8 ms·

I'm not the first person to state this, but it bears repeating: nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. I'm not ex

by tombert 4mo ago

I'm not the first person to state this, but it bears repeating: nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. I'm not exempting myself from this. I was an adjunct lecturer for two semesters. I did have some fun with it, but it was way harder than I thought it would be, and I think that university is probably considerably easier than elementary or high school. I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Now when I see people talking about how they're going to "revolutionize" school, most of the time I just assume that they've never actually taught anyone anything, or least never been required to teach someone who really isn't interested in learning.

Natsu 4mo ago
There's a huge difference between things people are forced to learn and stuff they want to learn. Life does tend to make you learn a few things by force, but that can also kill off one's taste for a subject. Conversely, I remember mom giving me M&Ms for getting math flash cards right as a small kid. For some reason, I always liked math...
- tombert 4mo ago
  There's an art to making learning fun. I thought I had that skill, but I do not, at least not intrinsically. Maybe I could learn it, but since I was only a lecturer for about a year, I never really developed it. I am not going to pretend I know how to make seemingly-boring subjects interesting, but a lot of things do need to be learned that aren't always fun. I've always liked math [1], but I know a lot of people don't. Even still, I think having basic and intermediate math skills is important. I have no idea how to make math fun for people that actively don't like it. [1] And I don't think I was given M&Ms for it :(
  - galaxyLogic 4mo ago
    Thing about it is the students should be given an explanations about why each topic is important for them to learn to be able to learn more advanced topics. Maybe briefly show how that adavanced topic will be taught and let them realize they can not possible even start to understand advanced topic because they are missing the more elementary pieces. Similarly why they can't got further without doing their homework. How mastering the homework exercises let's you solve more problems. I know that is not easy, the teacher may not quite understand how topics relate, why each of them is needed in a specific order, if they have not thought about that much.
    - eszed 4mo ago
      Yes, to all of this. The pedagogical term for the concept in your final paragraph is "scaffolding", and it's critical. Teachers have to know how to break their subject down into digestible pieces, and then find the proper order in which to build it up again. Advanced mode: be able to break it down and build it up again in different ways, for students with different backgrounds or learning styles. (This is why many teachers - I was among them - aren't immediately good at teaching concepts or subjects that come easily to them as they may be at teaching things they struggled a bit to learn. If you've had to break something down for yourself then you're ahead of the game when it comes to breaking it down for others.) For a while I taught an "Improv For Teachers" workshop (I have a theatre background), which was really about listening to your class and being ready to adapt your lesson plan to where they are in their course of work, or even to their mood on the day. It was mostly elementary school teachers, and some of them really resisted that idea. I'm convinced, though, that that's an important skill: the most memorable and successful classes I've taught have happened when I've been able to take advantage of a student question or a student interest and run with it - sometimes not even knowing where it'll go - with the confidence that I'll somehow be able to pivot back to the curriculum. You have to be willing to be a bit vulnerable, and embrace a bit of fear, and risk a bit of failure to do it, hence why the Improv experience is so helpful. Do you have teaching experience?
      - galaxyLogic 4mo ago
- wdutch 4mo ago
  As a math teacher myself I want to say... A parent taking an interest and spending some quality time with their child over a subject can have a huge impact on their motivation to learn. Props to your mom.
  - Natsu 4mo ago
    She was an elementary school teacher herself.
satisfice 4mo ago
I was one of those students. I refused to do homework after the age of 11 (I cited the 13th amendment). Quit school as soon as it was legal to do so. I wrote about this in Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. Now approaching my 60th birthday, I feel certain I was suffering from undiagnosed ADHD. You can't force a brain to think what you want it to think. I couldn't even force myself to think what I wanted to think. I began to imagine my thinking brain as if it were a pet rhino that did as it pleased. Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably. But it was a long journey. I teach for a living now-- but I only teach the willing.
- tombert 4mo ago
  I was too. That's why it was so frustrating to me. Teachers would like me, I don't think that any of them thought I was an idiot, but I wouldn't do my homework and they'd be stuck giving me middling-to-bad grades. I eventually more or less figured out how to force myself to learn things I didn't care about, and I did eventually get my bachelors and a masters, but that wasn't until my 30's.
- cortesoft 4mo ago
  > Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably. Honestly, these are the most important things to learn. I spend a lot of time with my kids talking about ways to get your brain to do what you want.
- obscurette 4mo ago
  Sounds too familiar. But I survived at school and I think that it helped a ton that I went to school at sixties (Soviet Union) – explicit teaching, homework and grades since age six, order in classrooms etc allowed me to practice handling my brain with babysteps since early age. If I look at classes my grandkids are put in – no way I'd survived in such chaotic and noisy environment with so few rules.
- Danox 4mo ago
  In America being willing historically depending on where you live still isn't enough for getting an education, healthcare or voting depending on where you live. But no worries there is a country on the other side of the world moving upwards.
socalgal2 4mo ago
There's also this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ which claims data shows students being forced to "figure it out" is not the best way to learn. Most HNer disagree with this.
- AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
  Seems to me that "figure it out" works better for learning depth of knowledge than it does for breadth of knowledge. That is, I can figure out the computer graphics tricks I need in order to get my project to draw fast, even if they're fairly deep and sophisticated tricks. I'm less likely to figure out, say, the humanities portion of a college education. Why? At least for me, focused goals motivate more than diffuse ones. I could treat "the humanities" as a bunch of focused goals, but there would be a large number of them. That takes a fair amount of motivation.
- obscurette 4mo ago
  As someone who have been teacher for some time - students being forced to "figure it out" is the worst way to learn. For every subject you teach explicitly there is always a ton of knowledge to discover if students choose to do it, but being forced to do it very clearly damages students. https://scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/no-explicit-instruction-does-not https://scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/no-explicit-instruc...
- rsolva 4mo ago
  What they need to figure out is what topics peaks their interest. Kids need exposure to a broad spectrum early, get interested, and then have mentors that know how to run with it and harness that motivation. Later on these kids can tolerate learning more mundane, boring stuff if that brings them closer to a goal they have set for themself. But motivation has to come first!
  - tuumi 4mo ago
    Piques their interest. Sorry to be that guy.
fhe 4mo ago
based on your description, one reasonable way to 'revolutionize' school might simply allow people (who don't want to be there) to leave.
- nhinck2 4mo ago
  There has been a shift towards too many jobs requiring a tertiary education. But good luck reversing that trend.
  - bawolff 4mo ago
    So? People can decide if they want the job enough to participate in the degree or not.
  - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
    This is not true. There has been a shift in requirements to combat credential inflation. The average person is not smarter or more capable.
    - somenameforme 4mo ago
      I think you misunderstood his comment, because you agree with him. He's not saying require as in needed to do the work, but required as in unnecessarily needed to be accepted for the job.
      - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
        Then I agree. I read it as the argument that the economy is actually more technically complex and requires additional education, which is a common argument made be politicians and university admins.
    - peterfirefly 4mo ago
      reading skills are important.
- cortesoft 4mo ago
fraserphysics 4mo ago
I signed up for software carpentry instructor training at the SciPy conference in 2015. I expected to learn about their curriculum. Instead, I found that they taught pedagogy. There were articles to read in advance. I should have taken that class before I spent 15 years teaching at university rather than afterwards.
- shimman 4mo ago
  What aspects of pedagogy did you find most relevant? It does seem sad that in our industry, one where practical learning is necessary, that learning how to learn isn't really taught well. Often the worse ways to learn are those that seemed to be encouraged, mostly because it's the easiest way to monetize content.
  - fraserphysics 4mo ago
    It was so long ago that I've forgotten most of it. I was impressed that it was based on evidence based literature. Here is a link to the training now https://carpentries.org/instructor-training/ https://carpentries.org/instructor-training/ I am disappointed that I don't see a reading list. Unless it's changed since I was active, The Carpentries does not monetize content.
j45 4mo ago
How to teach isn't always aligned with how to learn. How children learn is not how adults learn.
- crm9125 4mo ago
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- j45 4mo ago
