Jason Fried recently wrote that we should teach iteration as a subject, or technique at least, in schools.

Another subject wildly undertaught is evolution. Not just the “creation vs. evolution” Big Picture story of how humans got here that we’ve spent centuries arguing over. I mean the underlying mechanisms of random variation, error correction, and fitness-to-environment testing that creates emergent order:

Out of the random variation, which is the result of mutations/copying-errors (which can be the result of exposure to radiation, metals or chemical substances), only a small percentage actually increases the fitness of an individual. Those mutations tend to prevail and become widespread, whereas mutations that lead to a disadvantage will likely be weeded out of the genepool. Even though the variation is originally random, a non-random subset of it – the fitness-benefitting components – ends up conserved through natural selection. This mechanism results in organisms adapting to better survive and reproduce in their environment.

So many other fields can benefit from a deeper understanding of these mechanisms — economics, sociology, architecture, language. In fact there’s a similarity here to teaching iteration. Teaching that accumulation and trial-and-error are present in every real system you’ll encounter in the future.