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This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general po

This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of my head I can think of one where it gets so intense so quickly - long, detailed, emotionally charged anecdotes immediately when school comes up! [I love a good yarn, and am not judging or belittling people for expressing themselves here, I must stress]. I have speculated in my comfy armchair as to why our education structures seem to make venting such a need for people. Anecdotally, there does seem to be a suggestion of some sort of lingering and powerful malaise around the whole thing, in any case. I wonder if it's like an abusive relationship - the emotional work required to move on and have better relationships (i.e., different educational structures) gets so large at some stage that all you can focus on is "coping". And you're sort of stuck, and the cycle more or less continues. EDIT: may I just add - I read that whole article, and am very fond of Ramanujan. He made university much harder for me when I learned about his existence, as my maths classes seemed so far removed from whatever it was he was doing.

burkaman 2y ago
I think it's just because every single person here has at least a decade of personal experience in education. One of the things many people like about HN is that when an article about some obscure subject is posted, there is often someone in the comments with personal experience who can share a story. Education is one of the few subjects where we can all be that person.
cassepipe 2y ago
My guess would be it's because it's an experience (most of us) have in common in years full of first times. It's also an experience that took as least as much space in our life than work now does. It's also a place where we had to deal authority and groups. So whenever you make any point about education, if the point you are making seems to negate/go against the grain of my own experience, I will probably tell you :) (Venting is a need that everyone has when under pressure not sure it has anything to do with our education structures)
sanj 2y ago
Parenting.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  This is the long and short of it. Education doesn’t replace happy, 2-parent homes. Edit: or happy, one-parent homes. I just have an inkling it is good for children to see a contrast of parents, not just one parent.
jmcqk6 2y ago
I think there is another force at play here - the assumption that there is a platonic ideal good education system that works at every scale of population. Attempting to scale something that large forces people into boxes that fit inside the framework - one must necessarily ignore little detailed differences between humans. But from the perspective of those individual humans, ignoring those little details doesn't really work. Those things are important, and tend to ping our egos, so we react accordingly, and are eager for opportunities to give voice to this frustration.
- everdrive 2y ago
  There's another potentially missed point. There is no education system, nor any amount of effort which could have granted me the genius of Ramanjuan. He had something I never will. It would be like dream to run faster than Usain Bolt.
  - jmcqk6 2y ago
    On the other hand, it's likely that you have the potential to be really good at something that is totally outside your awareness right now, and having a broad education can be beneficial to expanding your exposure to such possibility.
  - freilanzer 2y ago
    Also, there is ADD and the likes which make mastering a subject very difficult or even impossible for many people, regardless of intellect.
ok123456 2y ago
Trama mostly.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  Trauma-drama? :)
vladimirralev 2y ago
> massive influx of personal anecdotes a.k.a. sampling from the distribution of interest. Once you have enough anecdotes, you actually have a representative distribution of the real thing. Selection may be biased but you can weight those data points as you like, it's still good data.
- danmaz74 2y ago
  Except for the fact that anecdotes aren't a random sample, they're selected because they're interesting.
akira2501 2y ago
> as to why our education structures seem to make venting such a need for people. Anecdotally, there does seem to be a suggestion of some sort of lingering and powerful malaise around the whole thing, in any case. Teaching has not incorporated morality or ethics as strongly as some other professions where the need is more obvious. This is combined with the way teaching "quality" is measured. The result is that your average school teacher often uses tactics and methodologies that border on straight up public bullying of their students in order to "achieve results." > I wonder if it's like an abusive relationship Neither the teacher or the student engage in a process which selects each other nor is there any process to manage particularly bad combinations of such. They are assigned to and stuck with each other. The ethical failures in teaching abound.
hilux 2y ago
> ... in a massive influx of personal anecdotes ... Not sure if you're in the US. Here, ALL non-technical topics, e.g. nutrition, healthcare, immigration are just a few of the big ones, devolve into a discussion of anecdotes and "feelings."
boringg 2y ago
I mean everyone on this thread seems to be pointing to the negative. I would like to point out that what we have achieved from a civilization perspective is literally through education and the structures that we have have gotten us this far. It is a broad tool and could be better. However lets not throw the baby out with the bath water because of all these anecdotes. It feels a little like everyone complaining about capitalism for all the woes in the world. Maybe it's worth a bit of perspective.
dxbydt 2y ago
> it can be hard to discuss education in our societies I found it quite ironical how the whole topic has been hijacked into this side discussion. For the record, Ramanujan is NOT a product of the Indian education system. In fact, that system was quite cruel & off-putting to him. He was a self-taught math prodigy. Apart from the well known 2 big biopics, there are numerous TV soaps telecasted in India in various languages that regularly emphasize this point. He taught himself mostly using Inequalities by GH Hardy, & several other books, all of which are freely available right now at the click of a button. Nobody is stopping anybody from studying math, and education or the lack of it has nothing to do with any of this.
- philiplu 2y ago
  > I found it quite ironical how the whole topic has been hijacked into this side discussion Indeed. I submitted this post, because I found the article's discussion of the math involved fascinating, along with biographical details of Ramanujan I hadn't heard about before. I'm surprised to see how popular the post is, but also that there's maybe 5 or so posts that engage with the actual mathematics. I probably shouldn't be surprised - generating functions pointing out unexpected connections between different restricted integer partitions is pretty niche.
moribunda 2y ago
From: https://medium.com/eedi/how-i-wish-id-taught-maths-8ec9b0578228 https://medium.com/eedi/how-i-wish-id-taught-maths-8ec9b0578... [...]the day I started reading educational research was the day my life changed. It all began with Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School, which led me onto his ridiculously good series of Ask the Cognitive Scientist articles for the American Federation of Teachers and the associated research papers he quoted. I devoured them all with eyes wide open and jaw firmly on the floor. Next came Cognitive Load Theory, which I was introduced to via the incredible blog of Greg Ashman and our subsequent conversation on my podcast. I was familiar with the work of Dylan Wiliam through the development of my Diagnostic Questions website, but I read and re-read everything I could get my hands on from the great man. I didn’t think life could get any better — and then I came across the work of Robert and Elizabeth Bjork. Good God. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had read well over 200 hundreds books and research papers. I would wake up in the middle of the night, my head buzzing with ideas[...]

