Ignorance as a Method: Rethinking Academic Burden in an Accelerated Society

Abstract

Purpose

This study applies “ignorance” as a theoretical lens to understand students’ academic burden in China as well as the value of free time in social acceleration.

Design/Approach/Methods

The article argues that students’ learning gradually became alienated in different times and spaces. It uses Rosa's social acceleration theory to analyze the logical paradox of the burden reduction policy in China and Benner's plasticity and self-activity principles to highlight the pedagogical value of leisure and free activities.

Findings

The findings suggest the need to maintain the “necessary ignorance” in leisure activities and intervene less in student learning. In this respect, “ignorance” can be viewed as a cognitive method to protect leisure time and rebuild a spontaneous order in learning, which can close the gap caused by the impossible synchronization of specific parties in the education system. Ignorance opens the door to learned spaces, providing more opportunities to reduce academic burden in an accelerated society and stimulate the imagination of education.

Originality/Value

This study reveals the plasticity and self-activity that students develop in free leisure time and space, and reworks the key concept of “inevitable ignorance” expounded by Friedrich Hayek into “necessary ignorance” with pedagogical and ethical meanings. The reconceptualization of academic burden opens up new ways of thinking about educational policy and educational practice.

In defense of ignorance: Protecting students’ free leisure time and rethinking academic burden in social acceleration

The issue of reducing academic burdens on students in China has attracted attention from various stakeholders in the education system and fueled people's anxiety. To resolve this issue, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, governments at all levels—from the central government to local authorities—have issued relevant policies with strict measures. For example, the central government has attempted to reduce academic burdens in four primary ways: (a) avoiding overworking students, (b) reducing emphasis on the enrollment rate, (c) mitigating the difference between ordinary and key schools, and (d) standardizing after-school training (Qin & Qi, 2022; Xiang, 2019). However, such policies (see e.g., General Office of the Ministry of Education [MOE], 2017; General Office of the MOE, 2021; General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, 2021) have not provided any particular benefit for students, parents, teachers, and other parties involved in educational activities over the past 20 years. Instead, these stakeholders appear lost in the education system and confused about the nature of reducing academic burdens (Fu & Li, 2022; Ma & Wu, 2014).

In recent years, the topic of how academic burdens can be reduced through family–school collaboration has received increasing attention. Historically, parents have never been as involved in their children's education as they are today. Resentment toward the heavy academic burdens on primary and secondary school students has resulted in a blame game between parents and schools. Schools are unhappy that parents do not share the responsibility of education at home, whereas parents are annoyed by the unnecessarily large amount of homework set by schools. Paradoxically, parents with a strong sense of responsibility in education appear to embrace a heavier academic burden, indicating that they would feel uncomfortable if there was less work. If schools reduce such burdens, these parents are likely to add academic burdens through after-school tutoring. Why do parents have such paradoxical feelings? Reducing academic burdens is taken as an approach to achieve quality education, and it complements and circumscribes other reform policies such as the new curriculum reform, performance-based teacher salary system, the construction of schools with special characteristics, and family‒school cooperation in education. In reality, this is easier said than done, which makes it more difficult to achieve quality education (Lin, 2019).

This study elucidates the nature of reducing academic burden by exploring the optional leisure activities that students voluntarily participate in for fun, to identify students’ plasticity and self-activity. In doing so, this study reiterates the value of the “necessary ignorance” in leisure activities and the need to intervene less in student learning. This study argues that being in a state of “ignorance” is a way to protect leisure time and rebuild a spontaneous order in learning, which can reduce the gap caused by the impossible synchronization of different parties in the education system. Finally, this study argues that “ignorance” opens the door to the space of the “known,” thus providing more opportunities to reduce academic burdens in an accelerated society and stimulate different ways of imagining education.

Academic burden and educational alienation in social acceleration

Learning comprises school learning and after-school learning, depending on where it occurs. By identifying the place of learning, we can draw a clear dividing line between family and school education. This line distinguishes the educational responsibilities of parents and schools while indirectly promoting family‒school collaboration. Depending on students’ autonomy to participate in the activity and the purpose of learning, their time can be categorized into “free time for play/leisure” (FTPL) and “blocked time for learning” (BTL), which enables us to discern a dividing line between learning and playing.

