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Can you become a genius purely through education and environment? Or are your genes the true factor for your potential? Nature versus nurture. The age-old debate continues, where we can try and determine if your environment or your genetics are the primary factor determining your level of excellence. This was the idea which the White Room was founded around. It was created to prove that, with the proper education and environment, genius individuals could be created in such a way that their genetics were irrelevant.
Here we are going to be taking a closer look at what exactly the White Room does to nurture its subjects, what its education looked like, and what it would take to succeed under its training regimen. To start off, we need to first understand how the White Room came to be and what its purpose is. The White Room was founded about 20 years before the events of *Classroom of the Elite* year 1 by Inukoji's father, Otsomi Inukoji. Its purpose was to study the effects of an enhanced education on children to learn how to artificially create geniuses. The eventual end goal was to devise a curriculum which could consistently produce excellent results. So, for each generation, the methods were slightly altered to continue and to try to find the best methodology.
So what does its curriculum look like? Each generation began its formal training around age three with subjects forcing you to rapidly master reading and writing before moving on to increasingly complex academic and physical tasks. As the children got older, they were also introduced to martial arts training. Failure in any subject would lead to dropping out of the program. So, getting perfect scores on all tasks were expected. Instructors were specifically gathered from among professionals at the top of their respective fields to teach each of the subjects. This was true for every subject taught, whether it be academic or physical. The instructors were also called geniuses in their respective fields, quote unquote. Otsomi was also merciless with his choice of staff. Failure to produce results at the highest level would mean immediately removing that instructor, as to ensure only the best education was given to the subjects.
The White Room has a focus on a liberal arts education. This means that subjects were varied and diverse, leading the subjects to gain a well-rounded pool of knowledge. Some of the subjects we know that are taught include languages, advanced mathematics, physical and life sciences, economics, political science, and more. Then this is combined with the physical conditioning and martial arts training which include numerous martial arts such as karate, jiu-jitsu, kendo, boxing, judo, aikido, and more.
Now that we have a better idea of what the curriculum looked like, we can now dive into what it would take to survive and succeed as a subject of the White Room. Imagine starting your education at age three, being forced to master not just reading and writing, but also five different writing systems by age four. This is the reality for subjects in the White Room. We will start off by looking at the fifth generation, which trained both Takia and Ichigo. This generation started out like most of the others by teaching the subjects basic reading and writing skills around age three. It would begin to ramp up quickly, introducing the different liberal arts subjects and eventually also their physical education.
During the fifth generation and onwards, a communication curriculum was also introduced. It was stated by Suzukake, the head researcher at the White Room, that this did decrease the rate at which the subject's ability increased when compared to the first four generations as a result of added inefficiencies. However, it was a necessary step for the subjects to be able to later integrate properly into society. Given the White Room's eventual goal to develop a curriculum for producing superior people, their ability to integrate into society was essential. By age 10, students delved into systems theory, a framework used to understand complex interactions in engineering and social sciences, similar to how we use systems thinking to solve real-world problems. Just a year later, they are tackling Einstein's theory of relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of physics and the universe. It involves advanced applications of physics at a graduate level.
Understanding the liberal arts approach of the White Room education, we know that all the subjects were taught at a similar level at that same time. By the age of 15, the subjects of the fifth generation had achieved at least a graduate-level education across a wide range of disciplines and likely had mastery even beyond that. In a traditional educational trajectory, students typically begin graduate-level studies around age 22 after completing a 4-year undergraduate degree. The fifth generation's curriculum in the White Room, however, was designed to be far more rigorous and accelerated, achieving more than twice the pace of conventional learning. This curriculum wasn't just faster, it was vastly more comprehensive, offering a broader, more in-depth exploration of subjects than even a standard graduate program. The instructors, who are each a leading expert in their field, ensured that every subject was taught at an elite level. Graduates of the fifth generation would have a more advanced grasp of specific fields than students who complete a graduate-level education in that field would.
In order to survive and complete the fifth generation curriculum, a subject would need to have fantastic learning ability to keep up with the rigor. If they were to falter in even a single subject, they would drop out and be deemed a failure. Those who successfully completed this curriculum became true polymaths, possessing knowledge so advanced that even experts in various fields would appear uneducated by comparison. And this is without even considering the rigorous martial arts training they underwent alongside their academic studies. Only the subjects with the ability to keep up with the rigor of all the subjects, continue to train physically at a similar rate, and withstand the stress of their environment would complete this curriculum.
