3 ms·

A tangent thought - I may be out of touch but I am amazed of little the school system changed over time (at least in my country), while in 2024 literally all th

by EZ-E 3y ago

A tangent thought - I may be out of touch but I am amazed of little the school system changed over time (at least in my country), while in 2024 literally all the knowledge and all there is to learn in school (at least until university) is available on the internet with top quality video or resources. Yet students are expected to show up every day at 8 AM to 5 PM in my country. When I remember my classes in high school - 90+% of the time is just the teacher talking, us copying on notes, the teacher demonstrating something or letting us do assignments present in the school book, it might as well be a video or interactive content. Do we really still need children to learn in this way and structure nowadays? Or is it just to let parents work they 9 to 6? It all feels... very inefficient somehow. (ps : I do not have children in school, as most readers probably guessed)

dredmorbius 3y ago
Pedagogy relies on more than mere exposure to information. To a substantial degree, information central to an education has been reasonably readily available since the early 20th century, a combination printing, cheap paper, and public libraries. Not entirely as convenient as online Internet access, to be sure, but a low barrier for a motivated student. There are notable examples of self-taught prodigies[1] ... ... but overall, organised, school-based education seems to scale vastly better. Teachers don't merely expose but guide, at least in the best cases. ________________________________ Notes: 1. One was, I believe, William Sidis, who'd taken refuge in a public library after being bullied, read Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, and corresponded with Russell over errata and corrections. I'm trying to turn up a reference, possibly The Prodigy: A Biography of William James Sidis, America's Greatest Child Prodigy by Amy Wallace.
thfuran 3y ago
>in 2024 literally all the knowledge and all there is to learn in school (at least until university) is available on the internet with top quality video or resources. It's all mixed up in and endless sea of shit though.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  no wonder there is usually a curriculum
keybored 3y ago
In-person teaching makes sense when you have relatively few students per teacher. Some things can’t even be taught by video or book. School is weird though. There’s 20+ student/pupils/kids per teacher. All neatly lined up. All sitting like a well-postured potato for the most part. Yeah, what’s the point? Are they really getting the personal, hands-on help that the in-person setting facilitates? Or is it more about parking the kids in that place where all the other parents park their kids between kindergarten and college?

by EZ-E 3y ago

dredmorbius 3y ago

Pedagogy relies on more than mere exposure to information. To a substantial degree, information central to an education has been reasonably readily available since the early 20th century, a combination printing, cheap paper, and public libraries. Not entirely as convenient as online Internet access, to be sure, but a low barrier for a motivated student. There are notable examples of self-taught prodigies[1] ... ... but overall, organised, school-based education seems to scale vastly better. Teachers don't merely expose but guide, at least in the best cases. ________________________________ Notes: 1. One was, I believe, William Sidis, who'd taken refuge in a public library after being bullied, read Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, and corresponded with Russell over errata and corrections. I'm trying to turn up a reference, possibly The Prodigy: A Biography of William James Sidis, America's Greatest Child Prodigy by Amy Wallace.

thfuran 3y ago

>in 2024 literally all the knowledge and all there is to learn in school (at least until university) is available on the internet with top quality video or resources. It's all mixed up in and endless sea of shit though.

geraldhh 3y ago
no wonder there is usually a curriculum

keybored 3y ago

In-person teaching makes sense when you have relatively few students per teacher. Some things can’t even be taught by video or book. School is weird though. There’s 20+ student/pupils/kids per teacher. All neatly lined up. All sitting like a well-postured potato for the most part. Yeah, what’s the point? Are they really getting the personal, hands-on help that the in-person setting facilitates? Or is it more about parking the kids in that place where all the other parents park their kids between kindergarten and college?