4 ms·

Most of the things school curricula touch turn awful. It's never been easier for you and interested kids to learn these things on their own.

• ekelsen 2mo ago
  I know them now, the questions were rhetorical. I agree that school curricula is often bad. I disagree that we should just accept it as hopeless and not hope it could get better.
  • eru 2mo ago
    No, no, just the opposite: school curricula are full of lofty highfalutin ideas. I didn't say anything is hopeless. It's just that adding more good and lofty ideas and topics to the curriculum isn't addressing the actual bottleneck.
• Retric 2mo ago
  The vast majority of people vastly overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education. Easier on its own is therefore effectively meaningless when people aren’t actually learning beyond the most superficial layers.
  • abyssin 2mo ago
    It’s not only feedback, having arbitrary checkpoints like exams is an important motivator, and it also creates a whole culture around it that makes the learning experience into a social one.
  • jacobolus 2mo ago
    > overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better. Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical classroom, because as it is self directed, self paced, can use the best materials someone can find and a whole variety of them vs. whatever was assigned, etc., but it takes a lot of skill (which comes from past practice) and effort on the part of the learner. Many researchers/scholars are doing significant amounts of self-directed learning as their career, and can get very good at it with decades of practice. The speed of learning in a classroom with 15+ students is inevitably unbelievably slow, and the time is used incredibly inefficiently. This isn't any particular problem with specific teachers, but as far as I can tell an inherent problem with aligning a bunch of people's preparation, motivation, and attention, and a problem with giving feedback in a 1:many setting. Teaching/learning speed generally seems worse at a primary school level vs. at a college level, given a very good teacher in both; I'm not sure if this is because of better prepared (because older) students, or just more motivated students.
    • Retric 2mo ago
      Formal education is wider than just 15+ people classrooms. Apprenticeships don’t require removing people from the workforce, but they require feedback to function well not just watching a master craftsman.
      • deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
      • eru 2mo ago
        Yes, apprenticeships are an interesting model. And in practice, whether formalised or not, it's how a lot of professions are taught to this day: as an example compare what they teach at university vs what you actually need on the job for your favourite white-collar profession. Some places, like management consultancies or investment banks, don't even require any specific degree.
  • OroPla 2mo ago
    English is my second language I learned outside of school. Formal education is pretty worthless all around in my experience, as they only tell you what you should learn on your own but make no effort to actually teach you. Otherwise every person leaving school would be fluent in at least two languages. The most incredulous part is how easy it was to learn English on my own. It took less than two years after having failed to do so with 10+ years in school.
• LarsDu88 2mo ago
  Yet the end result appears that people on their own accord go and "learn" things like vaccines are bad, fluoridated water is used for mind control, rectal enemas can cure bowel cancer, and that the moon landings were fake. At least the education system enforces some baseline level of standards