The Baby in the Bathwater
An Evolutionary Perspective on Schools Can't Afford to Lose Sight of the Good
In New York, schools are getting out and summer is finally here! With another year of teaching wrapping up, I find myself naturally reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly of my profession. What follows are my thoughts on what needs to change, but also some of the critical and beneficial roles that schools play. Both sides must be considered in any discussion of educational reform. We should be careful to not, as the proverb goes, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Evolutionarily Informed Schooling Calls for Change
There are a whole host of issues surrounding the way we educate our children. An evolutionary lens sheds light on many of these issues and has the capacity to provide guidance on ways to improve education. I’ve written about many issues that benefit from an evolutionary perspective:
Schools tend to decrease opportunities for play and time for recess.
Children exhibit increasing behavioral concerns, especially with substitute teachers.
Children have an overreliance on technology, yet schools struggle to effectively teach technological skills.
Children fail to demonstrate important self-help skills.
Dictated curricula and testing make it difficult to provide quality science instruction.
In general, evolutionary theory shows us how the modern education system is monumentally mismatched from the education conditions we have evolved to expect. We evolved to learn through self-directed, mixed-age play. However, school systems emphasize standards-based, teacher-directed, direct instruction. The implications of this mismatch are seen across the board in the academic, social, and mental health domains. There is a large body of evidence that children today are struggling more than ever (see Haidt, 2024; Gray, 2013).
As a result of this research, some argue that schools need to be completely redesigned to better align with our evolved learning mechanisms (see Gray, 2016). There are also increasing movements such as homeschooling or unschooling that aim to completely eradicate the schooling system in favor of more childhood autonomy and self-directed education.
I agree with the idea that we need to take a long, hard look at the way we are educating our children. That said, I do not believe we should completely throw out the education system as we know it for all children. Rather, I propose that by making small changes that work to reduce evolutionary mismatch, we can create more positive outcomes for modern students (see Gruskin et al., 2025). Additionally, it is important to remember that schools play critical roles in our society—roles that often go beyond just the curriculum.
The Positives of Schooling
It is important to recognize that there are a lot of good things happening in schools, particularly in public schools. There are many important practices and policies in place that play a critical role in our society and culture. What better time to reflect on these good things than at the end of the year?
In reality, it’s not just our schools that are mismatched from our evolved conditions. The Western world as a whole is “out of whack” and we find ourselves in large-scale societies, away from close family, and surrounded by novel foods, governments, and other conditions that our ancestors never had to contend with (see Glenn Geher’s Substack for more on this idea). Funny enough, schools do help us contend with some of the issues that result from these mismatches.
Below are just some critical roles that schools play that, regardless of how we feel about public schools, we should take pains not to lose sight of when discussing school reform:
Schools are important for the acquisition of evolutionarily novel skills:
While some researchers believe that children have evolved mechanisms to self-direct their own education, many believe schools are a necessary “evil” due to the complexity of the cultural-based knowledge we need to be successful in the 21st century and the Westernized world. Academic areas such as literacy and mathematics are not skills that come naturally to us as they were not around for the lion’s share of our evolutionary past. Consequently, some direct instruction is likely necessary to foster the acquisition of these academic skills (see Geary, 2024). Schools ensure that all children have access to instruction in these important, evolutionarily novel concepts.
Schools provide childcare:
I will never advocate for thinking of teachers as babysitters, yet the reality is that the Western economy rests on the foundation of schools providing reliable childcare during the workday. Without public schools to provide a safe place for children, many families would have to spend significant amounts of their income on reliable childcare or make decisions about who works and who stays home. Recent statistics from the US show that in approximately 66% of married-couple families with children, both parents are employed (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). This reliance on childcare was not a problem for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but is a legitimate concern for today’s societies.
