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Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where

Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where you could ask some questions. For high school, you're basically right, there isn't that much content. But it's not like you're in a math class particularly long either. Few hours a week for a few dozen weeks a year, for a few years, and a fair bit of each class is getting everyone seated, telling people the homework, and reviewing the previous lesson. If you look at a math/science high school curriculum, you tend to just follow some book that's a few hundred pages, and it takes the whole year to do it. An engaged kid could read it all over a few evenings, per class. > It is really irritating to me how so many people thinks it is impossible to grasp math by just sitting there It's very easy to think you really understand something when someone's explaining it to you. Kinda like watching a show on Discovery. Then when it comes to solving problems, there's a fair chance that you're exposed. I found this a lot at university, there'd only be 10 questions but they were good ones that necessitated looking at a variety of sources and getting a real understanding. Often nobody I knew would be confident on all the answers, and this is kids that got into a world famous university.

Jensson 5y ago
> It's very easy to think you really understand something when someone's explaining it to you. Kinda like watching a show on Discovery. Then when it comes to solving problems, there's a fair chance that you're exposed. I didn't think about it though, I didn't assume I understood anything. Just that one day there is a test, I went to the test and answered everything as well I could. I didn't get everything right, I did a lot of stupid mistakes, but I got enough things right. I think that if you need to practice to do well on the tests then you don't understand the subject well. There comes a point where you feel you have perfect clarity of a topic, I just reach that level very fast. I am not always correct when I feel that way, but it was good enough. > Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where you could ask some questions. Right, higher level courses makes you do more independent work. But the courses people take for physics, CS or engineering are still very well explained. The courses you take to prepare for math research didn't go as well for the reasons you explained, I still passed them but with worse grades and started doing math research, but after I solved my first research problem and wrote about it I realized I didn't really like math that much and learned programming and got into Google instead. I figured that if I have to work on something I don't care about I can just as well earn a lot of money doing it. Just explaining things here to make my position more understandable. I always hated teachers who grades after how hard you work or how many boring practice problems you solve etc, so I have a strong distaste for any argument along those lines. "But you need to work hard to learn!", no you really don't. That is my point. Don't make me do boring stuff because you had to.
- User23 5y ago
  The existence of so-called gifted persons such as yourself does present some difficulty to the blank slate crowd. Sadly, they appear to have settled on reducing or eliminating testing as well as tracking into gifted programs as a way to cut that gordian knot. Their alternative is more subjective measures, where I imagine at least some of your teachers would have been inclined to grade you poorly despite your grasp of the material. It’s disappointing, but also amusing. When I was in high school Harrison Bergeron was assigned reading. And it’s a great loss too, but one that most people won’t even notice. Observe how much skepticism your personal testimony gets from those who cannot even imagine what it’s like to have extremely high intelligence.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    I had the same experience, never studying at all, passing all the tests, and winning academic competitions. The difference is that I understand the reason for my apparent giftedness is being taught to think properly at a young age. I have taught others to do things that I had done at almost half the age because I have a deeper appreciation of pedagogy than my own teacher.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  I don't think I ever suggested grading based on effort, it makes no sense to me either. But most people do need to do something other than just show up to class to learn things. That's got to somehow be obvious, based on everyday observation of your peers? Certainly my main experience of university was that kids who were diligent understood things, and those who weren't didn't. Plenty of kids thought they could either quickly catch up, or get an overview at the lectures and just be smart and figure it out. It might have worked for one or two, but for the large mass of kids, they needed to sit and look at things themselves, and take some time. Also I don't understand how you think courses were well explained. Where did you study? I never thought anything was explained much at all, lectures were mostly a summary of major ideas, with a lot of glossing over the details by professors who were long past the point where it mattered how well they understood the stuff.
  - 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

> It's very easy to think you really understand something when someone's explaining it to you. Kinda like watching a show on Discovery. Then when it comes to solving problems, there's a fair chance that you're exposed. I didn't think about it though, I didn't assume I understood anything. Just that one day there is a test, I went to the test and answered everything as well I could. I didn't get everything right, I did a lot of stupid mistakes, but I got enough things right. I think that if you need to practice to do well on the tests then you don't understand the subject well. There comes a point where you feel you have perfect clarity of a topic, I just reach that level very fast. I am not always correct when I feel that way, but it was good enough. > Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where you could ask some questions. Right, higher level courses makes you do more independent work. But the courses people take for physics, CS or engineering are still very well explained. The courses you take to prepare for math research didn't go as well for the reasons you explained, I still passed them but with worse grades and started doing math research, but after I solved my first research problem and wrote about it I realized I didn't really like math that much and learned programming and got into Google instead. I figured that if I have to work on something I don't care about I can just as well earn a lot of money doing it. Just explaining things here to make my position more understandable. I always hated teachers who grades after how hard you work or how many boring practice problems you solve etc, so I have a strong distaste for any argument along those lines. "But you need to work hard to learn!", no you really don't. That is my point. Don't make me do boring stuff because you had to.

User23 5y ago
The existence of so-called gifted persons such as yourself does present some difficulty to the blank slate crowd. Sadly, they appear to have settled on reducing or eliminating testing as well as tracking into gifted programs as a way to cut that gordian knot. Their alternative is more subjective measures, where I imagine at least some of your teachers would have been inclined to grade you poorly despite your grasp of the material. It’s disappointing, but also amusing. When I was in high school Harrison Bergeron was assigned reading. And it’s a great loss too, but one that most people won’t even notice. Observe how much skepticism your personal testimony gets from those who cannot even imagine what it’s like to have extremely high intelligence.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  I had the same experience, never studying at all, passing all the tests, and winning academic competitions. The difference is that I understand the reason for my apparent giftedness is being taught to think properly at a young age. I have taught others to do things that I had done at almost half the age because I have a deeper appreciation of pedagogy than my own teacher.
lordnacho 5y ago
I don't think I ever suggested grading based on effort, it makes no sense to me either. But most people do need to do something other than just show up to class to learn things. That's got to somehow be obvious, based on everyday observation of your peers? Certainly my main experience of university was that kids who were diligent understood things, and those who weren't didn't. Plenty of kids thought they could either quickly catch up, or get an overview at the lectures and just be smart and figure it out. It might have worked for one or two, but for the large mass of kids, they needed to sit and look at things themselves, and take some time. Also I don't understand how you think courses were well explained. Where did you study? I never thought anything was explained much at all, lectures were mostly a summary of major ideas, with a lot of glossing over the details by professors who were long past the point where it mattered how well they understood the stuff.
- 5y ago