5 ms·

This isn't just biology, it's school. The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to

This isn't just biology, it's school. The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters. But most of all, you're being kept out of the house so that both your parents can go back to jobs they don't like.

etripe 6y ago
You made me exhale in amusement at this comment, because it is true to a degree. Do you think most people don't actually mind this kind of education? I'm asking because I'm baffled this is the way education seems to work in most places and has done for ages . I also assume that something would eventually change if enough people disagreed. Or might it be because that is still how we think about the employer-employee relationship and the latter's duties - follow orders and ignore your individuality?
- rimliu 6y ago
  I think that comment just reflects the current thinking that you can have something without putting any effort.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    I think this comment reflects the current thinking that the amount of effort is intrinsically tied to attained value.
  - Sophistifunk 6y ago
    I certainly wasn't saying that, nor do I think it. I don't see what it has do to with the topic at all.
- watwut 6y ago
  Education is actually changing all the time. There are some efforts to improve it in general, improve it for selected groups (disabled) and periodical efforts to dismantle and destroy its public form entirely.
rimliu 6y ago
Computers and calculators will not help you if you have no idea what you are doing.
olau 6y ago
Not all schools are like that. Vote with your (children's) feet.
MauranKilom 6y ago
Probably not the same education system, but there are many things I no longer do explicitly that are nevertheless important for understanding the concept. Off the top of my head, for just mathematics: - Long division - Calculate limits - Curve sketching These aren't things I do by hand any more. But if I hadn't learned how to do them, I wouldn't be able to apply them to more advanced problems. From my extremely limited exposure to US education methods, I would concur that some algorithms are practiced in an excessive manner. But that does not mean that they are useless, even if computers can help you often enough. Maybe you can name a thing or two that you consider "busywork [that] nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators"? (I will note though that biology courses always stood out to me in exactly the way that is lamented in this thread - almost entirely memorizing arbitrary things.)
- kls 6y ago
  I would say the times tables is a good example, once you know the mechanics of multiplying 2 numbers you don't need to redundantly memorize the exact values of tables of numbers. The mechanics and how to solve for it are the important pieces to learn. Further I think it actually does more harm as it hinders the child's ability to look at numbers as placeholders and variables when they get into higher level maths. Spending so many years on the basics of mathematics could be speed up if we ensured that children fundamentally understood the mechanics and principles and then moved on to more interesting math like algebra and geometry. Where you can see more real world applications by applying them to easily solve those word problems that we all hated as children. We really don't do a good job of teaching children how to think most of it is teaching them how to memorize. It's the whole concept of cramming for a test, memorize it just long enough to get past this test, then let it fall out of your brain. I don't even know where to start with english and literature, I just muscled thru those but man that was like death to me, just not my interest at all. It's very evident in my writing that I was not very attentive in those classes. Thank goodness for spellcheck and a very pedantic highschool friend that did not mind proofreading and shaking his head at me, after each paragraph.
  - infinite8s 6y ago
    You don't need to memorize the times tables once you understand multiplication, but having fluency in being able to do that makes subsequent mathematics much easier (for example, I'm not sure how you could learn algebra without having a fluent ability to do arithmetic).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kls 6y ago
Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often wonder how many great minds we have lost to being store clerk (no looking down on them, its just a waste of a mind if you have it)
- learnstats2 6y ago
  I think student-led education is a useful model: where students have a say in what they find important and in their own education. (This applies for all children, not only for adolescent boys) The curriculum has too much influence from adults whose goals (sometimes openly stated!) are for a compliant labour force with a reduced training cost on particular work-focussed skills. That's at the expense of (for example:) relationship and mental health education, creative arts, critical thinking skills, financial education, talent development, practical entrepreneurship, and the idea that children can have and create value in their own right. As such, this is regularly a complete mismatch to what's going to be useful to kids when and as they grow up, and kids often know it: even while they don't have the political power to make change.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  It boggles my mind how broken the model of rote memorization to pass written tests is. School should teach you the fundamentals of how to acquire knowledge and then get out of your way. Reading, writing, speaking, logic, geometry, mathematics, and programming along with a whirlwind tour of all the good and bad ideas throughout history then pack it up. Instead we have a public babysitting service that pretends to add value when it’s probably no better than dropping your kid off at a library for the day (whether they choose to stay and read or not).
  - Siira 6y ago
    I suspect teachers are the bottleneck. They hardly have any useful skills (except keeping children in line), so they can only teach memorization which is easy to teach/grade.
Siira 6y ago
> you're being kept out of the house so that both your parents can go back to jobs they don't like. I was left home alone from, like, 4 years old? I definitely preferred that to going to school.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
It depends on the curriculum and the teachers. Some teachers can get super excited about sharing the amazing stuff that's the results of their field. Sure, there's a bit of jargon and memorization to be able to discuss the problem. You can't be amazed by the results of concentration gradients, gene expression on the formation of proteins if you think concentration means something about your eyebrows, gradients are a function of WordArt, gene was a guy who played Willy Wonka, expressions are things your face does, and protein is a number on your dad's whey powder. If you can make students excited about using, testing, and comprehending the awesome information about their world that are just behind a minor speed bump of some jargon you need to cross, most will hurdle those difficulties as if it was effortless. The standardized tests that check whether they know the jargon will be just a wasted day that they don't get to learn more about the subject! If, instead, you set the end goal as passing the standardized test that checks whether they know the jargon or not, they'll begrudgingly do the minimum required to not get in too much trouble. The tragedy is that kids who don't even know the bare minimum jargon are often unprepared to function as independent adults, and so the rational, fair, game-theoretic optimum outcome demands resources need to be allocated to help those more than they need to be allocated to help those who are already functional. Also, there's the tragedy that teachers who pour their hearts into their students aren't adequately valued by society - we pay lawyers and administrators huge sums of money as if what they do is more important than what my 9th grade bio teacher did while using his weekends to crawl through the mud on bog walks to learn about sphagnum mosses and carnivorous plants with some kids he met for an hour a day for 8 months, while barely keeping his family out of poverty.

