4 ms·

Less drudgery and boring work? How about not drudgery and not boring. To accomplish this the thing has to be optional, and it has to be freely chosen. No amount

Less drudgery and boring work? How about not drudgery and not boring. To accomplish this the thing has to be optional, and it has to be freely chosen. No amount of window dressing on a thing you're forced to do makes it truly fun. But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated, and so we get endless "make learning fun!" crap on top of compulsory drudgery.

jacknews 1y ago
Life is not all fun. You need to learn how to buckle up and just get it done.
- card_zero 1y ago
  "Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive. It's sadly true, you end up learning to be pragmatic and defeated.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    'Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive.' If one chooses the modern life, then they're stuck within the constraints of society. You could be nearly self sufficient, but that would be even more difficult.
- hereme888 1y ago
  But school is 13 years of mostly boring, stressful and irrelevant learning. What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work? None except the small percent of academically-oriented personalities. Teacher: "today we're going to learn about the three types of rocks, and the quadratic equation." Student: "what for? I've never seen an adult discuss or use that in real life." Teacher: "you might need it some day, and its part of the curriculum."
  - gf000 1y ago
    Well, (some?) humans have inherent curiosity about how to world operates, see all the litany of questions small children have. Education should attempt to somehow tap into that as a core motivation, though that will surely not be enough or good for everyone. But learning is work, and there is no way around that.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      Is work fun?
      - gf000 1y ago
        Can be. Working hard for something and achieving it can be a great source of fun, and many people chase it.
    - hereme888 1y ago
      I estimate more than 50% of people have an aversion to learning because of their school experience. True learning, and curiosity-driven learning, boosts dopamine, hence most learning in modern society should be inherently "pleasurable". Of course this excludes hard lessons we have to learn through painful experiences. Even really difficult learning, like at the Masters - phD level, the painful parts of learning should constitute a small percent of the person's overall learning. Children are often accused of being unmotivated or lazy, but these are usually accusations from boring adults who can't see the magnitude of their error. A child will focus on a video game for hours, even a difficult one, and will still remember the information a week later. But give a child a boring and pointless video game, with no specific goal or accomplishment, and no one will play it. This is why the quadratic equation has become such a meme among "anti-schoolers". It's the epitome of pointlessness for the general population.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    "What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work?" Probably most people. 6 hour days, lunch provided, recess with your friends, no real responsibilities. Sounds better than most jobs. Rocks are easy to turn into fun since they're physical things and you can go over knapping flint, etc.
graemep 1y ago
Its not that hard to balance, but it takes individual attention. Learning is intrinsically fun and you need to avoid turning it into drudgery. I home educated by kids from about eight up to sixteen when they had done GCSEs (exams school kids in the UK do at 16). I very rarely had to force them to do anything, but I did have to make an effort to find the right approach to make things interesting. I think the solution is to let kids do what they choose but intervene if they are not learning at all. This takes judgement and knowing them as individuals. You could do it in schools if you have a very low student-teacher ratio (I say below 10 to 1 - so in the UK you would need about double the number of teachers in the state system), trusted teachers' judgement over metrics, and had more flexibility about learning to individual needs rather the prescribing exactly what kids need to learn at a particular age.
foobarian 1y ago
> But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated It's not not possible, but the problem is you'd end up with a majority uneducated populous who would decide that sacrificing goats and watering crops with Gatorade is the thing to do, and they would hang you if you disagreed
- card_zero 1y ago
  I don't know. I'd like Mike Judge's opinion on this point. Does trapping people in a building and forcing them to stack up academic KPIs really make them less stupid? I suppose it keeps them away from superstition and hoaxes and scams. Maybe. Does it even help with that? It's probably the socialization that matters.

jacknews 1y ago

Life is not all fun. You need to learn how to buckle up and just get it done.

card_zero 1y ago
"Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive. It's sadly true, you end up learning to be pragmatic and defeated.
- giantg2 1y ago
  'Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive.' If one chooses the modern life, then they're stuck within the constraints of society. You could be nearly self sufficient, but that would be even more difficult.
hereme888 1y ago
But school is 13 years of mostly boring, stressful and irrelevant learning. What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work? None except the small percent of academically-oriented personalities. Teacher: "today we're going to learn about the three types of rocks, and the quadratic equation." Student: "what for? I've never seen an adult discuss or use that in real life." Teacher: "you might need it some day, and its part of the curriculum."
- gf000 1y ago
  Well, (some?) humans have inherent curiosity about how to world operates, see all the litany of questions small children have. Education should attempt to somehow tap into that as a core motivation, though that will surely not be enough or good for everyone. But learning is work, and there is no way around that.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Is work fun?
    - gf000 1y ago
      Can be. Working hard for something and achieving it can be a great source of fun, and many people chase it.
  - hereme888 1y ago
    I estimate more than 50% of people have an aversion to learning because of their school experience. True learning, and curiosity-driven learning, boosts dopamine, hence most learning in modern society should be inherently "pleasurable". Of course this excludes hard lessons we have to learn through painful experiences. Even really difficult learning, like at the Masters - phD level, the painful parts of learning should constitute a small percent of the person's overall learning. Children are often accused of being unmotivated or lazy, but these are usually accusations from boring adults who can't see the magnitude of their error. A child will focus on a video game for hours, even a difficult one, and will still remember the information a week later. But give a child a boring and pointless video game, with no specific goal or accomplishment, and no one will play it. This is why the quadratic equation has become such a meme among "anti-schoolers". It's the epitome of pointlessness for the general population.
- giantg2 1y ago
  "What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work?" Probably most people. 6 hour days, lunch provided, recess with your friends, no real responsibilities. Sounds better than most jobs. Rocks are easy to turn into fun since they're physical things and you can go over knapping flint, etc.

graemep 1y ago

Its not that hard to balance, but it takes individual attention. Learning is intrinsically fun and you need to avoid turning it into drudgery. I home educated by kids from about eight up to sixteen when they had done GCSEs (exams school kids in the UK do at 16). I very rarely had to force them to do anything, but I did have to make an effort to find the right approach to make things interesting. I think the solution is to let kids do what they choose but intervene if they are not learning at all. This takes judgement and knowing them as individuals. You could do it in schools if you have a very low student-teacher ratio (I say below 10 to 1 - so in the UK you would need about double the number of teachers in the state system), trusted teachers' judgement over metrics, and had more flexibility about learning to individual needs rather the prescribing exactly what kids need to learn at a particular age.

foobarian 1y ago

> But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated It's not not possible, but the problem is you'd end up with a majority uneducated populous who would decide that sacrificing goats and watering crops with Gatorade is the thing to do, and they would hang you if you disagreed

card_zero 1y ago
I don't know. I'd like Mike Judge's opinion on this point. Does trapping people in a building and forcing them to stack up academic KPIs really make them less stupid? I suppose it keeps them away from superstition and hoaxes and scams. Maybe. Does it even help with that? It's probably the socialization that matters.