Maybe Celestia thought “You know what? I’ve have a about a 1/99 hit/miss ratio. Whatever I tell you to do, just do the opposite. We’ll see how that works”. And honestly, it kind of seems to be working.

Hardly any episode post pilot has been consistent.
 
In fact, a number of old episodes even contradicted the pilot.
 
However, it’s likely that with more creatures being discovered with no knowledge of Friendship the idea just works.
 
Also, Celestia was talking about her own experience in the pilot and Celestia is not the Princess of Friendship.
 
Twilight Sparkle is, and she’s also a lover of books and teaching thus making the school of Friendship less contradicting than most believe.
 
As for character regression… This is a ordinary problem a large amount of shows face, it’s hardly anything to be shocked about.
 
The main problem with the school of Friendship, however, is the fact that the only students that aren’t ponies are Ocellus, Yona, Gallius, Smoulder, and Silverstream.

I love that that’s the screenshot with the animation error.

@ElusiveDelight  
Agreed.

@Chopsticks  
Jesus Sparkle

Technically, Twilight’s School of Friendship is more akin to a church than a school.

People change their minds. I know these days people call it “flip-flopping”, but time was, people would continue to learn as they grew and their way of thinking would adapt and at that time it was called “maturing.” One’s sentiments at one time may not be their sentiments five+ years later.
 
Especially when that someone is over a thousand years old.

I think the School of Friendship is a stupid concept, and it hasn’t proven me otherwise.

The School of Friendship is a stupid concept, plain and simple.

The show’s writing hasn’t been consistently good since season 3. Go figure.

“Where ELSE are we gonna shove Twil- I mean Starlight Glimmer?”

To be fair, Celestia was talking in her own experiance in season 1. And while she knows a lot, she is not the Princess of Friendship.
 
On the other hoof, Twilight is the offically designated master of friendship and all friendship knowlage. Combine that with her love of books then it stands to reason that if anyone could condense friendship into book form, it would be Twilight.

There’s no contradiction.  
Friendship can’t be learned from books ALONE.  
That’s why Celestia sent Twilight into the field, because she basically never left the library.  
The students of the school aren’t making the mistake Twilight made, they have plenty of “real life” experience and can do with some theory.  
People are so eager to jump on alleged continuity errors that they’re missing the obvious

Maybe, just maybe, Celestia learned from Twilight’s breakthroughs that not everything is as she thought.

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Toys

Sad but true.

She’s the Princess of the Sun. No one ever called her the Princess of Consistency.
 
This is actually a big issue.

Shit, now I feel really really dumb for not realizing this sooner.

Bastards are ruining the show

Does feel like a bit of a contradiction, doesn’t it?

Lol