3 ms·
Ask HN: What, you found out later, were the biggest gaps in your education?
Things that, when you learnt about them, it was most surprising your previous education had never mentioned?
e.g. For me the biggest ones have been:
1. The Crusades. They seem absolutely huge in influence, the single most influential phenomenon in the history of the West, in the formation of Europe as an entity, in so many ways. Never mentioned in all my years of schooling. (see the Crusades chapter in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe)
2. The huge influence of Rousseau (French Revolution, Romantics, Nazis, the modern consciousness etc etc) (see Damrosch's Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius)
and I guess also:
- the real character of US foreign interventions since the 1890s and US role in the world (see Chomsky's political books, and the voting record in the UN GA & SC)
- (a musical one - I'm a musician) that equal temperament wasn't universally adopted until recently, the mid-late 19th C. Not in Bach's time, like I'd been taught.
- simonblack 9y agoI spent six years at an all-male boarding school before heading off to university. That meant I was six years behind in my social development with girls. Education is not just academic knowledge.
- ksaxena 9y agoHow to talk to people. And related skills - how to make small talk and how to read body language. These are critical skills in business and for life in general, but even two years of business education did not "teach" me these skills or even the fact that these skills were going to be critical for me soon.
- Lordarminius 9y agoWhat Everybody Is Saying by ex FBI agent Joe Navarro can help https://g.co/kgs/cBUfjS https://g.co/kgs/cBUfjS
- andrei_says_ 9y agoThe existence of curriculums whose existence is not even mentioned and therefore framing education in a very narrow way. Here are some types of curriculum: http://thesecondprinciple.com/instructional-design/types-of-curriculum/ http://thesecondprinciple.com/instructional-design/types-of-...
- zapperdapper 9y ago1. A rational critique of capitalism. 2. Decent philosophy and theology classes. 3. Managing money as per Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez.