4 ms·

I've become convinced that, in the end, no one really teaches you anything, you end up teaching yourself. That phrasing is a bit hyperbolic. It's more accurate

I've become convinced that, in the end, no one really teaches you anything, you end up teaching yourself. That phrasing is a bit hyperbolic. It's more accurate to say a good teacher only gets you 50%, 60%, maybe 70% of the way there, and it's up to you to get you to 100%. To be able to truly learn any given concept means being capable of answering a practically infinite number of different questions about that topic. The process of teaching is essentially trying to uncover which questions the student can't answer. The challenge, of course, is that the student doesn't know what questions they can't answer, because the questions haven't occurred to them. That is, until they start testing themselves, to see if they really do understand the concept. Problem sets in textbooks are the canonical way of addressing this teaching challenge, but there are only so many pages in a textbook, and there are other concepts that need to be taught, so the scope of the problem sets are necessarily finite. How many times have you nailed all the problems in a book, only to discover that there was some aspect of the topic you didn't understand, despite getting all the right answers?

jplusequalt 2y ago
This 100%. I taught myself *everything* in college. I relied on textbooks and online resources to teach myself the material outside of class. It worked pretty well. I wasn't the top of my class, nor have I retained all the things I've learned (but who does?). Fortunately, what I have retained is the ability to pick up almost any subject and learn about it on my own. That's more important than anything they can teach you in a classroom.
- gtr 2y ago
  I think that is one of the things that you are supposed to learn at college, in my experience.
saintfire 2y ago
That means you didn't write enough unit tests. Or so I'm told.
rramadass 2y ago
The following two quotes from Martial Arts have been quite helpful to me in motivating my study efforts; The Master shows the Gate, but it is the Student who has to walk through it. To show one the Right Direction and Right Path, Oral Instructions from a Master are necessary but Mastery of the Subject only comes from one's own Incessant Self-Cultivation. There is also a great inspirational story in the Mahabharata of "Ekalavya" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya) who became an exceptional archer through self-training. Eklavya inspires a life-long learning philosophy and his presence seems to be a celebration for the masses. In this EklavyaParv, the motto is 'You Create Yourself" and the legend of Eklavya is a testimony that is forwarded by many thinkers as well. The discipleship that Eklavya represents is the best for a student and enables one to be the creator of one's own destiny. Adapting to current times, "The Master" can be a "Good Book" and you can have "Many Masters" but the effort and learning has to happen within the Student. Source: I self-taught myself Martial Arts (JKD, Karate, Taijiquan) from books when i was young. Decades later when i did join a dojo to study under a Master, i was one of the top students with good skill and power.
- mbivert 2y ago
  > [...] my Rebbe was the geologist of the soul. You see, there are so many treasures in the earth. There is gold, there is silver, and there are diamonds. But if you don’t know where to dig, you’ll find only dirt and rocks and mud. The Rebbe can tell you where to dig, and what to dig for, but the digging you must do yourself.
  - rramadass 2y ago
    Also; "If" by Rudyard Kipling - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94
- marttt 2y ago
  "I self-taught myself Martial Arts (JKD, Karate, Taijiquan) from books when i was young." This is very interesting and impressive. How common would you think a complete self-study of martial arts actually is? I've always thought this cannot be done alone -- or, it would be extremely easy to get lost or head to some wrong direction, eventually harming yourself mentally or physically. Akin to how a common suggestion about yoga or meditation (I used to exercise vipassana daily for quite a while) is that the first, basic principles should be taught by a good master. Possibly due to personality type, I've always wanted to challenge this assumption, though. While learning martial arts on your own, what did you do to overcome more serious mental blocks or standstills (provided you had any)? Did you ever feel that "books are not enough"?
vladms 2y ago
I would claim there is no 100%. At least in engineering my professors were saying (paraphrasing) that it's all about trade-offs and most of the times there is not "one answer". I think many education systems (up to graduate at least) instill the idea that there is always "one answer" which has many bad repercussions later (people seeing things in black and white). I don't think a student needs to always answer a question "on the spot". Being able to find an answer in a reasonable amount of time and explain an answer would be in my opinion more valuable. So then it's more about "how efficient can the student give the answer to the question" (answer on the spot, spend one hour, spend one week, etc.).
mrkandel 2y ago
Idk, one good prof made me a fifty percent better mathematician in a single course. I would have to slam my head in the wall for a year or two to do it without him.
Hunpeter 2y ago
Tangentially, modern educational paradigms also characterize learning as a process of construction happening within the student's mind, rather than a transfer of knowledge.

