8 ms·

What medieval people got right about learning (2019)

165 points by ripe 1y ago

booleandilemma 1y ago
It's just an ad for a series of self-help books.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  Exactly. I want a self help apprenticeship
- gattilorenz 1y ago
  I find it telling that right in the first paragraph it says “People in the middle ages lit cats on fire for fun” as a fact, while it is, in the most charitable interpretation, something historians disagree on (and in the least charitable interpretation, it smells like bullshit from a mile). I certainly am skeptical of someone taking Wikipedia as the Truth.
wrp 1y ago
TFA misses a key difference between apprenticeship and classroom learning. Apprentice training tends to be one-on-one. When classroom instruction is done one-on-one, learning dramatically improves. This is called the "two sigma problem" in the educational literature. Ignoring this aspect gives the other factors discussed in TFA exaggerated significance.
- throw10920 1y ago
  Practice is extremely important, and I don't think its importance is exaggerated at all. I would expect students in an environment with a typically high student-to-teacher ratio, but who actually practice what they're being taught, will significantly outperform students who are taught one-on-one by a personal tutor but rarely actually perform the thing that they're trying to learn. Obviously, "¿Por Qué No Los Dos?" - doing both is even better. But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. As a personal anecdote (not to replace the above general arguments), I've gotten several hundred hours of one-on-one tutoring in an advanced field of physics from a number of experts, and yet I learned significantly less than I have from significantly fewer hours studying a separate (but no less difficult) field of math when I actually worked the problems.
  - jonahx 1y ago
    > But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback -- not an individual "lecture". While there is value to being in the forest entirely alone, I think for a motivated student good tutoring will outperform working problems on your own in speed of overall learning. Both are good though, and I agree working the problems out, and working a lot of problems, is the main thing.
    - throw10920 1y ago
      > Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback Yes, but then we're conflating the two things we're trying to separate - one-on-one instruction, and worked practice. I was using "tutoring" to mean specifically one-on-ones. I completely agree that a good tutor will have you practice what you're learning, and that's definitely much closer to optimal than the educational mess we're currently in.
      - graemep 1y ago
        They are related. They are both individual learning. One thing I have observed in my own experience (my own, and my, mostly home educated, kids) is that both one to one teaching AND learning on one's own (the amount of it being practice varying with subject) are better than classroom/lecture learning. This is not a statistical sample or a study, but it is three people across multiple subjects, at a pretty full range of levels (from primary school level to postgrad). Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective?
        jonahx 1y ago
        > Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective? Learning in groups is wildly ineffective from the perspective of gaining functional mastery over some subject (whether writing well, solving algebra problems, etc). However, it does have a lot of unrelated benefits, arguably more important: learning to collaborate with others, understanding how others think and learn, understanding your own skill level by direct comparison with others, competition as a motivator for learning, and more.
- musicale 1y ago
  As I understand it, the (medieval?) tutorial system is still used at some universities, notably Oxford and Cambridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system Much of graduate education in the US seems similar.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  This is extremely interesting, because while I'd never heard of the '2 sigma problem' [1] before, one university class I had seems to have been largely modeled on it, but with a very different angle. It was a 'self paced' electrical engineering course where we were given a textbook and free to advance through it at our own pace - kind of farcically, since you needed to complete at least 2 chapters per week to finish by the end of the semester. Moving forward to the next chapter required, exactly as described in that paper, the completion of a problem set and then a score of at least 90% on a test demonstrating mastery of the previous chapter, sometimes accompanied by also demonstrating that skill in a lab. But far from 1 on 1, this entire class was effectively 0 on infinity. The teaching assistant/proctors that we engaged with were there only to grade your work and provided minimal feedback. And indeed it was one of the most educational 'classes' I ever took. But I think this challenges the concept that it has anything to do with 1 on 1 attention. But rather the outcome seems practically tautological - a good way to get people to perform to the point of mastery is to require that they perform to the point of mastery. Of course, at scale, all you're really doing is weeding out the people that are unable to achieve mastery. And indeed that class was considered a weed out course. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem
  - aaplok 1y ago
    Mastery Learning, which Bloom advocates for in the two sigma problem paper, is an alternative to 1 on 1, not a way to achieve it. What you describe seems to be a very poor implementation of mastery learning. But if the tutor is completely disengaged even 1 on 1 tutoring is unlikely to have good effects.
  - PunchTornado 1y ago
    maybe with AI and things like guided learning from gemini we all can get a 1-1 instructor.
  - dcassett 1y ago
    I had such a self-paced course in the '70s based on the book "Fundamentals of Logic Design" by Charles Roth, Jr. It should be noted that the book was specifically written for self-paced study, and as such acted as a sort of tutor by carefully laying out a sequence of reading short segments, answering short questions about the material, then doing more involved problems. I found this course to be very effective and motivating for me, especially given the undergraduate class sizes.
- RataNova 1y ago
  Yeah, while the article makes good arguments about learning by doing and context-rich environments, it probably understates how much of the effectiveness comes down to just personalized guidance
  - danielbln 1y ago
    If it wasn't for all the pitfalls and hallucinations (and even then there is probably something to be had already) LLMs would be perfect for this. Limitless customizable one-on-one tutoring. I would have killed for something like it when I was in school, instead the choices were expensive tutor (not an option) or else good luck, hope you pay attention in the back of the 30 student classroom.
- efitz 1y ago
  1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from the labor pool equal to the number of students. Apprenticeships remove only a small fraction of that from the labor pool (because the practitioner spends only part of their time teaching/supervising the apprentice and then makes the apprentice go practice the skill) and partially makes up the lost labor with the labor from the apprentices- apprentices are expected to do actual productive work, not just learn.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    It doesn't have to be a crisis time-wise. In music you usually have a small amount of one-on-one instruction and then you practice. In tennis you usually have a small number of one-one-lessons and then you practice and play matches. You could probably do the same for maths. You're given some problems to try to solve and given two hours, then once you've made a serious attempt you get individual tutoring for an hour, then you go back to solving problems and there's a short one-on-one question session at the end, let's say 30 minutes. Then you have a 5 hour study session with 1.5 hours of teacher time, so he can have around three students.
  - graemep 1y ago
    > 1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from the labor pool equal to the number of students. It does require more teachers, but not 1:1. Students being taught 1:1 learn a lot faster, and can be set work to do unsupervised. From my experience I think less than an hour a seek (sometimes a lot less) of tuition time (plus a bit more for marking, and another few hours of study by the student) is sufficient to cover a subject 1:1 (and it can often me a lot less) for teenagers (specifically for GCSEs - British exams sat in schools at 16). it does require a significantly higher ratio than classroom teaching usually does, but its a long way from needing 1:1.
  - m463 1y ago
    I think another nuance is apprenticeship is learning by/while doing the classroom is learning by simulated doing
- adamgordonbell 1y ago
  You seem to be suggesting he's writing from a place of not knowing about the benefits of one-on-one learning and the "two sigma problem" when this is something he frequently writes about.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  Interestingly the Bloom study (1984) that describes the "two sigma problem" looked at three types of learning. a) Group Instruction: Baseline b) Mastery Learning, ensuring students master the material before moving on: One sigma improvement (outperform 68% of students in group setting) c) 1 on 1 Tutoring: Two sigma improvement (outperform 98% of students in group setting)
- Mawr 1y ago
