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It does not blow my mind. Not one bit. I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted

It does not blow my mind. Not one bit. I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted from the beginning, others mutating later on) with the compulsory schooling system and how the classroom model is ineffectual. Remember: education != schooling. Never forget that. This is one of the most common misconceptions of our time. What does blows my mind is just how thoroughly the masses have accepted public school curricula as the only true and legitimate form of education. People like you blow my mind. I don't mean to be smug or arrogant, I'm glad you're awakening. Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor. Here are some books to read: John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down, Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education. Charlotte Iserbyt: the deliberate dumbing down of america. Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society. John Holt: Anything at all, but particularly How Children Fail and How Children Learn. ---------- Besides Sudsbury schools, there's several other alternative school models: anarchistic free schools and democratic schools. Look those up, as well. Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. Yet schooling has killed the will to autodidact for many people, or has delegitimized it in favor of formal schooling and credentials.

peteforde 13y ago
It pains me that you do sound smug, arrogant and also patronizing because you're bang on in your analysis. Please, I'm basically begging you: don't adopt an obnoxious stance when you're arguing an important point. Not because you're wrong, but because you're mostly right.
- jonahx 13y ago
  This comment should be in permanent red bold type on the hacker news compose reply screen.
  - bdg 13y ago
    I'm a recovering internet asshat, and want to post two great techniques to improve the tone: 1. Talk about the topic exclusively. It's best to avoid talking about yourself and especially how you were right. Also, avoid speaking to your audience as if on stage. (Ie, "This is my point. Never forget that", can be "This is the point."). This may be against intuition, but it works to remove ego on all sides and focus on the conversation. 2. Always try to say "yes, and" before you say no. Agreeing with the point and building on it is generative. Blocking hurts.
  - peteforde 13y ago
    Not to be smug, arrogant or patronizing, but I would be completely okay with that. ;)
- derefr 13y ago
  I like to phrase this to my friends as "don't Dawkins your points."
irrationaljared 13y ago
I appreciate everything you've said. Obviously not everyone will have their mind blown by these observations if they're already well informed on much of this. My point was more toward the general public and the idea that such a radically different educational environment is preparing students for success in college and wide range of jobs should be at least inspire some curiosity...
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  I understand, and I apologize for my arrogant tone. However, I felt as though the general tone expressed in this blog post was quite condescending. It's as if you've discovered some deeply hidden and arcane mystery of life that you're now willing to share with the unwashed, and you express shock at how their minds could not be blown by such a proposition. Then, you are posting this on HN, so it was only a matter of time, anyway. I hope I saved a fellow ostentatious bloke the work. In the end, thanks for spreading awareness of this.
  - irrationaljared 13y ago
    Yea, I know. It's tough to strike the right tone in the blog post and in the end the format was structured to be readable and get attention as I really do just want people to think about these ideas more, even if in the end they don't agree with them.
pizza 13y ago
> autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  I feel a TV show pitch coming on (I'm sure it's been done). A small group of people are chosen with a similar job/background - all professors of Physics say, or all refuse collectors, or all high-school drop-outs, ... Those people are then given a challenge to do something that is known to be outside of their locus of experience - make a souffle, do a science demonstration, play a musical instrument. One is given a professional educator with the relevant experience of the field and a budget of money for resources, the other is given nothing except the same money for resources (which can not in this case be people). A prize is offered for the best results (in order to try to account for poor will-power; perhaps the prize is split between trainer and trainee if they win). The results are recorded for the entertainment of the masses. So, Endemol, call me ...?
- gruseom 13y ago
  That is a pretty striking finding. Has it been reproduced and is it accepted outside the work of that one researcher (and his students)?
com2kid 13y ago
> Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. I call bull. I can learn from a math teacher in an hour what would take me possibly years, or a lifetime for that matter, to discover on my own. During 2 years of college lecture classes one can learn what took philosophers and eventually mathematicians nearly 2000 years to discover. But what about the arts? Again, same story. Thousands of years of progress and theory can be summed up and taught in just months. (A wee bit of practice may then be required to master certain skills! ;) ) Yes some self directed learning is valuable, and indeed almost every class I took had aspect of self guided learning in it. Teachers loved leading us halfway to the goal, pointing us in a general direction, and then letting us go forth and discover the answer for ourselves. Now do I think how public schools are currently ran is ideal? Heck no, far from it. No Child Left Behind was a huge damaging blow to the American educational system. But what I always wanted out of school was more direction, not less. I passionately hated assignments where students had to go off and make their own video presentations and other such activities. Yet in theory, giving presentations is of some value, it requires the students to acquire information on their own, summarize it into a communicable form, and then share that information with others. (I just despised how much class time was devoted to watching very bad presentations...) But hey, that sounds like self guided learning, at a public school no less! One thing to remember is that trying to dictate any one educational style is going to fail some non-trivial percent of students. As I said in another comment, I did horrible in unstructured classes. More structure would have been my desire. IMHO school would have benefited from having 2 hours set aside just for an open study room for students to do HW in. But that is mostly because as a kid, left to my own devices, I would go home and play games rather than study. Heck I'd read a month's worth of reading assignments on the bus home, then never do the book reports! Likewise for finding study groups. As someone with social anxiety (which was much worse as a kid!) asking the class to form groups would result in me hiding in a corner somewhere. Suffice to say I never was good at getting language practice in either! But lab classes, oh wow I rocked at those. Love'd them. On a related note, questions come up as to the suitability of unstructured learning for certain topics. E.g. How would unstructured learning have students do genetic modifications of bacteria? Or play with explosives? Both are some of my fondest memories from high school! Both involved very explicit step by step instructions written down that we followed to the letter! (For good reason!) I guess my overall point is that ideologues of any type tend to have a drum and enjoy beating it, much to the determent of someone somewhere else.
Steko 13y ago
"what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning." Grand claims require grand evidence. Until then what we have is the widespread observation that compulsory schooling appears to have outcompeted it's competitors everywhere.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor. If by industrial moguls you mean thousands of locally-elected school boards in rural, agrarian small towns. During the period that public schools caught on in the U.S., the society was still a thoroughly decentralized Jeffersonian republic. Democratic centralism had not yet won any level of government, let alone the present nationalized education swamp. Autodidacticism only works for people who are highly intelligent, who have attention easily captured by books, and who have strong verbal skills. The other 99.5% of people need teachers. The Sudbury school produces graduates who have gaping holes in their knowledge, on whatever topics did not aggressively capture their attention.