jplusequalt 2y ago

This 100%. I taught myself *everything* in college. I relied on textbooks and online resources to teach myself the material outside of class. It worked pretty well. I wasn't the top of my class, nor have I retained all the things I've learned (but who does?). Fortunately, what I have retained is the ability to pick up almost any subject and learn about it on my own. That's more important than anything they can teach you in a classroom.

gtr 2y ago
I think that is one of the things that you are supposed to learn at college, in my experience.

saintfire 2y ago

That means you didn't write enough unit tests. Or so I'm told.

rramadass 2y ago

The following two quotes from Martial Arts have been quite helpful to me in motivating my study efforts; The Master shows the Gate, but it is the Student who has to walk through it. To show one the Right Direction and Right Path, Oral Instructions from a Master are necessary but Mastery of the Subject only comes from one's own Incessant Self-Cultivation. There is also a great inspirational story in the Mahabharata of "Ekalavya" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya) who became an exceptional archer through self-training. Eklavya inspires a life-long learning philosophy and his presence seems to be a celebration for the masses. In this EklavyaParv, the motto is 'You Create Yourself" and the legend of Eklavya is a testimony that is forwarded by many thinkers as well. The discipleship that Eklavya represents is the best for a student and enables one to be the creator of one's own destiny. Adapting to current times, "The Master" can be a "Good Book" and you can have "Many Masters" but the effort and learning has to happen within the Student. Source: I self-taught myself Martial Arts (JKD, Karate, Taijiquan) from books when i was young. Decades later when i did join a dojo to study under a Master, i was one of the top students with good skill and power.

mbivert 2y ago
> [...] my Rebbe was the geologist of the soul. You see, there are so many treasures in the earth. There is gold, there is silver, and there are diamonds. But if you don’t know where to dig, you’ll find only dirt and rocks and mud. The Rebbe can tell you where to dig, and what to dig for, but the digging you must do yourself.
- rramadass 2y ago
  Also; "If" by Rudyard Kipling - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94
marttt 2y ago
"I self-taught myself Martial Arts (JKD, Karate, Taijiquan) from books when i was young." This is very interesting and impressive. How common would you think a complete self-study of martial arts actually is? I've always thought this cannot be done alone -- or, it would be extremely easy to get lost or head to some wrong direction, eventually harming yourself mentally or physically. Akin to how a common suggestion about yoga or meditation (I used to exercise vipassana daily for quite a while) is that the first, basic principles should be taught by a good master. Possibly due to personality type, I've always wanted to challenge this assumption, though. While learning martial arts on your own, what did you do to overcome more serious mental blocks or standstills (provided you had any)? Did you ever feel that "books are not enough"?

vladms 2y ago

I would claim there is no 100%. At least in engineering my professors were saying (paraphrasing) that it's all about trade-offs and most of the times there is not "one answer". I think many education systems (up to graduate at least) instill the idea that there is always "one answer" which has many bad repercussions later (people seeing things in black and white). I don't think a student needs to always answer a question "on the spot". Being able to find an answer in a reasonable amount of time and explain an answer would be in my opinion more valuable. So then it's more about "how efficient can the student give the answer to the question" (answer on the spot, spend one hour, spend one week, etc.).

mrkandel 2y ago

Idk, one good prof made me a fifty percent better mathematician in a single course. I would have to slam my head in the wall for a year or two to do it without him.

Hunpeter 2y ago

Tangentially, modern educational paradigms also characterize learning as a process of construction happening within the student's mind, rather than a transfer of knowledge.