etripe 6y ago

You made me exhale in amusement at this comment, because it is true to a degree. Do you think most people don't actually mind this kind of education? I'm asking because I'm baffled this is the way education seems to work in most places and has done for ages . I also assume that something would eventually change if enough people disagreed. Or might it be because that is still how we think about the employer-employee relationship and the latter's duties - follow orders and ignore your individuality?

rimliu 6y ago
I think that comment just reflects the current thinking that you can have something without putting any effort.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  I think this comment reflects the current thinking that the amount of effort is intrinsically tied to attained value.
- Sophistifunk 6y ago
  I certainly wasn't saying that, nor do I think it. I don't see what it has do to with the topic at all.
watwut 6y ago
Education is actually changing all the time. There are some efforts to improve it in general, improve it for selected groups (disabled) and periodical efforts to dismantle and destroy its public form entirely.

rimliu 6y ago

Computers and calculators will not help you if you have no idea what you are doing.

olau 6y ago

Not all schools are like that. Vote with your (children's) feet.

MauranKilom 6y ago

Probably not the same education system, but there are many things I no longer do explicitly that are nevertheless important for understanding the concept. Off the top of my head, for just mathematics: - Long division - Calculate limits - Curve sketching These aren't things I do by hand any more. But if I hadn't learned how to do them, I wouldn't be able to apply them to more advanced problems. From my extremely limited exposure to US education methods, I would concur that some algorithms are practiced in an excessive manner. But that does not mean that they are useless, even if computers can help you often enough. Maybe you can name a thing or two that you consider "busywork [that] nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators"? (I will note though that biology courses always stood out to me in exactly the way that is lamented in this thread - almost entirely memorizing arbitrary things.)