  Irrelevant. The actual key here is training the exact skills you need to do the job. No classroom instruction can ever replicate that. The best way to learn how to do something is to do it. There's no substitute.
paulgerhardt 1y ago
I would wager the benefits of this model come mostly from the 2 sigma boost one gets from one on one instruction and not from any sort of optimal skill tree progression a master would impart on a student in a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge and skill acquisition.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  > a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge and skill acquisition I'm not sure how many of those we have available to us. Many are compromised by politics, funding, or the need to act as a daycare. I learned a lot at the various schools I went to, but the amount I learned seemed to correlate more directly with how invested I was in learning than how well the school was funded. Plenty of schools with better per-pupil funding had significantly worse student achievement rates than where I was. The only real exception to that is not all schools offer the same curriculum. Back in my day, not every secondary / high school had someone who could teach calculus, though now there's districts that are getting rid of calculus entirely to promote anti-racism. Honestly, I think learning calculus in high school was good for me, even if I've really only needed to calculate integrals once in my programming career. At University, things were much the same. Undergrad courses focused a bit more on synthesizing than memorizing compared to high school, but not really by much. All of this is to say that I'm not really sure it's fair to knock the apprentice program since we don't directly experience optimal pedagogy elsewhere.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    > Undergrad courses focused a bit more on synthesizing than memorizing compared to high school, but not really by much. Sorry about that. At Caltech, we were never given formulas. Everything was derived from scratch. I never memorized anything (but I found after a while I simply knew all the trig identifies!).
chmod775 1y ago
Apprenticeship is alive and well across Europe, most famously probably in Germany. The majority of young adults there completes one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany
- red_trumpet 1y ago
  > The majority of young adults there completes one. Are you sure about this? Your quoted article only has data from >20 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if nowadays more people study at university than do an apprenticeship
  - hutattedonmyarm 1y ago
    Based on my experience and not hard data: Not most, but still quite a few. Some jobs more or less require an apprenticeship (carpenter and other handy jobs). Doing an apprenticeship for a job and afterwards going to university also happens a lot
  - maverwa 1y ago
    Combining both is also pretty common in my experience. People frist do an apprenticeship, then, for example because their employment situation changed, they go to university. There are ways for a apprenticeship to qualifiy one to go for university. In 2024, according to the "Bundesinstituts für Berufsbildung" 486,700 people started their apprenticeship [0]. In the same period (2024-2025) 490,304 people started their first semester at university/college, according to the "Statistisches Bundesamt" [1]. So you are right, theres more new students than apprentices, but its not by a lot. [0]: https://www.bibb.de/de/201811.php https://www.bibb.de/de/201811.php [1]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildung-Forschung-Kultur/Hochschulen/Tabellen/studierende-erstes-hs-bundeslaender.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildun...
megamix 1y ago
Wish I practiced programming more than just trying to understand the perfect way to code or theories behind. Such a waste of time :(
WalterBright 1y ago
I learned in college that I didn't learn anything until I worked the problem sets. (It always seemed like I learned it, but when faced with the problem sets I discovered I hadn't learned anything yet.) It's the same with everything. You can watch a yootoob video on rebuilding a carburetor all day, but you don't know nuttin until you take it apart yourself. I decided to learn to ride a dirtbike. I took some personal instruction from an expert, and promptly crashed. Again and again and again. Finally, my body figured out how to coordinate the controls. Can't learn how to double clutch downshift from watching a video, either.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I drive a stick car. Shifting gears happens smoothly without any conscious thought. Not with the dirtbike. Every time, I have to stop and think through it step by step. My recent rides have all been constantly up and down shifting, in order to get it properly into muscle memory. I was annoyed that my car shifting skills did not transfer.
- taneq 1y ago
  Teaching is hard and training courses are often terrible. IMO, lessons need to consist of multiple (usually hierarchical) examples of (1) specific thing to learn, (2) high level motivation for doing this thing, (3) specifically when to do the thing, (4) specific causes and effects between your actions and observations during the process. I did a snowboarding course once, and it was largely useless because they didn’t actually explain any of the mechanics of how the board actually worked beyond seesawing mostly-sideways down the ultra beginner slope. It wasn’t until I had a chance to experiment that I started actually figuring out anything useful. I absolutely taught myself how to double-clutch from YouTube and Initial D, though. :D (Plus copious practice, of course.)
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I taught myself how to ride a bicycle, but was baffled for a long time how the bike stayed up. I did some very careful observation of what my body was doing to make it work, and finally figured it out. I've had some difficulty transferring that skill to the dirtbike, and spend a fair amount of practice time just doing figure eights. Another weird thing. I've been using the same text editor for 40 years. I no longer remember what the commands are - but I can still edit files just fine. Sometimes I watch my fingers to see what the command actually is.
beloch 1y ago
Medieval craftsmen often ran what we would consider to be sweatshops, with many young (i.e. child) apprentices banging out work and not receiving much instruction in exchange. We're romanticizing and idealizing a past that was, in realty, often quite exploitative. There are reasons why we started sending children to schools rather than businesses for basic education. There is also little need to reach back to medieval times when comparatively less exploitative (but still imperfect) apprenticeship systems are alive and well in the trades today. One-on-one practical instruction related specifically to what you want to do is awesome, but there are a lot of difficulties in incentivizing people to supply such instruction.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  I've deeply studied the apprentice programs in medieval Europe; your claims don't align with guild law, nor the motivations of the guilds themselves (to create protective but longterm market-satisfying services and goods; i.e. to stay in business and prevent cheap knockoffs, at the cost of inhibiting innovation). Apprenticeships certainly weren't more abusive than the typical alternatives: serf labor, or servant jobs. (One of the key differences between servants and apprentices in medieval England, for instance, was that you weren't allowed to beat your apprentices.) Often exploitative? Sure. Most power structures are. But it absolutely was a system that guaranteed rights to the worker, which made it rise far above most employment situations of that time.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Even manufacturing without instructions gives you practice. Also you need only so much instructions per practice, getting instructions won't actually help you get better you also need to do it. The master very much cares about your quality, because if it doesn't look like his quality nobody will buy it. If the quality goes down to much, there will be complaints to the guilt and he looses its ability to do business. If you have problems with your master you can look for another one. The good always needed to reject prentices, the bad had nobody showing up. In-fact you were required to stay with multiple masters. If you complain about them not having an 8-hour day, nobody had that in the middle ages. But tradesman were more of the richer people in a city, maybe behind tradesman.
obscurette 1y ago
It's not that bad in theory, but it's true that modern "no homework!", "no boring practice!" etc directions have done a lot of damage during last decades. But it answers quite well to common complaints why we are still learn to solve quadratic function in school although almost nobody uses it later in their lives? It's because quadratic function is a simplest way to lay a foundation to understand a tons of broad theoretical concepts about functions – turning points, zeros, decreasing, increasing, symmetry etc.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  I'd generalize this even further. Math, especially higher level math, often turns into a sort of puzzle. And solving quadratic equations is the first step going from learning how to execute basic arithmetic to using it in the process of solving a puzzle. The fact that these puzzles can then be used to do cool things is almost just a fortunate coincidence.
dwd 1y ago
Fortunately this model is still partially used for some careers like medicine and veterinary practices where you have a mandatory internship of at least a year before you can be admitted as a practicing GP or Vet.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  And pilots. Lots of "hours" required for the different grades.
