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Yep. You know the "10,000 hours of directed practice is how you master a subject" meme? A good teacher's where that direction comes from. The good teacher will

Yep. You know the "10,000 hours of directed practice is how you master a subject" meme? A good teacher's where that direction comes from. The good teacher will look at what you're doing and what you're struggling with and point you to exactly the right tool in the complicated toolset you're trying to pick up, and show you how much easier it makes your task. Finding the good teacher is, of course, a quest in and of itself. My experience is that becoming an assistant to an expert in the field is a great fast track to mastery, once you're good enough. Ideally a paid one, unpaid internships are super easy to abuse.

rahimnathwani 3y ago
> 10,000 hours of directed practice I thought it was 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. You seem to be talking about something closer to formative assessment. (I think both are useful.) > The good teacher will look at what you're doing and what you're struggling with and point you to exactly the right tool in the complicated toolset you're trying to pick up, and show you how much easier it makes your task. I disagree with this. If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend you read 'How to solve it' by George Pólya. It's focused on teaching and learning math, but the same applies to many other subjects. One of the main points in the book is that you can help a student who is stuck or on a wrong path by suggesting a question to them: a question that they might ask themselves. If your teacher always tells you which tool to use, how will you ever learn to pick your own tools in future?
- egypturnash 3y ago
  I disagree with your disagreement. Asking the student a question is a fine thing to do if the student already half-assedly knows the entirety of the toolset. If they only know about 1/10 of the toolset, then a teacher looking at their work and saying "did you know that this tool exists, I think it will help you a ton" is a major help. Struggling to do something, seeing the expert who is teaching/mentoring you do it in a fraction of the time, then doing it yourself in a fraction of the time as you try the tool/technique they just demonstrated is a powerful experience that I have had multiple times in my life.

rahimnathwani 3y ago

> 10,000 hours of directed practice I thought it was 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. You seem to be talking about something closer to formative assessment. (I think both are useful.) > The good teacher will look at what you're doing and what you're struggling with and point you to exactly the right tool in the complicated toolset you're trying to pick up, and show you how much easier it makes your task. I disagree with this. If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend you read 'How to solve it' by George Pólya. It's focused on teaching and learning math, but the same applies to many other subjects. One of the main points in the book is that you can help a student who is stuck or on a wrong path by suggesting a question to them: a question that they might ask themselves. If your teacher always tells you which tool to use, how will you ever learn to pick your own tools in future?

egypturnash 3y ago
I disagree with your disagreement. Asking the student a question is a fine thing to do if the student already half-assedly knows the entirety of the toolset. If they only know about 1/10 of the toolset, then a teacher looking at their work and saying "did you know that this tool exists, I think it will help you a ton" is a major help. Struggling to do something, seeing the expert who is teaching/mentoring you do it in a fraction of the time, then doing it yourself in a fraction of the time as you try the tool/technique they just demonstrated is a powerful experience that I have had multiple times in my life.