10 ms·

Things I Despised About My Education

113 points by amirhhz 14y ago

robryan 14y ago
The bit that I struggled with in high school a bit was gaining an understanding of where certain areas of maths were useful. If an area of maths isn't immediately useful at least some explanation of why we should appreciate it and how it relates to other math concepts would be useful.
jhuni 14y ago
Public education in modern capitalist society is a step up over what we had before. When capitalism first emerged in England there were no child labor laws so millions of children were denied an education and put into working in slave like conditions in factories with minimal if any safety equipment. Capitalism is based upon uneven and unequal development so much of the global population is still denied an education and even a basic level of literacy. Those people would love to have any education at all to complain about in the first place. I feel it is important to put this person's complaints into the context. Nonetheless, I will be the last person in the world to actually defend the education system in first world because it is just based on turning the first world citizens into obedient service sector workers and consumers of products mainly produced in China and extracted from the third world. > Our system should be producing more adults with this same fearlessness, who go after what they really want from the start in rational, systematic ways. Right now, we tend to produce ‘answer-centred’ people who are terrified of doing things wrong. Capitalism is not based upon letting people go after what they really want. Capitalism is based upon having a class of people (the proletariat) who are alienated from their own work and for whom doing things wrong means getting fired. > We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play. We need a system that teaches children to be alienated from the things around them, their productive activities, their own lives, and their peers. This is demanded by the capitalist mode of production itself and there is no way of getting around this without revolutionizing society.
tokenadult 14y ago
An interesting essay by Nabeel Qureshi, opening up with a great example from Richard Feynman and then showing the development of the author's own thinking on how to learn. The author writes, "My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.)" And of course many people receive an education like that. Qureshi credits John Holt's book How Children Fail http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Development/dp/0201484021/learninfreed http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Developme... with opening his eyes to a different view of education. (The same book was recommended to me by my junior high assistant principal in 1971. How Children Fail was a life-changing book for me, and I recommend it to everyone who has ever been in school.) Qureshi writes, "In the last couple of years, I’ve been going through a process of un-education: removing all the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me: "Being afraid of failure or embarrassment" That's crucial. To be afraid to fail is to be afraid to learn. Here's a link to a FAQ I have prepared for my local mathematics students, "Courage in the Face of Stupidity," http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php designed to prevent the kind of misguided approach to learning mentioned in the essay kindly submitted here. School curricula in many parts of the United States (and perhaps elsewhere too, as I note the essay is from Britain?) are designed so that most pupils will succeed in school assignments most of the time. That doesn't provide enough practice in taking on HARD tasks, and inadequately prepares young learners to succeed in either a) study of more than one really difficult subject at the same time or b) successful problem-solving in adult life in private employment, when the problems are often open-ended and ill-defined. As a parent of four children, and as a teacher of elementary-age pupils, I'm all about first bolstering children's expectations that initial failure is not a sure predictor of never succeeding, and then introducing CHALLENGING problems into their education so that one thing they practice while young is overcoming failure. AFTER EDIT: Another top-level comment just asked, Anyone out there tried home schooling? Yes. And it was John Holt's writings, beginning with How Children Fail in the early 1970s, that sparked my interest in homeschooling. I have been pleased with the results of homeschooling in the case of my oldest son, now fully grown and making a living as a hacker for a start-up, and I am glad to continue homeschooling for my three younger children.
- chatmasta 14y ago
PavlovsCat 14y ago
1. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to happen often to really really sour things. 2. Being fed a lot of crap by rote, with critical thinking only allowed in the sharp boundaries of the expected outcome for the curriculum. 3. The absolute unfairness and dictator-like behaviour of so many teachers, the mediocre characters, the lame-ass half-knowledge and pseudo-funny anecdotes they poured on the kids in between the lessons and oogling the girls. The lack of bodily hygiene of many. Yes, there were good teachers too, but they had the chances of a snowball in hell. For me school was mostly a nightmare, I hated it, I ran away from it. Now I hate the fact that everybody automatically assumes I have degrees and whatnot because I'm smart. Fuck education, encourage curiosity... or it'll just be another brick in the wall.
- PavlovsCat 14y ago
  That it was different for you doesn't change the fact that this is how it was for me. Maybe you were more lucky, maybe you had lower standards; who knows.
- willholloway 14y ago
  > 1. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to happen often to really really sour things. I have witnessed teachers putting down bright kids hundreds of times. They often cloak it in concern. A lot of people interpret a smarter person than themselves as a cognitive insult, and will automatically try to bring the person they feel is smarter than them down a peg or two. This crab mentality is so prevalent, and gifted children feel things so acutely that I would encourage any gifted adolescent to drop out as soon as possible, get a GED and get on with their lives. They will be 7-8 years ahead of their peers at 23. A gifted child we be smarter than most of their teachers at all but the best institutions. Their time would be better spent reading books and learning from the eminent experts in their fields than some hack with a teaching certificate. Living in a place like NYC can replace the social aspect of the college experience just fine. There is no excuse for tormenting a gifted child with the ordinary school system. It is designed to produce the mid-level workers capitalism needs for it's factories and offices, it is not designed to imbue the best education possible on young minds.