Hypothetically, the concept of “reducing academic burden” simplifies the education system as representing a horizontal relationship between actors in the system. However, it ignores the inevitable gap between the micro-time of individual organizations and the macro-time of social systems. In this sense, it assumes a tightly synchronized process in the virtual experience of time. However, as a result of acceleration, different departments cannot be synchronized with one another. Such asynchronization has not been recognized in the process of reducing academic burden—or deceleration—in the education system.

In the era of acceleration, people feel the need to forgo living in the moment in order to survive. Knowing that the past is gone, people continuously plan for the future, quickly jumping from one task to another, even though the future is still far ahead. The transitory experience in one place often renders people unable to feel the reality of the physical space, so that as time accelerates, the sense of space disappears. People engage in numerous events all at once within a limited timeframe because they wish or feel compelled to do more in less time. In other words, the key to winning a competition is to save time. Therefore, it has become crucial to be early and get ahead of the game. This logic is actually the manifestation of enterprise logic in the education system, whereby schools hope that students will reproduce value and make continuous contributions with increasing value. The main source of social motivation takes the form of competition. The theory of success reveals the relation between work and achievement, expressed in the following formula: Achievement is produced by the degree of labor or work completed in each unit of time, that is, Achievement = Work ÷ Time.

When this logic is applied to learning, students’ time and space for pure leisure is greatly reduced. Primary and secondary school students are asked to balance time and space across the four types of activities noted in this study and constantly consider their relationships and arrange their time to engage in these activities. First, they have to face the fixed schedule set by the school, which includes both normative and non-restrictive activities. This raises the question of whether they have enough energy to evaluate and balance all these activities in their decision-making. Second, they have to face the time structure of daily life. In this respect the role of family in education varies significantly. Currently, the amount of homework cannot be actually reduced, despite the advocacy for family‒school collaboration. In this context, can our daily life truly be restructured effectively? Accordingly, career planning becomes necessary, given the emphasis on students’ autonomy in course and module selection in exams. When deciding how to spend their time in terms of the four types of activities, students are effectively asking, “How do I spend my life?” Finally, although it may be possible to protect students on an ideal and virtual campus or at home, they will eventually realize that their time of day is inscribed into the time of their generation and era. As such, they must consider how to settle down their body-mind in the fluctuation of times. When they finish formal education, will they be ready to seize their turn?

In today's schools, most students cannot commit to the present and “live in the moment” by working hard. They also cannot be “the fisherman” without “the beach” and “the sun.” ¹ School education feeds their desire. Schools hope that students can continue to gain experience to meet higher expectations. Meanwhile, being used to after-school tutoring, this generation has no idea how to spend their free leisure time. Then, upon entering university, they gain some free time and begin to experience a disordered time structure before their self-activity is fulfilled. This phenomenon is also regarded as a widespread psychological disease called the “disease of hollowing-out” (Xu, 2016).

Given cultural patterns and the need to provide structure, aligning the demand for systematization with the actors’ expectations involves time manipulation. The key to managing conflicts of interest and battles over power lies in whoever determines the rhythm, duration, speed, sequence, and synchronization of events and actions. This situation then marks the beginning of an alienated education in social acceleration.

In the era of acceleration, educational reforms have stressed the importance of subjective values. The paradox is that this view seems to respect the subjectivity of students, but the essence is actually to accelerate society's grip on individual energy. For example, educators are encouraged to develop students’ creativity, subjectivity, and passion in teaching. This is an indispensable component for enhancing the competitiveness of the country. The significant energy generated by individuals and society is likely to be exhausted by the acceleration of society. If we do not want to be drained by continuously participating in socioeconomic competition, we have to deal with a new state of alienation that typically translates into two extremes. On the one hand, the subject cannot be forced by other actors or external factors. In other words, the actor can pursue their own goals or achieve what they want through various possible actions. On the other hand, the subject does not really want to do so or agree with such practices (Rosa, 2018, p. 114). For example, we still send our children to learn Olympiad mathematics after school, regardless of whether we consider it necessary to do so. Although we could adopt other approaches when we find ourselves skeptical about goals and practice, we remain in a situation where “we just have to do it anyway.” We may feel alienated whenever we act against our true will, regardless of whether we are prepared to do so. As this state develops, we—as an individual or collective—will eventually “forget” what our real goals and intentions are. This will produce a contrary state in which we are controlled by others, even though no external oppressor actually controls us (Rosa, 2018, p. 115).

