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This post has a fatal misconception that school teaches people to "learn how to learn". In your specific argument, it's the belief that forcing kids to master b

This post has a fatal misconception that school teaches people to "learn how to learn". In your specific argument, it's the belief that forcing kids to master boring material will augment their ability to learn boring material in adulthood. Cognitive psychology has consistently refuted this theory again and again. Transfer of learning is virtually non-existent.[1] When a student learns a topic he learns the very specific skills related to that topic. There's no spillover or improvement to the ability to learn other, even closely related, topics. [1]https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/low_transfer_of.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/low_transfer_of.htm...

yonaguska 5y ago
Anecdotally, I learned Japanese. At a later date, I studied Hungarian in a cram school. Two of us learned Hungarian much faster than our classmates- we both had studied Japanese. Most of the students had also studied other languages. Something about learning languages that were so grammatically different from English seemed to help with building mental models and stop "translating" things back and forth from English- which made the language much easier to pick up. Developing learning techniques does help in learning other things. Learning boring things however, I think that's always going to be hard for me.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  I have a feeling this anecdote has more to do with the personality of people who have the drive, desire, and passion to self-study Japanese.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I disagree, a lot of learning a language is transferable, but not because it's 'learning how to learn', just because it's the same. Grammars are largely described using the same system, with different languages using different parts of it (and more or less - Latin quite a lot; English quite little). Learning a second language (that's different enough) exposes you to more of the available grammatical constructs, so when you learn a third there's less that could possibly be new, and probably quite a bit of grammatical overlap with your first or second language.
    - nonbirithm 5y ago
      But does this specific anecdote generalize to, for example, learning a language and then trying to learn linear algebra? I feel that was the point the GP was meaning to bring up. Languages are fundamentally similar to one another in many ways, so I would imagine there is less you can transfer to learning something where the framework of language-learning no longer applies.
calgoo 5y ago
When I was in highschool I had several books I had to read that I hated. So i learned to beat the system. I found several online reviews of the book, read those, and the re-wrote them in my own words. Ironically i learned more that way then when I read the books myself, as i would actually have to think of how to re-write the the essays in my own words. When I was reading the book and not liking it, then it would be like a lot of school info, get it in my head, and once the assignment / test was done, forget it all.
heymijo 5y ago
Your linked post from Bryan Caplan isn't compelling that transfer of learning is "virtually non-existent." Anecdotally, I agree that a good deal of teaching does not produce learning that is durable or transfers. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Enter Scott Carrell and James West's study at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) [0]. The title and abstract bury the lede and actually misdirect. It talks about professor evaluations, tenure, and teacher quality. The key findings from this study are about the type of pedagogy that create durable and transferable learning. They compared pedagogical styles of teachers in first year calculus classes compared to how durable and transferable the knowledge was that cadets gained in each class. It was a totally unique environment that allowed for it to be randomized, controlled, and to study effects beyond one year. I have never seen a better study in education. The tl;dr is that pedagogy that forces students to engage in desirable difficulties [1] produces learning that is more durable and can transfer to different domains. The catch is two-fold. Students rate this type of teaching poorly. They also get worse grades at first even though the long-term payoff is much better. [0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14081/w14081.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14081/w140... [1] https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/04/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/...

yonaguska 5y ago

Anecdotally, I learned Japanese. At a later date, I studied Hungarian in a cram school. Two of us learned Hungarian much faster than our classmates- we both had studied Japanese. Most of the students had also studied other languages. Something about learning languages that were so grammatically different from English seemed to help with building mental models and stop "translating" things back and forth from English- which made the language much easier to pick up. Developing learning techniques does help in learning other things. Learning boring things however, I think that's always going to be hard for me.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
I have a feeling this anecdote has more to do with the personality of people who have the drive, desire, and passion to self-study Japanese.
- OJFord 5y ago
  I disagree, a lot of learning a language is transferable, but not because it's 'learning how to learn', just because it's the same. Grammars are largely described using the same system, with different languages using different parts of it (and more or less - Latin quite a lot; English quite little). Learning a second language (that's different enough) exposes you to more of the available grammatical constructs, so when you learn a third there's less that could possibly be new, and probably quite a bit of grammatical overlap with your first or second language.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    But does this specific anecdote generalize to, for example, learning a language and then trying to learn linear algebra? I feel that was the point the GP was meaning to bring up. Languages are fundamentally similar to one another in many ways, so I would imagine there is less you can transfer to learning something where the framework of language-learning no longer applies.

calgoo 5y ago

When I was in highschool I had several books I had to read that I hated. So i learned to beat the system. I found several online reviews of the book, read those, and the re-wrote them in my own words. Ironically i learned more that way then when I read the books myself, as i would actually have to think of how to re-write the the essays in my own words. When I was reading the book and not liking it, then it would be like a lot of school info, get it in my head, and once the assignment / test was done, forget it all.

heymijo 5y ago

Your linked post from Bryan Caplan isn't compelling that transfer of learning is "virtually non-existent." Anecdotally, I agree that a good deal of teaching does not produce learning that is durable or transfers. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Enter Scott Carrell and James West's study at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) [0]. The title and abstract bury the lede and actually misdirect. It talks about professor evaluations, tenure, and teacher quality. The key findings from this study are about the type of pedagogy that create durable and transferable learning. They compared pedagogical styles of teachers in first year calculus classes compared to how durable and transferable the knowledge was that cadets gained in each class. It was a totally unique environment that allowed for it to be randomized, controlled, and to study effects beyond one year. I have never seen a better study in education. The tl;dr is that pedagogy that forces students to engage in desirable difficulties [1] produces learning that is more durable and can transfer to different domains. The catch is two-fold. Students rate this type of teaching poorly. They also get worse grades at first even though the long-term payoff is much better. [0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14081/w14081.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14081/w140... [1] https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/04/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/...