7 ms·

I’m probably a radical, but I’m open to not forcing children to learn things that someone deems “important to learn” which they are not interested in. I think

I’m probably a radical, but I’m open to not forcing children to learn things that someone deems “important to learn” which they are not interested in. I think it’s great to give kids a taster of many subjects, but from my education I’m pretty sure that 90% of what I was taught was useless. The STEM stuff I would have done anyway because I loved it. And I have later come back to full in blanks in history etc. (Though I do acknowledge it’s hard to tell whether school builds a substrate or pattern for general learning, even if the raw facts were useless at the time.) I had peers that were forced to learn languages, English lit, maths, etc, and then left school to be tradesmen or musicians, where they used approximately zero of what they were forced to learn. (And trade school starting earlier could have taught them the trigonometry or scales they needed very quickly). The problem is we are trying to manufacture high school graduates rather than crafting or sculpting them. I agree that the existing classroom model doesn’t work for this new way of thinking about learning. Siblings have done a better job of arguing for specific options than I could. But yes, I’d rather try something with different structure. For example, can you stream kids by interest rather than by age group? 30 kids all into history, with varying ages, might learn better than 30 7th-graders all trying to learn the curriculum on WW2 or whatever was decided is “important they know” and which most don’t care about. Everyone has their own pet definition of what is “important to learn” in school, mine is the meta-level “learning is easy and fun if you care about what you are studying”.

TaupeRanger 4y ago
It is "radical" for a reason. Look at how bad things are right now, and multiply it by 10 if you decide to get rid of all curriculum that kids aren't inherently interested in: - Goodbye to any understanding of politics or social studies - Goodbye to historical knowledge - Goodbye to any understanding of our own bodies (except for kids who are interested in animals or medicine?) - Goodbye to classical literature - Goodbye to economics and personal finance - Goodbye to being able to appropriately and accurately express oneself when speaking and writing ALL of these are very important parts of human knowledge that are essential to high functioning in society, but 99% of children have absolutely no interest in them whatsoever if left to their own devices.
- theptip 4y ago
  I suppose we're unlikely to convince each other here. I'll just note that your list of "goodbyes" seems a bit overly-apocalyptic to me, and it's not even clear to me that many students leave the education system with meaningful knowledge of more than a couple items on your list. The students that do leave with knowledge of economics or classical literature almost certainly were interested in those things when they were introduced. > 99% of children have absolutely no interest in them whatsoever if left to their own devices. This would be the crux of our disagreement; I think that ultimately this depends on empirical investigation. It's hard to do such studies, since SES and other confounds are extremely hard to control for. I'm sure that 99% of kids have absolutely no interest in the current curriculum, but that's precisely my point; the curriculum is horrifically boring in many places if you don't connect with the subject matter. I do think it's reasonable to note that most other developed countries have better public education systems than the US, and for the most part follow a fairly traditional model, which demonstrates that there are gains to be had in the US without revolutionizing the system. I'm in favor of trying to achieve that too. And I'd of course not advocate for burning the whole thing down and starting with something new; I think experiments could be made with, say, one day a week of "interest-based learning" along the lines I put forth above, while still keeping the core curriculum alive.

TaupeRanger 4y ago

It is "radical" for a reason. Look at how bad things are right now, and multiply it by 10 if you decide to get rid of all curriculum that kids aren't inherently interested in: - Goodbye to any understanding of politics or social studies - Goodbye to historical knowledge - Goodbye to any understanding of our own bodies (except for kids who are interested in animals or medicine?) - Goodbye to classical literature - Goodbye to economics and personal finance - Goodbye to being able to appropriately and accurately express oneself when speaking and writing ALL of these are very important parts of human knowledge that are essential to high functioning in society, but 99% of children have absolutely no interest in them whatsoever if left to their own devices.

theptip 4y ago
I suppose we're unlikely to convince each other here. I'll just note that your list of "goodbyes" seems a bit overly-apocalyptic to me, and it's not even clear to me that many students leave the education system with meaningful knowledge of more than a couple items on your list. The students that do leave with knowledge of economics or classical literature almost certainly were interested in those things when they were introduced. > 99% of children have absolutely no interest in them whatsoever if left to their own devices. This would be the crux of our disagreement; I think that ultimately this depends on empirical investigation. It's hard to do such studies, since SES and other confounds are extremely hard to control for. I'm sure that 99% of kids have absolutely no interest in the current curriculum, but that's precisely my point; the curriculum is horrifically boring in many places if you don't connect with the subject matter. I do think it's reasonable to note that most other developed countries have better public education systems than the US, and for the most part follow a fairly traditional model, which demonstrates that there are gains to be had in the US without revolutionizing the system. I'm in favor of trying to achieve that too. And I'd of course not advocate for burning the whole thing down and starting with something new; I think experiments could be made with, say, one day a week of "interest-based learning" along the lines I put forth above, while still keeping the core curriculum alive.