Some observers of social reform have noted how time seems to accelerate and cannot be turned back. At the beginning, people start experiencing time constraints, shifting ideals, the fear of missing out, and the anxiety produced by the combination of them all. Thereafter, people face consequent social stagnation, boredom in groups, and burnout. Consequently, the state of human existence changes and people become increasingly isolated, losing their feelings and eventually themselves. In this case, an individual is trying to do something they are not genuinely interested in doing. The strangest thing is that although nobody overtly forces them, they still choose to do so. The emergence of this new form of alienation predicts the end of modern society.

Regardless of whether they receive special guidance, everyone can relate to an accelerated society. Through numerous unexpected collaborations, people have collated their experiences and views regarding acceleration in education. This acceleration can be observed from primary school to university. Junior high schools recruit primary school students in advance and run advance courses to prepare outstanding students for entering senior high school. Similarly, senior high school students can attend preparatory courses in preparation for attending university. At university, students are required to conduct research projects before they finish their undergraduate courses.

The foregoing provokes a series of questions. For instance, at the primary and secondary school levels, which parties/institutions are competing for time in a student's day to provide training? How is such training made available to schools? For university students, how do they retain the right to control their time given the presence of internship providers on campus? Essentially, the starting line for success is being moved forward little by little. Acceleration occurs at all stages and in all areas of education, and there are always people who jump the gun. Is learning still the same as it used to be? Are students still students in the traditional sense? In times of acceleration, how should we interpret social situations and future expectations of education reforms so that students can receive uniform training in the quartet system?

Protecting leisure time, self-activity and plasticity

For children, the location, content, and methods of learning are not defined from an educational perspective but rather, from the perspectives of politics, economics, technology, and various disciplines. Politics determines the number, type, and scope of disciplines. Rather than specific pedagogical criteria, teachers evaluate student performance from the perspective of a particular profession and discipline. The difficulty of an exam is determined by the number of students who should qualify to graduate from a certain type of school or be allowed to advance to an educational institution of higher grades. In accordance with constitutional guarantees, a person may be qualified to pursue a teaching career at a state institution. However, this condition tests whether an individual who is preparing to teach or is teaching is loyal to the constitution, not their teaching ability. This encourages the view that although there are various forms of educational action and occupations, there is no universally recognized pedagogical thought, knowledge, or skill that guides and restricts educational activities (Benner, 2005, p. 3). This means that many internal affairs in the field of education are not completely determined by the concept and practice of pedagogy. This basic incongruence corresponds to the diversified goals and constraints of school education. In the context of other social subsystems parallel to the field of education, essential forms of human practice in society (e.g., labor, ethics, education, politics, art, and religion) constitute the basis on which human beings maintain and advance their own existence through their interdependence, even though they are not in innate harmony with one another. Faced with the lack of coordination both within and beyond the educational system, students themselves—who are the recipients of the educational system—must be able to adapt to the situation to meet in- and out-of-school requirements.

Consequently, free time for pure leisure, which students typically value the most, is reduced to a small amount. The key to developing students’ ability to balance different types of activities lies in protecting their free space and time and ensuring high-quality learning, if learning were to take place during their free time. Beyond standard normative learning and quantifiable assessments, students will be differentiated according to the use of free time. Compared with BTL, the most important feature of free leisure activities is the withdrawal of the educator and the resulting assertion of students’ autonomy, which allows for the possibility of student plasticity and self-activity.

Plasticity embodies the principle of relativity in educational interaction, which views education as a practice involving individuals, subjects, and generations. The principle of plasticity first takes a neutral perspective—that the way we treat the educated should neither confirm nor deny that they have certain talents. To do so requires that the plasticity of the educated be recognized in educational interaction and that they be encouraged to participate in self-education and development. Through educational interactions, individuals can learn to support themselves and make decisions based on their own will to participate actively in their own development, rather than being helpless and feeling dominated (Benner, 2005, pp. 50–54).