Schools provide socialization:
In general, kids do like the social aspect of school and rely on schooling for the development and maintenance of their friendships. One telling study found that when COVID-19 shut down schools, the primary reason cited by children as their motivation to return to school was their friendships (Gray, 2020). Under ancestral conditions, children had more ready access to friends. Today, much of a child’s socialization either happens online or in schools (see Haidt, 2024).
Schools put eyes on at-risk kids:
It is an unfortunate reality that some children live in homes that are unsafe. Teachers, as mandated reporters (and often just people who care about kids), play a critical role in safeguarding vulnerable youth. Due to the nature of schooling, teachers get to know their students very well and either are the ones who spot signs of abuse or neglect or are the people that kids turn to when they need help. Without a system like this to watch out for children, there are concerns about increased instances of abuse. In small, tight-knit ancestral groups, it would have been difficult to hide instances of abuse. Unfortunately, it is much easier to do so in our society today, yet schools provide an important safeguard for children.
Schools provide social services and support:
Many children come from families facing economic hardships. About 1 in 7 kids in the US live below the poverty line (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2024). Schools often provide multiple meals to children during the day and go as far as sending home food for the evening and weekends. I’ve seen clothing, toys, blankets, and more being sent home to support struggling families. School staff are also able to set families up with community-based resources for healthcare, housing, etc., that would be difficult for families to find independently. In our mismatched large-scale societies, schools help provide support that small-scale ancestral groups would have helped with.
Teachers are, on the whole, amazing:
I’d be remiss not to make a note about teachers! The amazing folks I work with, and many who read this Substack, care deeply about their students and their students’ success and well-being. None of the positive things listed above would happen without highly dedicated teachers. Despite working in a system that is full of challenges, the majority of teachers spend their energy trying to do what is right for kids. Teaching is not an easy job and not something to be taken lightly. The amazing teachers I see every day work hard to provide high-quality lessons, use data to drive their instruction and interventions, teach social-emotional skills to kids, provide safe and nurturing spaces, make learning fun, support the needs of families, and so much more. Despite ancestral learning being done without adult teachers, great teachers are indispensable and truly something we should not lose sight of in the education system.
Takeaways
In reflecting on another year in the classroom, I do continue to believe that significant changes are needed in our education system and evolutionary thinking shines a powerful light on ways we can navigate those changes. Yes, schools are deeply mismatched from ancestral conditions and a lot of work must be done to create better, and hopefully, evolutionarily informed school systems. But no, I don’t think we can or should scrap the idea of schools completely.
Our entire modern world is evolutionarily mismatched—schools provide services to help navigate some of the associated challenges. Any discussion of school reform needs to be aware of the nuances of this issue.
It is critical that we not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Schools do a lot of good and that work should be recognized, celebrated, and safeguarded.
So teachers, enjoy your summer off! It is well-earned!
References:
Geary, D. (2024). The Evolved Mind and Modern Education. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009454858
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life. Basic Books.
Gray, P. (2016). Children's natural ways of educating themselves still work: Even for the three Rs. In D. C. Geary & D. B. Berch (Eds.), Evolutionary perspectives on education and child development (pp. 67–93). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29986-0_3
Gray, P. (2020). How children coped in the first months of the pandemic lockdown. American Journal of Play, 13, 33-52.
Gruskin, K., Griffin, M., Bansal, S., Dickinson-Frevola, S., Dykeman, A., Groce-Volinski, D., Henriquez, K., Kardas, M., McCarthy, A., Shetty, A., Staccio, B., Geher, G., & Eisenberg, E. (2025). Stakeholders’ Roles in Evolutionizing Education: An Evolutionary-Based Toolkit Surrounding Elementary Education. Behavioral Sciences, 15, 92. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15010092
Haidt, J. (2024) The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Random House.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2024, September 30). Child poverty rates remained high in 2023: At least 10 million kids in poverty. https://www.aecf.org/blog/new-child-poverty-data-illustrates-the-powerful-impact-of-americas-safety-net-programs
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025, April 23). Employment characteristics of families -- 2024 [Press release]. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf
Happy summer! Yay schools!