willvarfar 14y ago
Feynman's key point is that learning rote means you can't invent new things. Its not knowledge, its not progress. The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not nearly as damning.
- nqureshi 14y ago
  No it's not. See the passage here. (http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education) He's complaining about the fact that they don't really know what they've learned, they've just learned to 'say the right things', specifically because of the way they have been taught. Which is precisely the point I'm making. e.g. "After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant."
  - willvarfar 14y ago
    Read onwards to where he gives a summing-up speech to the uni.
- rayiner 14y ago
  By and large we don't need average kids to be able to invent knew things. Heck, even above average kids don't need to invent knew things. Most engineers working at Boeing couldn't invent new things, but they do a perfectly fine job of plugging in the numbers into the right equations and keeping the aircraft rolling out.
  - disgruntledphd2 14y ago
    Note, I don't mean to be in any way negative towards you in any way at all, at all. However, one could equally as well argue that we don't need average people to be able to read or do maths. They can learn it all from videos on Youtube et al anyway, right? More seriously, the notion that most people can't produce wonderful things is the single most pernicious lie of our times. Everyone is born with more than enough potential to do great things, and the job of society is to give them the tools and encouragement they need to do this. So, don't sell the species short. We may not need everyone to create new things, but hell, it couldn't hurt, right?
enupten 14y ago
Sadly, things don't change all that much in Grad school either.
amirhhz 14y ago
"My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.) So I worked hard at memorizing things, and anytime I wasn’t sure I’d get the right answer the first time, I’d be scared to try, in case I failed or made myself look stupid." Here's where the above really starts to hurt: during high school, I got away with avoiding failure because everything is set up for you to 'succeed'. As soon as I went to University the opportunities for failure increased by an order of magnitude and at the same time there was nothing and no-one there to assure you that this is OK and part of the process of learning. The spiral of self-doubt, depression and fear that this created almost completely ruined my academic career. I got lucky and it all worked out such that I am now a software developer who knows failure and experimentation (on almost any scale) are part and parcel of getting better at what you do, and the impact of this knowledge on one's emotional well-being is immense. It's what I would tell my 18-year-old self if I had the chance.
- shn 14y ago
  You were lucky at least to find a better place in college. Although not all classes I took was as bad as high school, unfortunately I just graduated memorizing my way out of college most of the time. The idea and the gist of the subject was always elusive, there was no connectedness with anything else. There was no exploration however the workload was enormous, we were taking 5-6 college level math classes per term. Quantity ruled over quality.
jupiterjaz 14y ago
"Trying to get answers before fully considering the problem." "Being uncomfortable with not knowing." These two things seem totally at odds to me and it's something I struggle with constantly. How do you ever know if you've considered the problem enough? If you come to a problem you cant solve and go to someone for help there's always a chance that person will ridicule you and put you down, destroying your motivation, because you didn't "fully consider the problem" in his eyes.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  If you goto someone else for help and they ridicule you, that person is wasting your time, and you should ignore them. If the person won't help, or at least give you constructive criticism, then ignore them. It doesn't matter if you didn't fully consider the problem, it matters if the other person will help you. And sometimes, if the other person doesn't know either, he can at least make himself feel good by making you feel bad. Don't let him.
msluyter 14y ago
"We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play." But how do you objectively measure creativity and play? You can't. So it's not surprising that American public education is moving in exactly the opposite direction, drifting ever closer to a system where high stakes standardized tests determine your entire future. At the root of this is some deep seated hysteria about being overtaken by China or whatnot. It's madness, but I have no politically viable ideas for fixing the system. Anyone out there tried home schooling?
- mdkess 14y ago
  Can't we meet in the middle somehow? I think that there is merit to rote learning. When I practice piano, most of the time I practice scales. Not creative at all - mind numbing, really, but fundamentally important. When I play a piece, it in theory the rote learning (ie. scales) gives me the dexterity and muscle memory to be creative within the piece of music. I believe that this translates into education as well. I think it's important that people can do mental math quickly. I think that it's important that a computer scientist can implement merge sort or a min heap without having to resort to Wikipedia. They should be able to explain it too, naturally, but I think that the baseline of knowledge is required to be creative with more difficult problems. I think that the important thing though, which music gets quite well yet academics mostly don't, is to separate the two. You practice scales, and mechanical exercises, so that you have the ability to be creative when playing the pieces. If they were more clearly separated, I think that it might be better, instead of confusing the two constantly. This is where I think the fear of failure comes from. With the mechanical side, failure is almost always bad. If you are not able to play the scale correctly, you haven't practiced enough - this is your own failing. With the creative side, failure is not necessarily bad, and success is not necessarily good. It's an experiment, an expression, and if it falls flat, you get knowledge from it, and if you're always succeeding, you're not pushing your limits. When the technical and creative get blurred, I think that it becomes natural to mistake the creative side as the technical side, and assume that failure is always bad. My favourite course in school was computer graphics. The final assignment, worth 20% of your grade if I recall correctly, was this: "Make something awesome with what you learned. You'll have 10-15 minutes to demo it to the professor. You have 3 weeks." So you had better be darn comfortable with perspective transforms and normals and writing shaders, which you are, because you've built up that knowledge over the rest of the course. Now with it, you are given a platform to be creative. We were tested on the rote learning stuff - the exams required us to transform vectors and decompose matrices and write down lighting equations, but this was a test of ones creative ability. I think it's almost perfect in this regard, in getting a lot out of both worlds in a way that is focused and guided but not on rails. I had friends who wouldn't take this course with me in school because they were worried that the courses would hurt their GPA.
