4 ms·

As much as I hated schooling, I do want to say that there are parts of learning that are simply hard. There are parts that you can build enthusiasm for with pro

by yannyu 11mo ago

As much as I hated schooling, I do want to say that there are parts of learning that are simply hard. There are parts that you can build enthusiasm for with project work and prioritizing for engagement. But there are many things that people should learn that will require drudgery to learn and won't excite all people. Doing derivatives, learning the periodic table, basic language and alphabet skills, playing an instrument are foundational skills that will require deliberate practice to learn, something that isn't typically part of project based learning. At some point in education with most fields, you will have to move beyond concepts and do some rote memorization and repetition of principles in order to get to higher level concepts. You can't gamify your way out of education, despite our best attempts to do so.

FloorEgg 11mo ago
Most learning curves in the education system today are very bumpy and don't adapt well to the specific student. Students get stuck on big bumps or get bored and demotivated at plateaus. AI has potential to smooth out all curves so that students can learn faster and maximize time in flow. I've spent literally thousands of hours thinking about this (and working on it). The future of education will be as different from today as today is to 300 years ago. Kids used to get smacked with a stick if they spelled a word wrong.
- seg_lol 11mo ago
  There is a huge opportunity here to have the stick smacking be automated and timed to perfection.
  - FloorEgg 11mo ago
    The point is that the education system has come a long way in utilizing STEM to make education more efficient (helping students advance faster and further with less resources) and it will continue to go a long way further. People thought the threat of physical violence was a good way to teach. We have learned better. What else is there for us to learn? What have we already learned but just don't have the resources to apply? I've met many educators who have told me stories of ambitions learning goals for students that didn't work because there weren't the time or resources to facilitate them properly. Often instructors are stuck trading off between inauthentic assessments that have scalable evaluation methods or authentic exercises that aren't feasible to evaluate at scale and so evaluation is sparse, incomplete or students only receive credit for completion.
TheAceOfHearts 11mo ago
Yeah, I agree that there's some skills that require deliberate practice. I think LLMs will be a huge boon there as well, because you can get real-time feedback as you're solving problems. And if you get stuck you can get immediate help or clarification, which is closer to having a personal tutor. In college if I got stuck on a problem, I might end up having to wait multiple days to ask someone for help. In software engineering we often come across build environments that make code iteration really difficult and slow, and speeding up that iteration cycle usually results in being able to experiment more and ship faster changes.
xboxnolifes 11mo ago
> At some point in education with most fields, you will have to move beyond concepts and do some rote memorization and repetition of principles in order to get to higher level concepts. You can't gamify your way out of education, despite our best attempts to do so. I don't know if we'll ever be successful, but the entire point of gamification is to make the rote parts more palatable. A lot of gamification techniques try to model after MMO gaming for a reason, as that's a genre where people willingly subject themselves to a lot of rote tasks.
graemep 11mo ago
> Doing derivatives Not something everyone learns. My kids seemed to enjoy it. My older daughter learned quite a lot of algebra etc. by doing physics. > learning the periodic table You do not need to rote learn all of it, and you remember enough by learning about particular elements etc. > basic language and alphabet skills My kids learned to read through firstly reading with me (or others) so enjoying the story and learning words as we went and guessing words on flashcards. Then on to reading because they linked it. Admittedly none of the above was in school, but my point is that its not intrinsic to learning. > At some point in education with most fields, you will have to move beyond concepts and do some rote memorization and repetition of principles in order to get to higher level concepts. Not a great deal and it does not feel like as much of a grind if you enjoy the subject and know where you are going.
- iteria 11mo ago
  This depends on the kid. I tried for literal years to get my kid to read. Nothing works. It doesn't matter what games I picked. What context she has to read, books, comics, video games, real life. It was not happening. You know what kick started my kid's ability to read? A reading teacher sitting with her every single day and teaching her explicitly the drudgery of what reading was. And then me doing the same at home. Rote is for kids like this and a lot of kids have areas like this. No my kid doesn't need as much math facts practice as she gets. But her cousin? That kid isn't learning anything without doing lines about how to add.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    Yes, of course there is individual variation, but there are usually ways around it. Not every single time, but usually. > A reading teacher sitting with her every single day and teaching her explicitly the drudgery of what reading was Individual attention makes a huge difference.
cameronh90 11mo ago
I have never had to rote learn anything mental since at least mid childhood. I can't remember before then. If it's something I need to do regularly, I eventually learn it through natural repetition while working towards the high level goal I was actually trying to achieve. Derivatives were like this for me. I still don't fully know the periodic table though, because it doesn't really come up in my life; if it's not something I need to do regularly, I just don't learn it. My guess is this doesn't work for everything (or for everyone), and it probably depends on the learning curve you experience. If there are cliff edges in the curve that are not aligned with useful or enjoyable output, dedicated practice of some sort is probably needed to overcome them, which may take the form of rote learning, or, maybe better, spaced repetition or quizzing or similar. However at least for me, I've not encountered anything like that. If I was to speculate why rote learning doesn't work well for me, I don't seem to experience a feeling of reward during it, and it seems like my ability to learn is really heavily tied somehow to that feeling. I learn far more quickly if it's a problem I've been struggling with for a while that I solve, or it's a problem I really wanted to solve, as the reward feeling is much higher.