kls 6y ago
I would say the times tables is a good example, once you know the mechanics of multiplying 2 numbers you don't need to redundantly memorize the exact values of tables of numbers. The mechanics and how to solve for it are the important pieces to learn. Further I think it actually does more harm as it hinders the child's ability to look at numbers as placeholders and variables when they get into higher level maths. Spending so many years on the basics of mathematics could be speed up if we ensured that children fundamentally understood the mechanics and principles and then moved on to more interesting math like algebra and geometry. Where you can see more real world applications by applying them to easily solve those word problems that we all hated as children. We really don't do a good job of teaching children how to think most of it is teaching them how to memorize. It's the whole concept of cramming for a test, memorize it just long enough to get past this test, then let it fall out of your brain. I don't even know where to start with english and literature, I just muscled thru those but man that was like death to me, just not my interest at all. It's very evident in my writing that I was not very attentive in those classes. Thank goodness for spellcheck and a very pedantic highschool friend that did not mind proofreading and shaking his head at me, after each paragraph.
- infinite8s 6y ago
  You don't need to memorize the times tables once you understand multiplication, but having fluency in being able to do that makes subsequent mathematics much easier (for example, I'm not sure how you could learn algebra without having a fluent ability to do arithmetic).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kls 6y ago

Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often wonder how many great minds we have lost to being store clerk (no looking down on them, its just a waste of a mind if you have it)

learnstats2 6y ago
I think student-led education is a useful model: where students have a say in what they find important and in their own education. (This applies for all children, not only for adolescent boys) The curriculum has too much influence from adults whose goals (sometimes openly stated!) are for a compliant labour force with a reduced training cost on particular work-focussed skills. That's at the expense of (for example:) relationship and mental health education, creative arts, critical thinking skills, financial education, talent development, practical entrepreneurship, and the idea that children can have and create value in their own right. As such, this is regularly a complete mismatch to what's going to be useful to kids when and as they grow up, and kids often know it: even while they don't have the political power to make change.
throwaway316943 6y ago
It boggles my mind how broken the model of rote memorization to pass written tests is. School should teach you the fundamentals of how to acquire knowledge and then get out of your way. Reading, writing, speaking, logic, geometry, mathematics, and programming along with a whirlwind tour of all the good and bad ideas throughout history then pack it up. Instead we have a public babysitting service that pretends to add value when it’s probably no better than dropping your kid off at a library for the day (whether they choose to stay and read or not).
- Siira 6y ago
  I suspect teachers are the bottleneck. They hardly have any useful skills (except keeping children in line), so they can only teach memorization which is easy to teach/grade.

Siira 6y ago

> you're being kept out of the house so that both your parents can go back to jobs they don't like. I was left home alone from, like, 4 years old? I definitely preferred that to going to school.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

It depends on the curriculum and the teachers. Some teachers can get super excited about sharing the amazing stuff that's the results of their field. Sure, there's a bit of jargon and memorization to be able to discuss the problem. You can't be amazed by the results of concentration gradients, gene expression on the formation of proteins if you think concentration means something about your eyebrows, gradients are a function of WordArt, gene was a guy who played Willy Wonka, expressions are things your face does, and protein is a number on your dad's whey powder. If you can make students excited about using, testing, and comprehending the awesome information about their world that are just behind a minor speed bump of some jargon you need to cross, most will hurdle those difficulties as if it was effortless. The standardized tests that check whether they know the jargon will be just a wasted day that they don't get to learn more about the subject! If, instead, you set the end goal as passing the standardized test that checks whether they know the jargon or not, they'll begrudgingly do the minimum required to not get in too much trouble. The tragedy is that kids who don't even know the bare minimum jargon are often unprepared to function as independent adults, and so the rational, fair, game-theoretic optimum outcome demands resources need to be allocated to help those more than they need to be allocated to help those who are already functional. Also, there's the tragedy that teachers who pour their hearts into their students aren't adequately valued by society - we pay lawyers and administrators huge sums of money as if what they do is more important than what my 9th grade bio teacher did while using his weekends to crawl through the mud on bog walks to learn about sphagnum mosses and carnivorous plants with some kids he met for an hour a day for 8 months, while barely keeping his family out of poverty.