  That's an odd comment below to see die from crm9125. I'm not sure what's so offensive about it? If it was downvoted, what interests could want to draw attention away from those sentences, and why? --- crm9125 13 hours ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–] Also there are about 2 billion children on earth, each with their own different idiosyncrasies. Good luck finding the grand unified theory of pedagogy for that.
necovek 4mo ago
I never taught myself, so take this with a grain of salt (though I do think it is extremely hard to do well). I did, however, have a teacher who taught an advanced subject and I found his instruction so good that I did not have to bother with homework and assignments if I was happy with B grades — as I wasn't particularly motivated, only occassionaly did I put in the effort for an A. I could, however, see the level of preparation that he put into it. When students confronted him with a difficult task, he'd not attack it right away but instead prepare for it for the next class so he'd provide the most effective instruction (it was not about being embarrased to show how exploration is sometimes messy because he'd quote that as the reason he won't do it right away). He was also so focused that he kicked out a school director when he tried to interrupt class with some sales pitch for whatever. Not everybody could score a B grade just out of his instruction, but nobody was failing a class because the instruction was so good. I will also openly admit: I had exactly one instructor like this in my life, so it is a high bar to clear ;)
- keithnz 4mo ago
  schooling has to be designed around "average" teachers. Having someone who is gifted at teaching is great, but there wouldn't be many teachers if that was the standard. I often think when people idealize what schooling should be like it always seems like they are imagining teachers who are gifted.
  - necovek 4mo ago
    I think in this case, it was a teacher who is motivated, committed and focused on efficient, effective direct instruction followed by practice. But I believe your point is great — we usually focus on average vs non-average student, and you are absolutely right that we need to focus on an average teacher just the same: what is the most effective way for a possibly non-motivated, less capable teacher to provide instruction with?
  - RealityVoid 4mo ago
    Yes, as always, we like people to be good at their jobs instead of being bad at their jobs. But, I think teaching skills, juuuust like any other skills can be taught and improved. So if we want good teachers and educators we need to build them up, not just relie on a few good ones to carry the day. I personally reject the notion of competency in this as a matter of "giftedness", as something you either have or don't have. I think it's something you cam build. It's something you can teach. But you need to specifically aim for it.
aaron695 4mo ago
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Animats 4mo ago
We know what works: a 1:5 staff to student ratio. At that ratio, method matters less. Beyond that, it's a productivity problem.
- kelseyfrog 4mo ago
  Yep, known as Bloom's Two Sigma Problem[1]. Like most hard problems we know the solution, but lack the appetite to implement. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
  - intended 4mo ago
    Hey Bloom’s 2 sigma problem. So far, (nearly) all conversations about education on HN I’ve seen, have had a naturally point at which Bloom’s 2s should be introduced. Humanity is now preparing students with a 20 year time horizon, while tech changes much faster. If this was agriculture, the industry would be doomed by that horizon mismatch. We really need more teachers, if we want the median citizen to be better off.
  - bradleyjg 4mo ago
    The study picked an artificial and useless proxy. What did tutored students go on to do? Were they over represented in Nobel Prizes, hedge fund billionaires, heads of state? Or did they do well on a meaningless test and then forget all about whatever they “learned” just like everyone else? The entire field is absolutely littered with this problem. Everyone is targeting cholesterol and not all cause mortality.
    - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
      What evidence would change your mind?
      - bradleyjg 4mo ago
        Strong correlations to actual outcomes. That can be career outcomes or otherwise but actual outcomes people care about. Not test scores. We have a zillion natural experiments because there are so many schools in the world and within many of them teachers given a lot of leeway. Does any of it make a damn bit of difference controlling for everything else? We have Waldorf schools teaching woodworking and cram schools shoving AP courses at eighth graders—-that’s a large difference, what do life outcomes show?
doctorpangloss 4mo ago
> I just assume that they've never actually taught anyone anything I care about teaching my students leadership, because all real problems are political. What exactly is the "test" for this? To me, revolutionizing school looks beyond "problem solving," because the parents and students who are excited about the thing they call "problem solving" - it's invoked in the article, it's talked about by many of the other comments - basically solves no real problems. The revolution will redefine what "problem solving" means.
- roncesvalles 4mo ago
  >because all real problems are political I don't think that's true at all. A lot of problems are purely technical. Once someone figures out the technical part, you realize the politically savvy people waiting on the sidelines for a solution were always a dime a dozen.
  - doctorpangloss 4mo ago
    at every level, we face political problems that "STEM" provides bad or wrong answers to. here's a simple one: what is the right answer for how to use a road? more parking? more bike lanes? exclusive use for busses? we do not bid on roadway land, there is no market solution to this. you can come up with a lot of metrics for efficiencies and optimize for them, but which metrics matter? journey times? environmental impact? there are real disputes about waymos, it isn't enough to invent autonomous vehicles, there must be leadership on adopting technology. these are all political issues. okay, and you probably spend 30m to an hour on roadways every day of your life, you can't say, this isn't a real problem. the greatest irony is it is exactly the families with this fairly myopic "all problem solving is math problem sets" point of view who disengage from political life, and despite their fixation on cultural hegemony, they have disproportionately little representation in politics. to be real, the reason parents care about math is because money. which should tell you everything you really need to know about its power to "solve problems."
- mrngld 4mo ago
  Got to disagree, there's been a cohort of teachers pursuing that avenue of thought and all it's led to is colleges that shout down anything that'd pierce the monoculture and employees so politicized they lose some utility in actually doing the useful work that the company or entity exists to perform. It's a side effect, perhaps, of the modern "main character syndrome". An electrician doesn't need political "leadership". He needs to know how to wire a house quickly, efficiently, and above all, safely. He doesn't need extensive training on how to help bring about a proletariat revolution. That's an example from the trades, but same in the white collar world; my employers accountants weren't hired because of any activism, but because they know accounting rules and regulations so the rest of the business doesn't have to think about those things as much. If anything, modern generations need reminders that 99.99% of us are NPC's and the best thing we can do for the world, our families and those around us are to be really good, competent NPC's. Let me also point out we landed on the moon without that view of education. People, on the moon, with all the technological and institutional advances necessary to make that happen.
teiferer 4mo ago
> teach someone who really isn't interested in learning. This is key. If you are interested in a subject, the learning will come more or less automatically. Different ways of teaching still have substantial impact on how efficiently you learn, but you automatically gravitate towards the more efficient methods since you want to learn this out of interest in the subject. Without interest, this is an uphill battle. And that is the gripe with traditional schooling. The methods may work well for intetested students, but they really kill interest. If I'm evaluated all the time, pressure on me, my interest tanks. The difference between something I have to do versus something I want to do is absolutely key.
- whiplash451 4mo ago
  To a large extent, the onus is on the teacher to generate interest. Most teaching until uni is mostly forced upon students.
  - graemep 4mo ago
    > Most teaching until uni is mostly forced upon students. That is the problem. It should not be forced. People naturally love learning and its a matter of facilitating that. Not going into details here as I have recent comments on this and other threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409530
    - watwut 4mo ago
      People naturally like learning some things and dislike learning others. The idea that if some learning is not interesting to everyone is misguided. And no, something being useful and relevant does not make it interesting on itself. Even if you know it is useful you can just dislike having to learn it.
      - graemep 4mo ago
        What is wrong with focusing on what you find interesting and doing only what is really necessary of what you do not? The problem is forcing everyone, regardless of talents or interests or aims, to follow the same curriculum If you know its useful you are still motived. if you are motivated overall you will develop the discipline to get through what you do not find interesting and put the work in. it avoids situations like this from the first comment in this thread: "they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade."
atoav 4mo ago