fatbird 14y ago
Another "If education had been more customized to me, education would be better for everyone" lament. Know what, Nabeel? Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating. That's not to say that Nabeel is a special flower and everyone else is a drone, it's to say that everyone is different--I mean, really different, in a way that any education system is going to struggle with. Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them. Some kids really do want, and thrive in, extremely structured, rote learning environments. Some kids really do want, and succeed best in, environments geared for professional advancement. And others want self-directed learning. The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students." Except that the education system is failing all students, at least here in America. Some countries expect high school graduates to be able to do basic calculus; in the US, we barely expect high school graduates to be able to do basic algebra. The average literacy in the USA is middle school level. "Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious" I would say that the education system shares some of the blame for that. American schools punish curiosity and creativity. We live in a country where a student who finds the correct answer using a logically sound approach may still get marks off because they used a technique they did not learn in class. Not only are curious and creative students harmed by that, but all the other students who see curiosity being punished learn not to act on whatever curiosity they possess. By the time a student is in high school, they have been subjected to years of training to suppress their independence, curiosity, and creativity. When a student shows aptitude, they should be praised and given more challenging assignments, rather than punished.
- btilly 14y ago
  Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating. Ever seen a group of 3 year olds in a sandbox? Most people may not be tinkerers, but it seems to me that most people have the potential to be. It is also a matter of historical fact that our school system was explicitly designed to train a population that would endure working in a factories. I remember one class I was a tutor for while I was in grad school. I wrote up sample answers for the final, and I took a step that is seldom taken - for each question I wrote down 3 different answers using 3 different techniques. (Normally, of course, the person writing sample answers just tries the approach that is probably going to be easiest.) It was a shock for the students. In a second year college course at an Ivy League college (Dartmouth College in this case) it was a revelation that there wouldn't be just one way to answer a math question. They had thought that if they tried one approach and the math prof another, that was proof that they had failed to understand the subject. It isn't. But far too many adults are walking around without understanding that.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Convex vs. concave. See: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma... The old-style, industrial-era education was based on limiting mistakes and reducing variance. Produce 100 widgets, by deadline X, with low variation. Reliable, low-variance work is still important, but machines do it a lot better than we do. We've handed the concave world over to machines. They do that stuff far better than we can. Now the only marketable human labor is the convex stuff where the variance-reducing approach that has characterized 200+ years of industrial capitalism fails (because when the input-output curve is convex, you want variance). The way we do things in the U.S. is ideal for the concave world and utterly incapable of preparing people for convex work, in which autonomy is no longer a rare reward but a prerequisite for producing quality work. It's not just education that has become outmoded. Our attitudes have as well. We understand natively that both talent (to be judged at best) and character (to be judged at worst) are important in assessing other people (building teams, choosing leaders) but we also conflate superficial reliability with character, to disastrous results. It turns out that the people who most easily maximize superficial reliability ("team players") are often the people of the worst character (psychopaths). The educational process is designed to (a) inculcate reliability appropriate to a concave world, and (b) prime the smartest people for a world in which superficial reliability will be the main criterion for advancement.
chefsurfing 14y ago
Great article. Unfortunately the vast majority of the so-called education to which people around the world are exposed is not education, it's merely schooling. For those interested in the difference I suggest reading John Taylor Gatto's books. Also most important is to reflect on your own experiences of education vs. schooling. I myself have found that the two are absolutely antithetical. "The Underground History of American Education" available free online: http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf Radio piece w/ JTG on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI
dougk16 14y ago
This emergence of "essays" lately is interesting, and I've been thinking about the differences between them and blog posts. Conclusion: essays don't have a place for comments on the bottom.
- nqureshi 14y ago
  I've actually always had comments on, but recently switched to a CMS I wrote myself. I haven't had time to implement comments yet, but it's on the todo list. :)
  - dougk16 14y ago
    Good to hear. Might I suggest linking to the HN discussion in the mean time (and/or wherever else it's discussed)? Your essay/blog is well-written and valuable, but comments can add at least as much value, and not everyone who visits your site will know to come here.
    - nqureshi 14y ago
      good suggestion. done.
- dspeyer 14y ago
