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Haven't thought is for decades, but was my environments favourite math tutor, because I managed to ground everything in people's reality and rell them a compell

by atoav 3y ago

Haven't thought is for decades, but was my environments favourite math tutor, because I managed to ground everything in people's reality and rell them a compelling fiction in which knowing how to do the thing was actually a super-power. You know like the survival tricks certain preppers learn and never use — that, but with math. Even if the examples were sometimes over the top, involved flaming moats and other xkcd-like freakiness I got students where their teachers told me it is hopeless sitting there participating with glowing eyes. Meanwhile in my own math education I had a teacher who made us do integrals for what felt like a year without telling us once what the hell it is needed for. I had to figure that out on my own. My colleagues who didn't care just learned it by hard and forgot it immediately after. But I guess they got thought all the material and got ok grades so their education was a success. What bullshit. Now, 15 years later I relearn a lot of those thinga because school made it sound boring only for me to later discover it is one of the most exiting things your brain can do. But that is about thinking on solutions to actual things not learning steps and doing them and getting punished for making one mistep.

skhunted 3y ago
What bullshit. Now, 15 years later I relearn a lot of those thinga because school made it sound boring only for me to later discover it is one of the most exiting things your brain can do. But that is about thinking on solutions to actual things not learning steps and doing them and getting punished for making one mistep. This is precisely what I was referring to about people who come back at a later time and relearn the stuff. They want applications. At the time a class is taken very few actually want to dive into applications. The subject has been taught the way it is taught for a reason.
- atoav 3y ago
  I am in education and what you claim here is in contradiction with both my experience and the direct feedback of the people I educated — most of which would say they dislike math or say they are bad at it. The argument that it is like it is for a reason can be made, but it has probably more to do with the historical role of school as an institution that is meant to produce obidient workers than with school as a place that is meant to produce people able to analyze nature and the world around them with the tools of mathematics. Ever student that got a bad grade because they solved the problem, but did so using the "wrong" way can testament to this. Back when I was in school I had the luck to also have a lot of maths both physics and mechanics classes, so I had above average exposure to mathematical applications. This is what made me the most wanted maths-helper among my friends who went to other schools with a "purely theoretical"-maths approach: I could finally show them how the stuff they had a hard time with connects to the actual real world and nature around them — which contrary to your statement really their ability to grasp it. If we think about how one would go about teaching any subject in a way that creates the maximum disinterest in the field it would be done dry theory only while keeping real world connections and story telling to a minimum. Sure, you could do that and there would always be a small number of students who would excell at that anyways because their brains are wired for abstract things — but that isn't a healthy approach to to take in general education. Sometimes my feeling is that mathematicians, like many other nerds want to gatekeep and shroud their own field in an overly opaque mysticism, because they can derive a higher self value from that. So things get explained over complicated and they tell you, that you would never understand (because you are the wrong kind of person). I like to instead believe that if explained right you can nearly explain everything to everyone — provided you manage to spark their interest, keep their interest and provide a good way into the matter. This is why Feynmanns lectures are so famous. He was really good at this.
  - skhunted 3y ago
    Feynman’s lectures demonstrate my point. From Wikipedia on the lectures: As a result, some physics students find the lectures more valuable after they have obtained a good grasp of physics by studying more traditional texts, and the books are sometimes seen as more helpful for teachers than for students.[5] It does not sound to me that you have much experience with actual teaching.

by atoav 3y ago

skhunted 3y ago

What bullshit. Now, 15 years later I relearn a lot of those thinga because school made it sound boring only for me to later discover it is one of the most exiting things your brain can do. But that is about thinking on solutions to actual things not learning steps and doing them and getting punished for making one mistep. This is precisely what I was referring to about people who come back at a later time and relearn the stuff. They want applications. At the time a class is taken very few actually want to dive into applications. The subject has been taught the way it is taught for a reason.

atoav 3y ago
I am in education and what you claim here is in contradiction with both my experience and the direct feedback of the people I educated — most of which would say they dislike math or say they are bad at it. The argument that it is like it is for a reason can be made, but it has probably more to do with the historical role of school as an institution that is meant to produce obidient workers than with school as a place that is meant to produce people able to analyze nature and the world around them with the tools of mathematics. Ever student that got a bad grade because they solved the problem, but did so using the "wrong" way can testament to this. Back when I was in school I had the luck to also have a lot of maths both physics and mechanics classes, so I had above average exposure to mathematical applications. This is what made me the most wanted maths-helper among my friends who went to other schools with a "purely theoretical"-maths approach: I could finally show them how the stuff they had a hard time with connects to the actual real world and nature around them — which contrary to your statement really their ability to grasp it. If we think about how one would go about teaching any subject in a way that creates the maximum disinterest in the field it would be done dry theory only while keeping real world connections and story telling to a minimum. Sure, you could do that and there would always be a small number of students who would excell at that anyways because their brains are wired for abstract things — but that isn't a healthy approach to to take in general education. Sometimes my feeling is that mathematicians, like many other nerds want to gatekeep and shroud their own field in an overly opaque mysticism, because they can derive a higher self value from that. So things get explained over complicated and they tell you, that you would never understand (because you are the wrong kind of person). I like to instead believe that if explained right you can nearly explain everything to everyone — provided you manage to spark their interest, keep their interest and provide a good way into the matter. This is why Feynmanns lectures are so famous. He was really good at this.
- skhunted 3y ago
  Feynman’s lectures demonstrate my point. From Wikipedia on the lectures: As a result, some physics students find the lectures more valuable after they have obtained a good grasp of physics by studying more traditional texts, and the books are sometimes seen as more helpful for teachers than for students.[5] It does not sound to me that you have much experience with actual teaching.