I am teaching for at the university level for 6 years now, with 5 courses per year. The one most important goal many beginning (or bad) educators miss is making students care before going all explainy. My subjects are very practical (Media technology, Electronics) and I have repeatedly seen students who understand a theoretical explaination and then fail utterly to apply what was explained in a practical situation. Coincidentally the latter makes most of them care instantly. The solution in my case was to weave the theory together with something practical tangible. If everybody knows what they are working towards, and you weave in small practical tasks where it has to be applied that knowledge serves a purpose and students are much, much more willing to understand. When you then go all meta and details after they understood what it is for and how it is used that worked much better than front loading the a struct stuff. So (1) the dumb explainations that avoid them hurting themselves or breaking things, geared towards "this is what we need in 5 minutes", (2) applying the dumb thing to a practical solution, (3) theory how does it actually work, (4) another practical thing, this time armed with knowledge, watching out for details that we now notice because of knowing the theory. Students soak that up like sponges. But teaching is hard, especially if the knowledge levels of the students in a group are disparate or you have students that aren't actually fit to receive education for mental reasons in that moment.
deleted 4mo ago
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Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
From experience (with a moody teenager), can confirm; I think this is less teaching methods and more personal development. Younger children will conform more easily to e.g. structured education, teacher / parent authority, and basically do what they are told/asked to do. But at college / uni ages, you're dealing with young adults, some of which are only doing an education still because it's expected of them by parents/society. Or even when they want to be there, the motivation to do the work may not be there. yet. It's difficult because their brain is still at high learning capacity, so one has to capitalize on that. But they also have other interests, like sleeping until midday and spacing out for ages.
- graemep 4mo ago
  Younger children will do what they are told more easily, but making learning a chore they do because they are told to rather than a joy will kill their love of learning and that is what causes the lack of motivation later on.
graemep 4mo ago
I think the problem with your argument is that you are placing teaching as something done to students at the centre of your view, rather than something done by students. It assume classroom learning. That rules out any really different approach. The fundamental problem is trying to revolutionise schooling rather than learning. > They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Then they should not be there. That is the fundamental problem. Especially at that level why is anyone there who is not even motivated enough to study? Someone might not like ever undergraduate level course they need for a degree, but they should be able to push themselves through the boring stuff. At school level, its difficult to make things work in a classroom setting with a fixed curriculum. Once I took my kids out of school they largely learned what they found interesting until they started studying towards doing exams. I made sure they learned core skills around reading, writing and maths, but they still had a say in what to do and how. A lot of it can be done by pursuing other subjects or hobbies. With the exams they had a choice (discussed, and they had to do maths and English language) but they had a choice) of what subjects to do and made choices that suited them, including some less common subjects (such as astronomy and Latin). Again, motivated and requiring very little actual teaching (they both entirely taught themselves Latin, and did other subjects with minimal help - although we did have tutors for English literature and classical civilisation, and varying amounts of parental help with other subjects). A lot of the best universities (in the UK, at least) have tutorial systems that rely heavily on small groups rather than lectures (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St Andrews - that I know of). A lot more individual attention is a long proven method of getting better results. At school level it might look very expensive, but that is balanced by needing a lot less time per student. A few hours of one to one a week is cheaper than school.
- simiones 4mo ago
  The point of a fixed curriculum is that there is a minimal level of knowledge on various subjects that we should expect all of our fellow citizens to have. Maybe you find biology very boring, but that still doesn't mean you should be able to finish school without knowing that living organisms have cells that power them, that all animals have hearts, that plants do photosynthesis etc. It's alright to not like history, but you should still have some idea of what the Roman empire was or about the Second World War. It's ok to hate physics, but it's not ok to have no idea about Newton's laws of motion or about the notions of pressure, volume, and temperature and how they relate to each other in gasses. Knowing Latin doesn't compensate for lacking knowledge about the fundamental details of the world we live in and share.
vintermann 4mo ago
Well, we've all been students, haven't we? And most of us probably have experience with ways of teaching us that worked, and ways that didn't. Of course we're all going to have an opinion. I don't have any grand theory of education, but I have some stories of what worked for me and what didn't. I learned English from a guy with a radical method: the "direct method" or "natural method". After the first lesson explaining what he was going to do, he spoke only English in class. The textbook also had only English (vocabulary was taught with pictures). This was about third grade elementary school. This worked great for me, I always had top marks in English. German, by comparison, was always taught to me in the traditional method with grammar lists etc. durchfürgegenohneum, ausbeimitnachseitvonzu, and I still remember that crap and I still absolutely suck at German. So one "revolutionary", running his own radical program (he would never have been allowed to do that today), helped me. I think we should let people try things.
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  I'd agree with this conclusion from another angle as well. It seems slightly odd to me that people think there must be a single "right" way to teach. What works for one student, one group of people, doesn't necessarily work well for another. And it also goes the other way as well. One form of pedagogy might work excellently for one teacher, yet he may do abysmally at another. What's "right" for him may be wrong for another teacher. By striving for something like homogeneity you disadvantage not only students, but also teachers. This is all even more true in current times as educational outcomes continue to decline even as ever more money is pumped into education, and teacher churn rates are at record highs, with many completely leaving the profession.
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    Humans are not so different from one other that we need different ways. However there are a lot of ways that work and it is very hard to run a real study to figure out which is best. You cannot isolate all the variables (several of the different ways claim teacher quality is important - just one variable that is hard to isolate)
hurril 4mo ago
I was one of these "smart students" but it really wasn't that I did not want to be there. I was a lazy, or complacent, f*ck. I've have had to learn how to learn and how to have discipline late(r) in life.
bradleyjg 4mo ago
I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. I think you need to go a level up. Forget the people that flunked the class. Did the people that get good grades learn anything? Really? Do you think they still know it? Was learning the point for anyone or any institution involved?
- tombert 4mo ago
  I think for at least a couple of the students, they really did learn the subject well. A couple students took me up on my offer to do private tutoring [1], and I do think that they benefited from it. A couple of them would even ask interesting follow-up questions [2]. Of course, there's a pretty strong selection-bias there: if they are actively looking for help from a professional, they probably have some interest in the subject matter, so it's difficult to know how much I helped compared to them just looking things up on Google and/or doing the homework, but I would like to think that I helped at least a little more than they would have had otherwise. [1] On my own free time; I wasn't given any direct budget for office hours. [2] e.g. one person became extremely interested multithreading and multiprocessing, and so I pointed him to the ZeroMQ guide and walked him through some basic farmout patterns...I should see how he's doing actually, I think he has a lot of potential.
red-iron-pine 4mo ago
> I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. "The A students lead the C students who direct the B students"
- tombert 4mo ago
  I thought I might be able to reach them, because I was never an A student. I was always kind of the underachiever who teachers knew was smart but would get mediocre grades because I wouldn't do the homework. I passed high school because I have a good enough memory to remember what was being taught in class and do fine on tests, but I'd still get middling-to-bad grades in high school because I wouldn't consistently do the homework. To be clear, I do not blame the teachers at all for this; I do not think they took any joy giving me bad grades. But because I was someone who knew what it was like to be a smart academic underachiever, I thought I might have luck reaching the students who I saw falling into the same negative patterns I had. I do think I reached at least one, but I think most of them I did not. It's ok, teaching is hard. I hope a better teacher came along in these students' lives and helped them out.
jon-wood 4mo ago
> I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Yeah, I was that student. It was undiagnosed ADHD (because nobody thinks to go send the kids who aren't literally jumping around the place shouting for an assessment, I'm ADD without so much of the hyperactivity). Put me in a classroom where literally all there is to do is getting on with the work and I'll be mostly ok, or at least give a good appearance of being so. Once I got home though I simply wasn't going to sit down and focus on doing homework, it wasn't a case of refusing too or anything, I always had the intent of doing it, but then the morning it was due would come round and somehow it hadn't happened. Anyway, I did fine. Through some merciful coincidence the thing I was interested in doing turned out to be a lucrative career choice in an industry populated by people with the same sort of brain. That was almost entirely fluke though, it would be nice if instead of people just shrugging and going "huh, guess he's not interested in learning" we could improve education to better accommodate people who don't fit exactly down the median path. I'd start by doing away with with homework which really is some grade A bullshit - if my employer decided to turn around and go "oh, by the way, now the work day is over here's some extra work I'd like you to get done in your own time" they wouldn't be my employer for very long. How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks?