  Sure they do. Right here. :-)
bencevans 14y ago
I'm currently an A-Level Student in the UK. I can agree with all the points made. The education system believes you still need to go to college, uni etc. I don't anymore. I've learnt more outside of college (internet, local groups, friends in the area I'm interested in) than what the teachers can teach (I wish they were researchers rather than "curriculum" pushers).
- disgruntledphd2 14y ago
  I both agree and disagree with you there. I would agree that I myself have learned more from independent study than I have from formal education (and I've almost finished a PhD) but, I did learn a lot of things that I didn't realise I needed from college/university. Granted given the recent changes to fees in the UK, I completely see where you're coming from. I suppose in your situation (as a (presumably bright) A level student in the UK) it would probably only make economic sense to attend a Russell Group University, preferably Oxbridge. Then, the real returns from education are not (in my experience) economic. Mind you, money is nice, so don't completely ignore economics.
neverlsmice 14y ago
http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-rote-learning/ http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-rote...
asselinpaul 14y ago
I can also relate, studying for my A-Levels (AS) this year. The biggest part of the problem is that everything is too academical, I'm trying to not take into account the fact that I can learn a lot without the rigid structure of school. Mathematics only teach you how to solve problems, it does not in any way encompass the other parts of mathematics which are important (e.g. how do you model a problem). Sciences are stuck in the 80's (I've been studying Physics with a text book that is way older than me). Why cant we talk a bit about the 'cool' new stuff in class (mentioning things such as quad-copters, 3d printers and cryptography would certainly get a lot of kids interested). I can't relate to the more language based subjects but I hear that it is problematic too. Finally, I'm also preparing for the SAT, and that, that is a horrible test. It tests you're ability to adapt to a new system/test, I really don't see how it is a good indicator for college applications. It is awful on so many levels and yet it remains the primary test for college admission in the US.
kevinalexbrown 14y ago
the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me School might be a mechanism, but I doubt that's the driving force. Losing a sense of curiosity and play is an ancient phenomenon that predates modern education. When I became a man, I put away childish things was written 10^3 years ago. If schools are doing X, Y, and Z and students are losing curiosity, stopping X Y and Z might not do any good unless it's part of a broader cultural problem. More importantly, the question of whether schools are the best place to prod cultural forces remains open. If we do decide to curate curiosity in schools, it might be beneficial to understand why curiosity is dying in the first place. I'm curious if anyone has any insight into what these forces might be and why they're so universal. Unless losing your sense of wonder is a relatively recent transformation, why did humans evolve in such a way that wonder isn't conserved across development?
- jhuni 14y ago
  Your analysis is spot on. Schools are part of a larger economic system that is based upon alienation. How can I be curious about the things around me if they are based upon closed designs? For example, how can I be curious about the operations of my own computer if it is based upon proprietary software? Our entire society alienates people from the production and design processes and it alienates people from themselves and one another.
  - dev1n 14y ago
    I think the computer as an example of a closed design is perfect, and that this will soon no longer be the case. Raspberry Pi is doing, IMO, exactly what you are describing here. Allowing child-like, fearless exploration of the device. I don't understand why corporations feel the need to continue with this closed design process when there is already enough evidence provided by Raspberry Pi that this is not necessary. There is a continuous backlog of requests for the units. Clearly, according to basic supply and demand in economics, this is what people want. Looking at all the brilliant software that has been designed is astounding. Alienation is not how greatness is achieved, and Raspberry Pi IMO is rightly proving this system very wrong.
mp01 14y ago
Does anyone have suggestions for good books/websites where I can learn more about education and our educational system? I'm really interested in trying to make it better, but I don't feel like I know enough yet to come up with significant changes.
ableal 14y ago
"That’s what I hated about school - it felt like such a waste of time, learning stuff that I was probably going to forget." Some people go to gyms, where they exert themselves pointlessly - they're not drawing water, generating electricity, or moving materials uphill. They seem to think that the process somehow improves them. Modern medicine apparently agrees with them. If that is not the case with whatever exercises are done in school, perhaps we could get better proof than "it felt".
jimhefferon 14y ago
It is not a good sign in a teacher to use the word "despised."
viddi 14y ago
This is something I've always observed. But to be fair, there are many different types of pupils, especially on a high school. If you were to explain things in a way, that they actually mean something, some of your students would do really well, while the rest is unable to grasp the essence. Nowadays schools teach in a way that works for all: Just give recipes, and hope that a few students will motivate themselves to actually understand what they're doing. Or, let them do it for so long, that they get the idea the better, the more often they apply the recipe. In my case I was one of the lucky few who actually understood derivations after the first class. At home, I thought about half an hour about it, and was able to tell the next "recipe" on the lesson plan. (Side note: Students get rewarded for memorizing algorithms, not understanding them. So even people who are "good in maths" are - even in college - not always good at understanding them.) Now in university I'm still a bit disappointed. This could be because of my engineering course. We're still just being taught how to do what, but not in a descriptive way. This became extremely bad at differential equations. We weren't even told what differential equations are, and when you use them. It was a mere "you have this, then you have to do that". It seemed very difficult to me, but many other students had no problems. They told me because "it's just: you have this, then you do that".

