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Personally, I would hate this. As a student I far preferred PDFs, etc. because I could quickly make Anki cards out of them, strip mine them for insights and goo

Personally, I would hate this. As a student I far preferred PDFs, etc. because I could quickly make Anki cards out of them, strip mine them for insights and good practice problems and then just burn them into my long term memory over the next few months. We should be teaching children about spaced repetition systems and helping them instill the one habit actually proven to help them remember what they learn, not banishing them back to the Carboniferous Era! EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, and I stand by what I said. :) Your kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid can no longer remember his material. That's a separate problem which can be solved with an approach as simple as "turn off the modem".

pwillia7 2y ago
Nah -- the schools should teach to the average student and address the average problems. I don't begrudge the school system for not catering to me when I went through it.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Schools need to teach everyone basic skills for life in society. Whatever those are. In lower grades that is about the same for everyone, but as you move on schools need to push kids to where they will do well. I took metal shop in school, but I was always on the college track and so this was just a fun class I only took because I have one block that nothing else fit in - for all other kids in that class it was essential to their future life and they knew it.
- graemep 2y ago
  No one is really average. Even people who are average overall are not average in every skill and every subject. /classroom This is an intrinsic problem with classroom teaching. There is an HN discussion about home education (or "homeschooling" as people misleadingly call it) at the moment...
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  The average student shouldn't be expected to remember more than 5% of what they learn through school because teaching them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard? That's bleak.
  - pwillia7 2y ago
    _if_ teaching them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard.
fn-mote 2y ago
Downvotes should not be for disagreeing with content!!
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  I suppose it depends on how you think of free speech: 1. Free speech means I should be able to say anything (or in this case vote in any manner) that's legal, and that's the only consideration. 2. Free speech is a foundation for a higher level goal of a society that also values etiquette, respect, and discretion.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  I don't begrudge them for downvoting. They are, nonetheless, wrong in their belief that a return to printed books makes long term sense.
  - dambi0 2y ago
    Do you have any reasons for this beyond ease of reproducing portions of the text to drill yourself to remember it verbatim?
    - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
      Yes. Over 12 years of use I have consistently found spaced repetition to be the most enjoyable way to learn basically anything, and essentially the only way to ensure things I don't regularly use as part of my job continue to be things I can remember. Some subjects I have in rotation at the moment: Finnish, Haskell, SQLite database internally, cash management and financial jargon, old photos and video clips of my childhood cat who I loved dearly. But, more to the point: You seem confused as to the true generality of the technique. Flashcards can be used in much more interesting ways than just checking to see if you can recite all the lines of Homer correctly or something. The vast majority of cards I have are questions of understanding - e.g. a card like "How many unique strands of DNA can be made from 100 A-T pairs and 100 C-G pairs?" You can't memorize all those digits. You need to remember how to solve the problem, which is quite simple, but not so simple it's worthless for a non-mathematician to solve without pen and paper.
golly_ned 2y ago
What would stop a kid from doing the same with physical books rather than PDFs?
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  You can't screenshot a physical book nearly as easily as a PDF. That's an issue for making flashcards out of a whole host of useful informational visuals, not to mention stuff that is just plain hard to communicate in plain text.
alkonaut 2y ago
> Your kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid can no longer remember his material. The books are brought back (at a cost) because the kids have proven to learn better from books, or a mix of mediums. They haven't, and won't, use only physical or only digital material. They'll use a mix.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  You need to measure long term remembrance of the material, not short-term learning. A 5% increase in the speed of children learning a fact for the first time doesn't matter if the fact has disappeared from all their brains 6 months later, but to accomplish the latter at scale, there's no substitute - you need some kind of spaced repetition system. Otherwise you may as well have not taught the fact at all, and let them spend the time having fun or getting some exercise instead.
  - alkonaut 2y ago
    I have no idea what the actual science referenced here is on this but I'm sure whatever they used to convince people to spend that much money is based on science that isn't just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is better". And spaced repetition has been part of education since forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But you'd have to assume they thought of that too...
    - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
      >I'm sure whatever they used to convince people to spend that much money is based on science that isn't just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is better". Likewise, I'm sure that science is weaker than it first appears. I can point you to dozens of studies showing spaced repetition is robust and effective, across a wide variety of domains. >[S]paced repetition has been part of education since forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But you'd have to assume they thought of that too... In fact I only found out about spaced repetition near the end of high school, so no, I wouldn't call it "part of education since forever". In fact I consider the fact it isn't a topic we scream about from the hilltops and make it a known thing for students a great civilization-wide error. It seems closer to an open secret that was a lot less well known even just a decade ago. It's also not "slightly" easier with a PDF, it's much easier. Individual cards that would take much longer to create by hand (image occlusions in particular) take less than a minute with software. There is a reason I insist upon using ebooks these days, paper books just can't compete with that kind of efficiency.