In time and space that can be controlled freely for learning, students should be regarded as rational beings and be able to affirm their self-activity or dynamism. As Fichte noted, a rational being must think that they have the power of self-activity, and their essence is completely determined by their own initiative (e.g., ego and subjectivity). Moreover, the ultimate and highest substratum of the reflection of a rational being must be the self-defined dynamism that returns to oneself. Through this dynamic activity, the rational being defines himself. In this respect, the self must then exist for itself in order to give the individual what they seek (Fichte, 2004, pp. 17–18). The dialectic relationship between plasticity and self-activity must be addressed if we want education to get rid entirely of lessons, indoctrination, manipulation, and anti-education learning, and ensure that the learning process is neither determined by the will of others nor totally left to the discretion of the learner. To achieve such an arduous task, educational reformers often put their hope in non-restrictive and normative learning activities such as promoting “efficient classrooms,” “student-centered teaching,” “flipping classrooms,” and “inquiry-based learning.” However, the advocacy of all kinds of promising classroom activities has indirectly reduced students’ leisure time, restricting their plasticity and self-activity. The direction and boundary of growth are defined in a progressive way. Educators, with their excessive and even arrogant knowledge, suppress the space for learners to explore and grow freely.

How do we deal with this dialectical relationship? Dewey's discussion on “an experience” in his book Art as Experience (1980) provides some inspiration. According to Dewey, “an experience” must first have integrity. The real experience is the unity of “doing” and “undergoing.” It is a loop. After doing something, one generates an awareness of the consequences of one's own action; this refers to the concept of “undergoing.” As an example, albeit a negative one, “stew in one's own juice” can be considered “an experience.” Letting children play freely often means that they have to bear the consequences of playing alone, and children are often willing to take such risks. However, not all past events become “an experience.” As Dewey (1980) explains,

We put our hands to the plow and turn back; we start and then we stop, not because the experience has reached the end for the sake of which it was initiated but because of extraneous interruptions or of inner lethargy. (p. 37)

Something is only accomplished when it is completed. It is only in the free space and time of complete autonomy that the individual can constantly “do” things according to their own initiative, so as to develop their own unique rhythmic movement. Such movement will slowly accumulate to foster natural growth where one can explore one's own inner rhythm.

On the whole, an experience is characterized by patterns and structures because it does not merely involve the transformation from doing to undergoing. Instead, it forms a relationship between the two in which actions and their consequences are combined in perception. In the ultimate sense, the relationship between doing and undergoing can be seen as the development of reason. In this process, reason eventually develops into the structure of experience. The occurrence of experience involves will and purpose. In the process of thinking, an underlying quality develops through “trains of ideas” characterized by emotion and practice (Dewey, 1980, pp. 35–43). Emotion is the glue that holds together the different parts of “an experience.”

Following Dewey's concept of “an experience,” we need to address whether it is better for students to have more free time and space for pure leisure, as well as how the learning activities of BTL relate to activities of FTPL. The holism of human beings is not accomplished at once in a single time and space, and “doing” and “undergoing” do not necessarily occur sequentially. If students can perform activities of BTL, they can also engage in activities of FTPL. This process still constitutes “an experience,” and the same is true the other way around. Therefore, the plasticity and self-activity of the individual can be developed by weaving together their experiences of normative learning activities and non-restrictive leisure activities.

According to Dewey (1980), all factors that intervene in the perception of the relations between “undergoing” and “doing” restrict experience. Such an intervention can be caused by either excessive “doing” or “undergoing.” Any imbalance between the two can obscure perception, leading to a one-sided and distorted experience that lacks rich and true meaning (Dewey, 1980, pp. 44–45). From an empirical viewpoint, students’ autonomy and self-reflection are developed by “doing” and “undergoing” optional leisure activities, and the combination of the two can help in developing “new experiences.” Too much receptivity is akin to trying to help the shoots grow by pulling them upward. When there is no balance between doing and undergoing, nothing can take root in the mind. This is the inevitable misfortune of education. You do not always reap what you sow.