  - analog31 1y ago
    And physicists. Good degree programs involve labs, undergrad, and graduate research.
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      When you really think of it is doctoral programs in academia apprenticeships? At least in fields where you do need laboratories and such...
      - analog31 1y ago
        That's a good way to think about it, though one still has to ask: "An apprenticeship in what?" Optimally thesis means you're given a nebulous problem within an area of interest and asked to manage a project to solve it and communicate the results. My own field, physics, is particularly loose in terms of what tools you might need to adapt and create.
syphia 1y ago
I'm not sure if concerete seeing/doing is the only, or even most effective, way to learn. I've often learned by recalling the concepts from a lecture, reasoning about the material, and imagining what some of the problems would look like while sketching out solutions in my head. It's not any easier than doing the homework, but it is more convenient and flexible. And it can sometimes help with physical skills. Theory is still important because it communicates how other people understand what they do. But it's certainly not a replacement for reasoning and experience. I've found the best model of learning is to... not have a "learning process" in the first place. I try to understand as much as possible from as many angles as possible. This means big concepts, minutae, my ideas, other people's philosophies, imagined scenarios, hands-on-experiences, tangentially related concepts, and so on. Being able to answer questions or do the task is more of a side-effect than the intent.
attila-lendvai 1y ago
compulsory education is a main pillar of the twisted power structure in our society. power in society comes from a knowledge gap, and powerful people have all the incentives to sustain it. consequently education is a battleground, and we, the honest people, have pretty much lost the battles for about a century now. the OP only makes sense when also considering this aspect of the question.
RataNova 1y ago
School teaches you about things; apprenticeships teach you to do things. Huge difference.
- KineticLensman 1y ago
  That’s essentially the difference between education and training
Zobat 1y ago
> Human beings, it appears, are nearly unique in the animal world for being able to learn something by watching somebody else do it. This is just blatantly wrong. If nothing else I myself have shown dogs how to solve problems, but here's a link to Wikipedia for good measure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals
- stripe_away 1y ago
  octopuses learn by observing other octopuses See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw or if you prefer, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978012415823800023X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801...
khalic 1y ago
Honestly, it's not worth your time, a lot of presumptions, false premises and incomplete hypothesis. Also, apprenticeship didn't disappear, it's still very much in use in many countries. The focus is just different. Classroom education allows a plethora of secondary skills to be trained without the pressure of performance. For some, it's essential.
bradley13 1y ago
Much of Europe still has apprenticeship programs for the trades. The loss of this in the US and the UK shows in the quality of work: anyone can claim to be a carpenter, or painter, or whatever: whether or not they have any training.
chriseidhof 1y ago
This really speaks to me. I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes. The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.
- ahartmetz 1y ago
  I think I'd prefer overview, exercise, details. You need some kind of mental framework. I guess you don't just dive right in, otherwise you wouldn't be getting good feedback ;) What I really hate is explaining the solution before explaining the problem. It's a terrible way to teach and it's quite common. I like to say that there are two bad ways to teach: The cookbook (do this, then do that) and the maths textbook (solutions without problems or context). The good way is a combination of them with some additional things that neither of them has, like motivating examples, relevant anecdotes etc.
- analog31 1y ago
  Granted I've been out of school for decades. The textbooks were always an accessory to classroom instruction and not intended for stand-alone learning. Math students quickly figured out that the most important thing was doing the problems, the text was essentially a reference, and the classroom was for guidance through the concepts, and for motivation. Of course the humanities classes were about books, so learning how to study the books themselves was a major part of the practice. Programming seems to lend itself particularly well to self learning because the computer allows for endless trial-and-error practice.
bluenose69 1y ago
The author is a good writer, able to expand upon (and illustrate) ideas articulately and convincingly. However, quite a lot of this doesn't quite apply to actual practice in education, particularly in science. High-school and undergraduate science classes tend to pair lectures with labs. Practical work is very much the focus of those labs, and the lab instructors work closely with students who need help. And a postgraduate degree typically involves a student working side-by-side with a professor on practical work. As for the pyramid model, I think the author makes some good points, especially for the grade-school level. However, it's simply a fact that being comfortable with adding comes in handy before moving on to multiplying. Good teachers find ways to motivate students, and adjust those ways as the years flow by. They know how to do their job, and I trust them to find the best practices. One thing I've heard from many teachers, especially those who are notably effective, is that teaching theorists are not of much help. And I see that in the silly trends that higher-ups impose on teachers. That way of teaching multiplication that has worked for generations? No good -- we must scrap it. The practice of teaching students to write cursive? So quaint - time to toss that in the trash bin. Years later, I see the results of these trends, when students come to university. The problem of teaching theorists coming up with silly ideas is a result, I fear, of the system of educating educators. How do you get a PhD in a subject? You have to come up with a new idea. Nobody got an advanced graduate degree in education by writing a thesis that said "teaching is fine as it is." No, that PhD student has to say "this is broken, and here's how to fix it." But some things just aren't quite broken, not really. Sure, some adjustments might be helpful. More one-on-one tutoring would be great. Although then, the non-theorist immediately sees a problem: we don't have enough teachers, as it is.
danielam 1y ago
Apprenticeship is generally for the so-called servile arts. The article completely neglects medieval education in the form of the liberal arts, and specifically the trivium and quadrivium. These are experiencing a minor resurgence in various forms in classical education curricula.
xivzgrev 1y ago
People back then just needed to learn one skill, say baking. Then they ply that trade for their lives. Our economy changes so fast that we need more generalized skills to adapt. If you were apprenticed as a telephone operator, what would you have done? So we learn math, science, communication, etc. Kids are absolutely right - much of it you will never use to make money. But if you learn how to learn, then that will help make you successful no matter where you go.
jjcob 1y ago
So I don't know what medical education is like in other parts of the world, but in Austria it involves a lot of practice. Doctors spend a lot of time practicing medicine under supervision before they are allowed to practice on their own. Specialists work as "assistant doctors" for a few years before they can open their own specialist practice. It's not a question of theory or practice; you obviously need both to learn advanced skills.
- rodrigo975 1y ago
  You mean, they start practicing before learning the theory, or they learn the theory then start practicing :p
  - jjcob 1y ago
    Sorry I got confused by the many meanings of practice :)
piombisallow 1y ago
This is a very utilitarian view of learning. Mass education isn't meant just to teach you marketable skills, it's quite explicitly designed to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation. Plus in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, with similar goals in mind.
- stripe_away 1y ago
  > in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, The idea of church as "someone lecturing you from a book" describes only a few christian denominations, few of which were active/existant in medieval times. I agree that many churches in the US are "20 minutes singing followed by a 1 hour sermon", which is what you describe, but there are also many denominations where the focus is on the liturgy and the sermon is a side note. liturgy is basically a spiritual practice you do as a group. say that week's prayer (from the prayer book) read the psalm, call-and-response (so the congregation is talking half the time) say the confession of sins say the Lords prayer someone reads 1-2 sections from the bible a quick sermon eucharist/communion
  - stripe_away 1y ago
    Which doesn't take away from your main point. A liturgically oriented church does build community.
  - Paul_Clayton 1y ago