pwillia7 2y ago

Nah -- the schools should teach to the average student and address the average problems. I don't begrudge the school system for not catering to me when I went through it.

bluGill 2y ago
Schools need to teach everyone basic skills for life in society. Whatever those are. In lower grades that is about the same for everyone, but as you move on schools need to push kids to where they will do well. I took metal shop in school, but I was always on the college track and so this was just a fun class I only took because I have one block that nothing else fit in - for all other kids in that class it was essential to their future life and they knew it.
graemep 2y ago
No one is really average. Even people who are average overall are not average in every skill and every subject. /classroom This is an intrinsic problem with classroom teaching. There is an HN discussion about home education (or "homeschooling" as people misleadingly call it) at the moment...
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
The average student shouldn't be expected to remember more than 5% of what they learn through school because teaching them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard? That's bleak.
- pwillia7 2y ago
  _if_ teaching them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard.

fn-mote 2y ago

Downvotes should not be for disagreeing with content!!

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
I suppose it depends on how you think of free speech: 1. Free speech means I should be able to say anything (or in this case vote in any manner) that's legal, and that's the only consideration. 2. Free speech is a foundation for a higher level goal of a society that also values etiquette, respect, and discretion.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
I don't begrudge them for downvoting. They are, nonetheless, wrong in their belief that a return to printed books makes long term sense.
- dambi0 2y ago
  Do you have any reasons for this beyond ease of reproducing portions of the text to drill yourself to remember it verbatim?
  - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
    Yes. Over 12 years of use I have consistently found spaced repetition to be the most enjoyable way to learn basically anything, and essentially the only way to ensure things I don't regularly use as part of my job continue to be things I can remember. Some subjects I have in rotation at the moment: Finnish, Haskell, SQLite database internally, cash management and financial jargon, old photos and video clips of my childhood cat who I loved dearly. But, more to the point: You seem confused as to the true generality of the technique. Flashcards can be used in much more interesting ways than just checking to see if you can recite all the lines of Homer correctly or something. The vast majority of cards I have are questions of understanding - e.g. a card like "How many unique strands of DNA can be made from 100 A-T pairs and 100 C-G pairs?" You can't memorize all those digits. You need to remember how to solve the problem, which is quite simple, but not so simple it's worthless for a non-mathematician to solve without pen and paper.

golly_ned 2y ago

What would stop a kid from doing the same with physical books rather than PDFs?

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
You can't screenshot a physical book nearly as easily as a PDF. That's an issue for making flashcards out of a whole host of useful informational visuals, not to mention stuff that is just plain hard to communicate in plain text.

alkonaut 2y ago

> Your kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid can no longer remember his material. The books are brought back (at a cost) because the kids have proven to learn better from books, or a mix of mediums. They haven't, and won't, use only physical or only digital material. They'll use a mix.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
You need to measure long term remembrance of the material, not short-term learning. A 5% increase in the speed of children learning a fact for the first time doesn't matter if the fact has disappeared from all their brains 6 months later, but to accomplish the latter at scale, there's no substitute - you need some kind of spaced repetition system. Otherwise you may as well have not taught the fact at all, and let them spend the time having fun or getting some exercise instead.
- alkonaut 2y ago
  I have no idea what the actual science referenced here is on this but I'm sure whatever they used to convince people to spend that much money is based on science that isn't just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is better". And spaced repetition has been part of education since forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But you'd have to assume they thought of that too...
  - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
    >I'm sure whatever they used to convince people to spend that much money is based on science that isn't just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is better". Likewise, I'm sure that science is weaker than it first appears. I can point you to dozens of studies showing spaced repetition is robust and effective, across a wide variety of domains. >[S]paced repetition has been part of education since forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But you'd have to assume they thought of that too... In fact I only found out about spaced repetition near the end of high school, so no, I wouldn't call it "part of education since forever". In fact I consider the fact it isn't a topic we scream about from the hilltops and make it a known thing for students a great civilization-wide error. It seems closer to an open secret that was a lot less well known even just a decade ago. It's also not "slightly" easier with a PDF, it's much easier. Individual cards that would take much longer to create by hand (image occlusions in particular) take less than a minute with software. There is a reason I insist upon using ebooks these days, paper books just can't compete with that kind of efficiency.