Information is stored in the brain.
People who do well in tests, it's because the procedure to do the things similiar to it has been streamlined, so streamlined but only because it came out of past experiences.
Think of any skills. Does it make sense for HR to hire a senior engineer with someone who has 1 month of experience in the field?
Problem Solving Centric Approach
Neural connections are abstract by nature, but skill is streamlined to a simple phrase of 'I have a problem that I need solving, and by solving more problems I get better by doing that exact thing', whether it's in the form of drawing, writing, playing a guitar, piano, coding, anything.
The brain learns and it forms neural connection to be better at doing that exact thing. In which it comes back to the phrase 'I have this problem that I want to solve'.
The first time I learned to play Nirvana songs on the guitar, my chord progression and the movement between chords felt stiff and I know that I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do because there are context-dependent metrics that I understand, in which it is "it's not supposed to sound this way". But over time, as my neurons that observe together, fires together, the tendon muscles on my fingers began to realign itself to make a better sounding chord progression.
It's all very abstract as the brain just forms and entangle a lot of unrelated things to achieve a goal.
The Teacher's Dilemma
Imagine a classroom, in which a teacher enters their very first day opening on a new module. Does it really make sense if they start the class by hading out a ungraded pre-eliminary test/quiz/exam on the first day?
At face value it doesn't really make sense, because the students are probably going to flunk it because they don't know anything about the subject.
But I think it'll make much more sense than just start teaching, this is my argument. When the teacher starts teaching say the module is biology of cells. It may done overload of information and the brain is an information processor and it tend to delete information that it doesn't register as important.
Bringing context means bringing a challenge to the brain that is context dependent and that can be done through ungraded pre-eliminary test in which it serves as a context that the students are expected to understand.
Does Teacher does not do this because it's too burdensome?
I grow up in a national school in which teachers are paid a fixed salary by a government and notorious talk on the street is that they are not being paid high enough to do better work. Performance of teachers greatly varies from person to person. Some seems to do extra work while some done the bare minimum while some does not do anything at all.
I talked with people from many different school, in which grading more exam papers, simply requires more motivation, effort, and time. For something that the teachers are not incentivized, why would they put more time than they should when their extra time is not incentivized?
For context, some teacher really could just walk in to class and make us powerpoint on different sub modules and arrange class presentations for the next lessons based on the sub modules. It's like making the students do the teaching through presentations while the teacher practically does nothing than managing the process of the group presentations.
Neurons Fire Together -> Abstraction to Correlation to Synthesis.
Cause and effect.
While multiple choices questions can seem to have a very wide variation to it. But boundaries are limited to the module, solving one multiple choice question does not only mean you are better at doing that exact thing, but you are better at solving the variation of the question that has variables within it.
If the example of the question is 'Which organelle of a cell functions as the powerhouse of the cell', and the options are golgi appratus, mitochondria, nucleus, reticulum endoplasm. Not only the student must draw the line between the function of a particular organelle to which organelle does the operation. A line made must also concur that other organellese have different purposes. And the format of the question is most probably be set on that particular context.
This is however, still memory based exam in which A -> B. Analysis is enabled when all webs have been tied and the question is above basic memory.
If mitochondria does the energy production of the cells. Then what happens when 'Cyanide binds to at least one molecule involved in producing ATP. If a cell is exposed to cyanide, most of the cyanide will be found within the?'
a. mitochondria. c. peroxisomes. b. ribosomes. d. lysosomes.
Only by knowing mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell doesn't directly infer where Cynaide is found to which organelle of the cells, but as the brain binds correlation from abstraction, it can make sense of abstract knowledge into something tangible and that comes from the ability to make abstract knowledge into something coherent and understandable.
The brain continues to form new cells, and the term 'neuroplasticity' arrives. This comes whenever we learn something new that knowledge of that particular thing is never rendered on our brain until we learn about it and that information is saved.
What Should We Do Now? Problem Solving Maximalist?
The world revoles in 'problem solving'.
I agree that it's too nihilistic to see life as a problem to be solved. It's not a problem per se, problem is just saying that there is a gap between where you are and where you wanted to be, in which the gap is what needs solving. This frame of where you wanted to be, is what is called the problem is very context dependent.
