Educating is a systemic approach because many dimensions interact: cognitive, emotional, psychological, social and material. OakEdu's curriculum concentrates on the cognitive level. But increasing the knowledge of the student should respect the other levels, in order to keep the stability of the system.

Cybernetics, the science of systems, is applied to the mind of the student. This complex network of components, faced with the unknown, immediately generates an answer to fill up the meaning gap, to keep the system integrity. Because of the dangerous unbalance, if the new information chunk provides balance to the system, it will be integrated, else it will be rejected. If accepted, there is a cascade effect and the centre of gravity of the system can move. Integrating new knowledge can succeed when the whole system is ready to welcome new content. This is a natural process, values and beliefs are constantly challenged by interaction with people and environment. The ideal system features a good balance between order and chaos. Too much order leads to dogmatic fanaticism, closed minds, strong, hard and excelling in routine but failing in adaptation. Too much chaos leads to colourful artist anarchist chameleons flying in all directions but building nothing.

The more choices a system has, the more potential it has to select the best response given the challenge: it is more adaptable. Identifying the limits of the system is the first step in order to overcome them. OakEdu aims at developing a feeling of the level of choice, an habit of mind to think "what if", "what are my goals", "what are my options", "how else", "what is under my control", "how can I add more choice".