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> Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management. I would argue that's about the only thing that scho

> Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management. I would argue that's about the only thing that schools do teach. After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. What middle school and high school does is force you to learn how to get your work done on time, be social, have hobbies, work with "bosses", and interact regularly with people you don't like. That's the real value in high school IMO. 99.9% of the people who took calculus in highschool would fail an exam 10 years later. The brain just doesn't hold onto info it doesn't use. I think it would be the same if there was an explicit class on e.g. time management. Nothing you say to the kids will have any impact. OTOH, giving them homework and deadlines let's them actually figure out and practice these skills in a safer environment.

saagarjha 7y ago
> After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. Uh, I think you’re going to have to cite that.
- solveit 7y ago
  I mean, you're right. But I'm inclined to believe this because most people cannot in fact articulate the difference between metals and nonmetals, complete the square, name the three branches of government, etc.
- flukus 7y ago
  What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I learned that in grade 5, was drilled on it, haven't had to know since and no longer remember. A small example but one I think is fairly representative of at least 50% of what I learned in school. We waste a tonne of time teaching very specific things of limited use, formulas, dates of historic events and busy work like plotting exponentials on graph paper and long division, there's a lot of room to be teaching higher level concepts instead.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    The volume of any pointy thing is the area of the base times the height divided by three. It’s not necessarily the most useful thing I know, but I do use it from time to time. (Disclaimer: I did math competitively in grade school, so I have a lot more formulas burned into my head than I’d expect most other people to know. That doesn’t mean I don’t think people should forget how to do simple math like solve a linear equation in one variable, calculate interest, etc.)
  - gwd 7y ago
    > What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I don't need to know the formula off the top of my head; I need to know what a conical pyramid is, what volume is, what a formula is, and how to use it. I guarantee that between me and someone who's never done geometry at all, I can find the volume of a conical pyramid faster and more reliably. You're right that memorizing specific formulas isn't useful; but using a large number of formulas over and over to gain mastery over the general idea certainly is.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Deriving the formula for the volume of a pyramid manually is nontrivial, usually requiring either calculus or careful application of Cavalieri's principle. I know how to get it but it's not practical to do on the spot, so I treat it as an idiom.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Of course that's just a silly statement.
afarrell 7y ago
It doesn’t force you to learn those things. It imposes suffering upon people who don’t learn those things. Whats the difference? Well what is the difference between giving an 8-year-old lessons in how to swim vs. tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat?
- atq2119 7y ago
  > It doesn’t force you to learn those things. It imposes suffering upon people who don’t learn those things. Imposing some form of suffering on those who don't comply is literally what forcing people to do something is. Edit: Note that simply giving somebody swimming lessons does not force them to swim and neither does it force them to learn anything -- because they're free to ignore you. Tossing them over board is forcing them to swim, because you're taking away the viable alternatives. We agree that the way schools do things is bad, by the way.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    Thats like saying that breathing is mandatory. If you toss a child into a body of water, the child continuing to breathe is definitely optional. ——— If someone starts beating you with a rubber hose until you recite Jabberwocky, that doesn’t actually cause you to recite jabberwocky unless you have some means of finding the words to that poem that you can see. The last part, access to how to do the action, is crucial to doing the action. ——— For another example: suppose a 5-year-old child is crying and his grandfather pinches him and tells him to stop crying. But the 5-year-old has not yet learned the emotional self-regulation skills to stop himself from crying. So while the grandfather is forcing compliance, he won’t actually achieve compliance. He’ll just inflict pain. Likewise, if you have an engineering student drowning under a firehose of work and trying to learn time management. The poorly-managed pile of work is forcing him to learn good time management and punishing him for not learning it. But unless he has access to a known source of guidence on time-management, he’ll continue to suffer. Not only that, but sleep deprivation, as makes this harder.
    - atq2119 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

> After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. Uh, I think you’re going to have to cite that.

solveit 7y ago
I mean, you're right. But I'm inclined to believe this because most people cannot in fact articulate the difference between metals and nonmetals, complete the square, name the three branches of government, etc.
flukus 7y ago
What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I learned that in grade 5, was drilled on it, haven't had to know since and no longer remember. A small example but one I think is fairly representative of at least 50% of what I learned in school. We waste a tonne of time teaching very specific things of limited use, formulas, dates of historic events and busy work like plotting exponentials on graph paper and long division, there's a lot of room to be teaching higher level concepts instead.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  The volume of any pointy thing is the area of the base times the height divided by three. It’s not necessarily the most useful thing I know, but I do use it from time to time. (Disclaimer: I did math competitively in grade school, so I have a lot more formulas burned into my head than I’d expect most other people to know. That doesn’t mean I don’t think people should forget how to do simple math like solve a linear equation in one variable, calculate interest, etc.)
- gwd 7y ago
  > What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I don't need to know the formula off the top of my head; I need to know what a conical pyramid is, what volume is, what a formula is, and how to use it. I guarantee that between me and someone who's never done geometry at all, I can find the volume of a conical pyramid faster and more reliably. You're right that memorizing specific formulas isn't useful; but using a large number of formulas over and over to gain mastery over the general idea certainly is.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Deriving the formula for the volume of a pyramid manually is nontrivial, usually requiring either calculus or careful application of Cavalieri's principle. I know how to get it but it's not practical to do on the spot, so I treat it as an idiom.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Of course that's just a silly statement.

afarrell 7y ago

It doesn’t force you to learn those things. It imposes suffering upon people who don’t learn those things. Whats the difference? Well what is the difference between giving an 8-year-old lessons in how to swim vs. tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat?

atq2119 7y ago
> It doesn’t force you to learn those things. It imposes suffering upon people who don’t learn those things. Imposing some form of suffering on those who don't comply is literally what forcing people to do something is. Edit: Note that simply giving somebody swimming lessons does not force them to swim and neither does it force them to learn anything -- because they're free to ignore you. Tossing them over board is forcing them to swim, because you're taking away the viable alternatives. We agree that the way schools do things is bad, by the way.
- afarrell 7y ago
  Thats like saying that breathing is mandatory. If you toss a child into a body of water, the child continuing to breathe is definitely optional. ——— If someone starts beating you with a rubber hose until you recite Jabberwocky, that doesn’t actually cause you to recite jabberwocky unless you have some means of finding the words to that poem that you can see. The last part, access to how to do the action, is crucial to doing the action. ——— For another example: suppose a 5-year-old child is crying and his grandfather pinches him and tells him to stop crying. But the 5-year-old has not yet learned the emotional self-regulation skills to stop himself from crying. So while the grandfather is forcing compliance, he won’t actually achieve compliance. He’ll just inflict pain. Likewise, if you have an engineering student drowning under a firehose of work and trying to learn time management. The poorly-managed pile of work is forcing him to learn good time management and punishing him for not learning it. But unless he has access to a known source of guidence on time-management, he’ll continue to suffer. Not only that, but sleep deprivation, as makes this harder.
  - atq2119 7y ago