113 points by amirhhz 14y ago

The bit that I struggled with in high school a bit was gaining an understanding of where certain areas of maths were useful. If an area of maths isn't immediately useful at least some explanation of why we should appreciate it and how it relates to other math concepts would be useful.

jhuni 14y ago

Public education in modern capitalist society is a step up over what we had before. When capitalism first emerged in England there were no child labor laws so millions of children were denied an education and put into working in slave like conditions in factories with minimal if any safety equipment. Capitalism is based upon uneven and unequal development so much of the global population is still denied an education and even a basic level of literacy. Those people would love to have any education at all to complain about in the first place. I feel it is important to put this person's complaints into the context. Nonetheless, I will be the last person in the world to actually defend the education system in first world because it is just based on turning the first world citizens into obedient service sector workers and consumers of products mainly produced in China and extracted from the third world. > Our system should be producing more adults with this same fearlessness, who go after what they really want from the start in rational, systematic ways. Right now, we tend to produce ‘answer-centred’ people who are terrified of doing things wrong. Capitalism is not based upon letting people go after what they really want. Capitalism is based upon having a class of people (the proletariat) who are alienated from their own work and for whom doing things wrong means getting fired. > We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play. We need a system that teaches children to be alienated from the things around them, their productive activities, their own lives, and their peers. This is demanded by the capitalist mode of production itself and there is no way of getting around this without revolutionizing society.

tokenadult 14y ago

An interesting essay by Nabeel Qureshi, opening up with a great example from Richard Feynman and then showing the development of the author's own thinking on how to learn. The author writes, "My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.)" And of course many people receive an education like that. Qureshi credits John Holt's book How Children Fail http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Development/dp/0201484021/learninfreed http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Developme... with opening his eyes to a different view of education. (The same book was recommended to me by my junior high assistant principal in 1971. How Children Fail was a life-changing book for me, and I recommend it to everyone who has ever been in school.) Qureshi writes, "In the last couple of years, I’ve been going through a process of un-education: removing all the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me: "Being afraid of failure or embarrassment" That's crucial. To be afraid to fail is to be afraid to learn. Here's a link to a FAQ I have prepared for my local mathematics students, "Courage in the Face of Stupidity," http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php designed to prevent the kind of misguided approach to learning mentioned in the essay kindly submitted here. School curricula in many parts of the United States (and perhaps elsewhere too, as I note the essay is from Britain?) are designed so that most pupils will succeed in school assignments most of the time. That doesn't provide enough practice in taking on HARD tasks, and inadequately prepares young learners to succeed in either a) study of more than one really difficult subject at the same time or b) successful problem-solving in adult life in private employment, when the problems are often open-ended and ill-defined. As a parent of four children, and as a teacher of elementary-age pupils, I'm all about first bolstering children's expectations that initial failure is not a sure predictor of never succeeding, and then introducing CHALLENGING problems into their education so that one thing they practice while young is overcoming failure. AFTER EDIT: Another top-level comment just asked, Anyone out there tried home schooling? Yes. And it was John Holt's writings, beginning with How Children Fail in the early 1970s, that sparked my interest in homeschooling. I have been pleased with the results of homeschooling in the case of my oldest son, now fully grown and making a living as a hacker for a start-up, and I am glad to continue homeschooling for my three younger children.

chatmasta 14y ago

PavlovsCat 14y ago

1. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to happen often to really really sour things. 2. Being fed a lot of crap by rote, with critical thinking only allowed in the sharp boundaries of the expected outcome for the curriculum. 3. The absolute unfairness and dictator-like behaviour of so many teachers, the mediocre characters, the lame-ass half-knowledge and pseudo-funny anecdotes they poured on the kids in between the lessons and oogling the girls. The lack of bodily hygiene of many. Yes, there were good teachers too, but they had the chances of a snowball in hell. For me school was mostly a nightmare, I hated it, I ran away from it. Now I hate the fact that everybody automatically assumes I have degrees and whatnot because I'm smart. Fuck education, encourage curiosity... or it'll just be another brick in the wall.

PavlovsCat 14y ago
That it was different for you doesn't change the fact that this is how it was for me. Maybe you were more lucky, maybe you had lower standards; who knows.
willholloway 14y ago
> 1. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to happen often to really really sour things. I have witnessed teachers putting down bright kids hundreds of times. They often cloak it in concern. A lot of people interpret a smarter person than themselves as a cognitive insult, and will automatically try to bring the person they feel is smarter than them down a peg or two. This crab mentality is so prevalent, and gifted children feel things so acutely that I would encourage any gifted adolescent to drop out as soon as possible, get a GED and get on with their lives. They will be 7-8 years ahead of their peers at 23. A gifted child we be smarter than most of their teachers at all but the best institutions. Their time would be better spent reading books and learning from the eminent experts in their fields than some hack with a teaching certificate. Living in a place like NYC can replace the social aspect of the college experience just fine. There is no excuse for tormenting a gifted child with the ordinary school system. It is designed to produce the mid-level workers capitalism needs for it's factories and offices, it is not designed to imbue the best education possible on young minds.