A balance between doing and undergoing is not always achieved when students struggle alone. It is necessary to take a holistic view of time allocation by days, weeks, months, and years. Time and space are divided up among schools, family, society, and the students themselves. Therefore, we need to take an alternative perspective to help students find a harmonious balance across FTPL and BTL, so that they can establish actual contact with the real world through activities of “doing” and “undergoing.” In other words, some decisive action is necessary to defend optional leisure activities. Obviously, the decisive action can be either positive or negative. Over the years, most of the policies on reducing academic burden have advocated positive action. However, schools and families may benefit by considering new possible actions from a negative perspective.

Rebuilding “spontaneous order” with necessary ignorance in leisure time

Although we all spend a large part of our lives on learning and mastering general and specific knowledge, our development can vary significantly. In all walks of life, knowledge about people, the local environment, and specific situations is a valuable asset. Certainly, the wealth of such knowledge varies from one individual to another. The acquisition of such knowledge should start from the initial stage of life education. Here, it is important to recognize how independent activities are carried out in free leisure time, outside formal education and scheduled activities.

Our natural desire to pursue knowledge is not without purpose; the purpose lies in our own ignorance. According to Cusanus (1981),

For a man—even one very well versed in learning—will attain unto nothing more perfect than to be found to be most learned in the ignorance which is distinctively his. The more he knows that he is unknowing, the more learned he will be. (p. 6)

In this sense, it would be wiser to retreat into a state of “ignorance” rather than assume that we know what students should do at every moment of learning. Such ignorance is both a necessity and a protective piece of education wisdom. This is similar to Cusanus’ (1981) theological reflection on God and truth, namely, that the basis of learned ignorance lies in the fact that absolute truth is beyond our grasp and that we should discuss “the maximum learning of ignorance” (Cusanus, 1981, pp. 5–6).

In addition, according to Hayek (1980),

It will at once be evident that on this point the position will be different with respect to different kinds of knowledge. The answer to our question will therefore largely turn on the relative importance of the different kinds of knowledge: those more likely to be at the disposal of particular individuals and those which we should with greater confidence expect to find in the possession of an authority made up of suitably chosen experts. If it is today so widely assumed that the latter will be in a better position, this is because one kind of knowledge, namely, scientific knowledge, occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant. It may be admitted that, as far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available—though this is of course merely shifting the difficulty to the problem of selecting the experts. (pp. 79–80)

This point is abundantly evident in modern education. It has always been easy to engage public knowledge on issues concerning education, frequently producing social trends. However, some experts are also keen to disseminate certain “scientific knowledge” to guide the public in shaping the kind of “ideal” or “future” education that they desire, as illustrated in the following quote,

But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active co-operation. (Hayek, 1980, p. 80)

As Hayek emphasizes, the necessity of “divided individual knowledge” lies in the “necessary ignorance” of an individual regarding the unique situation in which others find themselves.

By introducing “ignorance” as his core concept, Hayek moved directly from “divided individual knowledge” based on “knowing”—that is, “explicit knowledge”—to “tacit knowledge” based on “ignorance.” For example, terms such as “knowledge,” “opinions,” “beliefs,” and “ideas” have been replaced by concepts such as “ignorance,” “necessary ignorance,” and “inevitable ignorance” (Deng, 1998, p. 107). This transition opens up possibilities for building a more spontaneous order, in which “tacit knowledge” and “knowing how” gradually emerge after “conscious knowledge” and “explicit knowledge.” In specific circumstances, the knowledge employed in coordinating the actions of many people does not stem from any one mind alone but exists as the independent knowledge of a myriad different individuals. Together, the abstract rules that individuals follow in performing actions and the outcomes that result from their responses constitute the overall order of actions (Hayek, 1967, pp. 91–92).

Living as members of society and dependent for the satisfaction of most of our needs on various forms of co-operation with others, we depend for the effective pursuit of our aims clearly on the correspondence of the expectations concerning the actions of others on which our plans are based with what they will really do. This matching of the intentions and expectations that determine the actions of different individuals is the form in which order manifests itself in social life (Hayek, 1973, p. 36). Today, curriculum and teaching reforms promote cooperative learning to stimulate the socialization of students, whereby they learn to solve problems collaboratively through interpersonal interactions and find their true selves through cooperation. Such cooperation should result in a spontaneous order in which individuals can locate themselves and others through interaction or even “stacks.”