burkaman 2y ago

I think it's just because every single person here has at least a decade of personal experience in education. One of the things many people like about HN is that when an article about some obscure subject is posted, there is often someone in the comments with personal experience who can share a story. Education is one of the few subjects where we can all be that person.

cassepipe 2y ago

My guess would be it's because it's an experience (most of us) have in common in years full of first times. It's also an experience that took as least as much space in our life than work now does. It's also a place where we had to deal authority and groups. So whenever you make any point about education, if the point you are making seems to negate/go against the grain of my own experience, I will probably tell you :) (Venting is a need that everyone has when under pressure not sure it has anything to do with our education structures)

sanj 2y ago

Parenting.

dgfitz 2y ago
This is the long and short of it. Education doesn’t replace happy, 2-parent homes. Edit: or happy, one-parent homes. I just have an inkling it is good for children to see a contrast of parents, not just one parent.

jmcqk6 2y ago

I think there is another force at play here - the assumption that there is a platonic ideal good education system that works at every scale of population. Attempting to scale something that large forces people into boxes that fit inside the framework - one must necessarily ignore little detailed differences between humans. But from the perspective of those individual humans, ignoring those little details doesn't really work. Those things are important, and tend to ping our egos, so we react accordingly, and are eager for opportunities to give voice to this frustration.

everdrive 2y ago
There's another potentially missed point. There is no education system, nor any amount of effort which could have granted me the genius of Ramanjuan. He had something I never will. It would be like dream to run faster than Usain Bolt.
- jmcqk6 2y ago
  On the other hand, it's likely that you have the potential to be really good at something that is totally outside your awareness right now, and having a broad education can be beneficial to expanding your exposure to such possibility.
- freilanzer 2y ago
  Also, there is ADD and the likes which make mastering a subject very difficult or even impossible for many people, regardless of intellect.