willvarfar 14y ago

Feynman's key point is that learning rote means you can't invent new things. Its not knowledge, its not progress. The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not nearly as damning.

nqureshi 14y ago
No it's not. See the passage here. (http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education) He's complaining about the fact that they don't really know what they've learned, they've just learned to 'say the right things', specifically because of the way they have been taught. Which is precisely the point I'm making. e.g. "After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant."
- willvarfar 14y ago
  Read onwards to where he gives a summing-up speech to the uni.
rayiner 14y ago
By and large we don't need average kids to be able to invent knew things. Heck, even above average kids don't need to invent knew things. Most engineers working at Boeing couldn't invent new things, but they do a perfectly fine job of plugging in the numbers into the right equations and keeping the aircraft rolling out.
- disgruntledphd2 14y ago
  Note, I don't mean to be in any way negative towards you in any way at all, at all. However, one could equally as well argue that we don't need average people to be able to read or do maths. They can learn it all from videos on Youtube et al anyway, right? More seriously, the notion that most people can't produce wonderful things is the single most pernicious lie of our times. Everyone is born with more than enough potential to do great things, and the job of society is to give them the tools and encouragement they need to do this. So, don't sell the species short. We may not need everyone to create new things, but hell, it couldn't hurt, right?

enupten 14y ago

Sadly, things don't change all that much in Grad school either.

amirhhz 14y ago

"My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.) So I worked hard at memorizing things, and anytime I wasn’t sure I’d get the right answer the first time, I’d be scared to try, in case I failed or made myself look stupid." Here's where the above really starts to hurt: during high school, I got away with avoiding failure because everything is set up for you to 'succeed'. As soon as I went to University the opportunities for failure increased by an order of magnitude and at the same time there was nothing and no-one there to assure you that this is OK and part of the process of learning. The spiral of self-doubt, depression and fear that this created almost completely ruined my academic career. I got lucky and it all worked out such that I am now a software developer who knows failure and experimentation (on almost any scale) are part and parcel of getting better at what you do, and the impact of this knowledge on one's emotional well-being is immense. It's what I would tell my 18-year-old self if I had the chance.

shn 14y ago
You were lucky at least to find a better place in college. Although not all classes I took was as bad as high school, unfortunately I just graduated memorizing my way out of college most of the time. The idea and the gist of the subject was always elusive, there was no connectedness with anything else. There was no exploration however the workload was enormous, we were taking 5-6 college level math classes per term. Quantity ruled over quality.

jupiterjaz 14y ago

"Trying to get answers before fully considering the problem." "Being uncomfortable with not knowing." These two things seem totally at odds to me and it's something I struggle with constantly. How do you ever know if you've considered the problem enough? If you come to a problem you cant solve and go to someone for help there's always a chance that person will ridicule you and put you down, destroying your motivation, because you didn't "fully consider the problem" in his eyes.

stephengillie 14y ago
If you goto someone else for help and they ridicule you, that person is wasting your time, and you should ignore them. If the person won't help, or at least give you constructive criticism, then ignore them. It doesn't matter if you didn't fully consider the problem, it matters if the other person will help you. And sometimes, if the other person doesn't know either, he can at least make himself feel good by making you feel bad. Don't let him.

msluyter 14y ago

"We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play." But how do you objectively measure creativity and play? You can't. So it's not surprising that American public education is moving in exactly the opposite direction, drifting ever closer to a system where high stakes standardized tests determine your entire future. At the root of this is some deep seated hysteria about being overtaken by China or whatnot. It's madness, but I have no politically viable ideas for fixing the system. Anyone out there tried home schooling?

mdkess 14y ago
Can't we meet in the middle somehow? I think that there is merit to rote learning. When I practice piano, most of the time I practice scales. Not creative at all - mind numbing, really, but fundamentally important. When I play a piece, it in theory the rote learning (ie. scales) gives me the dexterity and muscle memory to be creative within the piece of music. I believe that this translates into education as well. I think it's important that people can do mental math quickly. I think that it's important that a computer scientist can implement merge sort or a min heap without having to resort to Wikipedia. They should be able to explain it too, naturally, but I think that the baseline of knowledge is required to be creative with more difficult problems. I think that the important thing though, which music gets quite well yet academics mostly don't, is to separate the two. You practice scales, and mechanical exercises, so that you have the ability to be creative when playing the pieces. If they were more clearly separated, I think that it might be better, instead of confusing the two constantly. This is where I think the fear of failure comes from. With the mechanical side, failure is almost always bad. If you are not able to play the scale correctly, you haven't practiced enough - this is your own failing. With the creative side, failure is not necessarily bad, and success is not necessarily good. It's an experiment, an expression, and if it falls flat, you get knowledge from it, and if you're always succeeding, you're not pushing your limits. When the technical and creative get blurred, I think that it becomes natural to mistake the creative side as the technical side, and assume that failure is always bad. My favourite course in school was computer graphics. The final assignment, worth 20% of your grade if I recall correctly, was this: "Make something awesome with what you learned. You'll have 10-15 minutes to demo it to the professor. You have 3 weeks." So you had better be darn comfortable with perspective transforms and normals and writing shaders, which you are, because you've built up that knowledge over the rest of the course. Now with it, you are given a platform to be creative. We were tested on the rote learning stuff - the exams required us to transform vectors and decompose matrices and write down lighting equations, but this was a test of ones creative ability. I think it's almost perfect in this regard, in getting a lot out of both worlds in a way that is focused and guided but not on rails. I had friends who wouldn't take this course with me in school because they were worried that the courses would hurt their GPA.