    Most parts of the liturgy are teaching. Scripture readings might compare with text book reading; the Lord's Prayer and other formulaic recitations are often taken from Scripture. The eucharist is more "ritual" than "overt teaching" but it is meant to call to mind one loaf -> one body and the cost of forgiveness. The earlier poster's point was more "with similar goals in mind" (i.e., "to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation") rather than emphasizing the mechanism (I think). "Marketable skills" is different from social/civic skills/responsibility.
rodrigo975 1y ago
It seems that the author prefers to ignore the fact that, throughout history, apprenticing has been reserved for the common people, while teaching was reserved for their masters, the rich and the powerful. Having both is better, but at some point you need to learn the theory.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  I think even more so apprenticeships were for skilled workers or somewhat "middle-classes". Majority that is farmers well either you worked with your parents or seek employment from someone else in various farming jobs. Sure they trained you to do that, but it was not so much complex jobs but labour.
graycat 1y ago
> Classes are divorced from the practical applications of learning. Apprenticeships train in exactly the situation you’d want to apply the skill. Hmm .... Something like in the movie "The Hunt for Red October", the US Navy wanted: (1) Start with recordings by US submarines of underwater sounds, and write software to estimate the power spectra using the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and the Blackman and Tukey, "The Measurement of Power Spectra". (2) Given ships at sea and a war, how long would the US submarines last? Start with some WWII analysis of search and encounters by Koopmans and do a Monte-Carlo Markov process, generate many independent sample paths and average. Gee, how could I do those without my academic courses in analysis and probability? And there are more examples, including the crucial, original core math in my startup.
Shorel 1y ago
I like that we talk about practice, and we need to add this to our learning. Even more now, when apprenticeships are a dying practice and everyone is vibe-working. But dismissing theories, and just saying “most theories are wrong, anyway” smells too strongly of anti-intellectualism, and it just rubs me in the wrong way. I don't like this trend at all. Theory is as important as practice. The two depend on each other.
derelicta 1y ago
I've done an apprenticeship in IT and CS, the first two years of it felt more intense than my 4 years of university education. We used to have waves of exams every 6 weeks for the first year. Then on the second, every 8/12. Was crazy but it was thrilling. 16yo me was incredibly happy to have gone to trade school instead of high school.
thesuitonym 1y ago
I think this article shows nicely what we in modern days get wrong about education, even though it's premise is wrong in my opinion. These are just my opinions, and I am not an educator by trade, so take it for what it's worth. This article starts with the premise that we go to school to learn how to work. In a world where that is the case, yeah, apprenticeships are far better. It happens that many people look at schooling that way, but I don't believe that's even the correct way to think about schooling. School originally was not about learning to do a job. It was about learning how to learn. That's why writing papers and doing homework used to be such a big deal, because while you might have been stuffing your brain with knowledge about, say the history of bronze-age Europe, what you were really doing was learning how to find facts, how to organize them, and how to take useful notes. The problem is that in the past 80 years or so, we've started to see school as training to work. Whether it's primary school teaching us to be good factory workers, or college teaching us to be good office workers. College and university came to be viewed as a way for poor children to move up the social ladder. But to do that, you need a good job. And the best way to get that good job is to teach you to do it in university. So you end up in a situation where schools don't teach students how to learn, and since group instruction is a bad way to learn how to do a job, they don't really teach students how to do a job either. And in some countries you pay out the nose for the privilege.
wosined 1y ago
The author constructs a straw man in a simplified universe that is utterly unrealistic and then proceeds to defeat this straw man. Most real teaching is not done as it is described in the text. That is why there is nothing readworthy in it. It is probably a hidden form of marketing to buy the books they are selling.
harimau777 1y ago
I feel like this article hits on a good observation but draws the wrong conclusion. Education may have very well come to underemphasize practice. However, I think that a pure learning by doing approach throws the baby out with the bathwater. It's also not what I've observed in my (admittedly limited) experience with apprenticship: I worked as a field service engineer setting up servers and similar systems for a while. The place I was sent wasn't a union job but many of the workers were from the local union. I was very impressed with the apprentices. They would work half their week at our site and the other half attended training at the union hall. It seemed to work well for everyone: they seemed to learn a lot, the union developed it's next generation, and we effectively got an extra worker for half of every week. It would be interesting to see a model like (half on the job and half in the classroom) that applied to more professions. E.g. in programming, universities seem to neglect the practice while bootcamps seem to neglect the theory.
bjourne 1y ago
He's right, but it has been known for decades that learning by doing is the most efficient way of learning. The reason it is not panacea is because it is hard to measure. A test is easier to administer than reviewing source code to determine whether someone can build web sites well. Learning by doing also requires more freer forms of education, hence it is resisted by Conservative politicians who'd rather have the students learn more discipline (i.e., if you aren't suffering you aren't working hard). Moreover, a country that emphasizes learning by doing over education focused on test taking will likely score worse on international student assessments, such as PISA. For the simple reason that if students are better at doing their own research, writing reports, etc., they are probably also worse at test taking. There's too much paranoia and prestige involved in education. It would be better if education was based on the science of education, rather than the whims of politicians, but it's not... it's like the prerogative to control the young generation is too important to let people like "professors in pedagogy" decide. Cause what the fuck do they know? I was a kid once and I learned things in school, kids these days suck, yadda, yadda.
khalera 1y ago
FWIW, this is exactly how you learn craftsmanship professions in Germany today. You become a apprentice of a Master for 3 years and learn as you work together, alongside theoretical learning.
ruslan_sure 1y ago
Simply put, the author doesn't know what he's talking about. This nostalgia for the "good old days" should have a name. This comparison of "medieval learning" and "modern learning" is tougher than "Wilt Chamberlain" versus "Michael Jordan." The amount of knowledge and usage of high abstractions is incomparable. Imagine what we've learned in the last 500 years, and then forget it all and teach children that. They'll finish school in one year. If your goal is to create a capable laborer for a specific job that won't change in their lifetime, apprenticeships are the way to go. However, if your goal is to teach a person many abstract ideas not specifically related to a particular job, it won't work. 3. It's a popular idea to teach with real-world examples and learn by doing ("general abstractions" vs. "hyperspecific things," "do and watch" vs. "study"). But how many things that you study in school can you touch or do? If you throw away the last 500 years, then yes, what's left you can definitely touch. For example, the author refers to "economic reasoning." Okay, let's create a real-world example and have the student either do it or watch how someone else does it. Hard, right? 4. We can actually use "real-world examples" and "do and watch" for almost anything students are learning. For example, we could go with the class to a nuclear power plant and 'do and watch' there. There are two issues: many things will not be allowed for students, and it would take years to finish just one year of school. We may call not using it "an embarrassment," but there is a reason for it. 5. "Human beings, it appears, are nearly unique in the animal world for being able to learn something by watching somebody else do it." This is simply not true. 6. "It’s often not so important to understand the reasons why you should do something as it is to see it being performed correctly." We do so much of this in real life unintentionally. Imagine a world where we do it intentionally. What would happen if things changes faster and faster? Who would pay all of these "real-world example" learners during their transition? 7. "Most theories are wrong anyway." You may read this and skip the other parts. 8. He got the pyramid model wrong. Putting a base first doesn't mean learning all of math first, then physics, then chemistry, then biology. A biology base may be about the differences and similarities of animals and plants, and the types of animals. 9. "...this must mean we have an ironclad theory of how scientific knowledge is produced. Except we don’t." Yes, we actually have a scientific method. He probably couldn't "do and watch" it, so it fell out of his sight.

