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His argument about knowledge retention also completely misses the mark. My high school chemistry teacher said it best when asked why we needed to learn stuff we

His argument about knowledge retention also completely misses the mark. My high school chemistry teacher said it best when asked why we needed to learn stuff we'd just forget about after the exam: "I don't expect you to remember anything you learned in my classes after you leave high school, but when a time comes later in life that you need this knowledge you'll know how to learn it again." It's not about being able to recite all the answers to the exam questions at any given time. It's about having gone through the learning process.

jokethrowaway 6y ago
I've heard this adage several times and it doesn't match my experience. I've been trying grasping some physics recently and I had do it from scratch, I didn't even know basic facts. I was pleased to see I still remember trigonometry though, and I perfectly know why: instead of studying back in school I spent time making 2d games and I often needed trigonometry. The way we do education in school is broken. If not for everyone, at least for my brain.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  Eh, for secondary education it's more of a "breadth, then depth" minmax pruning exercise - you go through 10 or 20 courses like biology, physics, economics, drama, calculus, journalism, etc. and then you winnow those down into things to pursue further, rinse, repeat... By the time you're 3 years into med school or a graphics designer job, forgetting trig or how a Constitutional amendment is ratified is a feature, not a bug.
Olreich 6y ago
Children are learning machines. They do it faster than adults, and they could be retaining everything. The reason no one retains things from school is because there’s no effort put into long-term retention. There’s no effort put into much of anything outside of memorization. Math is memorizing formulas, French is memorizing vocabulary, English is memorizing plots and literary devices. The best classes are the ones that the teacher asks for synthesizing something that is not explicitly given. Take some base knowledge and ask people to use it to make something new, and the learning is way more effective. Language learning works on this principle, thus why “immersion” is the best learning method. It forces you to speak. Math is like this too, playing around with the formulas and learning to come up with new ones reinforces the principles. Writing is far more effective at teaching students to read than just reading is. Creative writing in the same style or using the same devices as a book will internalize them. Learning is about synthesis, and it’s vanishingly rare in the education system.
- olau 6y ago
  Agreed. My kids go to a Waldorf school, and it's all about synthesis. They don't get teaching material, they make it themselves. This also reinforces a can-do attitude. I compare it to my university education, where we spend most of the time (2/3) each semester doing a project in a small group. The engineering faculty of the university I attended was recently rated in the top 4 with Stanford and MIT and a Chinese one (above Oxford). I guarantee you it's not because of the quality of the staff - it's the method.
- watwut 6y ago
  My math was not memorizing formulas and French constantly tortured us with writing essays. And my school system was more tilted toward authoritarian memorizing then my kids school is. Also, kids don't retain everything, school or not. Yet also, my kids are in elementary school and I definitely learn faster at this point. They will learn even faster then I am learning now, but they are not there yet.
hobs 6y ago
Nothing about pedagogy needs the brain to have heard facts 10 years ago about something, that's totally bogus.
DFHippie 6y ago
Even if you forget what you've learned, having learned it once makes the acquisition faster the second time. Though really what matters most is wanting to learn it. The problem with most formal education is that you're taught stuff that you don't really care about at the time.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

I've heard this adage several times and it doesn't match my experience. I've been trying grasping some physics recently and I had do it from scratch, I didn't even know basic facts. I was pleased to see I still remember trigonometry though, and I perfectly know why: instead of studying back in school I spent time making 2d games and I often needed trigonometry. The way we do education in school is broken. If not for everyone, at least for my brain.

kthejoker2 6y ago
Eh, for secondary education it's more of a "breadth, then depth" minmax pruning exercise - you go through 10 or 20 courses like biology, physics, economics, drama, calculus, journalism, etc. and then you winnow those down into things to pursue further, rinse, repeat... By the time you're 3 years into med school or a graphics designer job, forgetting trig or how a Constitutional amendment is ratified is a feature, not a bug.

Olreich 6y ago

Children are learning machines. They do it faster than adults, and they could be retaining everything. The reason no one retains things from school is because there’s no effort put into long-term retention. There’s no effort put into much of anything outside of memorization. Math is memorizing formulas, French is memorizing vocabulary, English is memorizing plots and literary devices. The best classes are the ones that the teacher asks for synthesizing something that is not explicitly given. Take some base knowledge and ask people to use it to make something new, and the learning is way more effective. Language learning works on this principle, thus why “immersion” is the best learning method. It forces you to speak. Math is like this too, playing around with the formulas and learning to come up with new ones reinforces the principles. Writing is far more effective at teaching students to read than just reading is. Creative writing in the same style or using the same devices as a book will internalize them. Learning is about synthesis, and it’s vanishingly rare in the education system.

olau 6y ago
Agreed. My kids go to a Waldorf school, and it's all about synthesis. They don't get teaching material, they make it themselves. This also reinforces a can-do attitude. I compare it to my university education, where we spend most of the time (2/3) each semester doing a project in a small group. The engineering faculty of the university I attended was recently rated in the top 4 with Stanford and MIT and a Chinese one (above Oxford). I guarantee you it's not because of the quality of the staff - it's the method.
watwut 6y ago
My math was not memorizing formulas and French constantly tortured us with writing essays. And my school system was more tilted toward authoritarian memorizing then my kids school is. Also, kids don't retain everything, school or not. Yet also, my kids are in elementary school and I definitely learn faster at this point. They will learn even faster then I am learning now, but they are not there yet.

hobs 6y ago

Nothing about pedagogy needs the brain to have heard facts 10 years ago about something, that's totally bogus.

DFHippie 6y ago

Even if you forget what you've learned, having learned it once makes the acquisition faster the second time. Though really what matters most is wanting to learn it. The problem with most formal education is that you're taught stuff that you don't really care about at the time.