fatbird 14y ago

Another "If education had been more customized to me, education would be better for everyone" lament. Know what, Nabeel? Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating. That's not to say that Nabeel is a special flower and everyone else is a drone, it's to say that everyone is different--I mean, really different, in a way that any education system is going to struggle with. Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them. Some kids really do want, and thrive in, extremely structured, rote learning environments. Some kids really do want, and succeed best in, environments geared for professional advancement. And others want self-directed learning. The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students.

betterunix 14y ago
"The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students." Except that the education system is failing all students, at least here in America. Some countries expect high school graduates to be able to do basic calculus; in the US, we barely expect high school graduates to be able to do basic algebra. The average literacy in the USA is middle school level. "Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious" I would say that the education system shares some of the blame for that. American schools punish curiosity and creativity. We live in a country where a student who finds the correct answer using a logically sound approach may still get marks off because they used a technique they did not learn in class. Not only are curious and creative students harmed by that, but all the other students who see curiosity being punished learn not to act on whatever curiosity they possess. By the time a student is in high school, they have been subjected to years of training to suppress their independence, curiosity, and creativity. When a student shows aptitude, they should be praised and given more challenging assignments, rather than punished.
btilly 14y ago
Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating. Ever seen a group of 3 year olds in a sandbox? Most people may not be tinkerers, but it seems to me that most people have the potential to be. It is also a matter of historical fact that our school system was explicitly designed to train a population that would endure working in a factories. I remember one class I was a tutor for while I was in grad school. I wrote up sample answers for the final, and I took a step that is seldom taken - for each question I wrote down 3 different answers using 3 different techniques. (Normally, of course, the person writing sample answers just tries the approach that is probably going to be easiest.) It was a shock for the students. In a second year college course at an Ivy League college (Dartmouth College in this case) it was a revelation that there wouldn't be just one way to answer a math question. They had thought that if they tried one approach and the math prof another, that was proof that they had failed to understand the subject. It isn't. But far too many adults are walking around without understanding that.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Convex vs. concave. See: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma... The old-style, industrial-era education was based on limiting mistakes and reducing variance. Produce 100 widgets, by deadline X, with low variation. Reliable, low-variance work is still important, but machines do it a lot better than we do. We've handed the concave world over to machines. They do that stuff far better than we can. Now the only marketable human labor is the convex stuff where the variance-reducing approach that has characterized 200+ years of industrial capitalism fails (because when the input-output curve is convex, you want variance). The way we do things in the U.S. is ideal for the concave world and utterly incapable of preparing people for convex work, in which autonomy is no longer a rare reward but a prerequisite for producing quality work. It's not just education that has become outmoded. Our attitudes have as well. We understand natively that both talent (to be judged at best) and character (to be judged at worst) are important in assessing other people (building teams, choosing leaders) but we also conflate superficial reliability with character, to disastrous results. It turns out that the people who most easily maximize superficial reliability ("team players") are often the people of the worst character (psychopaths). The educational process is designed to (a) inculcate reliability appropriate to a concave world, and (b) prime the smartest people for a world in which superficial reliability will be the main criterion for advancement.

chefsurfing 14y ago

Great article. Unfortunately the vast majority of the so-called education to which people around the world are exposed is not education, it's merely schooling. For those interested in the difference I suggest reading John Taylor Gatto's books. Also most important is to reflect on your own experiences of education vs. schooling. I myself have found that the two are absolutely antithetical. "The Underground History of American Education" available free online: http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf Radio piece w/ JTG on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI

dougk16 14y ago

This emergence of "essays" lately is interesting, and I've been thinking about the differences between them and blog posts. Conclusion: essays don't have a place for comments on the bottom.

nqureshi 14y ago
I've actually always had comments on, but recently switched to a CMS I wrote myself. I haven't had time to implement comments yet, but it's on the todo list. :)
- dougk16 14y ago
  Good to hear. Might I suggest linking to the HN discussion in the mean time (and/or wherever else it's discussed)? Your essay/blog is well-written and valuable, but comments can add at least as much value, and not everyone who visits your site will know to come here.
  - nqureshi 14y ago
    good suggestion. done.
dspeyer 14y ago
Sure they do. Right here. :-)

bencevans 14y ago

I'm currently an A-Level Student in the UK. I can agree with all the points made. The education system believes you still need to go to college, uni etc. I don't anymore. I've learnt more outside of college (internet, local groups, friends in the area I'm interested in) than what the teachers can teach (I wish they were researchers rather than "curriculum" pushers).