- PotatoPrime 4mo ago
  > How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks? This is great in theory, but then you have students who complete those tasks in half the time allotted, who then proceed to distract the rest of the class. No easy one size fits all to the hw problem unfortunately.
  - hylaride 4mo ago
    Universal K-12 education was probably one of the greatest level-up programs that society has ever implemented. The question now, is it holding us back and how (if) it should be reformed. And reform is dangerous as there are people whose only goal is to ruin it, damned the consequences.
dboreham 4mo ago
Both my parents were teachers so I thought I had some idea, but it wasn't until I ventured into the middle school to assist a teacher with a coding class (probably this was 10 years ago now) that I learned something about education.
pc86 4mo ago
This is a really interesting framing to me. You say "forced," would you have preferred to give them a better grade even though they didn't do the work because they were smart?
- Jolter 4mo ago
  Forced, presumably, by the student themself.
- tombert 4mo ago
  I said "forced" because there's a grading framework that I had to follow and there was no amount of flexibility within that framework that made it so I could pass them... Especially since they didn't leave the class really understanding the subject. I knew they were capable of understanding what I was teaching, and I even made it very clear to students that if they are having trouble with the homework they can bother me and I will help them through it, and I will spend whatever amount of time it takes. A few students actually took me up on that, and they really did improve as a result, but some of the students simply seemed content on failing. I take it as a personal failing; if a person is smart enough to pass my class and didn't, then I didn't do a good enough job making it interesting.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4mo ago
Also, there is no 'right way to teach', but there are 'right ways of teaching'. This difference being that people can respond very differently to the same approach, so many approaches are needed to be effective.
deepsun 4mo ago
Yes, and I probably was that student in school. The thing is -- grades looked to me like a silly attempt in gamification. I did not really care about grades, but I care about learning. So you might have taught them good, and they will carry it to their lives, they just don't care to show it off in the form of grades. Now, an admission tests grades are way different deal, of course.
nickwood_dot_io 4mo ago
Absolutely. I regularly think about to how difficult it would have been to teach the younger me (while trying to stick myself in my kids' perspective). Any well intended notion of "I wonder what sort of teacher would have ignited a passion for learning" is quickly replaced by the understanding that such a person likely didn't exist. I was lazy up until I wasn't, which was largely a reaction to being lazy in the first place. Fast forward a few decades and I am a serial workaholic who is continually making up for lost time. Nowadays I wonder what it will take to motivate my offspring. It's the circle of liiiiiife......
SoftTalker 4mo ago
One of my sons is one of those. He's smart, tends to creative pursuits, and while he will research and learn on his own about stuff he's interested in, put him in a classroom setting, for something he doesn't really care about, and he just won't do the work.
- boringg 4mo ago
  I'm guessing your past this option but you could try a Montessori classroom -- less structured and allows children to chase their own pursuits. My sense is its stronger for years 1-6 as opposed to later years. Also it doesn't feel like Montessori tries to grind down the children - school/teachers dependent for sure (same could be said for other systems).
  - SoftTalker 4mo ago
    Oh he's well past that now. He did graduate High School, kept his grades up enough to be eligible to participate in some extracurriculars that he enjoyed. He made a couple attempts at community college, but it didn't go well and we agreed that we'd stop wasting money on that for now.
- hylaride 4mo ago
  I was one of those kids. Did well in class, participated, and my grades trended downwards as the school year went on. A lot of it was undiagnosed ADHD, which didn't work well with the repetitive nature of much public schooling. OK, let's do polynomials. Start with two terms...then three...then four...and on and on. I lost interest after three. Of course, then I didn't study or practice and did poorly on tests. I grasped the concepts, but couldn't be bothered to study. I had the same problems in other subjects. I'm a big history nerd. I could write a huge essay on the causes of WW1, but instead the tests were "what was the date of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand...". We also read the Hobbit as a grade 8 class book. First question on the test? "Name all the dwarves that were at Bilbo's party...". It took me a decade to re-read it and get into Lord of the Rings. I've actually thrived in the "real world" because I can quickly grasp concepts and with a combination of grit managed to make a great tech career. I was lucky with timing though. Had I been born a 5 years later, the career path wouldn't have worked.
weirdmantis69 4mo ago
That's true. I'm frustrated for example in how they teach math at my kids school. They don't do rote memorization of how to multiply. No quizzes, no reciting... they teach the conceptual parts of it which is fine, but without memorizing I feel they will never have fluency. And my daughter never did get fluency in math now I'm drilling my younger son every day.
notnullorvoid 4mo ago
> nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. It's typical for people to accumulate many examples of how "not to teach", and it's natural to extrapolate those experiences into ideas of "how to teach". To your point though, most people don't know how to do things they aren't practiced in, and some don't even know how to do things they are practiced in. > They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class [...] but they didn't want to be there. > [...] isn't interested in learning. I highly doubt these students weren't interested in learning. By your own account they were engaged during class. No teaching style is going to be able to fit to all students equally.
- CobaltFire 4mo ago
  I was taught (when teaching for the military, actually) that leadership/teaching/etc. often talk about toolboxes but neglect a VERY important one. You shouldn't just have a toolbox of things you've picked up from your best examples, that you've been taught, etc. It's possibly more important to have another toolbox of broken tools from all the terrible bosses, reactions to situations you've witnessed, etc. This way when you go to do something and it's not in your toolbox, you can pull out that box of broken/bad tools and see if it's there. Otherwise we perpetuate bad leadership (and teaching IS leadership) through intentional ignorance (forgetting the lessons those bad situations gave us).
vitally3643 4mo ago
Almost all such attempts start with the flawed assumption that there is One True Way to teach literally every person in the same cookie cutter fashion. The fact that the dozens or hundreds of different teaching styles have great success with some but not all is not considered past "some is not all therefore it's a failure". Individual humans can be radically different and have completely different needs. It's astounding how many people refuse to realize this.
b33j0r 4mo ago
I had the opposite experience. I saw college kids who didn’t know where the F5 key was on the first day write smart matlab and python programs by the midterms. I don’t think I’m exceptional at all. I was always behind and that probably reflected pretty poorly on me. But all it took to teach was preparing interesting examples and then spending time with subgroups and individuals. I bet a lot of people think I’m catastrophically wrong, probably just got lucky.
beej71 4mo ago
After 20 industry years, I've been teaching CS for the last 7. I sincerely hope that I figure it out before I retire. :) Doing this job effectively is more challenging than anything I've done in my career. I've read a lot about teaching, and it's amazing how much of it doesn't resonate for me. What has been the absolute best is sitting in on other instructors' classes and learning from them. And being completely flexible in how I teach--there really is no single solution to everything. "Be like water". As for the students who don't apply themselves, I know exactly who you are talking about, of course. And often they're among the most capable people in the class. There's also no single thing that works here. But I've had some success with asking them point-blank, "What's your plan for passing this class?" But that doesn't work with everyone.
- tombert 4mo ago
  Yeah, honestly if I were to do the lecturing again, I would probably get some training first. I, like a lot of people, thought it would be relatively easy for me because I've always been relatively good at explaining things to people on an individual level. For example, at previous jobs I was the person who was there to help explain functional programming concepts to people from different backgrounds, and I was often tasked as being the "theory guy" for the junior engineers when they were having trouble optimizing. But there were some problems with my thinking. First, sort of by definition if someone is asking for help they're kind of invested with paying attention and understanding the concept. Second, there's a pretty big difference between explaining something to a single person (especially a person you already kind of know) and an entire class of ~15-20 people, all of which are different humans with different histories and backgrounds. I also think I took things a bit more personally than I should have. I didn't have any training or practice, and I just jumped right into the teaching part. I think I did "ok" given that, but that's not exactly reassuring..."My professor for the class I paid money for wasn't quite as bad as he could have been."
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]

