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> there is Keith Devlin involved.... I am sure he enjoys it a lot to be in a position where he can write pedantic falsehoods while at the same time being taken

• zamadatix 6y ago
  The general concept is known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children and I think you'd be hard pressed to teach/learn/apply anything of significance without this "well actually it's more complicated than that" approach and recognizing how far you need to go with it to aptly do some task.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    There's no need to lie to children. Telling children "multiplication is a separate operation on numbers, but it works like repeated addition for the counting numbers you're familiar with" is not a lie.
    • SilasX 6y ago
      Well, that would be true if all children were as smart and analytically adept as you.
      • pdonis 6y ago
        I think this viewpoint is pernicious. A child doesn't have to be "smart" in order to deserve being told the truth. Or I could turn your remark around: what makes you, the adult, think you are so much smarter than the child that you can correctly judge what lies are OK to tell them? Are all adults really that smart? (Are any of us?)
        • allturtles 6y ago
          An abstraction/simplification/shorthand is not a lie. People don't say "multiplication is repeated addition" because they are trying to hide the truth for some selfish reason. It's a pedagogical strategy to help people learn a new abstraction by analogy to an old one. These kind of crutches are a necessity, you can't introduce all the complexity of the world to someone all at once. This applies to every subject - science, history, writing. Simple notions and shorthands are introduced first, and complexity and nuance added on later. Is it a "lie" to teach kids just learning chess that queens are worth more than any other piece and you should always protect your queen, even though there are advanced situations when it makes sense to sacrifice your queen for no immediate material gain? In this specific case, introducing the ideas of "operations" and "counting numbers" into the picture muddies the waters, most kids who are just learning multiplication won't have any idea what you mean by those concepts.
          • pdonis 6y ago
            > An abstraction/simplification/shorthand is not a lie. "Multiplication is repeated addition" is not "an abstraction/simplification/shorthand". Doing that for multiplication would be saying something like "multiplication is a distinct primitive operation, but it works like repeated addition for whole numbers, so that's what we'll be learning how to do now." Is that really so hard? > Is it a "lie" to teach kids just learning chess that queens are worth more than any other piece and you should always protect your queen, even though there are advanced situations when it makes sense to sacrifice your queen for no immediate material gain? If you tell them everything you just said, no, you're not lying. But if you just tell them "always protect your queen", without explaining anything about why and without saying that there are some advanced situations where you might break this rule, yes, you're lying. It only takes a couple of sentences to add that extra information. Again, is that really so hard? > In this specific case, introducing the ideas of "operations" and "counting numbers" into the picture muddies the waters, most kids who are just learning multiplication won't have any idea what you mean by those concepts. Um, what? We're assuming they already know about addition of whole numbers. So it is simple to tell them "this addition thing that you learned, that's an example of an operation", and "those whole number thingies that you learned how to add, those are numbers". Once more, is that really so hard?
      • hrktb 6y ago
        It looks like splitting hairs, but I also think it makes a difference to state upfront that it’s an oversimplification. Kids actually understand the point, and they can decide if they care enough to ask more questions or if it’s good enough for them. We faced that when teaching divisions. Saying upfront we’d explain falsehoods for the sake of simplicity helped set aside the more difficult questions (infinity, etc.) that came right after. We just say it’s the complicated parts and move on. The best aspect is they are more receptive to have their mental model broken afterwards, instead of clinging to what you explained as fully true.
    • majormajor 6y ago
      The continuing series of qualifications "it's kinda like this, for what you're talking about" gets pretty rough there, even when explaining, say, Kubernetes to adults! It can be a confidence crusher. There's also the flip side response which is always asking a lot of questions about "well then what are the other sorts of numbers" and eventually getting shut down "we're not talking about that now" which comes back to the "who decides what you're smart enough to hear about now" question in its own way. Or "oh the teacher doesn't actually know what the difference is, or why this isn't 'true' 100%." Despite the cutesy name, I don't think omission of detail is the same as lying. It's often impossible to tell 100% the truth. You probably don't even know it yourself!
      • smolder 6y ago
        Refusing to answer curious students questions isn't helpful. Giving them a hint and telling them you'll get back to it works fine. They're smart enough to understand they aren't having to wait because they're incapable of understanding, but because other things need teaching first. I know I did. The good teachers were encouraging of the curiosity while back-burnering something, others responded less patiently with things like "we're not there yet!", which made them seem like bad teachers to me, even back to elementary.
      • roenxi 6y ago
        > It can be a confidence crusher. If confidence gets priority over truth in explanations, then society will churn out people who are confidently wrong. This is a bad idea even if everybody does that and even if it is the traditional approach. If people were honest that they don't know something then the world at large would be a lot nicer to live in.
        • kortilla 6y ago
          The confidence is in the ability to learn a topic, not confidence about the knowledge.
