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Love and agree with most of the thoughts, but strongly disagree with: > If you are not understanding what is being taught: the problem is the teacher. This is

Love and agree with most of the thoughts, but strongly disagree with: > If you are not understanding what is being taught: the problem is the teacher. This is the case a lot of the time, but if it's applied as stated above, it misses the fact that some subjects are literally unlearnable for certain individuals and is not the teacher's fault. Probably a statement more in spirit is: "If you are not understanding what is being taught: The good teacher asks what methods can be changed to further learning."

kd5bjo 7y ago
> Some subjects are literally unlearnable for certain individuals and is not the teacher's fault. This feels like a controversial starement to me. There are certainly some subjects that are currently beyond some individuals’ ability to learn, but that seems to reflect more on a lack of prior required learning than a fundamental inability to learn that subject. It’s certainly much harder for some people, possibly to the point of economic infeasibility, but impossible seems a stretch.
- irjustin 7y ago
  I used literally, literally, because my wife is a special needs teacher. Many higher level subjects fall into unlearnable for students with severe needs where no amounts of time or care can get past the physical barrier. It could be viewed as contrarian, but putting the blame/responsibility for a student not learning solely on a teacher's shoulders removes the human which the spirit of this post and thread embodies.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    True, my objection was primarily to the idea that we should completely write-off any potential learner. A teacher’s job is not to do research, but to choose the best available known method for the situation. If that doesn’t produce results, it’s not the teacher’s fault; instead, it’s a call for researchers to search for new methods.
- red_admiral 7y ago
  The focus on the social model of disability and how disabled people are first of all people and never assume someone can't do something just because they have a disability etc. has a lot of good things going for it, and it's compassionate and makes the world a better place. It doesn't remove the fact that some people have disabilities that mean they will simply never be able to complete certain tasks, including ones of the learning kind.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
“Some subjects are unlearnable”. Everything is a continuum, it’s never so black and white. Even if something are incredibly hard for some people to learn I think it’s worth avoiding the fixed mindset that the notion of “unlearnability” produces. The belief that one can change things about themselves is the most fundamental attitude required for learning in my experience and opinion. Without it, learning can only be an accident.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  Had a similar conversation 4 days ago on HN, on the question of the limits of an individual's talent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23017585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23017585 I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting that one can't learn something. I probably wouldn't be able to learn world-class violin skills even if I trained obsessively. Plenty of violinists train obsessively, from a starting age far younger than me, with more natural ability than I'm likely to have, and a tiny fraction of them become world-class. So what? I don't see this as disempowering.
  - clairity 7y ago
    that's sound from an intentionality perspective (you should actively choose what to pursue and what not to pursue based on your unique set of accidental gifts), but performance is different from learning. while we each (very likely) have differing learning horizons, it's highly dependent on interest and motivation not simply raw "intelligence". you could learn as much about playing violins as world-class violinists if you were as obsessive about it, even if you couldn't play as well. those not-quite-world-class violinists likely know as much, but just don't have the same combination of accidental (physical/psychogical/biochemical) gifts that give them a miniscule edge. "ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't".
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      > performance is different from learning I'm not sure about that. Knowledge 'in a vacuum', separated from one's abilities to do anything useful, isn't what we normally mean by the word. To put it bluntly, no-one cares who has the most encyclopaedic knowledge of violins, they care who's best able to do the job. Like I said in the other thread, sometimes there's no substitute for raw talent. Just about everyone is smart enough to learn algebra, and programming, but I suspect most people lack the raw intelligence to become an MIT professor, regardless of how hard they work. You can put in as much work as you like, but if the other guy puts in just as much work and has an incredible natural ability in the field, you really don't stand a chance. Same goes for sports, where it's more about your physical limits than your intellectual ones. Again though, I don't see that these realities should put us off self-improvement, whether learning, or sport, or any other avenue. It seems silly to even write it: learning still has plenty going for it. > "ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't". Agreed. For most of us at least, our intellectual ceilings aren't generally what steer our decisions.
thomk 7y ago
Thank you and I appreciate your comments as well. Obviously nobody can teach quantum computing to an infant. So how about this instead?: > If you have the ability to learn something, and you are not learning, then the problem is the teacher. My point is that students should not feel embarrassed because they aren't 'getting it' and they should take some comfort in knowing that unfortunately there are teachers who are bad at teaching out there.