165 points by ripe 1y ago

booleandilemma 1y ago

It's just an ad for a series of self-help books.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bravesoul2 1y ago
Exactly. I want a self help apprenticeship
gattilorenz 1y ago
I find it telling that right in the first paragraph it says “People in the middle ages lit cats on fire for fun” as a fact, while it is, in the most charitable interpretation, something historians disagree on (and in the least charitable interpretation, it smells like bullshit from a mile). I certainly am skeptical of someone taking Wikipedia as the Truth.

wrp 1y ago

TFA misses a key difference between apprenticeship and classroom learning. Apprentice training tends to be one-on-one. When classroom instruction is done one-on-one, learning dramatically improves. This is called the "two sigma problem" in the educational literature. Ignoring this aspect gives the other factors discussed in TFA exaggerated significance.

throw10920 1y ago
Practice is extremely important, and I don't think its importance is exaggerated at all. I would expect students in an environment with a typically high student-to-teacher ratio, but who actually practice what they're being taught, will significantly outperform students who are taught one-on-one by a personal tutor but rarely actually perform the thing that they're trying to learn. Obviously, "¿Por Qué No Los Dos?" - doing both is even better. But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. As a personal anecdote (not to replace the above general arguments), I've gotten several hundred hours of one-on-one tutoring in an advanced field of physics from a number of experts, and yet I learned significantly less than I have from significantly fewer hours studying a separate (but no less difficult) field of math when I actually worked the problems.
- jonahx 1y ago
  > But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback -- not an individual "lecture". While there is value to being in the forest entirely alone, I think for a motivated student good tutoring will outperform working problems on your own in speed of overall learning. Both are good though, and I agree working the problems out, and working a lot of problems, is the main thing.
  - throw10920 1y ago
    > Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback Yes, but then we're conflating the two things we're trying to separate - one-on-one instruction, and worked practice. I was using "tutoring" to mean specifically one-on-ones. I completely agree that a good tutor will have you practice what you're learning, and that's definitely much closer to optimal than the educational mess we're currently in.
    - graemep 1y ago
      They are related. They are both individual learning. One thing I have observed in my own experience (my own, and my, mostly home educated, kids) is that both one to one teaching AND learning on one's own (the amount of it being practice varying with subject) are better than classroom/lecture learning. This is not a statistical sample or a study, but it is three people across multiple subjects, at a pretty full range of levels (from primary school level to postgrad). Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective?
      - jonahx 1y ago
        > Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective? Learning in groups is wildly ineffective from the perspective of gaining functional mastery over some subject (whether writing well, solving algebra problems, etc). However, it does have a lot of unrelated benefits, arguably more important: learning to collaborate with others, understanding how others think and learn, understanding your own skill level by direct comparison with others, competition as a motivator for learning, and more.
musicale 1y ago
As I understand it, the (medieval?) tutorial system is still used at some universities, notably Oxford and Cambridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system Much of graduate education in the US seems similar.
somenameforme 1y ago
This is extremely interesting, because while I'd never heard of the '2 sigma problem' [1] before, one university class I had seems to have been largely modeled on it, but with a very different angle. It was a 'self paced' electrical engineering course where we were given a textbook and free to advance through it at our own pace - kind of farcically, since you needed to complete at least 2 chapters per week to finish by the end of the semester. Moving forward to the next chapter required, exactly as described in that paper, the completion of a problem set and then a score of at least 90% on a test demonstrating mastery of the previous chapter, sometimes accompanied by also demonstrating that skill in a lab. But far from 1 on 1, this entire class was effectively 0 on infinity. The teaching assistant/proctors that we engaged with were there only to grade your work and provided minimal feedback. And indeed it was one of the most educational 'classes' I ever took. But I think this challenges the concept that it has anything to do with 1 on 1 attention. But rather the outcome seems practically tautological - a good way to get people to perform to the point of mastery is to require that they perform to the point of mastery. Of course, at scale, all you're really doing is weeding out the people that are unable to achieve mastery. And indeed that class was considered a weed out course. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem
- aaplok 1y ago
  Mastery Learning, which Bloom advocates for in the two sigma problem paper, is an alternative to 1 on 1, not a way to achieve it. What you describe seems to be a very poor implementation of mastery learning. But if the tutor is completely disengaged even 1 on 1 tutoring is unlikely to have good effects.
- PunchTornado 1y ago
  maybe with AI and things like guided learning from gemini we all can get a 1-1 instructor.
- dcassett 1y ago
  I had such a self-paced course in the '70s based on the book "Fundamentals of Logic Design" by Charles Roth, Jr. It should be noted that the book was specifically written for self-paced study, and as such acted as a sort of tutor by carefully laying out a sequence of reading short segments, answering short questions about the material, then doing more involved problems. I found this course to be very effective and motivating for me, especially given the undergraduate class sizes.
RataNova 1y ago
Yeah, while the article makes good arguments about learning by doing and context-rich environments, it probably understates how much of the effectiveness comes down to just personalized guidance
- danielbln 1y ago
  If it wasn't for all the pitfalls and hallucinations (and even then there is probably something to be had already) LLMs would be perfect for this. Limitless customizable one-on-one tutoring. I would have killed for something like it when I was in school, instead the choices were expensive tutor (not an option) or else good luck, hope you pay attention in the back of the 30 student classroom.
efitz 1y ago
1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from the labor pool equal to the number of students. Apprenticeships remove only a small fraction of that from the labor pool (because the practitioner spends only part of their time teaching/supervising the apprentice and then makes the apprentice go practice the skill) and partially makes up the lost labor with the labor from the apprentices- apprentices are expected to do actual productive work, not just learn.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  It doesn't have to be a crisis time-wise. In music you usually have a small amount of one-on-one instruction and then you practice. In tennis you usually have a small number of one-one-lessons and then you practice and play matches. You could probably do the same for maths. You're given some problems to try to solve and given two hours, then once you've made a serious attempt you get individual tutoring for an hour, then you go back to solving problems and there's a short one-on-one question session at the end, let's say 30 minutes. Then you have a 5 hour study session with 1.5 hours of teacher time, so he can have around three students.
- graemep 1y ago
  > 1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from the labor pool equal to the number of students. It does require more teachers, but not 1:1. Students being taught 1:1 learn a lot faster, and can be set work to do unsupervised. From my experience I think less than an hour a seek (sometimes a lot less) of tuition time (plus a bit more for marking, and another few hours of study by the student) is sufficient to cover a subject 1:1 (and it can often me a lot less) for teenagers (specifically for GCSEs - British exams sat in schools at 16). it does require a significantly higher ratio than classroom teaching usually does, but its a long way from needing 1:1.
- m463 1y ago
  I think another nuance is apprenticeship is learning by/while doing the classroom is learning by simulated doing
adamgordonbell 1y ago
You seem to be suggesting he's writing from a place of not knowing about the benefits of one-on-one learning and the "two sigma problem" when this is something he frequently writes about.
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
Interestingly the Bloom study (1984) that describes the "two sigma problem" looked at three types of learning. a) Group Instruction: Baseline b) Mastery Learning, ensuring students master the material before moving on: One sigma improvement (outperform 68% of students in group setting) c) 1 on 1 Tutoring: Two sigma improvement (outperform 98% of students in group setting)
Mawr 1y ago
Irrelevant. The actual key here is training the exact skills you need to do the job. No classroom instruction can ever replicate that. The best way to learn how to do something is to do it. There's no substitute.

