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To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers

by diziet 16y ago

To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness. The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way, she could have learned to learn, then learned to read and write, and then passed the exam, plus come out with other valuable skills. Doesn't this remind you of those college graduates that go through the motions, but when they sit down and are asked to do something on their own simply fail to even understand what they're asked? I remember back in college I would sometimes participate in study groups, and so often encounter students that relied simply on memorizing problem types and the ways to solve them without actually having any clue about what they were doing. It seemed more common with students hailing from asia, and surely had something to do with the way school and knowledge is treated there.

Goladus 16y ago
She's 60+ years old and has been selling vegetables and working on farms most of her life. She doesn't remind me of college students or graduates at all. For her, learning how to learn is probably much more difficult than you think it is.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Well its not so much that learning to learn is more difficult, but learning to learn in a given domain. If you don't have someone to teach you, figuring out the ideal way to learn something can be tricky. For example, the Rubiks Cube. I'm sure there are great ways to learn to solve this puzzle, but I learned using a very time consuming technique with a lot of failure. While I have a really good schema for book learning, I have a relatively poor schema for learning the optimal way to manipulate items in 3space, despite the fact that I live that space.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Learning to solve the puzzle would mean that you learned how to solve it without memorizing a technique. There is a big difference between actually solving the cube and learning how to 'solve' it using some technique someone else came up with. Solving it means that you analyzed the workings of the cube, figured out a way to return it to its original state without access to some outside source of information on how to do it. Screwdrivers probably shouldn't count as a 'solution' in this sense ;)
klipt 16y ago
surely had something to do with the way school and knowledge is treated there. You mean like the fact she only started school at 15 and never finished it? We take things like literacy for granted, but they're actually quite difficult to acquire if you don't start young. Which is not to say that I think her method was a good idea, just that there may not really have been other options.
- diziet 16y ago
  I think I was not fully clear on who I meant treats school and knowledge. I was talking about the public, about the fact that we, and the media, exclaim and proclaim her diligence and hard working nature. That's the ironic and sad part. Working smart is better than working hard (except, of course, when you need to work hard and smart). Imagine if instead of the current computerized mail sorting system we had thousands of post workers sitting there and sorting mail, diligently. Is that something to be applauded?
protez 16y ago
Her brute learning style reminds me of training artificial neural network from no prior knowledge: feeding problem-solution pairs to a Bayesian network again and again, hoping the ANN will reproduce the relationship somehow. We think her learning style sad and absurd, but such a statistical training technique logical and scientific. Just my two cents.
yuiyuiy 16y ago
Just as ~90% of programming job applicants couldn't code fizz-buzz if their life depended on it, ~90% of drivers couldn't correct an oversteer safely... when their lives actually might depend on it.

by diziet 16y ago

Goladus 16y ago

She's 60+ years old and has been selling vegetables and working on farms most of her life. She doesn't remind me of college students or graduates at all. For her, learning how to learn is probably much more difficult than you think it is.

kenjackson 16y ago
Well its not so much that learning to learn is more difficult, but learning to learn in a given domain. If you don't have someone to teach you, figuring out the ideal way to learn something can be tricky. For example, the Rubiks Cube. I'm sure there are great ways to learn to solve this puzzle, but I learned using a very time consuming technique with a lot of failure. While I have a really good schema for book learning, I have a relatively poor schema for learning the optimal way to manipulate items in 3space, despite the fact that I live that space.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Learning to solve the puzzle would mean that you learned how to solve it without memorizing a technique. There is a big difference between actually solving the cube and learning how to 'solve' it using some technique someone else came up with. Solving it means that you analyzed the workings of the cube, figured out a way to return it to its original state without access to some outside source of information on how to do it. Screwdrivers probably shouldn't count as a 'solution' in this sense ;)

klipt 16y ago

surely had something to do with the way school and knowledge is treated there. You mean like the fact she only started school at 15 and never finished it? We take things like literacy for granted, but they're actually quite difficult to acquire if you don't start young. Which is not to say that I think her method was a good idea, just that there may not really have been other options.

diziet 16y ago
I think I was not fully clear on who I meant treats school and knowledge. I was talking about the public, about the fact that we, and the media, exclaim and proclaim her diligence and hard working nature. That's the ironic and sad part. Working smart is better than working hard (except, of course, when you need to work hard and smart). Imagine if instead of the current computerized mail sorting system we had thousands of post workers sitting there and sorting mail, diligently. Is that something to be applauded?

protez 16y ago

Her brute learning style reminds me of training artificial neural network from no prior knowledge: feeding problem-solution pairs to a Bayesian network again and again, hoping the ANN will reproduce the relationship somehow. We think her learning style sad and absurd, but such a statistical training technique logical and scientific. Just my two cents.

yuiyuiy 16y ago

Just as ~90% of programming job applicants couldn't code fizz-buzz if their life depended on it, ~90% of drivers couldn't correct an oversteer safely... when their lives actually might depend on it.