by yannyu 11mo ago

FloorEgg 11mo ago

Most learning curves in the education system today are very bumpy and don't adapt well to the specific student. Students get stuck on big bumps or get bored and demotivated at plateaus. AI has potential to smooth out all curves so that students can learn faster and maximize time in flow. I've spent literally thousands of hours thinking about this (and working on it). The future of education will be as different from today as today is to 300 years ago. Kids used to get smacked with a stick if they spelled a word wrong.

seg_lol 11mo ago
There is a huge opportunity here to have the stick smacking be automated and timed to perfection.
- FloorEgg 11mo ago
  The point is that the education system has come a long way in utilizing STEM to make education more efficient (helping students advance faster and further with less resources) and it will continue to go a long way further. People thought the threat of physical violence was a good way to teach. We have learned better. What else is there for us to learn? What have we already learned but just don't have the resources to apply? I've met many educators who have told me stories of ambitions learning goals for students that didn't work because there weren't the time or resources to facilitate them properly. Often instructors are stuck trading off between inauthentic assessments that have scalable evaluation methods or authentic exercises that aren't feasible to evaluate at scale and so evaluation is sparse, incomplete or students only receive credit for completion.

TheAceOfHearts 11mo ago

Yeah, I agree that there's some skills that require deliberate practice. I think LLMs will be a huge boon there as well, because you can get real-time feedback as you're solving problems. And if you get stuck you can get immediate help or clarification, which is closer to having a personal tutor. In college if I got stuck on a problem, I might end up having to wait multiple days to ask someone for help. In software engineering we often come across build environments that make code iteration really difficult and slow, and speeding up that iteration cycle usually results in being able to experiment more and ship faster changes.

xboxnolifes 11mo ago

> At some point in education with most fields, you will have to move beyond concepts and do some rote memorization and repetition of principles in order to get to higher level concepts. You can't gamify your way out of education, despite our best attempts to do so. I don't know if we'll ever be successful, but the entire point of gamification is to make the rote parts more palatable. A lot of gamification techniques try to model after MMO gaming for a reason, as that's a genre where people willingly subject themselves to a lot of rote tasks.

graemep 11mo ago

> Doing derivatives Not something everyone learns. My kids seemed to enjoy it. My older daughter learned quite a lot of algebra etc. by doing physics. > learning the periodic table You do not need to rote learn all of it, and you remember enough by learning about particular elements etc. > basic language and alphabet skills My kids learned to read through firstly reading with me (or others) so enjoying the story and learning words as we went and guessing words on flashcards. Then on to reading because they linked it. Admittedly none of the above was in school, but my point is that its not intrinsic to learning. > At some point in education with most fields, you will have to move beyond concepts and do some rote memorization and repetition of principles in order to get to higher level concepts. Not a great deal and it does not feel like as much of a grind if you enjoy the subject and know where you are going.

iteria 11mo ago
This depends on the kid. I tried for literal years to get my kid to read. Nothing works. It doesn't matter what games I picked. What context she has to read, books, comics, video games, real life. It was not happening. You know what kick started my kid's ability to read? A reading teacher sitting with her every single day and teaching her explicitly the drudgery of what reading was. And then me doing the same at home. Rote is for kids like this and a lot of kids have areas like this. No my kid doesn't need as much math facts practice as she gets. But her cousin? That kid isn't learning anything without doing lines about how to add.
- graemep 11mo ago
  Yes, of course there is individual variation, but there are usually ways around it. Not every single time, but usually. > A reading teacher sitting with her every single day and teaching her explicitly the drudgery of what reading was Individual attention makes a huge difference.

cameronh90 11mo ago

I have never had to rote learn anything mental since at least mid childhood. I can't remember before then. If it's something I need to do regularly, I eventually learn it through natural repetition while working towards the high level goal I was actually trying to achieve. Derivatives were like this for me. I still don't fully know the periodic table though, because it doesn't really come up in my life; if it's not something I need to do regularly, I just don't learn it. My guess is this doesn't work for everything (or for everyone), and it probably depends on the learning curve you experience. If there are cliff edges in the curve that are not aligned with useful or enjoyable output, dedicated practice of some sort is probably needed to overcome them, which may take the form of rote learning, or, maybe better, spaced repetition or quizzing or similar. However at least for me, I've not encountered anything like that. If I was to speculate why rote learning doesn't work well for me, I don't seem to experience a feeling of reward during it, and it seems like my ability to learn is really heavily tied somehow to that feeling. I learn far more quickly if it's a problem I've been struggling with for a while that I solve, or it's a problem I really wanted to solve, as the reward feeling is much higher.