As order has been generally interpreted as such a deliberate arrangement by somebody, the concept has become unpopular among those who value freedom and has been favored mainly by authoritarians. According to this interpretation, order in society must rest on a command–obedience relationship or a hierarchical structure of the whole of society in which the will of superiors, and ultimately of some single supreme authority, determines what each individual must do (Hayek, 1973, p. 36). As is commonly known, students primarily carry out normative and semi-normative activities at school. They are willing to learn in a step-by-step manner by following instructions. Although such an arrangement may appear rational, it actually greatly deprives students of opportunities to establish a spontaneous order within themselves. When given free time and space for studying, students often ask, “What should I do?” This question is prompted by their lack of experience. However, students quickly become involved in structured activities that their parents have arranged for them and continue in this loop before they even have a chance to struggle and hesitate because of the lack of experience noted earlier. Experience accumulates as a result of emotions derived from impulses and stimuli that humans possess as living creatures, as well as from a normal state of ignorance—it is only where there is an open space that something new can be placed in it, which captures the Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. We become aware of men's necessary ignorance of many things, and this awareness helps them achieve their aims. Most of the advantages of social life, especially in its more advanced forms, which we call “civilization,” rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than they are aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of their goals can use more knowledge than they have themselves acquired and can transcend the boundaries of their ignorance by profiting from knowledge they do not themselves possess (Hayek, 1960, p. 22).

Students are in a position where they can only accept the order externally formed in a system in which schools, families, the government, and society are closely connected with one another. However, the sense of oppression produced by such an order is frequently overlooked. According to Hayek (1973),

… this authoritarian connotation of the concept of order derives, however, entirely from the belief that order can be created only by forces outside the system (or “exogenously”). It does not apply to an equilibrium set up from within (or “endogenously”) such as that which the general theory of the market endeavours to explain. (p. 36)

Dewey (1980) saw such a spontaneous order as producing esthetics and the values of a higher realm. As he explained, “In as far as the development of experience is controlled through reference to these immediately felt relations of order and fulfillment, that experience becomes dominantly aesthetic in nature” (Dewey, 1980, p. 50).

In this respect, we should value the real and new individual experience developed from leisure. One reason we should do so is that the development of experience demands controlling the order that we directly perceive. Order is the rhythm of actions, where a series of events is arranged one by one, step by step, eventually making a complete whole, without fear of failure or starting over. When completed, the process of accumulating experience instills in an individual a sense of control by making meaning from the relationship between “doing” and “undergoing” throughout the process. This empirical sense of order is captured by Chinese idioms such as “handling a butcher's cleaver with ease” (i.e., doing something skillfully and easily). In other words, experience by nature attains the state of esthetics: If you find a skill, you can handle it. Human beings have reached a level of instinctual automaticity, where the muscles can automatically control the brain, and the brain can automatically control the muscles. In free leisure time and space, people can acquire unique abilities through unconscious training. The interaction between “doing” and “undergoing” gradually accumulates, each serving as a tool in an endless cycle. In free time and space for leisure, children can create their own unique experience by “doing” energetic activities and “undergoing” events intensively. After gaining experience through FTPL, children can use reflexive thinking to choose, simplify, clarify, omit, and extract experience from other areas to suit their own interests. In this way, they can grow up without actually being conscious of their growth.

Getting one step ahead has long been a common strategy in the competitive arena of education, although this has often translated into “jumping the gun.” However, too much intervention in children's education at an early stage removes the challenges that they need to encounter in the process of obtaining experience. This situation not only obscures the boundary and nature of free leisure time but also hinders their growth. Turning an experience into an esthetic experience depends on transforming resistance, tension, and stimuli—which tend to be divisive—into any activity that leads to inclusion and perfection. “If we move too rapidly, we get away from the base of supplies—of accrued meanings—and the experience is flustered, thin, and confused” (Dewey, 1980, p. 56). Here, “base of supplies” refers to the meaning gradually accumulated in the children's development. It is easy for children to forget their original intention in normative training. If they can return to their original intention in free leisure time and identify their priorities, they will return to their own base and find their true self. However, as Dewey (1980, p. 56) noted, “if we dawdle too long after having extracted a net value, experience perishes of inanition.” Certainly, there are still questions that need to be addressed to ensure that experience is accumulated properly during free leisure time.