by tombert 4mo ago

Natsu 4mo ago

There's a huge difference between things people are forced to learn and stuff they want to learn. Life does tend to make you learn a few things by force, but that can also kill off one's taste for a subject. Conversely, I remember mom giving me M&Ms for getting math flash cards right as a small kid. For some reason, I always liked math...

tombert 4mo ago
There's an art to making learning fun. I thought I had that skill, but I do not, at least not intrinsically. Maybe I could learn it, but since I was only a lecturer for about a year, I never really developed it. I am not going to pretend I know how to make seemingly-boring subjects interesting, but a lot of things do need to be learned that aren't always fun. I've always liked math [1], but I know a lot of people don't. Even still, I think having basic and intermediate math skills is important. I have no idea how to make math fun for people that actively don't like it. [1] And I don't think I was given M&Ms for it :(
- galaxyLogic 4mo ago
  Thing about it is the students should be given an explanations about why each topic is important for them to learn to be able to learn more advanced topics. Maybe briefly show how that adavanced topic will be taught and let them realize they can not possible even start to understand advanced topic because they are missing the more elementary pieces. Similarly why they can't got further without doing their homework. How mastering the homework exercises let's you solve more problems. I know that is not easy, the teacher may not quite understand how topics relate, why each of them is needed in a specific order, if they have not thought about that much.
  - eszed 4mo ago
    Yes, to all of this. The pedagogical term for the concept in your final paragraph is "scaffolding", and it's critical. Teachers have to know how to break their subject down into digestible pieces, and then find the proper order in which to build it up again. Advanced mode: be able to break it down and build it up again in different ways, for students with different backgrounds or learning styles. (This is why many teachers - I was among them - aren't immediately good at teaching concepts or subjects that come easily to them as they may be at teaching things they struggled a bit to learn. If you've had to break something down for yourself then you're ahead of the game when it comes to breaking it down for others.) For a while I taught an "Improv For Teachers" workshop (I have a theatre background), which was really about listening to your class and being ready to adapt your lesson plan to where they are in their course of work, or even to their mood on the day. It was mostly elementary school teachers, and some of them really resisted that idea. I'm convinced, though, that that's an important skill: the most memorable and successful classes I've taught have happened when I've been able to take advantage of a student question or a student interest and run with it - sometimes not even knowing where it'll go - with the confidence that I'll somehow be able to pivot back to the curriculum. You have to be willing to be a bit vulnerable, and embrace a bit of fear, and risk a bit of failure to do it, hence why the Improv experience is so helpful. Do you have teaching experience?
    - galaxyLogic 4mo ago
wdutch 4mo ago
As a math teacher myself I want to say... A parent taking an interest and spending some quality time with their child over a subject can have a huge impact on their motivation to learn. Props to your mom.
- Natsu 4mo ago
  She was an elementary school teacher herself.

satisfice 4mo ago

I was one of those students. I refused to do homework after the age of 11 (I cited the 13th amendment). Quit school as soon as it was legal to do so. I wrote about this in Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. Now approaching my 60th birthday, I feel certain I was suffering from undiagnosed ADHD. You can't force a brain to think what you want it to think. I couldn't even force myself to think what I wanted to think. I began to imagine my thinking brain as if it were a pet rhino that did as it pleased. Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably. But it was a long journey. I teach for a living now-- but I only teach the willing.

tombert 4mo ago
I was too. That's why it was so frustrating to me. Teachers would like me, I don't think that any of them thought I was an idiot, but I wouldn't do my homework and they'd be stuck giving me middling-to-bad grades. I eventually more or less figured out how to force myself to learn things I didn't care about, and I did eventually get my bachelors and a masters, but that wasn't until my 30's.
cortesoft 4mo ago
> Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably. Honestly, these are the most important things to learn. I spend a lot of time with my kids talking about ways to get your brain to do what you want.
obscurette 4mo ago
Sounds too familiar. But I survived at school and I think that it helped a ton that I went to school at sixties (Soviet Union) – explicit teaching, homework and grades since age six, order in classrooms etc allowed me to practice handling my brain with babysteps since early age. If I look at classes my grandkids are put in – no way I'd survived in such chaotic and noisy environment with so few rules.
Danox 4mo ago
In America being willing historically depending on where you live still isn't enough for getting an education, healthcare or voting depending on where you live. But no worries there is a country on the other side of the world moving upwards.

socalgal2 4mo ago

There's also this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ which claims data shows students being forced to "figure it out" is not the best way to learn. Most HNer disagree with this.

AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
Seems to me that "figure it out" works better for learning depth of knowledge than it does for breadth of knowledge. That is, I can figure out the computer graphics tricks I need in order to get my project to draw fast, even if they're fairly deep and sophisticated tricks. I'm less likely to figure out, say, the humanities portion of a college education. Why? At least for me, focused goals motivate more than diffuse ones. I could treat "the humanities" as a bunch of focused goals, but there would be a large number of them. That takes a fair amount of motivation.
obscurette 4mo ago
As someone who have been teacher for some time - students being forced to "figure it out" is the worst way to learn. For every subject you teach explicitly there is always a ton of knowledge to discover if students choose to do it, but being forced to do it very clearly damages students. https://scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/no-explicit-instruction-does-not https://scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/no-explicit-instruc...
rsolva 4mo ago
What they need to figure out is what topics peaks their interest. Kids need exposure to a broad spectrum early, get interested, and then have mentors that know how to run with it and harness that motivation. Later on these kids can tolerate learning more mundane, boring stuff if that brings them closer to a goal they have set for themself. But motivation has to come first!
- tuumi 4mo ago
  Piques their interest. Sorry to be that guy.

fhe 4mo ago

based on your description, one reasonable way to 'revolutionize' school might simply allow people (who don't want to be there) to leave.

nhinck2 4mo ago
There has been a shift towards too many jobs requiring a tertiary education. But good luck reversing that trend.
- bawolff 4mo ago
  So? People can decide if they want the job enough to participate in the degree or not.
- groundzeros2015 4mo ago
  This is not true. There has been a shift in requirements to combat credential inflation. The average person is not smarter or more capable.
  - somenameforme 4mo ago
    I think you misunderstood his comment, because you agree with him. He's not saying require as in needed to do the work, but required as in unnecessarily needed to be accepted for the job.
    - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      Then I agree. I read it as the argument that the economy is actually more technically complex and requires additional education, which is a common argument made be politicians and university admins.
  - peterfirefly 4mo ago
    reading skills are important.
cortesoft 4mo ago

fraserphysics 4mo ago

I signed up for software carpentry instructor training at the SciPy conference in 2015. I expected to learn about their curriculum. Instead, I found that they taught pedagogy. There were articles to read in advance. I should have taken that class before I spent 15 years teaching at university rather than afterwards.

shimman 4mo ago
What aspects of pedagogy did you find most relevant? It does seem sad that in our industry, one where practical learning is necessary, that learning how to learn isn't really taught well. Often the worse ways to learn are those that seemed to be encouraged, mostly because it's the easiest way to monetize content.
- fraserphysics 4mo ago
  It was so long ago that I've forgotten most of it. I was impressed that it was based on evidence based literature. Here is a link to the training now https://carpentries.org/instructor-training/ https://carpentries.org/instructor-training/ I am disappointed that I don't see a reading list. Unless it's changed since I was active, The Carpentries does not monetize content.

j45 4mo ago

How to teach isn't always aligned with how to learn. How children learn is not how adults learn.

