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The hilarity to me is watching people who always derided school as a remnant of the industrial age that denied creativity and could easily be replaced by Khan a

by Noos 6y ago

The hilarity to me is watching people who always derided school as a remnant of the industrial age that denied creativity and could easily be replaced by Khan academy or what have you realize during Covid just how important that model was to actually educate people. Pretty much anyone who was against homeschooling could have told you that yes, home-based education was always biased for the people who had enough resources to compensate for the ineffectiveness of that teaching method, and relied on the children also being intelligent self-starters too. Now that it is more or less forced, or forced "radio schooling" in a way, we are seeing people become suspiciously quiet about the matter.

watwut 6y ago
Not on HN. Pretty much any thread about school has people strongly claim about how covid shown that school is just babysitting and most def hellhole. I am not encountering that sentiment outside of HN. Then again, HN is has also unusually strong sub-community of homeschoolers.
- rhino369 6y ago
  I also think there that among programmers there are an unusually large number of "self-teachers." How is CS taught? By giving a problem set and having you try it out yourself. These types of people tend to think that structured learning is bad. But many other types of people learn better in a structured environment.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I dont even think HN represents "programmers" in general. Most of people I talk and socialize with are programmers. When I say I dont encounter that sentiment outside of HN, it includes them. And CS is not taught purely by giving you problem set that you try alone. A lot of effort goes into trying to attract children by gamified programming systems or by nice graphics, into exercises that are actually age appropriate and so on. There is self learning, but there are massive parts of it that are not self learning. And the self learning part is not even the thing that makes programming special. People self learning is not something that only programmers would do.

by Noos 6y ago

watwut 6y ago

Not on HN. Pretty much any thread about school has people strongly claim about how covid shown that school is just babysitting and most def hellhole. I am not encountering that sentiment outside of HN. Then again, HN is has also unusually strong sub-community of homeschoolers.

rhino369 6y ago
I also think there that among programmers there are an unusually large number of "self-teachers." How is CS taught? By giving a problem set and having you try it out yourself. These types of people tend to think that structured learning is bad. But many other types of people learn better in a structured environment.
- watwut 6y ago
  I dont even think HN represents "programmers" in general. Most of people I talk and socialize with are programmers. When I say I dont encounter that sentiment outside of HN, it includes them. And CS is not taught purely by giving you problem set that you try alone. A lot of effort goes into trying to attract children by gamified programming systems or by nice graphics, into exercises that are actually age appropriate and so on. There is self learning, but there are massive parts of it that are not self learning. And the self learning part is not even the thing that makes programming special. People self learning is not something that only programmers would do.