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> Most learners hate the work it takes to actually learn something This is nowhere close to true. People love learning things and exploring new ideas, in a con

> Most learners hate the work it takes to actually learn something This is nowhere close to true. People love learning things and exploring new ideas, in a context where they have autonomy. Essentially every human learns a tremendous amount about a wide range of topics and skills between age 5–20 years, with or without any explicit external instruction. What they hate is being forced by someone else to do (what seems to them to be) pointless busywork. Products which are marketed to schools as “educational technology” often seem especially pointless from a student perspective.

yorwba 7y ago
> This is nowhere close to true. People love learning things and exploring new ideas, in a context where they have autonomy. There are many people who say they want to learn a foreign language or an instrument or some other skill and many free resources for self-study are available. Yet, most of those people either never start or give up halfway. Either they do not want what they say they want, or they're too lazy to put in the necessary work. I'm a self-taught developer and learned a few languages on my own, but there's still a lot I wanted to learn but never did simply because I didn't feel like practicing and stopped.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  That does not demonstrate that people “hate the work it takes to learn”. It only demonstrates that someone’s passively stated desire to learn some particular thing does not immediately grant them the intrinsic motivation, time, and external support to follow through. Just because someone doesn’t spend every waking moment on deliberately practicing specific new skills does not mean that they hate putting effort into anything. Most “free resources for self-study” are crap, and only work for people with unusual amounts of motivation and focus. This doesn’t mean that everyone else is just lazy. People lead busy lives and have many distractions competing for their attention. If you just said “many people claim they want to learn various specific skills and subjects but then never make time for it”, that would be an uncontroversial and easily factually supported claim. * * * Motivation is pretty tricky. It would be beneficial to everyone if society spent more effort on teaching meta-skills like how to break large goals into small manageable chunks, how to manage time and focus, how to seek out resources, how to evaluate progress, etc., and more effort on offering people meaningful support for achieving their own goals. From what I have seen most “educational software”, testing-focused pedagogy, de-professionalization of teachers, etc. are harming rather than helping.

yorwba 7y ago

> This is nowhere close to true. People love learning things and exploring new ideas, in a context where they have autonomy. There are many people who say they want to learn a foreign language or an instrument or some other skill and many free resources for self-study are available. Yet, most of those people either never start or give up halfway. Either they do not want what they say they want, or they're too lazy to put in the necessary work. I'm a self-taught developer and learned a few languages on my own, but there's still a lot I wanted to learn but never did simply because I didn't feel like practicing and stopped.

jacobolus 7y ago
That does not demonstrate that people “hate the work it takes to learn”. It only demonstrates that someone’s passively stated desire to learn some particular thing does not immediately grant them the intrinsic motivation, time, and external support to follow through. Just because someone doesn’t spend every waking moment on deliberately practicing specific new skills does not mean that they hate putting effort into anything. Most “free resources for self-study” are crap, and only work for people with unusual amounts of motivation and focus. This doesn’t mean that everyone else is just lazy. People lead busy lives and have many distractions competing for their attention. If you just said “many people claim they want to learn various specific skills and subjects but then never make time for it”, that would be an uncontroversial and easily factually supported claim. * * * Motivation is pretty tricky. It would be beneficial to everyone if society spent more effort on teaching meta-skills like how to break large goals into small manageable chunks, how to manage time and focus, how to seek out resources, how to evaluate progress, etc., and more effort on offering people meaningful support for achieving their own goals. From what I have seen most “educational software”, testing-focused pedagogy, de-professionalization of teachers, etc. are harming rather than helping.