From the early cradle of civilization, each human thrives to make a living of tomorrow better than yesterday, a simple model where a human walks toward somewhere it wishes to be.
Why Are There Any Problems?
Because we live in a world with a structure designed without us (pre-natal).
and since this is the world that we live in, we will have to make money in order to live and the moment we abandon hope/optimism that we are able to create money/value for at least to survive, we will become the real nihilist, the people who doesn't believe in anything.
The reason why calculus are getting harder and harder each and every generations, is that because the demand of an intelligence-driven labor force, has made it necesarry to produce smarter and smarter human beings relative to prior generations. People of the past and us continously integrate ourselves with the model that in order to have 'desired states', there is always a problem to solve.
While a 'Problem', as much it carries negative sentiment into it, it doesn't mean it's an inherently bad thing to have.
Say I have a crush, I want to satisfy her, a state where I envision for her to be happy and I thrive towards the state to become. The moment I figured out how, it become a solved problem, while I could also at the same time love every time solving that problem.
Nothing is inherently 'bad', we just carry 'sentiment' to certain words based on our previous experiences.
And I most certainly would rather to live in the current world rather than in a world where I must hunt for meat in the forest and avoid predation at all times.
If a hunter gatherer's life motto is to survive, in a world where the savana does not guarantee his survival, then it became a problem to be solved where humans need to make something of itself and its surrounding to guarantee his basic survival. From a state of lower chance of surviving in the savanna, to a desired state where its survival is guaranteed by higher probabilities by means necesarry. The man saw a vision, the man walks toward its vision, and what term closes to it than a mere 'problem solving'?
The world is shaped around fractals of 'problem solving' until men is unable to understand what the word 'desire' means.
Submit to passion and become a value driven man.
Living always produces energy and that's just how life is. But it doesn't mean that problems won't be fun to solve.
Learning to be Happy
Why live at all?
Because we are able to perceive and understand what it means to be happy.
While being 'happy' is strongly sustained by our biological functions and we with outmost certainty we know it can be detached from us. Overexpose any human in an environment where stress hormones are overproduced, his neurotransmitter will simply grow numbs to emotions as it now feels alien to how the word 'happy' feels.
Your brain is not created with a failproof mechanism to guarantee happiness, but it can feel what does it mean to be 'happy'.
Schools, University, and Jobs
At some point of our life, we came from not knowing to knowing the whole purpose of academics is out of our parents expectation that we understand how the current world works so we can make a living by ourselves while doing the thing that we like, call it passion for work, or call it anything.
Though, the steps towards this is nothing mere than just again a desired state that we cannot obtain any other way.
We grow to find a sense of identity within ourselves the longer we live. How we can place ourselves in the world.
The world is not a zero sum game, it's only a zero sum game if you convinced yourself that it's a zero sum game.
We just happen to live in a world where it incentivizes people that thrives towards a shared-value, shared with other parties, call it a company's HR, call it university that sacks you for not having grades good enough for their criterion, call it the people who thinks that you do not provide a shared-value enough for them.
The good thing about 'value' is that it is made out of thin air, since it's subjectively perceived. You too can create 'value' out of nothing, your very own mind.
Being ahead means, forecasting what the world or 'sums of people' think would be valuable in the current and in the future, and how you can provide it.
Just like anything, you will be rewarded if it what the world needs, and you will learn if you get it wrong, but it doesn't mean you will always get it wrong.
A Model to Learning
That philosophical explanation above was quite the drift.
A model to learning means, over experience of solving problems, you will simply get better at doing that exact thing. The brain will bind correlation towards each experience and bind it to other subjects to find correlation. As you nourish the experiences, it will grow 'acclimitized' towards solving that thing and you will be 'proficient' at it.
Learning by getting context is just a means to dive in how to 'solve' the so-called problems.
You don't learn how to tie a tie by watching a video on how to tie a tie.
You try tying a tie and the more you do it, you get better at doing that exact thing.
You don't get to understand how to throw a 3-pointer by only watching Stephen Curry dunk a 3-pointer. You try throwing a 3-pointer.
Understand how the brain works, then you understand yourself.
Even a doctor does not become a doctor without practice.
The brain is just a thing that fires neurons and bind correlations and as it grows through experiences, it grows better at doing that exact thing.