          • pdonis 6y ago
    • aidenn0 6y ago
      If you don't lie to children you confuse and discourage them. I know because my own internal desire for precision often is to the detriment of my pedagogy.
    • CodeMage 6y ago
      Let's not take the word "lie" out of its context and then get hung up on it. We're not actually lying to children by simplifying the explanation down to what they can comprehend with the tools they have at that stage.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • pdonis 6y ago
        > Let's not take the word "lie" out of its context I'm not the one that used that word. If people are going to reference a concept that's been published in a book and uses that word, they should own it and be prepared to justify it. If they can't do that, they should not use the word in the first place. To be clear, I'm not saying you are one of those people. But the poster I was responding to is.
        • CodeMage 6y ago
          I'm not saying you shouldn't use the word. I'm saying you shouldn't ignore its very specific and specialized context. Taking things out of their context often leads to problems, just like in this case.
    • peterwoerner 6y ago
      But you can define multiplication based on abstracting repeated addition. That how we did it my analysis class, although I forget some of the details. So if you say multiplication is repeated addition, it really isn't a lie.
      • threatofrain 6y ago
        But did your analysis class define addition on the naturals? Then that's an operator for the naturals. And then for integers, rationals, etc.
        • peterwoerner 6y ago
          Yep and how to construct, the naturals from set theory, the integers from the naturals, the rationals from the integers and the reals from the rational. I've forgotten the details at this point, but I remember the conclusions.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • smolder 6y ago
      They don't need this information when learning that 3 groups of 5 fruit are 15 fruits. It's not in the natural order of understanding principles.
      • pdonis 6y ago
        > They don't need this information when learning that 3 groups of 5 fruit are 15 fruits. They also don't need the "information" that multiplication is repeated addition, period, full stop. But that's what others in this discussion appear to be trying to argue for.
        • smolder 6y ago
          I'm really not sure how you could arrive at an understanding of multiplication without first going through the exercise of adding up X groups of Y to yield X * Y. We don't need to declare to children that the precise definition of multiplication is repeated addition. If that's what you're arguing, we agree. If it's that 3*5 shouldn't be explained as 5+5+5, I'm not sure how kids would be expected to learn the subject. We can't transactionally insert comprehensive math knowledge, so it's got to be incomplete along the way.
          • pdonis 6y ago
            > I'm really not sure how you could arrive at an understanding of multiplication without first going through the exercise of adding up X groups of Y to yield X Y.* Arriving at an understanding of one particular special case of multiplication might indeed be a necessary step towards arriving at an understanding of multiplication in general, but that doesn't mean the two are the same.
    • wcarey 6y ago
      How would you teach physics without lying to children?
      • pdonis 6y ago
        Um, by not lying to them? Do you have a specific example of where you think you need to lie to teach physics?
        • djur 6y ago
          Explaining the structure of an atom without having to explain atomic orbitals and standing waves. Explaining classical mechanics without including a bunch of caveats about relativistic speeds.
          • pdonis 6y ago
            > Explaining the structure of an atom without having to explain atomic orbitals and standing waves. My high school chemistry teacher had no problem explaining this to me, when teaching the periodic table of the elements, without telling any lies and without going into the details of the quantum mechanics involved. The Pauli exclusion principle and a general statement that the details of the quantum mechanics were out of scope for that class was enough. > Explaining classical mechanics without including a bunch of caveats about relativistic speeds. My high school physics teacher had no problem explaining classical mechanics including the caveats. The caveats took only a few minutes early in the semester. What's the problem?
            • pessimizer 6y ago
              Why would you explain classical mechanics at all? It's an inaccurate simplification.
              • pdonis 6y ago
                It's much simpler to compute answers with classical mechanics, and the answers are accurate enough for many practical purposes. As the saying goes, all models are wrong but some are useful.
  • TrevorJ 6y ago
    It costs nothing to tell someone: "I'm going to teach you one way of thinking about this, but there are other ways you will learn later".
• JosephRedfern 6y ago
  I never got over being lied to about electron shells and the 2-8-8 "rule".
  • Sharlin 6y ago
    To be fair, it once was the best model we had, before we figured out quantum mechanics. That brings up an interesting point, though: the way many of these things are taught closely mirrors the history of how we discovered them in the first place. This is definitely not a coincidence, but I'm also not sure whether it is the most effective way to teach.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    How were you lied to about that?
    • JosephRedfern 6y ago
      In GCSE Chemistry (taught to 15-16ish year olds), we were taught that the first shell contained two electrons, and subsequent shells contained 8 (up to the final, which may contain fewer). Then, after GCSEs, during A-levels, we were told (by the same teachers, in the same classrooms) to forget this model, and that the situation was actually more complicated, with s, p, d, f orbitals etc. I realise that this is was a simplification and not necessarily an outright lie, and can understand why they did it this way. But it was the first time I realised I’d been deliberately taught something that was incomplete or inaccurate.