Conclusion: Opening the imagination of education with ignorance as a method

This study analyzes the spatial and the temporal distributions of students’ learning activities through the theoretical lens of ignorance and highlights the need to pay particular attention to learners’ “free leisure time” in order to promote the development of their unique experience. However, there is a paradox that cannot be ignored, that is, the argument stands only if there are positive outcomes. In other words, the time learners initially spent on leisure activities is only one reason for their later achievement of satisfactory academic results. It is not unusual to hear people complain that “other kids” develop themselves in all aspects during their free time after school, while their own children do not have great ambitions and spend too much time playing. Although learning from experience is a common approach and often yields great success, many factors can affect its outcome. Experience itself is inherently heterogeneous because of its complex causal structure. History, which is endogenous and constructed by participants and observers, can provide only small samples and little experience. The flexibility of interpretation comes down to whether it captures the hyperreality or evokes the authority to interpret experience after an event. In general, stories and models are more commonly used to explain an event after the fact rather than predict it (March, 2011, pp. 81–85).

Positivists predict future actions based on the facts that already exist, with such analysis reflecting a certain type of epistemology. From statistical analysis of big data to narratives of success at the individual level, various attempts have been made to counter the mind and feelings, often in terms of despair, which is inherent in subjectivity and self-conceptualization. Indeed, it is impossible to confirm whether other minds exist. Regardless, our understanding of another mind is invariably vague, incomplete, or even completely wrong (Bennett, 2014, pp. 237–238). In the world with which we are familiar, we consider things carefully with suppressed emotions, and we describe things in vague language—things that are not real and cannot be seen. We become aware of the existence of night after we turn on the light. Indeed, the things you cannot see are as important as the things you can see (Bennett, 2014, p. 207). The epistemology and methods established based on positivism, as well as relevant educational measures introduced, try to make us forget one thing: our inevitable ignorance of the existence of the other or things that are not seen.

We are not always able to convey meaning clearly. More often than not, we are ignorant of the current era, the world, and children in front of us. It is the inevitable ignorance of the soul of the other that leads to confusion, disbelief, and the questioning of meaning. When things are unseen, we cannot make sense of them, which leads to ignorance. What can we do? Both types of ignorance—the “inevitable ignorance” of others and the “necessary ignorance” of the self—bring about knowledge, significant cognitive opportunities, and numerous uncertainties. Education can be regarded as playing a decisive role in defining a young person. In contrast to the lessons taught at school and the educational activities arranged at home, what happens in students’ free leisure time can only be considered a “negative process.” In this process, the normative education of adults temporarily retires, and what occurs can only be an interpretation of uncertainty, indeterminacy, or ignorance. In free leisure time, children tend to “understand, question, familiarize, forget, and erase, making the process unrecognizable and repetitive.” With the power of denial, they can switch comfortably from non-restrictive learning to restrictive arrangements, thus maintaining an equilibrium.

Alternatively, we could reorganize the actors in the educational system with a focus on leisure activities in free time, to ensure that these actors remain ignorant of at least some activities within a cycle of free time and allow action to be initiated in occupied time with ignorance and then in the pursuit of educational benefits. This does not mean that educators should ignore their responsibilities. Rather, it means that one can retreat into a state of necessary ignorance, searching and longing for an unsolved mystery, a riddle without an answer, a secret without content. Here, the desire is not only for knowledge, teaching, meaning, and understanding but also ultimately for the unknowable. Children's leisure activities provide participants with knowledge and awareness as well as indescribable content. This is perhaps the true meaning of the old saying, “teaching benefits teachers as well as students.”

Here, it is worth mentioning the influence of a conventional but not widely perceived concept, epistemophilia, that is, the desire for or preoccupation with knowledge. When a child is born, parents are influenced by the market and start learning how to have a good relationship with their child by attending parenting classes, participating in parent‒child activities, buying childcare books, and seeking educational tips in the hope of applying some universal laws to the education of their own child. Too often, people take for granted that the desire for knowledge is a positive value. In a learning society, the advocacy of lifelong learning increases the popularity of pursuing knowledge. Epistemophilia has promoted the development of normative education, while people's behavior has also been shaped by the structure of narratives of success. This, paradoxically, makes anepistemophilia or epistemophobia—the thirst and the awareness of ignorance—highly appreciated values today.