Before we dive into the fourth generation, it's important to quickly mention the sixth generation which studied under the level 5 curriculum devised by Suzukake. Suzukake mentions that level five is the human limit for what can be sustained. This was showcased by every member of the seventh generation dropping out, leaving nobody remaining. They were studying under the level six curriculum which was above the human limit to sustain. Initially, Suzukake created a curriculum with 10 levels of difficulty and accurately predicted that level five would be the maximum level that could be implemented. Then, in addition to those 10 levels, there would also be a beta curriculum which was devised. However, he considered it so infeasible that it was discarded before Otsomi insisted on using it for the fourth generation. The beta curriculum was so far above any of the other 10 levels; it was described as being in a different dimension. Suzukake warned that using it would be a waste since it would just destroy the subjects with no possibility of success. The beta curriculum was originally designed to test the point at which the subjects would reach the human limit, and Otomi implemented this in the fourth generation to do exactly that.
In the fourth generation, the subjects were being nurtured from infancy. The infants were introduced to simple reasoning tests to try and simulate them in preparation for the rapid introduction of beta curriculum education at age three. Inkoji's perfect memory allowed him to process and learn from this early age and helped lead to his later success in the fourth generation. At age three, the subjects were taught five different writing systems; they were expected to master them. And by age four, everyone was expected to be fluent in all of them and be able to showcase them with good handwriting. Perfect scores were the minimum requirement on these exams, with being a neat and fast writer also being required. Martial arts were introduced by age four, with the children taking part in live combat exercises at this age. Instructors who were professionals and highly experienced were told not to hold back and had no issues beating the subjects until they were on the brink of death. The subjects would also fight each other in one-versus-one matches and sometimes in one-versus-multiple-people matches. At this age, the fourth generation started with teaching judo and karate, moving on to the other martial arts later.
By age five, the subjects had reached university-level education in topics such as mathematics, languages, economics, and political sciences. In terms of mathematics, their curriculum at this age included the AMGM inequality, which states that an arithmetic mean of a list of non-negative numbers is greater than or equal to the geometric mean of the same list. They were being tested on the equality conditions of additive and synchronous averages and were also working on mathematical proofs to show e isn't an irrational number. These are subjects taught in a real analysis class, which is a university class taught to math majors from calculus 1 and 2 as prerequisites. Understanding the White Room's focus on liberal arts subjects, the span of its fields of study include history, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, humanities, biology, and other natural and physical sciences. The White Room's vast topics of study are also seen through Inkoji showing advanced knowledge of these fields throughout the series. Given how the White Room advanced the curriculum of different subjects simultaneously, the amount of knowledge that would be required at this stage of the fourth generation already surpasses the level of real-world polymaths. Even such geniuses don't necessarily have advanced knowledge in each of these subjects and more likely have specialized skills in a smaller number of them. Given that perfect scores are the minimum requirement to advance in the fourth generation, subjects would be expected to have advanced knowledge in each of their fields of study.
We can use this point as a benchmark to compare the fourth generation to the fifth in terms of how accelerated the curriculums are. Ordinarily, university-level courses are taught beginning at age 18 with graduate courses beginning at age 22. The fifth generation reached this point at age 11, and the fourth generation reached it at age five. This means that the fourth generation was accelerated at about four times what the fifth generation was learning. And that assumes they were studying the exact same subjects. Since the beta curriculum was designed to try and force as much knowledge into its subjects as possible, it is very likely its array of subjects is more expansive, meaning it would be even more accelerated in practice. The feat of students going from learning how to read and write starting at age three and learning university-level academics at age five is a period of under two years. This is completely impossible by real-life standards. Subjects who survive until this point needed to possess an unrealistic level of learning ability and stress tolerance.
Their education was regimented, starting every day at 7:00 a.m. when everyone woke up. Subjects underwent daily health checks in the morning, then did 30 minutes of basic training to maintain their physique. They had daily quotas for physical exercises, which if not met, would lead to the subject dropping out. At 8:00 a.m., they ate breakfast, and afterward, they would begin the day's curriculum. Studies would continue until 5:00 p.m., and they would engage in two hours of physical training until 7:00 p.m. Then tasks such as dinner, bathing, and additional physical examinations would take place until 9:00 p.m. Subjects were required to go to sleep by 10:00 p.m., and the cycle would begin again the next day. The level of difficulty would only continue to ramp up faster as time passed and more students began to drop out.