paulgerhardt 1y ago

I would wager the benefits of this model come mostly from the 2 sigma boost one gets from one on one instruction and not from any sort of optimal skill tree progression a master would impart on a student in a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge and skill acquisition.

zdragnar 1y ago
> a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge and skill acquisition I'm not sure how many of those we have available to us. Many are compromised by politics, funding, or the need to act as a daycare. I learned a lot at the various schools I went to, but the amount I learned seemed to correlate more directly with how invested I was in learning than how well the school was funded. Plenty of schools with better per-pupil funding had significantly worse student achievement rates than where I was. The only real exception to that is not all schools offer the same curriculum. Back in my day, not every secondary / high school had someone who could teach calculus, though now there's districts that are getting rid of calculus entirely to promote anti-racism. Honestly, I think learning calculus in high school was good for me, even if I've really only needed to calculate integrals once in my programming career. At University, things were much the same. Undergrad courses focused a bit more on synthesizing than memorizing compared to high school, but not really by much. All of this is to say that I'm not really sure it's fair to knock the apprentice program since we don't directly experience optimal pedagogy elsewhere.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  > Undergrad courses focused a bit more on synthesizing than memorizing compared to high school, but not really by much. Sorry about that. At Caltech, we were never given formulas. Everything was derived from scratch. I never memorized anything (but I found after a while I simply knew all the trig identifies!).

chmod775 1y ago

Apprenticeship is alive and well across Europe, most famously probably in Germany. The majority of young adults there completes one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany

red_trumpet 1y ago
> The majority of young adults there completes one. Are you sure about this? Your quoted article only has data from >20 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if nowadays more people study at university than do an apprenticeship
- hutattedonmyarm 1y ago
  Based on my experience and not hard data: Not most, but still quite a few. Some jobs more or less require an apprenticeship (carpenter and other handy jobs). Doing an apprenticeship for a job and afterwards going to university also happens a lot
- maverwa 1y ago
  Combining both is also pretty common in my experience. People frist do an apprenticeship, then, for example because their employment situation changed, they go to university. There are ways for a apprenticeship to qualifiy one to go for university. In 2024, according to the "Bundesinstituts für Berufsbildung" 486,700 people started their apprenticeship [0]. In the same period (2024-2025) 490,304 people started their first semester at university/college, according to the "Statistisches Bundesamt" [1]. So you are right, theres more new students than apprentices, but its not by a lot. [0]: https://www.bibb.de/de/201811.php https://www.bibb.de/de/201811.php [1]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildung-Forschung-Kultur/Hochschulen/Tabellen/studierende-erstes-hs-bundeslaender.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildun...

megamix 1y ago

Wish I practiced programming more than just trying to understand the perfect way to code or theories behind. Such a waste of time :(

WalterBright 1y ago

I learned in college that I didn't learn anything until I worked the problem sets. (It always seemed like I learned it, but when faced with the problem sets I discovered I hadn't learned anything yet.) It's the same with everything. You can watch a yootoob video on rebuilding a carburetor all day, but you don't know nuttin until you take it apart yourself. I decided to learn to ride a dirtbike. I took some personal instruction from an expert, and promptly crashed. Again and again and again. Finally, my body figured out how to coordinate the controls. Can't learn how to double clutch downshift from watching a video, either.

WalterBright 1y ago
I drive a stick car. Shifting gears happens smoothly without any conscious thought. Not with the dirtbike. Every time, I have to stop and think through it step by step. My recent rides have all been constantly up and down shifting, in order to get it properly into muscle memory. I was annoyed that my car shifting skills did not transfer.
taneq 1y ago
Teaching is hard and training courses are often terrible. IMO, lessons need to consist of multiple (usually hierarchical) examples of (1) specific thing to learn, (2) high level motivation for doing this thing, (3) specifically when to do the thing, (4) specific causes and effects between your actions and observations during the process. I did a snowboarding course once, and it was largely useless because they didn’t actually explain any of the mechanics of how the board actually worked beyond seesawing mostly-sideways down the ultra beginner slope. It wasn’t until I had a chance to experiment that I started actually figuring out anything useful. I absolutely taught myself how to double-clutch from YouTube and Initial D, though. :D (Plus copious practice, of course.)
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I taught myself how to ride a bicycle, but was baffled for a long time how the bike stayed up. I did some very careful observation of what my body was doing to make it work, and finally figured it out. I've had some difficulty transferring that skill to the dirtbike, and spend a fair amount of practice time just doing figure eights. Another weird thing. I've been using the same text editor for 40 years. I no longer remember what the commands are - but I can still edit files just fine. Sometimes I watch my fingers to see what the command actually is.

beloch 1y ago

Medieval craftsmen often ran what we would consider to be sweatshops, with many young (i.e. child) apprentices banging out work and not receiving much instruction in exchange. We're romanticizing and idealizing a past that was, in realty, often quite exploitative. There are reasons why we started sending children to schools rather than businesses for basic education. There is also little need to reach back to medieval times when comparatively less exploitative (but still imperfect) apprenticeship systems are alive and well in the trades today. One-on-one practical instruction related specifically to what you want to do is awesome, but there are a lot of difficulties in incentivizing people to supply such instruction.

IAmBroom 1y ago
I've deeply studied the apprentice programs in medieval Europe; your claims don't align with guild law, nor the motivations of the guilds themselves (to create protective but longterm market-satisfying services and goods; i.e. to stay in business and prevent cheap knockoffs, at the cost of inhibiting innovation). Apprenticeships certainly weren't more abusive than the typical alternatives: serf labor, or servant jobs. (One of the key differences between servants and apprentices in medieval England, for instance, was that you weren't allowed to beat your apprentices.) Often exploitative? Sure. Most power structures are. But it absolutely was a system that guaranteed rights to the worker, which made it rise far above most employment situations of that time.
1718627440 1y ago
Even manufacturing without instructions gives you practice. Also you need only so much instructions per practice, getting instructions won't actually help you get better you also need to do it. The master very much cares about your quality, because if it doesn't look like his quality nobody will buy it. If the quality goes down to much, there will be complaints to the guilt and he looses its ability to do business. If you have problems with your master you can look for another one. The good always needed to reject prentices, the bad had nobody showing up. In-fact you were required to stay with multiple masters. If you complain about them not having an 8-hour day, nobody had that in the middle ages. But tradesman were more of the richer people in a city, maybe behind tradesman.

obscurette 1y ago

It's not that bad in theory, but it's true that modern "no homework!", "no boring practice!" etc directions have done a lot of damage during last decades. But it answers quite well to common complaints why we are still learn to solve quadratic function in school although almost nobody uses it later in their lives? It's because quadratic function is a simplest way to lay a foundation to understand a tons of broad theoretical concepts about functions – turning points, zeros, decreasing, increasing, symmetry etc.

somenameforme 1y ago
I'd generalize this even further. Math, especially higher level math, often turns into a sort of puzzle. And solving quadratic equations is the first step going from learning how to execute basic arithmetic to using it in the process of solving a puzzle. The fact that these puzzles can then be used to do cool things is almost just a fortunate coincidence.

dwd 1y ago

Fortunately this model is still partially used for some careers like medicine and veterinary practices where you have a mandatory internship of at least a year before you can be admitted as a practicing GP or Vet.

