In 1981, while an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri, Michael Soetaert almost jokingly poised the question, “Why is college so much harder than grade school?”  After seven years and a seven million dollar government grant, this book is the result of that question.  What Michael Soetaert discovered is perhaps the most significant educational breakthrough in this century, and it is destined to change the pedagogical structure of our entire educational system.

At first we might be tempted to say that the subject matter was easier in grade school, but curricular difficulty is only relative to the cognitive level for which it is designed.  Simply put, difficulty levels increase as our intellectual capacity increases.

One major difference between college and grammar school is the classroom structure.  Grade schools tend to be more personal, offering more one-on-one instruction, whereas college tends to be the opposite.  No one would ream of putting five hundred third graders in an auditorium to hear a lecture on economics for an hour.  It has been suggested that no one should put five hundred college sophomores in an auditorium for an hour to hear a lecture on economics, and that could quite possibly be the present problem with our educational system.

Soetaert, however, discounts the above theory.  Having already compiled extensive research on an alternate hypothesis, he would have been forced to abandon the work of several years simply because the original hypothesis was wrong.  According to Soetaert, “There’s no reason to waste valuable research time disproving that which probably isn’t right anyway.”

So Soetaert remained with his original hypothesis:  The reason why college is so much harder than grade school is because there are no pictures.  Soetaert is quick to point out that there are pictures in college texts, but they are qualitatively different than those found in grammar school texts.  Those pictures found in grammar school texts tend primarily to be explanatory, whereas those pictures found in college texts tend only to make the books thicker.  For instance, an explanation of a cow found in a second grade textbook would most certainly include a picture of one, but an explanation of a realist found in a second year college text probably would not include a picture.  And even if there were a picture of a realist it would probably be some fuzzy picture of an old man with a beard that looks nearly identical to the fuzzy old photograph that is supposed to be a naturalist.

Therefore, pictures become the key to education, and that, then, becomes the purpose of this book:  To provide a basis from which Soetaert’s educational theory can be proved.  As such, it is not inclusive.  Once the educational success of this simple text has been established, it will become the duty of future educators to thoroughly apply its ramifications to all areas of academia.