crm9125 4mo ago
[dead]
j45 4mo ago
That's an odd comment below to see die from crm9125. I'm not sure what's so offensive about it? If it was downvoted, what interests could want to draw attention away from those sentences, and why? --- crm9125 13 hours ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–] Also there are about 2 billion children on earth, each with their own different idiosyncrasies. Good luck finding the grand unified theory of pedagogy for that.

necovek 4mo ago

I never taught myself, so take this with a grain of salt (though I do think it is extremely hard to do well). I did, however, have a teacher who taught an advanced subject and I found his instruction so good that I did not have to bother with homework and assignments if I was happy with B grades — as I wasn't particularly motivated, only occassionaly did I put in the effort for an A. I could, however, see the level of preparation that he put into it. When students confronted him with a difficult task, he'd not attack it right away but instead prepare for it for the next class so he'd provide the most effective instruction (it was not about being embarrased to show how exploration is sometimes messy because he'd quote that as the reason he won't do it right away). He was also so focused that he kicked out a school director when he tried to interrupt class with some sales pitch for whatever. Not everybody could score a B grade just out of his instruction, but nobody was failing a class because the instruction was so good. I will also openly admit: I had exactly one instructor like this in my life, so it is a high bar to clear ;)

keithnz 4mo ago
schooling has to be designed around "average" teachers. Having someone who is gifted at teaching is great, but there wouldn't be many teachers if that was the standard. I often think when people idealize what schooling should be like it always seems like they are imagining teachers who are gifted.
- necovek 4mo ago
  I think in this case, it was a teacher who is motivated, committed and focused on efficient, effective direct instruction followed by practice. But I believe your point is great — we usually focus on average vs non-average student, and you are absolutely right that we need to focus on an average teacher just the same: what is the most effective way for a possibly non-motivated, less capable teacher to provide instruction with?
- RealityVoid 4mo ago
  Yes, as always, we like people to be good at their jobs instead of being bad at their jobs. But, I think teaching skills, juuuust like any other skills can be taught and improved. So if we want good teachers and educators we need to build them up, not just relie on a few good ones to carry the day. I personally reject the notion of competency in this as a matter of "giftedness", as something you either have or don't have. I think it's something you cam build. It's something you can teach. But you need to specifically aim for it.

aaron695 4mo ago

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Animats 4mo ago

We know what works: a 1:5 staff to student ratio. At that ratio, method matters less. Beyond that, it's a productivity problem.

kelseyfrog 4mo ago
Yep, known as Bloom's Two Sigma Problem[1]. Like most hard problems we know the solution, but lack the appetite to implement. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
- intended 4mo ago
  Hey Bloom’s 2 sigma problem. So far, (nearly) all conversations about education on HN I’ve seen, have had a naturally point at which Bloom’s 2s should be introduced. Humanity is now preparing students with a 20 year time horizon, while tech changes much faster. If this was agriculture, the industry would be doomed by that horizon mismatch. We really need more teachers, if we want the median citizen to be better off.
- bradleyjg 4mo ago
  The study picked an artificial and useless proxy. What did tutored students go on to do? Were they over represented in Nobel Prizes, hedge fund billionaires, heads of state? Or did they do well on a meaningless test and then forget all about whatever they “learned” just like everyone else? The entire field is absolutely littered with this problem. Everyone is targeting cholesterol and not all cause mortality.
  - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
    What evidence would change your mind?
    - bradleyjg 4mo ago
      Strong correlations to actual outcomes. That can be career outcomes or otherwise but actual outcomes people care about. Not test scores. We have a zillion natural experiments because there are so many schools in the world and within many of them teachers given a lot of leeway. Does any of it make a damn bit of difference controlling for everything else? We have Waldorf schools teaching woodworking and cram schools shoving AP courses at eighth graders—-that’s a large difference, what do life outcomes show?

doctorpangloss 4mo ago

> I just assume that they've never actually taught anyone anything I care about teaching my students leadership, because all real problems are political. What exactly is the "test" for this? To me, revolutionizing school looks beyond "problem solving," because the parents and students who are excited about the thing they call "problem solving" - it's invoked in the article, it's talked about by many of the other comments - basically solves no real problems. The revolution will redefine what "problem solving" means.

roncesvalles 4mo ago
>because all real problems are political I don't think that's true at all. A lot of problems are purely technical. Once someone figures out the technical part, you realize the politically savvy people waiting on the sidelines for a solution were always a dime a dozen.
- doctorpangloss 4mo ago
  at every level, we face political problems that "STEM" provides bad or wrong answers to. here's a simple one: what is the right answer for how to use a road? more parking? more bike lanes? exclusive use for busses? we do not bid on roadway land, there is no market solution to this. you can come up with a lot of metrics for efficiencies and optimize for them, but which metrics matter? journey times? environmental impact? there are real disputes about waymos, it isn't enough to invent autonomous vehicles, there must be leadership on adopting technology. these are all political issues. okay, and you probably spend 30m to an hour on roadways every day of your life, you can't say, this isn't a real problem. the greatest irony is it is exactly the families with this fairly myopic "all problem solving is math problem sets" point of view who disengage from political life, and despite their fixation on cultural hegemony, they have disproportionately little representation in politics. to be real, the reason parents care about math is because money. which should tell you everything you really need to know about its power to "solve problems."
mrngld 4mo ago
Got to disagree, there's been a cohort of teachers pursuing that avenue of thought and all it's led to is colleges that shout down anything that'd pierce the monoculture and employees so politicized they lose some utility in actually doing the useful work that the company or entity exists to perform. It's a side effect, perhaps, of the modern "main character syndrome". An electrician doesn't need political "leadership". He needs to know how to wire a house quickly, efficiently, and above all, safely. He doesn't need extensive training on how to help bring about a proletariat revolution. That's an example from the trades, but same in the white collar world; my employers accountants weren't hired because of any activism, but because they know accounting rules and regulations so the rest of the business doesn't have to think about those things as much. If anything, modern generations need reminders that 99.99% of us are NPC's and the best thing we can do for the world, our families and those around us are to be really good, competent NPC's. Let me also point out we landed on the moon without that view of education. People, on the moon, with all the technological and institutional advances necessary to make that happen.

teiferer 4mo ago

> teach someone who really isn't interested in learning. This is key. If you are interested in a subject, the learning will come more or less automatically. Different ways of teaching still have substantial impact on how efficiently you learn, but you automatically gravitate towards the more efficient methods since you want to learn this out of interest in the subject. Without interest, this is an uphill battle. And that is the gripe with traditional schooling. The methods may work well for intetested students, but they really kill interest. If I'm evaluated all the time, pressure on me, my interest tanks. The difference between something I have to do versus something I want to do is absolutely key.

whiplash451 4mo ago
To a large extent, the onus is on the teacher to generate interest. Most teaching until uni is mostly forced upon students.
- graemep 4mo ago
  > Most teaching until uni is mostly forced upon students. That is the problem. It should not be forced. People naturally love learning and its a matter of facilitating that. Not going into details here as I have recent comments on this and other threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409530
  - watwut 4mo ago
    People naturally like learning some things and dislike learning others. The idea that if some learning is not interesting to everyone is misguided. And no, something being useful and relevant does not make it interesting on itself. Even if you know it is useful you can just dislike having to learn it.
    - graemep 4mo ago
      What is wrong with focusing on what you find interesting and doing only what is really necessary of what you do not? The problem is forcing everyone, regardless of talents or interests or aims, to follow the same curriculum If you know its useful you are still motived. if you are motivated overall you will develop the discipline to get through what you do not find interesting and put the work in. it avoids situations like this from the first comment in this thread: "they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade."