HPsquared 1y ago
And pilots. Lots of "hours" required for the different grades.
- analog31 1y ago
  And physicists. Good degree programs involve labs, undergrad, and graduate research.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    When you really think of it is doctoral programs in academia apprenticeships? At least in fields where you do need laboratories and such...
    - analog31 1y ago
      That's a good way to think about it, though one still has to ask: "An apprenticeship in what?" Optimally thesis means you're given a nebulous problem within an area of interest and asked to manage a project to solve it and communicate the results. My own field, physics, is particularly loose in terms of what tools you might need to adapt and create.

syphia 1y ago

I'm not sure if concerete seeing/doing is the only, or even most effective, way to learn. I've often learned by recalling the concepts from a lecture, reasoning about the material, and imagining what some of the problems would look like while sketching out solutions in my head. It's not any easier than doing the homework, but it is more convenient and flexible. And it can sometimes help with physical skills. Theory is still important because it communicates how other people understand what they do. But it's certainly not a replacement for reasoning and experience. I've found the best model of learning is to... not have a "learning process" in the first place. I try to understand as much as possible from as many angles as possible. This means big concepts, minutae, my ideas, other people's philosophies, imagined scenarios, hands-on-experiences, tangentially related concepts, and so on. Being able to answer questions or do the task is more of a side-effect than the intent.

attila-lendvai 1y ago

compulsory education is a main pillar of the twisted power structure in our society. power in society comes from a knowledge gap, and powerful people have all the incentives to sustain it. consequently education is a battleground, and we, the honest people, have pretty much lost the battles for about a century now. the OP only makes sense when also considering this aspect of the question.

RataNova 1y ago

School teaches you about things; apprenticeships teach you to do things. Huge difference.

KineticLensman 1y ago
That’s essentially the difference between education and training

Zobat 1y ago

> Human beings, it appears, are nearly unique in the animal world for being able to learn something by watching somebody else do it. This is just blatantly wrong. If nothing else I myself have shown dogs how to solve problems, but here's a link to Wikipedia for good measure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals

stripe_away 1y ago
octopuses learn by observing other octopuses See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw or if you prefer, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978012415823800023X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801...

khalic 1y ago

Honestly, it's not worth your time, a lot of presumptions, false premises and incomplete hypothesis. Also, apprenticeship didn't disappear, it's still very much in use in many countries. The focus is just different. Classroom education allows a plethora of secondary skills to be trained without the pressure of performance. For some, it's essential.

bradley13 1y ago

Much of Europe still has apprenticeship programs for the trades. The loss of this in the US and the UK shows in the quality of work: anyone can claim to be a carpenter, or painter, or whatever: whether or not they have any training.

chriseidhof 1y ago

This really speaks to me. I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes. The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.

ahartmetz 1y ago
I think I'd prefer overview, exercise, details. You need some kind of mental framework. I guess you don't just dive right in, otherwise you wouldn't be getting good feedback ;) What I really hate is explaining the solution before explaining the problem. It's a terrible way to teach and it's quite common. I like to say that there are two bad ways to teach: The cookbook (do this, then do that) and the maths textbook (solutions without problems or context). The good way is a combination of them with some additional things that neither of them has, like motivating examples, relevant anecdotes etc.
analog31 1y ago
Granted I've been out of school for decades. The textbooks were always an accessory to classroom instruction and not intended for stand-alone learning. Math students quickly figured out that the most important thing was doing the problems, the text was essentially a reference, and the classroom was for guidance through the concepts, and for motivation. Of course the humanities classes were about books, so learning how to study the books themselves was a major part of the practice. Programming seems to lend itself particularly well to self learning because the computer allows for endless trial-and-error practice.

bluenose69 1y ago

The author is a good writer, able to expand upon (and illustrate) ideas articulately and convincingly. However, quite a lot of this doesn't quite apply to actual practice in education, particularly in science. High-school and undergraduate science classes tend to pair lectures with labs. Practical work is very much the focus of those labs, and the lab instructors work closely with students who need help. And a postgraduate degree typically involves a student working side-by-side with a professor on practical work. As for the pyramid model, I think the author makes some good points, especially for the grade-school level. However, it's simply a fact that being comfortable with adding comes in handy before moving on to multiplying. Good teachers find ways to motivate students, and adjust those ways as the years flow by. They know how to do their job, and I trust them to find the best practices. One thing I've heard from many teachers, especially those who are notably effective, is that teaching theorists are not of much help. And I see that in the silly trends that higher-ups impose on teachers. That way of teaching multiplication that has worked for generations? No good -- we must scrap it. The practice of teaching students to write cursive? So quaint - time to toss that in the trash bin. Years later, I see the results of these trends, when students come to university. The problem of teaching theorists coming up with silly ideas is a result, I fear, of the system of educating educators. How do you get a PhD in a subject? You have to come up with a new idea. Nobody got an advanced graduate degree in education by writing a thesis that said "teaching is fine as it is." No, that PhD student has to say "this is broken, and here's how to fix it." But some things just aren't quite broken, not really. Sure, some adjustments might be helpful. More one-on-one tutoring would be great. Although then, the non-theorist immediately sees a problem: we don't have enough teachers, as it is.

danielam 1y ago

Apprenticeship is generally for the so-called servile arts. The article completely neglects medieval education in the form of the liberal arts, and specifically the trivium and quadrivium. These are experiencing a minor resurgence in various forms in classical education curricula.

xivzgrev 1y ago

People back then just needed to learn one skill, say baking. Then they ply that trade for their lives. Our economy changes so fast that we need more generalized skills to adapt. If you were apprenticed as a telephone operator, what would you have done? So we learn math, science, communication, etc. Kids are absolutely right - much of it you will never use to make money. But if you learn how to learn, then that will help make you successful no matter where you go.

jjcob 1y ago

So I don't know what medical education is like in other parts of the world, but in Austria it involves a lot of practice. Doctors spend a lot of time practicing medicine under supervision before they are allowed to practice on their own. Specialists work as "assistant doctors" for a few years before they can open their own specialist practice. It's not a question of theory or practice; you obviously need both to learn advanced skills.

rodrigo975 1y ago
You mean, they start practicing before learning the theory, or they learn the theory then start practicing :p
- jjcob 1y ago
  Sorry I got confused by the many meanings of practice :)

piombisallow 1y ago

This is a very utilitarian view of learning. Mass education isn't meant just to teach you marketable skills, it's quite explicitly designed to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation. Plus in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, with similar goals in mind.

stripe_away 1y ago
> in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, The idea of church as "someone lecturing you from a book" describes only a few christian denominations, few of which were active/existant in medieval times. I agree that many churches in the US are "20 minutes singing followed by a 1 hour sermon", which is what you describe, but there are also many denominations where the focus is on the liturgy and the sermon is a side note. liturgy is basically a spiritual practice you do as a group. say that week's prayer (from the prayer book) read the psalm, call-and-response (so the congregation is talking half the time) say the confession of sins say the Lords prayer someone reads 1-2 sections from the bible a quick sermon eucharist/communion
- stripe_away 1y ago
  Which doesn't take away from your main point. A liturgically oriented church does build community.
- Paul_Clayton 1y ago
  Most parts of the liturgy are teaching. Scripture readings might compare with text book reading; the Lord's Prayer and other formulaic recitations are often taken from Scripture. The eucharist is more "ritual" than "overt teaching" but it is meant to call to mind one loaf -> one body and the cost of forgiveness. The earlier poster's point was more "with similar goals in mind" (i.e., "to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation") rather than emphasizing the mechanism (I think). "Marketable skills" is different from social/civic skills/responsibility.

rodrigo975 1y ago

It seems that the author prefers to ignore the fact that, throughout history, apprenticing has been reserved for the common people, while teaching was reserved for their masters, the rich and the powerful. Having both is better, but at some point you need to learn the theory.

