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You don't have to teach everyone everything. This is a misguided belief of the modern western education system that evolved from Christian roots. As Bruce Lee

by hj34 9y ago

You don't have to teach everyone everything. This is a misguided belief of the modern western education system that evolved from Christian roots. As Bruce Lee would say - I cannot teach because I don't believe in systems or methods. So how do I learn? Only when I look for the cause of my ignorance. The masses don't spend their time looking for the cause of their ignorance.

mncharity 9y ago
When doing adult outreach, I sometimes get feedback like "Atoms. I hated learning about atoms. And I've never used any of it. Why worry about teaching atoms? Teach writing and collaboration instead." And I say something like the following. Leaving aside the question of whether atoms should be taught, if we do spend time teaching such, it would be nice to succeed at teaching it, which we currently aren't. But bigger picture, I speculate that the unpleasantness and lack of utility, are caused by how atoms are taught, rather than by the subject of atoms. Perhaps taught much better, atoms might hang together with lots of other things (interwoven finger gesture), creating fun and powerful insight into the world. > You don't have to teach everyone everything. There's an old idea that the way to learn history, is to start with whatever interests you. Because history is such an interconnected tapestry, that it doesn't matter which tread you start on. If you like tiddlywinks, you'll soon encounter materials, and trade networks, and game evolution, and social partitioning, and... everything. Science and engineering are also richly interwoven webs. So why can't you do something similar? Because our science and engineering expertise is too scattered, insufficiently disseminated and integrated. And with past tech, that was too expensive to change. With better tech, and a lot of societal effort, that might change. So "anyone could learn about anything". Rather than almost immediately hitting a story of "Ah, that touches on several areas. And I'm sorry, textbooks handle all of them badly. You might spend a few months getting up to speed on the research literature in each area, but even then... Well, you really have to move across the country for long in-person conversations with one of a few professors (crazy busy) or their students, and then do that again for each other area. But... have you considered just giving up and crushing your interest now?"

by hj34 9y ago

mncharity 9y ago

When doing adult outreach, I sometimes get feedback like "Atoms. I hated learning about atoms. And I've never used any of it. Why worry about teaching atoms? Teach writing and collaboration instead." And I say something like the following. Leaving aside the question of whether atoms should be taught, if we do spend time teaching such, it would be nice to succeed at teaching it, which we currently aren't. But bigger picture, I speculate that the unpleasantness and lack of utility, are caused by how atoms are taught, rather than by the subject of atoms. Perhaps taught much better, atoms might hang together with lots of other things (interwoven finger gesture), creating fun and powerful insight into the world. > You don't have to teach everyone everything. There's an old idea that the way to learn history, is to start with whatever interests you. Because history is such an interconnected tapestry, that it doesn't matter which tread you start on. If you like tiddlywinks, you'll soon encounter materials, and trade networks, and game evolution, and social partitioning, and... everything. Science and engineering are also richly interwoven webs. So why can't you do something similar? Because our science and engineering expertise is too scattered, insufficiently disseminated and integrated. And with past tech, that was too expensive to change. With better tech, and a lot of societal effort, that might change. So "anyone could learn about anything". Rather than almost immediately hitting a story of "Ah, that touches on several areas. And I'm sorry, textbooks handle all of them badly. You might spend a few months getting up to speed on the research literature in each area, but even then... Well, you really have to move across the country for long in-person conversations with one of a few professors (crazy busy) or their students, and then do that again for each other area. But... have you considered just giving up and crushing your interest now?"