Enrichment facts
This is how they work
Reinforcement and enrichment may sound similar, but they play very different roles in schema building:
- Reinforcement builds short edges between two or more new facts.
- Enrichment connects a new fact to something the learner already knows.
These enrichment edges are often longer — they bridge topics that don’t look directly related, but turn out to connect in surprising and meaningful ways. Because the brain loves making connections, these long edges are extremely powerful: they strengthen both ends of the schema.
A simple example
- Core fact: The Nile is a river in Africa.
- Reinforcement fact: The Nile flows through 11 African countries, from Lake Victoria in the south all the way to Egypt in the north.
- Enrichment fact: The Ancient Egyptians used the Nile to transport enormous stone blocks for the pyramids.
Here, a geography fact is connected to something most learners already know — the pyramids. The Nile now matters more, because it is no longer “just a river” but part of a bigger story they already recognise.
Animation: Building long edges
Enrichment facts create edges across the schema, linking a fragile new node to something already stable. This both strengthens the new fact and deepens the older one.
The good news
These long edges are the natural way the human mind stores information. We rarely keep facts in small boxes — we keep them because they connect to something else that already matters:
- You remember that water expands when it freezes because the pipes in your house burst last winter.
- You remember that salt preserves food because you know that salt was traded at enormous prices in the Middle Ages.
- You remember that momentum is preserved because you use it when you play a game of billiards.
This is why enrichment feels exciting: it rewards the brain with an “aha!” moment. It’s the spark that says, “this fits into my world.”
Why this matters
School syllabi often separate subjects into boxes — geography here, history there, science over there.
But our minds don’t work like that. We evolved to learn from a web of connections where weather, animals, plants,
tools, and stories all hung together.
When we ignore enrichment, we lose one of the brain’s strongest memory signals: relevance through connection.
The Hundred makes enrichment a core design principle.
By deliberately linking new facts to what learners already know, we create longer edges that lock fragile knowledge into stable, meaningful schemas.