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So they give their experiences with many, many students that they've taught over the years, and you say it's not true because you're different?

• obsurveyor 11y ago
  The example used is flawed to begin with, in my opinion. Some kind of structure is almost required to learn a language in a reasonable amount of time, assuming there is no immediate access to full immersion 24/7.
• fao_ 11y ago
  I have also had the experience with infomally teaching (read with a bias towards 'mentor') programming to people, along with the second hand experience of knowing numerous teachers, including my father. Along with this I was unschooled from the age of eleven, and I have seen the effects of this upon the children -- most notably with a child (Eleven years of age) teaching themselves to read to an adult level in roughly six months -> one year, simply because they were interested in a subject. My example was anecdotal, however when combined with my (Also anecdotal) experiences concerning the education system, the second-hand experiences I noted, and the writings of Russell, Whitehead, Lockheart, and numerous others who also have expounded on the problems with overly structured teaching and similar methods, it provides me with enough evidence to convince me until equal evidence is provided to the contrary. That is why I say it is not true -- or more accurately, that in my experience, it is not true. I accept that a structured environment is a requirement for some people to learn, but I dispute that it is a hard requirement, and I also dispute that it is natural for the general population to require structure to learn.
  • brazzledazzle 11y ago
    My anecdotal experience brought me to similar conclusions. Structure is required in schools because of the way children are taught in schools. And I'm not sure I'd do any different given the same requirements. Even though it doesn't have the best results for every child it scales well enough that most people at least do okay. Take your average child away from that after several years of being part of it and any short term observations are going to make you think structure is critical. Before they do anything else they're going to have to learn that they don't need structure to learn and after that they're going to have to learn how to teach and push themselves.
    • cyphar 11y ago
      > My anecdotal experience brought me to similar conclusions. Structure is required in schools because of the way children are taught in schools. First off, that's a circular argument. But also note that research into education is riddled with issues (such as the researchers having moral issues with blind control groups, which results in basically useless data). Our education system is based on the gut instinct of certain administrators. People who clearly would prefer a structured system where one-size-fits-all. Not that I'm saying everyone learns differently (learning styles are also mostly bullshit), I'm saying that the current system could be much better and people who do well in the current system are very motivated to do well and will gladly push with all of their force through the bullshit so they can get on with their lives.
      • brazzledazzle 11y ago
        It's circular because it's a circular pattern that reinforces itself. If schools had a large amount of resources or didn't need to scale efficiently they wouldn't need the structure and if they didn't need the structure children (and staff) wouldn't become dependent on it. That said there certainly are people that need structure to learn (particularly what they don't want to learn). There are several disorders or disabilities that would make unstructured learning incredibly difficult or impossible.