kd5bjo 7y ago

> Some subjects are literally unlearnable for certain individuals and is not the teacher's fault. This feels like a controversial starement to me. There are certainly some subjects that are currently beyond some individuals’ ability to learn, but that seems to reflect more on a lack of prior required learning than a fundamental inability to learn that subject. It’s certainly much harder for some people, possibly to the point of economic infeasibility, but impossible seems a stretch.

irjustin 7y ago
I used literally, literally, because my wife is a special needs teacher. Many higher level subjects fall into unlearnable for students with severe needs where no amounts of time or care can get past the physical barrier. It could be viewed as contrarian, but putting the blame/responsibility for a student not learning solely on a teacher's shoulders removes the human which the spirit of this post and thread embodies.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  True, my objection was primarily to the idea that we should completely write-off any potential learner. A teacher’s job is not to do research, but to choose the best available known method for the situation. If that doesn’t produce results, it’s not the teacher’s fault; instead, it’s a call for researchers to search for new methods.
red_admiral 7y ago
The focus on the social model of disability and how disabled people are first of all people and never assume someone can't do something just because they have a disability etc. has a lot of good things going for it, and it's compassionate and makes the world a better place. It doesn't remove the fact that some people have disabilities that mean they will simply never be able to complete certain tasks, including ones of the learning kind.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

iovrthoughtthis 7y ago

“Some subjects are unlearnable”. Everything is a continuum, it’s never so black and white. Even if something are incredibly hard for some people to learn I think it’s worth avoiding the fixed mindset that the notion of “unlearnability” produces. The belief that one can change things about themselves is the most fundamental attitude required for learning in my experience and opinion. Without it, learning can only be an accident.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
Had a similar conversation 4 days ago on HN, on the question of the limits of an individual's talent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23017585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23017585 I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting that one can't learn something. I probably wouldn't be able to learn world-class violin skills even if I trained obsessively. Plenty of violinists train obsessively, from a starting age far younger than me, with more natural ability than I'm likely to have, and a tiny fraction of them become world-class. So what? I don't see this as disempowering.
- clairity 7y ago
  that's sound from an intentionality perspective (you should actively choose what to pursue and what not to pursue based on your unique set of accidental gifts), but performance is different from learning. while we each (very likely) have differing learning horizons, it's highly dependent on interest and motivation not simply raw "intelligence". you could learn as much about playing violins as world-class violinists if you were as obsessive about it, even if you couldn't play as well. those not-quite-world-class violinists likely know as much, but just don't have the same combination of accidental (physical/psychogical/biochemical) gifts that give them a miniscule edge. "ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't".
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    > performance is different from learning I'm not sure about that. Knowledge 'in a vacuum', separated from one's abilities to do anything useful, isn't what we normally mean by the word. To put it bluntly, no-one cares who has the most encyclopaedic knowledge of violins, they care who's best able to do the job. Like I said in the other thread, sometimes there's no substitute for raw talent. Just about everyone is smart enough to learn algebra, and programming, but I suspect most people lack the raw intelligence to become an MIT professor, regardless of how hard they work. You can put in as much work as you like, but if the other guy puts in just as much work and has an incredible natural ability in the field, you really don't stand a chance. Same goes for sports, where it's more about your physical limits than your intellectual ones. Again though, I don't see that these realities should put us off self-improvement, whether learning, or sport, or any other avenue. It seems silly to even write it: learning still has plenty going for it. > "ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't". Agreed. For most of us at least, our intellectual ceilings aren't generally what steer our decisions.

thomk 7y ago

Thank you and I appreciate your comments as well. Obviously nobody can teach quantum computing to an infant. So how about this instead?: > If you have the ability to learn something, and you are not learning, then the problem is the teacher. My point is that students should not feel embarrassed because they aren't 'getting it' and they should take some comfort in knowing that unfortunately there are teachers who are bad at teaching out there.