      • selimthegrim 6y ago
        Wait until you hear about Px, py orbitals and their actual quantum numbers
• curiousllama 6y ago
  Idk discovering all the lies I believe is one of the most fun parts of learning for me.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    > discovering all the lies I believe I have no problem with discovering lies I believe because I told them to myself (and I think most of the lies anyone believes are lies they've told themselves). What I have a problem with is discovering that someone else deliberately lied to me. But probably not everyone feels the same way I do about such things.
• lhorie 6y ago
  > teaching students one thing, and then later coming back and saying "well, that thing you were taught before isn't actually correct..." My kids are learning multiplication. I honestly don't feel like they're being lied to, or confused about what they are being taught. Yes, they start with addition and subtraction as crutches (e.g. `9 x N` is initially taught as `10 x N - N`). It's certainly not how I learned (I had to do rote memorization of the tables), but hey they can recite tables now too. Easing into multiplication via addition doesn't feel wrong IMHO. In fact, at later grades, I'd have to learn about associative/commutative properties anyways. My daughter in particular has a somewhat peculiar story: she is in kinder and learning multiplication from a game[0] that her older brother started playing, and the way they introduced multiplication is by telling her that to calculate the area of a rectangle, she needs to literally count the number of blocks that compose it. Is it "wrong"? I guess. Blocks aren't really proper units, but she gets that a rectangle made of 4x5 blocks has an area of 20 blocks, first by stumbling n' counting, then adding rows then eventually just memorizing the multiplication fact, so mission accomplished? Things build up from there, first without the grid, then into area of more complex polygons, spin off into word problems, etc. IMHO what helps kids learn is just repeatedly seeing where the memorized mechanisms can be applied and where they can't. Eventually multiplication becomes second nature and the addition/subtraction crutches come off. [0] https://www.prodigygame.com/ https://www.prodigygame.com/
  • com2kid 6y ago
    > (e.g. `9 x N` is initially taught as `10 x N - N`) That isn't a crutch, that is how large numbers can be multiplied in one's head! 90 * 21 is (90 * 20) + 90 Right after removing that extra 90, now you have 9 * 2 * 10 * 10 + 90, which is easy to do mentally. Heck if you ask me what 9 * 14 is, I'm going to do 10 * 14 - 14. Did I have to memorize 0x0 through 12x12? Yup. But now days I have a few key mid points memorized and I'll add my way from there. I don't remember 7 * 6 but I know its 7 * 7 - 7.
    • FPGAhacker 6y ago
      > Heck if you ask me what 9 * 14 is, I'm going to do 10 * 14 - 14. Yeah, that’s interesting how we do things in our head like that. I would frequently break that down as 9*10 + 9*4 in my head. But I might also do it as 10*14 - 10 - 4. I’ll try different ways in my head until I can solve one of them easily.
• hyperpallium2 6y ago
  Pre-university mathematics is mostly like this. But there is a way to teach mathematics from axioms that is intuitive: geometry. Euclid's Elements was the key mathematics textbook for about 2000 years. Of course, you simply can't cover as much ground if you must derive everything. But I do wonder if the collapse in public discourse is partly because of faith-based mathematics. i.e. taught as: it's true because we tell you it's true, not because you can see for yourself that it's true.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  Teaching Newtonian Mechanics to students is also a lie. But I don't believe starting with General Relativity is going to do anything but confuse students. I was never confused by "3 baskets of 6 apples, how many apples" questions or thought I'd been lied to about addition.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    > Teaching Newtonian Mechanics to students is also a lie. Not if you tell the students that it's an approximate model that works well in the domain they're currently studying, but doesn't work well in a more expanded domain. Of course if you insist on acting like an authority and telling students that Newtonian Mechanics is "the Truth", then yes, you are lying to them. But you don't have to tell them that to teach them Newtonian Mechanics.
    • cyphar 6y ago
      > Of course if you insist on acting like an authority and telling students that Newtonian Mechanics is "the Truth", then yes, you are lying to them. But you don't have to tell them that to teach them Newtonian Mechanics. Do you think teachers really say "Newtonian Mechanics is the Truth" in class? Maybe it's different in the US but in Australia I've never had an interaction with a teacher like that. Or is your issue that teachers are omitting that information? If so, that's quite a different thing to discuss.
• tvanantwerp 6y ago
  I still encounter this as a grown adult. I'm working through a course on a programming framework I'm unfamiliar with right now, and several times have gone through a half-hour setup to encounter "Now that I've shown you the awful way to do this, here's a built-in way that's far simpler and less error-prone!" Extremely irritating.