Theory of Six Stages

Brainchild of Yunzhong Hou

The following Theory of Six Stages will be presented by Yunzhong Hou within the near future. The following is merely an abstract. Although it will be presented within the near future, its consequences will not become manifest until a decade or more into the future. Hou's theory of six stages coincides with the earlier psychological theories of development by Jean Piaget and Erik Erickson.

Through the course of human development, many qualities are variable and follow general functions that can describe them. The qualities we will consider here are:


 * Communication: People generally are very well able to communicate throughout their lives, with the exception of ages 0-4 and ages => 80.
 * Memory: The ability of a person to memorize new information is generally rather low at birth but climbs until puberty, after which it begins to decrease. By ages => 80, memory is particularly low. Peak memorization takes place during the adolescent and twenty something years,  and it starts to slowly decline starting in their thirties.
 * Flexibility: The ability of a person to flexibly work with various concepts (for example, Algebra, Calculus, Economics) is extremely high during childhood but gradually falls starting in early adulthood and continues to decrease through the years.
 * Knowledge: The amount of knowledge possessed by one person at a particular time is referred to as knowledge. This value depends on memory and flexibility. As a rule, knowledge rises most rapidly during adolescence and early twenties, reaches a peak at age 50-60, and then declines faster and faster.
 * Growth: Physical growth is most prominent at birth and decreases afterward, with a small spike during puberty.
 * Wisdom: Subjectively scaled, the amount of wisdom that a person possesses gradually increases through the years and generally does not decrease. Wisdom peaks especially with people 65 and older.
 * Creativity: Ability to come up with new ideas and concepts. Generally spikes during late childhood and becomes lower and lower afterward. Creativity seems to increase for some over the age of 50.

Since each of these variables peaks at a different age span, and since a human's life span is best spent by using the variable that is at a maximum during a particular time span, these peaks establish the Six Stages of human life, which generally can be viewed as how best to utilize a person's life span and his/her abilities during those years to maximize the benefit gained by society.

The Six Stages are: (Named rather arbitrarily)


 * 1) Young: Ages 0-6. During this time span the human body develops the most physically, while any knowledge learned during this time will eventually become forgotten to the point of uselessness later in life, and therefore society should promote vigorous exercise with minimal learning. This is the age where people learn about their physical surroundings and life is a big playground or sandbox with many things to explore.
 * 2) Page: Ages 6-12. During this time children should be placed into school (in a process known as Induction) and be given a crash course in the various courses that society has to offer.  Children at this stage are starting to understand concepts and are beginning to be able to map things out mentally instead of relying only on the physical environment for learning. Aside from the standard core curriculum, this should explore the basics of each of the branch curricula (such as the arts, economy, politics, religion, social studies, foreign languages, physics, chemistry, biology, etc). After the preliminary classes (ages 6-9) the pupil will then move on to more in-depth focus on the topics of their choice (those subject areas that are candidates for their further study because of their interest). For example, if a pupil shows interest in biology then the next areas open to him/her will be those such as medicine, bioinformatics, zoology, biology education, biotechnology, and bio-engineering, to name a few.  This continues into the squire phase.
 * 3) Squire: Ages 12-18. During this time people are best able to learn material that they will keep with them throughout life, having reached a level of developmental maturity. Courses now consist of even more specific subject areas. For example, the pupil mentioned above will now be schooled in subjects such as radiology and oncology. Generally, by age 12 the pupil will know what he/she is interested in, and therefore study in other subject areas will be a waste of time. This approach--throwing out the liberal arts education concept--will allow graduating students of age 18 to be fully active in their subject areas (maybe except for medicine, business, law, and engineering), but at the sacrifice of all other subject areas.
 * 4) Knight: Ages 18-36. By the time of Graduation students will have mastered everything vital to their subject areas and have found a job. Thereafter, the next eighteen years will be devoted to introducing new concepts to society. People in this time span will still have creativity that they can tap into, and will also have the most up-to-date information in their subject areas, having just recently Graduated. Before long they will have published their theses as part of their contribution to society.
 * 5) Master: Ages 36-72. By age 36 adults will have done all that they can to contribute new ideas to society, their body of knowledge having fallen far behind newer Graduates due to the relentless theses publication and technological advancement that their age group has made. Therefore, these adults will spend their next decades doing work that does not require as much creativity and flexibility of mind: more mundane work that no one else in society has time for according to this plan. This would include teaching other students.
 * 6) Lord: Ages 72+. By old age adults will be totally unable to teach and work for the community in their chosen subject areas because of loss of knowledge and total lack of memory and flexibility. In addition, their physical ability has also declined, making it impossible for them to contribute to general work. However, their major asset is their wisdom. Therefore, these old adults will contribute to society in that way: through the giving of their wisdom to younger ones. This would consist of jury duty and similar endeavors.

These are the Six Stages.