At age six, other elements were added to the curriculum. A music curriculum including instruments such as piano, violin, and more was included, as well as traditional Japanese arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, and other traditional cultural pursuits. The use of virtual reality consoles was also used to teach subjects about places outside the White Room. It was also used to help the subjects train their skills of observation and insight. Subjects would also be given a view and forced to quickly point out the unnatural point in the simulation. Memory tests were also administered at times, leading to the instructors discovering Inkoji's perfect memory. Later on, subjects were also introduced to classical games, with chess being the notable one, and the level of difficulty of the curriculum only continued to advance. A significantly advanced writing exam was specifically noted as another benchmark for subjects to learn additional languages and properly learn to write them.
After this point, the fourth generation quickly dwindled down to just Inkoji and Shiro. But just a few months later, Inukoji was the sole remaining member of the fourth generation. Thirteen had dropped out by age three, and 23 by the time they were age five. And by age eight, everyone else had dropped out, leaving Inkoji alone. This would be a drastic change since the fourth generation curriculum would continue for years with Inkoji alone. From this point on, our knowledge of the fourth generation curriculum is solely based on Inkoji's performance, which we know exceeded the limits of even the beta curriculum. As it stands, the actual beta curriculum wouldn't be as challenging as what Inkoji ended up completing.
It was commonplace when a subject was unable to continue that they would have a mental breakdown. The children were described as collapsing and hyperventilating, or they would be seen having seizures or convulsions. These reactions were the result of the building stress placed upon them by the fourth generation curriculum. Yuki, as an example, even with a much higher level of stress tolerance than normal, given that she was able to survive in the fourth generation longer than anybody but Inkoji and Shiro. Once she hit her limit, it broke her. After leaving the White Room for the first time about seven years after Yuki had dropped out, Inkoji visited her in a hospital where she has been confined since dropping out. To that day, she had continued to have lasting trauma. And even those years later, she had panic attacks and was unable to function normally. Even Shiro, who was the final person to drop out, couldn't bear to remain in the White Room any longer.
At age nine, the fourth generation's martial arts curriculum was ramped up since Inkoji had already defeated all the White Room instructors in combat. It was then that he faced his six-versus-one fight against professional adult fighters and easily defeated them. As time continued, Inkoji would surpass what the instructors could teach him, and the fourth generation would have to continue to adapt as Inkoji would not just complete it but exceed it. In totality, the fourth generation curriculum includes advanced graduate or higher levels of education in all major academic subjects such as mathematics, literature, economics, psychology, political science, multiple languages, physical and life sciences, history, social sciences, music, and more. Mastery and fluency in easily 10 or more languages and writing systems, critical thinking and observational thinking training, mastery of a host of martial arts and skills up to the point where even the professional instructors ran out of things to teach.
So what allowed Inkoji to excel in such a harsh curriculum and exceed any and all expectations? To survive the fourth generation of the White Room, you need three specific qualities. First, an insane learning ability. This is evident from the sheer speed of the academic curriculum. Without a high enough learning ability, you would not be able to keep up with the pace of the curriculum and would be forced to drop out. Second, you need to have a ridiculous level of stress tolerance. Subjects were beaten by instructors, forced into an inhumane curriculum, and were never given a moment's rest. As time went on, the speed of introducing new topics only increased, and without the ability to regulate the stress of the environment, subjects would have a mental breakdown. This became a common occurrence in the fourth generation, and Inkoji noted that many of the other subjects dropped out for this reason. Third is incredible physical ability. The physical curriculum in the fourth generation was just as rigorous as the academic one. Hours of physical training and martial arts instruction daily starting from age four. The subjects also fought at least three times a day during their training, meaning they would fight thousands of times throughout their time in the White Room. Without the ability to physically keep pace, you would again be forced to drop out.
When comparing characters from outside *Classroom of the Elite* to the White Room curriculum, it's clear that even surviving the fifth generation would be an impressive feat. However, the fourth generation would be outright impossible for those with our already unrealistic feats. Most would have dropped out by age three or four years old due to an overload from the curriculum and stress. Now, with a better understanding of the White Room's rigor and its inhuman expectations, we have a better idea of what it would take to survive. Since a lot of people downplay the White Room's difficulty, the White Room's harsh, accelerated education system offers a chilling look into what it means to push human limits by starting subjects at an incredibly young age and subjecting them to overwhelmingly academic, physical, and psychological challenges. The White Room aims to strip away any advantage of natural talent, proving that with the right environment, one could reach unimaginable levels of intelligence and skill. However, the dropout rates, mental breakdowns highlighted a real limit to normal human potential. However, it was also clear that Inkoji was the exception to this rule. And as the White Room's only deemed masterpiece, he demonstrated the ability to succeed in an environment which no human should have been able to.