4 ms·

If they learn to engineer software, surely they'll know how to access Wikipedia.

• jilebedev 15y ago
  Education not only teaches facts, but efficiently exposes a person to unknown unknowns. I'd argue that a student-teacher conversation is more efficient at exposing a student to an unknown unknown, than Wikipedia would be.
  • blueprint 15y ago
    Could you share one or two unknown unknowns to which you were exposed in school?
• LargeWu 15y ago
  Learning how to accumulate facts is a completely different problem than learning how to think about ideas. I think teaching children how to think about things is far more important than focusing on specific skills at that age, even if they are useful skills.
  • blueprint 15y ago
    How can one confirm the benefit that thinking has had in one's life? From my point of view, it's more important to know both the principle and the problems (questions) that determine the results that exist in the world, rather than learning how to think about how to solve problems. It's my experience that I have to think when there's an important fact that I haven't realized.
  • r00fus 15y ago
    I don't agree with this dichotomy. Thinking and doing are two activities that inform and reinforce each other - "book learning" and "on the job training" are best when combined in an individual. Sometimes the best ideas don't come to you until you've worked and struggled with the existing tools and materials to appreciate the difference between practice and theory.