disgruntledphd2 14y ago
I both agree and disagree with you there. I would agree that I myself have learned more from independent study than I have from formal education (and I've almost finished a PhD) but, I did learn a lot of things that I didn't realise I needed from college/university. Granted given the recent changes to fees in the UK, I completely see where you're coming from. I suppose in your situation (as a (presumably bright) A level student in the UK) it would probably only make economic sense to attend a Russell Group University, preferably Oxbridge. Then, the real returns from education are not (in my experience) economic. Mind you, money is nice, so don't completely ignore economics.

neverlsmice 14y ago

http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-rote-learning/ http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-rote...

asselinpaul 14y ago

I can also relate, studying for my A-Levels (AS) this year. The biggest part of the problem is that everything is too academical, I'm trying to not take into account the fact that I can learn a lot without the rigid structure of school. Mathematics only teach you how to solve problems, it does not in any way encompass the other parts of mathematics which are important (e.g. how do you model a problem). Sciences are stuck in the 80's (I've been studying Physics with a text book that is way older than me). Why cant we talk a bit about the 'cool' new stuff in class (mentioning things such as quad-copters, 3d printers and cryptography would certainly get a lot of kids interested). I can't relate to the more language based subjects but I hear that it is problematic too. Finally, I'm also preparing for the SAT, and that, that is a horrible test. It tests you're ability to adapt to a new system/test, I really don't see how it is a good indicator for college applications. It is awful on so many levels and yet it remains the primary test for college admission in the US.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me School might be a mechanism, but I doubt that's the driving force. Losing a sense of curiosity and play is an ancient phenomenon that predates modern education. When I became a man, I put away childish things was written 10^3 years ago. If schools are doing X, Y, and Z and students are losing curiosity, stopping X Y and Z might not do any good unless it's part of a broader cultural problem. More importantly, the question of whether schools are the best place to prod cultural forces remains open. If we do decide to curate curiosity in schools, it might be beneficial to understand why curiosity is dying in the first place. I'm curious if anyone has any insight into what these forces might be and why they're so universal. Unless losing your sense of wonder is a relatively recent transformation, why did humans evolve in such a way that wonder isn't conserved across development?

jhuni 14y ago
Your analysis is spot on. Schools are part of a larger economic system that is based upon alienation. How can I be curious about the things around me if they are based upon closed designs? For example, how can I be curious about the operations of my own computer if it is based upon proprietary software? Our entire society alienates people from the production and design processes and it alienates people from themselves and one another.
- dev1n 14y ago
  I think the computer as an example of a closed design is perfect, and that this will soon no longer be the case. Raspberry Pi is doing, IMO, exactly what you are describing here. Allowing child-like, fearless exploration of the device. I don't understand why corporations feel the need to continue with this closed design process when there is already enough evidence provided by Raspberry Pi that this is not necessary. There is a continuous backlog of requests for the units. Clearly, according to basic supply and demand in economics, this is what people want. Looking at all the brilliant software that has been designed is astounding. Alienation is not how greatness is achieved, and Raspberry Pi IMO is rightly proving this system very wrong.

mp01 14y ago

Does anyone have suggestions for good books/websites where I can learn more about education and our educational system? I'm really interested in trying to make it better, but I don't feel like I know enough yet to come up with significant changes.

ableal 14y ago

"That’s what I hated about school - it felt like such a waste of time, learning stuff that I was probably going to forget." Some people go to gyms, where they exert themselves pointlessly - they're not drawing water, generating electricity, or moving materials uphill. They seem to think that the process somehow improves them. Modern medicine apparently agrees with them. If that is not the case with whatever exercises are done in school, perhaps we could get better proof than "it felt".

jimhefferon 14y ago

It is not a good sign in a teacher to use the word "despised."

viddi 14y ago

This is something I've always observed. But to be fair, there are many different types of pupils, especially on a high school. If you were to explain things in a way, that they actually mean something, some of your students would do really well, while the rest is unable to grasp the essence. Nowadays schools teach in a way that works for all: Just give recipes, and hope that a few students will motivate themselves to actually understand what they're doing. Or, let them do it for so long, that they get the idea the better, the more often they apply the recipe. In my case I was one of the lucky few who actually understood derivations after the first class. At home, I thought about half an hour about it, and was able to tell the next "recipe" on the lesson plan. (Side note: Students get rewarded for memorizing algorithms, not understanding them. So even people who are "good in maths" are - even in college - not always good at understanding them.) Now in university I'm still a bit disappointed. This could be because of my engineering course. We're still just being taught how to do what, but not in a descriptive way. This became extremely bad at differential equations. We weren't even told what differential equations are, and when you use them. It was a mere "you have this, then you have to do that". It seemed very difficult to me, but many other students had no problems. They told me because "it's just: you have this, then you do that".