atoav 4mo ago

I am teaching for at the university level for 6 years now, with 5 courses per year. The one most important goal many beginning (or bad) educators miss is making students care before going all explainy. My subjects are very practical (Media technology, Electronics) and I have repeatedly seen students who understand a theoretical explaination and then fail utterly to apply what was explained in a practical situation. Coincidentally the latter makes most of them care instantly. The solution in my case was to weave the theory together with something practical tangible. If everybody knows what they are working towards, and you weave in small practical tasks where it has to be applied that knowledge serves a purpose and students are much, much more willing to understand. When you then go all meta and details after they understood what it is for and how it is used that worked much better than front loading the a struct stuff. So (1) the dumb explainations that avoid them hurting themselves or breaking things, geared towards "this is what we need in 5 minutes", (2) applying the dumb thing to a practical solution, (3) theory how does it actually work, (4) another practical thing, this time armed with knowledge, watching out for details that we now notice because of knowing the theory. Students soak that up like sponges. But teaching is hard, especially if the knowledge levels of the students in a group are disparate or you have students that aren't actually fit to receive education for mental reasons in that moment.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

Cthulhu_ 4mo ago

From experience (with a moody teenager), can confirm; I think this is less teaching methods and more personal development. Younger children will conform more easily to e.g. structured education, teacher / parent authority, and basically do what they are told/asked to do. But at college / uni ages, you're dealing with young adults, some of which are only doing an education still because it's expected of them by parents/society. Or even when they want to be there, the motivation to do the work may not be there. yet. It's difficult because their brain is still at high learning capacity, so one has to capitalize on that. But they also have other interests, like sleeping until midday and spacing out for ages.

graemep 4mo ago
Younger children will do what they are told more easily, but making learning a chore they do because they are told to rather than a joy will kill their love of learning and that is what causes the lack of motivation later on.

graemep 4mo ago

I think the problem with your argument is that you are placing teaching as something done to students at the centre of your view, rather than something done by students. It assume classroom learning. That rules out any really different approach. The fundamental problem is trying to revolutionise schooling rather than learning. > They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Then they should not be there. That is the fundamental problem. Especially at that level why is anyone there who is not even motivated enough to study? Someone might not like ever undergraduate level course they need for a degree, but they should be able to push themselves through the boring stuff. At school level, its difficult to make things work in a classroom setting with a fixed curriculum. Once I took my kids out of school they largely learned what they found interesting until they started studying towards doing exams. I made sure they learned core skills around reading, writing and maths, but they still had a say in what to do and how. A lot of it can be done by pursuing other subjects or hobbies. With the exams they had a choice (discussed, and they had to do maths and English language) but they had a choice) of what subjects to do and made choices that suited them, including some less common subjects (such as astronomy and Latin). Again, motivated and requiring very little actual teaching (they both entirely taught themselves Latin, and did other subjects with minimal help - although we did have tutors for English literature and classical civilisation, and varying amounts of parental help with other subjects). A lot of the best universities (in the UK, at least) have tutorial systems that rely heavily on small groups rather than lectures (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St Andrews - that I know of). A lot more individual attention is a long proven method of getting better results. At school level it might look very expensive, but that is balanced by needing a lot less time per student. A few hours of one to one a week is cheaper than school.

simiones 4mo ago
The point of a fixed curriculum is that there is a minimal level of knowledge on various subjects that we should expect all of our fellow citizens to have. Maybe you find biology very boring, but that still doesn't mean you should be able to finish school without knowing that living organisms have cells that power them, that all animals have hearts, that plants do photosynthesis etc. It's alright to not like history, but you should still have some idea of what the Roman empire was or about the Second World War. It's ok to hate physics, but it's not ok to have no idea about Newton's laws of motion or about the notions of pressure, volume, and temperature and how they relate to each other in gasses. Knowing Latin doesn't compensate for lacking knowledge about the fundamental details of the world we live in and share.

vintermann 4mo ago

Well, we've all been students, haven't we? And most of us probably have experience with ways of teaching us that worked, and ways that didn't. Of course we're all going to have an opinion. I don't have any grand theory of education, but I have some stories of what worked for me and what didn't. I learned English from a guy with a radical method: the "direct method" or "natural method". After the first lesson explaining what he was going to do, he spoke only English in class. The textbook also had only English (vocabulary was taught with pictures). This was about third grade elementary school. This worked great for me, I always had top marks in English. German, by comparison, was always taught to me in the traditional method with grammar lists etc. durchfürgegenohneum, ausbeimitnachseitvonzu, and I still remember that crap and I still absolutely suck at German. So one "revolutionary", running his own radical program (he would never have been allowed to do that today), helped me. I think we should let people try things.

somenameforme 4mo ago
I'd agree with this conclusion from another angle as well. It seems slightly odd to me that people think there must be a single "right" way to teach. What works for one student, one group of people, doesn't necessarily work well for another. And it also goes the other way as well. One form of pedagogy might work excellently for one teacher, yet he may do abysmally at another. What's "right" for him may be wrong for another teacher. By striving for something like homogeneity you disadvantage not only students, but also teachers. This is all even more true in current times as educational outcomes continue to decline even as ever more money is pumped into education, and teacher churn rates are at record highs, with many completely leaving the profession.
- bluGill 4mo ago
  Humans are not so different from one other that we need different ways. However there are a lot of ways that work and it is very hard to run a real study to figure out which is best. You cannot isolate all the variables (several of the different ways claim teacher quality is important - just one variable that is hard to isolate)

hurril 4mo ago

I was one of these "smart students" but it really wasn't that I did not want to be there. I was a lazy, or complacent, f*ck. I've have had to learn how to learn and how to have discipline late(r) in life.

bradleyjg 4mo ago

I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. I think you need to go a level up. Forget the people that flunked the class. Did the people that get good grades learn anything? Really? Do you think they still know it? Was learning the point for anyone or any institution involved?

tombert 4mo ago
I think for at least a couple of the students, they really did learn the subject well. A couple students took me up on my offer to do private tutoring [1], and I do think that they benefited from it. A couple of them would even ask interesting follow-up questions [2]. Of course, there's a pretty strong selection-bias there: if they are actively looking for help from a professional, they probably have some interest in the subject matter, so it's difficult to know how much I helped compared to them just looking things up on Google and/or doing the homework, but I would like to think that I helped at least a little more than they would have had otherwise. [1] On my own free time; I wasn't given any direct budget for office hours. [2] e.g. one person became extremely interested multithreading and multiprocessing, and so I pointed him to the ZeroMQ guide and walked him through some basic farmout patterns...I should see how he's doing actually, I think he has a lot of potential.

red-iron-pine 4mo ago

tombert 4mo ago
I thought I might be able to reach them, because I was never an A student. I was always kind of the underachiever who teachers knew was smart but would get mediocre grades because I wouldn't do the homework. I passed high school because I have a good enough memory to remember what was being taught in class and do fine on tests, but I'd still get middling-to-bad grades in high school because I wouldn't consistently do the homework. To be clear, I do not blame the teachers at all for this; I do not think they took any joy giving me bad grades. But because I was someone who knew what it was like to be a smart academic underachiever, I thought I might have luck reaching the students who I saw falling into the same negative patterns I had. I do think I reached at least one, but I think most of them I did not. It's ok, teaching is hard. I hope a better teacher came along in these students' lives and helped them out.

jon-wood 4mo ago

> I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Yeah, I was that student. It was undiagnosed ADHD (because nobody thinks to go send the kids who aren't literally jumping around the place shouting for an assessment, I'm ADD without so much of the hyperactivity). Put me in a classroom where literally all there is to do is getting on with the work and I'll be mostly ok, or at least give a good appearance of being so. Once I got home though I simply wasn't going to sit down and focus on doing homework, it wasn't a case of refusing too or anything, I always had the intent of doing it, but then the morning it was due would come round and somehow it hadn't happened. Anyway, I did fine. Through some merciful coincidence the thing I was interested in doing turned out to be a lucrative career choice in an industry populated by people with the same sort of brain. That was almost entirely fluke though, it would be nice if instead of people just shrugging and going "huh, guess he's not interested in learning" we could improve education to better accommodate people who don't fit exactly down the median path. I'd start by doing away with with homework which really is some grade A bullshit - if my employer decided to turn around and go "oh, by the way, now the work day is over here's some extra work I'd like you to get done in your own time" they wouldn't be my employer for very long. How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks?

