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This article is ostensibly about biology but it's really about pedagogy—how traditional education squeezes out the sense of discovery and turns many subjects in

by vipshek 1mo ago

This article is ostensibly about biology but it's really about pedagogy—how traditional education squeezes out the sense of discovery and turns many subjects into rote memorization exercises. This reminds me of the pedagogical philosophy of Seymour Papert, who was heavily influenced by the ideas of Jean Piaget. Piaget's "genetic epistemology" argues that knowledge and understanding is created by interacting with environments, which traditional educational approaches fail to provide. Papert combined Piaget's ideas with the emergence of computing to argue that children should be taught subjects in a hands-on, exploratory way - and not just for teaching computing! The idea is that by programming in simplified languages, children can discover ideas in subjects like mathematics and grammar - deriving them as they try to solve problems instead of having them dictated to them. Suppose that biology was taught in a game-like environment where students were designing cells or organisms in some way. Maybe the game could be structured so that each organelle could be "discovered" by the student as they designed the cell to survive in some environment. Perhaps that'd make the purpose of each cell component more grounded and memorable. Papert's book Mindstorms covers all this in detail, and I highly recommend reading it. I feel like it's especially important today given fears of how AI will affect childhood education. At best, I hope that computing can be a boon to education instead of a detriment if it's woven into pedagogy thoughtfully.

BeetleB 1mo ago
Education serves two purposes: Understanding and developing skills for employment. Unfortunately, there usually isn't enough time to teach both for all subjects. The latter usually takes priority. I saw this happen twice in my university life. I took the honors version of CHEM101. 80% of it was more about exploring and discovery, and 20% was more traditional problems, calculations, etc. For people like me who were not chemistry majors, this was great. For the chemistry majors - they really struggled when they got into CHEM102. The same happened with Quantum Mechanics I. The professor didn't want to teach all the bra-ket notation, and more or less skipped much of the linear algebra aspects of QM - focusing on a purely calculus approach. He then retired. The professor who taught QM II saw what the professor did, and said "WTF?!" He spent most of the semester reteaching QM I. As a result, those like me who went on to grad school had to retake QM II at the new university to make up for all that wasn't taught to me.
- traes 1mo ago
  Completely off topic, but I really don't understand the demographic of physics educators that are resistant to Dirac notation in a first QM course. It isn't really that hard to explain or understand, it's extraordinarily convenient, and it's essential for engaging with most quantum adjacent literature. I understand that it conceals the distinction between vector space and dual space a bit but it's really not that hard to get through. I may be biased because I learned the notation in week 2 of intro quantum, so I am curious if anyone with the opposite experience disagrees.
  - BeetleB 1mo ago
    I think he just felt the students wouldn't be able to handle the linear algebra aspects of QM. Strange notion, given that all the students were seniors, and had all taken a linear algebra course from the math department. Probably wanted less formalism overall. Like when I took an E&M course in the EE department, and the professor insisted on teaching only the integral forms and not the differential forms of the Maxwell's equations (i.e. no divergence, curl, etc in the whole course).
- interludead 1mo ago
  [dead]
interludead 1mo ago
I would have loved that kind of biology game, particularly if failed designs were part of the lesson
- science4sail 1mo ago
  You should try Thrive - https://www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ https://www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ It's a open-source clone of Spore that aims to be more scientifically accurate. Right now you can play as microbes and very simple multicellular organisms.
perrygeo 1mo ago
Skin in the game. Being "smart" isn't an immutable property of a noun. It's a verb. It's something you do, something you practice, constantly. Even in fields like Math where ostensibly we have universal truths accessible to all, we still must learn how to derive proofs. Without doing math, one cannot understand math. Learning IS experiential. It requires concentration and effort. Those who seek to make learning "easier" by removing effort are embarrassingly misguided about human cognition.

by vipshek 1mo ago

BeetleB 1mo ago

Education serves two purposes: Understanding and developing skills for employment. Unfortunately, there usually isn't enough time to teach both for all subjects. The latter usually takes priority. I saw this happen twice in my university life. I took the honors version of CHEM101. 80% of it was more about exploring and discovery, and 20% was more traditional problems, calculations, etc. For people like me who were not chemistry majors, this was great. For the chemistry majors - they really struggled when they got into CHEM102. The same happened with Quantum Mechanics I. The professor didn't want to teach all the bra-ket notation, and more or less skipped much of the linear algebra aspects of QM - focusing on a purely calculus approach. He then retired. The professor who taught QM II saw what the professor did, and said "WTF?!" He spent most of the semester reteaching QM I. As a result, those like me who went on to grad school had to retake QM II at the new university to make up for all that wasn't taught to me.

traes 1mo ago
Completely off topic, but I really don't understand the demographic of physics educators that are resistant to Dirac notation in a first QM course. It isn't really that hard to explain or understand, it's extraordinarily convenient, and it's essential for engaging with most quantum adjacent literature. I understand that it conceals the distinction between vector space and dual space a bit but it's really not that hard to get through. I may be biased because I learned the notation in week 2 of intro quantum, so I am curious if anyone with the opposite experience disagrees.
- BeetleB 1mo ago
  I think he just felt the students wouldn't be able to handle the linear algebra aspects of QM. Strange notion, given that all the students were seniors, and had all taken a linear algebra course from the math department. Probably wanted less formalism overall. Like when I took an E&M course in the EE department, and the professor insisted on teaching only the integral forms and not the differential forms of the Maxwell's equations (i.e. no divergence, curl, etc in the whole course).
interludead 1mo ago
[dead]

interludead 1mo ago

I would have loved that kind of biology game, particularly if failed designs were part of the lesson

science4sail 1mo ago
You should try Thrive - https://www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ https://www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ It's a open-source clone of Spore that aims to be more scientifically accurate. Right now you can play as microbes and very simple multicellular organisms.

perrygeo 1mo ago

Skin in the game. Being "smart" isn't an immutable property of a noun. It's a verb. It's something you do, something you practice, constantly. Even in fields like Math where ostensibly we have universal truths accessible to all, we still must learn how to derive proofs. Without doing math, one cannot understand math. Learning IS experiential. It requires concentration and effort. Those who seek to make learning "easier" by removing effort are embarrassingly misguided about human cognition.