Through joint efforts to educate the next generation, the government has introduced various policies intended to foster cooperation among once distant parties. To some extent, measures like “family‒school collaboration,” “parent education,” and “parents in class” are based on the omniscience of others and oneself, with the expectation that others will cooperate with oneself in education. However, such deep cooperation and connection make it more challenging to reduce the academic burden on students. The journey of education is long. During and even at the end of this journey, people remain unaware of the root causes of their triumphs, even after they have succeeded on their own path. Unsurprisingly, people continue to have doubts, remain ignorant, and persist in seeking ways to educate their children.

In free space and time, learners’ activities are characterized by the uncertainty of intention, the incalculability of content, and the inability to control the process fully. These three characteristics can be used to evaluate the school's normative curriculum and instructions. Undoubtedly, educators do not always know the intentions, processes, and effects of their action, which inevitably leads to copious ineffective communication in “one-to-many teaching.” The advocacy of policies and measures for reducing academic burden appears to make parties in the system deviate from their usual perception of academic burden. Being understood and being ignored are often at odds with each other. Consequently, there is confusion regarding the future of education, with students forced to drain themselves in learning.

“Necessary ignorance” is not only a cognitive state before an individual takes action but also a kind of “purposeless purposiveness” in modern education. ² It is necessary for us to introduce a combined concept of “ignorance and purposelessness” to facilitate an understanding of how learners allocate their free time and space. This way, we also obtain an opportunity to transform the education of this part of time and space from technological governance to an artistic and esthetic experience. What really interests educators is the content of the ignorance from students, that is, everything we do not know in our imagination.

This raises the question of how we can foster the imagination of education. To achieve the synchronization of different academic times and spaces, this study focused on the educational opportunities brought about by ignorance in free learning time, which may exist in the meaningful tension between our ignorance of learners and understanding of ourselves. In this respect, there appears to be a strange mechanism urging us to explore the hidden contradictions in the problem of ignorance in education. It is impossible to determine what, why, and how learners behave in their free leisure time. Therefore, there is significant diversity in students’ growth despite their receiving similar classroom learning and after-school tutoring. This phenomenon illustrates the art and wisdom of education, which cannot be imagined in a standardized technical process.

Why are we yet to change our mindset when approaching the issue of reducing academic burden? There is a fixed amount of time in a day. Allocating time for normative study and leisure essentially follows the same process. The quality of learning in free leisure time determines the quality of education and the value of life. It is necessary to recognize that the total increase in academic burden on students is determined by social development and demand. To achieve educational reform, we should consider how to let students enjoy themselves with more time and space unrelated to making a living. We also need to elucidate the meaning of time and space in this era of acceleration. The key to happiness in life seems to lie in having experiences beyond those related to the necessity of survival. This reiterates the starting point of this study, that is, identifying which issues need to be considered in developing policies for reducing academic burden. In response to this question, this study's findings are as follows.

First, we should seriously consider and pay attention to learning quality in free leisure time. This is related to students’ personal interests and the cultivation of their decision-making capabilities, which are important for the success of educational reform. Second, it is necessary to investigate the arrangement of normative learning and leisure activities at school. It is only by focusing on these details of learning and teaching that we will be able to implement our grand educational reforms successfully. Third, we have identified ignorance as a uniquely personal cognitive asset that drives learning and enables making valuable and directional judgments about what and how to learn. However, it is important to note that the ignorance of children, students, adults, thinkers, and philosophers cannot be completely equated. Specifically, regarding the ignorance deliberately created by adults that affects minors, there are risks of being blinded, paranoid, protective, and vulnerable, and of fostering arrogance. Such situations require educators to intervene more judiciously.

At a time when “new alienation” continues to occur, we should at least prevent those who jump the gun from taking all the resources and simultaneously compete in all learning spaces. Further efforts are needed to counter alienation and defend free space and time. To engender hope in the future, learners should create new experiences with humbleness rooted in necessary ignorance.