PotatoPrime 4mo ago
> How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks? This is great in theory, but then you have students who complete those tasks in half the time allotted, who then proceed to distract the rest of the class. No easy one size fits all to the hw problem unfortunately.
- hylaride 4mo ago
  Universal K-12 education was probably one of the greatest level-up programs that society has ever implemented. The question now, is it holding us back and how (if) it should be reformed. And reform is dangerous as there are people whose only goal is to ruin it, damned the consequences.

dboreham 4mo ago

Both my parents were teachers so I thought I had some idea, but it wasn't until I ventured into the middle school to assist a teacher with a coding class (probably this was 10 years ago now) that I learned something about education.

pc86 4mo ago

This is a really interesting framing to me. You say "forced," would you have preferred to give them a better grade even though they didn't do the work because they were smart?

Jolter 4mo ago
Forced, presumably, by the student themself.
tombert 4mo ago
I said "forced" because there's a grading framework that I had to follow and there was no amount of flexibility within that framework that made it so I could pass them... Especially since they didn't leave the class really understanding the subject. I knew they were capable of understanding what I was teaching, and I even made it very clear to students that if they are having trouble with the homework they can bother me and I will help them through it, and I will spend whatever amount of time it takes. A few students actually took me up on that, and they really did improve as a result, but some of the students simply seemed content on failing. I take it as a personal failing; if a person is smart enough to pass my class and didn't, then I didn't do a good enough job making it interesting.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4mo ago

Also, there is no 'right way to teach', but there are 'right ways of teaching'. This difference being that people can respond very differently to the same approach, so many approaches are needed to be effective.

deepsun 4mo ago

Yes, and I probably was that student in school. The thing is -- grades looked to me like a silly attempt in gamification. I did not really care about grades, but I care about learning. So you might have taught them good, and they will carry it to their lives, they just don't care to show it off in the form of grades. Now, an admission tests grades are way different deal, of course.

nickwood_dot_io 4mo ago

Absolutely. I regularly think about to how difficult it would have been to teach the younger me (while trying to stick myself in my kids' perspective). Any well intended notion of "I wonder what sort of teacher would have ignited a passion for learning" is quickly replaced by the understanding that such a person likely didn't exist. I was lazy up until I wasn't, which was largely a reaction to being lazy in the first place. Fast forward a few decades and I am a serial workaholic who is continually making up for lost time. Nowadays I wonder what it will take to motivate my offspring. It's the circle of liiiiiife......

SoftTalker 4mo ago

One of my sons is one of those. He's smart, tends to creative pursuits, and while he will research and learn on his own about stuff he's interested in, put him in a classroom setting, for something he doesn't really care about, and he just won't do the work.

boringg 4mo ago
I'm guessing your past this option but you could try a Montessori classroom -- less structured and allows children to chase their own pursuits. My sense is its stronger for years 1-6 as opposed to later years. Also it doesn't feel like Montessori tries to grind down the children - school/teachers dependent for sure (same could be said for other systems).
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  Oh he's well past that now. He did graduate High School, kept his grades up enough to be eligible to participate in some extracurriculars that he enjoyed. He made a couple attempts at community college, but it didn't go well and we agreed that we'd stop wasting money on that for now.
hylaride 4mo ago
I was one of those kids. Did well in class, participated, and my grades trended downwards as the school year went on. A lot of it was undiagnosed ADHD, which didn't work well with the repetitive nature of much public schooling. OK, let's do polynomials. Start with two terms...then three...then four...and on and on. I lost interest after three. Of course, then I didn't study or practice and did poorly on tests. I grasped the concepts, but couldn't be bothered to study. I had the same problems in other subjects. I'm a big history nerd. I could write a huge essay on the causes of WW1, but instead the tests were "what was the date of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand...". We also read the Hobbit as a grade 8 class book. First question on the test? "Name all the dwarves that were at Bilbo's party...". It took me a decade to re-read it and get into Lord of the Rings. I've actually thrived in the "real world" because I can quickly grasp concepts and with a combination of grit managed to make a great tech career. I was lucky with timing though. Had I been born a 5 years later, the career path wouldn't have worked.

weirdmantis69 4mo ago

That's true. I'm frustrated for example in how they teach math at my kids school. They don't do rote memorization of how to multiply. No quizzes, no reciting... they teach the conceptual parts of it which is fine, but without memorizing I feel they will never have fluency. And my daughter never did get fluency in math now I'm drilling my younger son every day.

notnullorvoid 4mo ago

> nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. It's typical for people to accumulate many examples of how "not to teach", and it's natural to extrapolate those experiences into ideas of "how to teach". To your point though, most people don't know how to do things they aren't practiced in, and some don't even know how to do things they are practiced in. > They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class [...] but they didn't want to be there. > [...] isn't interested in learning. I highly doubt these students weren't interested in learning. By your own account they were engaged during class. No teaching style is going to be able to fit to all students equally.

CobaltFire 4mo ago
I was taught (when teaching for the military, actually) that leadership/teaching/etc. often talk about toolboxes but neglect a VERY important one. You shouldn't just have a toolbox of things you've picked up from your best examples, that you've been taught, etc. It's possibly more important to have another toolbox of broken tools from all the terrible bosses, reactions to situations you've witnessed, etc. This way when you go to do something and it's not in your toolbox, you can pull out that box of broken/bad tools and see if it's there. Otherwise we perpetuate bad leadership (and teaching IS leadership) through intentional ignorance (forgetting the lessons those bad situations gave us).

vitally3643 4mo ago

Almost all such attempts start with the flawed assumption that there is One True Way to teach literally every person in the same cookie cutter fashion. The fact that the dozens or hundreds of different teaching styles have great success with some but not all is not considered past "some is not all therefore it's a failure". Individual humans can be radically different and have completely different needs. It's astounding how many people refuse to realize this.

b33j0r 4mo ago

I had the opposite experience. I saw college kids who didn’t know where the F5 key was on the first day write smart matlab and python programs by the midterms. I don’t think I’m exceptional at all. I was always behind and that probably reflected pretty poorly on me. But all it took to teach was preparing interesting examples and then spending time with subgroups and individuals. I bet a lot of people think I’m catastrophically wrong, probably just got lucky.

beej71 4mo ago

After 20 industry years, I've been teaching CS for the last 7. I sincerely hope that I figure it out before I retire. :) Doing this job effectively is more challenging than anything I've done in my career. I've read a lot about teaching, and it's amazing how much of it doesn't resonate for me. What has been the absolute best is sitting in on other instructors' classes and learning from them. And being completely flexible in how I teach--there really is no single solution to everything. "Be like water". As for the students who don't apply themselves, I know exactly who you are talking about, of course. And often they're among the most capable people in the class. There's also no single thing that works here. But I've had some success with asking them point-blank, "What's your plan for passing this class?" But that doesn't work with everyone.

tombert 4mo ago
Yeah, honestly if I were to do the lecturing again, I would probably get some training first. I, like a lot of people, thought it would be relatively easy for me because I've always been relatively good at explaining things to people on an individual level. For example, at previous jobs I was the person who was there to help explain functional programming concepts to people from different backgrounds, and I was often tasked as being the "theory guy" for the junior engineers when they were having trouble optimizing. But there were some problems with my thinking. First, sort of by definition if someone is asking for help they're kind of invested with paying attention and understanding the concept. Second, there's a pretty big difference between explaining something to a single person (especially a person you already kind of know) and an entire class of ~15-20 people, all of which are different humans with different histories and backgrounds. I also think I took things a bit more personally than I should have. I didn't have any training or practice, and I just jumped right into the teaching part. I think I did "ok" given that, but that's not exactly reassuring..."My professor for the class I paid money for wasn't quite as bad as he could have been."
- deleted 4mo ago
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