Ekaros 1y ago
I think even more so apprenticeships were for skilled workers or somewhat "middle-classes". Majority that is farmers well either you worked with your parents or seek employment from someone else in various farming jobs. Sure they trained you to do that, but it was not so much complex jobs but labour.

graycat 1y ago

> Classes are divorced from the practical applications of learning. Apprenticeships train in exactly the situation you’d want to apply the skill. Hmm .... Something like in the movie "The Hunt for Red October", the US Navy wanted: (1) Start with recordings by US submarines of underwater sounds, and write software to estimate the power spectra using the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and the Blackman and Tukey, "The Measurement of Power Spectra". (2) Given ships at sea and a war, how long would the US submarines last? Start with some WWII analysis of search and encounters by Koopmans and do a Monte-Carlo Markov process, generate many independent sample paths and average. Gee, how could I do those without my academic courses in analysis and probability? And there are more examples, including the crucial, original core math in my startup.

Shorel 1y ago

I like that we talk about practice, and we need to add this to our learning. Even more now, when apprenticeships are a dying practice and everyone is vibe-working. But dismissing theories, and just saying “most theories are wrong, anyway” smells too strongly of anti-intellectualism, and it just rubs me in the wrong way. I don't like this trend at all. Theory is as important as practice. The two depend on each other.

derelicta 1y ago

I've done an apprenticeship in IT and CS, the first two years of it felt more intense than my 4 years of university education. We used to have waves of exams every 6 weeks for the first year. Then on the second, every 8/12. Was crazy but it was thrilling. 16yo me was incredibly happy to have gone to trade school instead of high school.

thesuitonym 1y ago

I think this article shows nicely what we in modern days get wrong about education, even though it's premise is wrong in my opinion. These are just my opinions, and I am not an educator by trade, so take it for what it's worth. This article starts with the premise that we go to school to learn how to work. In a world where that is the case, yeah, apprenticeships are far better. It happens that many people look at schooling that way, but I don't believe that's even the correct way to think about schooling. School originally was not about learning to do a job. It was about learning how to learn. That's why writing papers and doing homework used to be such a big deal, because while you might have been stuffing your brain with knowledge about, say the history of bronze-age Europe, what you were really doing was learning how to find facts, how to organize them, and how to take useful notes. The problem is that in the past 80 years or so, we've started to see school as training to work. Whether it's primary school teaching us to be good factory workers, or college teaching us to be good office workers. College and university came to be viewed as a way for poor children to move up the social ladder. But to do that, you need a good job. And the best way to get that good job is to teach you to do it in university. So you end up in a situation where schools don't teach students how to learn, and since group instruction is a bad way to learn how to do a job, they don't really teach students how to do a job either. And in some countries you pay out the nose for the privilege.

wosined 1y ago

The author constructs a straw man in a simplified universe that is utterly unrealistic and then proceeds to defeat this straw man. Most real teaching is not done as it is described in the text. That is why there is nothing readworthy in it. It is probably a hidden form of marketing to buy the books they are selling.

harimau777 1y ago

I feel like this article hits on a good observation but draws the wrong conclusion. Education may have very well come to underemphasize practice. However, I think that a pure learning by doing approach throws the baby out with the bathwater. It's also not what I've observed in my (admittedly limited) experience with apprenticship: I worked as a field service engineer setting up servers and similar systems for a while. The place I was sent wasn't a union job but many of the workers were from the local union. I was very impressed with the apprentices. They would work half their week at our site and the other half attended training at the union hall. It seemed to work well for everyone: they seemed to learn a lot, the union developed it's next generation, and we effectively got an extra worker for half of every week. It would be interesting to see a model like (half on the job and half in the classroom) that applied to more professions. E.g. in programming, universities seem to neglect the practice while bootcamps seem to neglect the theory.

bjourne 1y ago

He's right, but it has been known for decades that learning by doing is the most efficient way of learning. The reason it is not panacea is because it is hard to measure. A test is easier to administer than reviewing source code to determine whether someone can build web sites well. Learning by doing also requires more freer forms of education, hence it is resisted by Conservative politicians who'd rather have the students learn more discipline (i.e., if you aren't suffering you aren't working hard). Moreover, a country that emphasizes learning by doing over education focused on test taking will likely score worse on international student assessments, such as PISA. For the simple reason that if students are better at doing their own research, writing reports, etc., they are probably also worse at test taking. There's too much paranoia and prestige involved in education. It would be better if education was based on the science of education, rather than the whims of politicians, but it's not... it's like the prerogative to control the young generation is too important to let people like "professors in pedagogy" decide. Cause what the fuck do they know? I was a kid once and I learned things in school, kids these days suck, yadda, yadda.

khalera 1y ago

FWIW, this is exactly how you learn craftsmanship professions in Germany today. You become a apprentice of a Master for 3 years and learn as you work together, alongside theoretical learning.

ruslan_sure 1y ago

Simply put, the author doesn't know what he's talking about. This nostalgia for the "good old days" should have a name. This comparison of "medieval learning" and "modern learning" is tougher than "Wilt Chamberlain" versus "Michael Jordan." The amount of knowledge and usage of high abstractions is incomparable. Imagine what we've learned in the last 500 years, and then forget it all and teach children that. They'll finish school in one year. If your goal is to create a capable laborer for a specific job that won't change in their lifetime, apprenticeships are the way to go. However, if your goal is to teach a person many abstract ideas not specifically related to a particular job, it won't work. 3. It's a popular idea to teach with real-world examples and learn by doing ("general abstractions" vs. "hyperspecific things," "do and watch" vs. "study"). But how many things that you study in school can you touch or do? If you throw away the last 500 years, then yes, what's left you can definitely touch. For example, the author refers to "economic reasoning." Okay, let's create a real-world example and have the student either do it or watch how someone else does it. Hard, right? 4. We can actually use "real-world examples" and "do and watch" for almost anything students are learning. For example, we could go with the class to a nuclear power plant and 'do and watch' there. There are two issues: many things will not be allowed for students, and it would take years to finish just one year of school. We may call not using it "an embarrassment," but there is a reason for it. 5. "Human beings, it appears, are nearly unique in the animal world for being able to learn something by watching somebody else do it." This is simply not true. 6. "It’s often not so important to understand the reasons why you should do something as it is to see it being performed correctly." We do so much of this in real life unintentionally. Imagine a world where we do it intentionally. What would happen if things changes faster and faster? Who would pay all of these "real-world example" learners during their transition? 7. "Most theories are wrong anyway." You may read this and skip the other parts. 8. He got the pyramid model wrong. Putting a base first doesn't mean learning all of math first, then physics, then chemistry, then biology. A biology base may be about the differences and similarities of animals and plants, and the types of animals. 9. "...this must mean we have an ironclad theory of how scientific knowledge is produced. Except we don’t." Yes, we actually have a scientific method. He probably couldn't "do and watch" it, so it fell out of his sight.