ok123456 2y ago

Trama mostly.

sourcepluck 2y ago
Trauma-drama? :)

vladimirralev 2y ago

> massive influx of personal anecdotes a.k.a. sampling from the distribution of interest. Once you have enough anecdotes, you actually have a representative distribution of the real thing. Selection may be biased but you can weight those data points as you like, it's still good data.

danmaz74 2y ago
Except for the fact that anecdotes aren't a random sample, they're selected because they're interesting.

akira2501 2y ago

> as to why our education structures seem to make venting such a need for people. Anecdotally, there does seem to be a suggestion of some sort of lingering and powerful malaise around the whole thing, in any case. Teaching has not incorporated morality or ethics as strongly as some other professions where the need is more obvious. This is combined with the way teaching "quality" is measured. The result is that your average school teacher often uses tactics and methodologies that border on straight up public bullying of their students in order to "achieve results." > I wonder if it's like an abusive relationship Neither the teacher or the student engage in a process which selects each other nor is there any process to manage particularly bad combinations of such. They are assigned to and stuck with each other. The ethical failures in teaching abound.

hilux 2y ago

> ... in a massive influx of personal anecdotes ... Not sure if you're in the US. Here, ALL non-technical topics, e.g. nutrition, healthcare, immigration are just a few of the big ones, devolve into a discussion of anecdotes and "feelings."

boringg 2y ago

I mean everyone on this thread seems to be pointing to the negative. I would like to point out that what we have achieved from a civilization perspective is literally through education and the structures that we have have gotten us this far. It is a broad tool and could be better. However lets not throw the baby out with the bath water because of all these anecdotes. It feels a little like everyone complaining about capitalism for all the woes in the world. Maybe it's worth a bit of perspective.

dxbydt 2y ago

> it can be hard to discuss education in our societies I found it quite ironical how the whole topic has been hijacked into this side discussion. For the record, Ramanujan is NOT a product of the Indian education system. In fact, that system was quite cruel & off-putting to him. He was a self-taught math prodigy. Apart from the well known 2 big biopics, there are numerous TV soaps telecasted in India in various languages that regularly emphasize this point. He taught himself mostly using Inequalities by GH Hardy, & several other books, all of which are freely available right now at the click of a button. Nobody is stopping anybody from studying math, and education or the lack of it has nothing to do with any of this.

philiplu 2y ago
> I found it quite ironical how the whole topic has been hijacked into this side discussion Indeed. I submitted this post, because I found the article's discussion of the math involved fascinating, along with biographical details of Ramanujan I hadn't heard about before. I'm surprised to see how popular the post is, but also that there's maybe 5 or so posts that engage with the actual mathematics. I probably shouldn't be surprised - generating functions pointing out unexpected connections between different restricted integer partitions is pretty niche.

moribunda 2y ago

From: https://medium.com/eedi/how-i-wish-id-taught-maths-8ec9b0578228 https://medium.com/eedi/how-i-wish-id-taught-maths-8ec9b0578... [...]the day I started reading educational research was the day my life changed. It all began with Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School, which led me onto his ridiculously good series of Ask the Cognitive Scientist articles for the American Federation of Teachers and the associated research papers he quoted. I devoured them all with eyes wide open and jaw firmly on the floor. Next came Cognitive Load Theory, which I was introduced to via the incredible blog of Greg Ashman and our subsequent conversation on my podcast. I was familiar with the work of Dylan Wiliam through the development of my Diagnostic Questions website, but I read and re-read everything I could get my hands on from the great man. I didn’t think life could get any better — and then I came across the work of Robert and Elizabeth Bjork. Good God. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had read well over 200 hundreds books and research papers. I would wake up in the middle of the night, my head buzzing with ideas[...]