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I think this talk addresses the question "What do we need to do so that children born today have a healthy world to live in when they're 82, in the year 2100?
by lcuff 8y ago
I think this talk addresses the question "What do we need to do so that children born today have a healthy world to live in when they're 82, in the year 2100? Bret Victor is amazing and interesting, but he's not addressing the same issues. Nor are the issues he addresses nearly as important. If you only watched the first 20 minutes of this, you probably missed the point of needing to radically change how we educate children, and Alan Kay's ideas for how to do that, which as far as I'm concerned, are dead on the money.
- bsaul 8y agoI did end up watching the whole talk, just to make sure i didn’t miss the point. What do you mean by his ideas on how to educate children ? Not dumbing down , and in the process use computers ? I don’t think this in itself is anything original, unless you provide some examples on how that would look today ( the video sample in the talk shows a child manipulating a computer interface from the early 90s so i couldn’t tell how old that video was). But more importantly why spend the first 40 minutes on general pseudo-scientific anecdotal statements, if you’re eager to talk about that ? Do you think people really need to be convinced education is important ?
- discreteevent 8y agoYes people really need to be convinced that good education is more important than most things. I know this at some level but the talk but a lot of things together. And it motivated me to at least think about the value of passing on some of the things I know (and to try do that in the 'honest, directed' way he described) rather than using that knowledge to just make a living.
- lcuff 8y ago> What do you mean by his ideas on how to educate children ? Not dumbing down , and in the process use computers ? Well, I took away a lot more than 'not dumbing down'. One of the key things he described is the fact that very few people can sustain their attention for ingesting information, and that getting anyone engaged in practice and exploration at the right level is crucial to them successfully mastering concepts. The 't-ball for x' idea. Whether teachers are teaching stuff that's dumbed down or not turns out not to make a difference: People learn stuff by grappling with it in a 'hands on' way. Getting real mathematicians and scientists involved to create these kinds of environments is part of this. He led with saying this has been said before. My own take is that he said it very well, but clearly that's not everyone's experience. What were the pseudo-scientific statements that stand out for you? My detector didn't go off on anything as pseudo science.