peteforde 13y ago

It pains me that you do sound smug, arrogant and also patronizing because you're bang on in your analysis. Please, I'm basically begging you: don't adopt an obnoxious stance when you're arguing an important point. Not because you're wrong, but because you're mostly right.

jonahx 13y ago
This comment should be in permanent red bold type on the hacker news compose reply screen.
- bdg 13y ago
  I'm a recovering internet asshat, and want to post two great techniques to improve the tone: 1. Talk about the topic exclusively. It's best to avoid talking about yourself and especially how you were right. Also, avoid speaking to your audience as if on stage. (Ie, "This is my point. Never forget that", can be "This is the point."). This may be against intuition, but it works to remove ego on all sides and focus on the conversation. 2. Always try to say "yes, and" before you say no. Agreeing with the point and building on it is generative. Blocking hurts.
- peteforde 13y ago
  Not to be smug, arrogant or patronizing, but I would be completely okay with that. ;)
derefr 13y ago
I like to phrase this to my friends as "don't Dawkins your points."

irrationaljared 13y ago

I appreciate everything you've said. Obviously not everyone will have their mind blown by these observations if they're already well informed on much of this. My point was more toward the general public and the idea that such a radically different educational environment is preparing students for success in college and wide range of jobs should be at least inspire some curiosity...

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
I understand, and I apologize for my arrogant tone. However, I felt as though the general tone expressed in this blog post was quite condescending. It's as if you've discovered some deeply hidden and arcane mystery of life that you're now willing to share with the unwashed, and you express shock at how their minds could not be blown by such a proposition. Then, you are posting this on HN, so it was only a matter of time, anyway. I hope I saved a fellow ostentatious bloke the work. In the end, thanks for spreading awareness of this.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  Yea, I know. It's tough to strike the right tone in the blog post and in the end the format was structured to be readable and get attention as I really do just want people to think about these ideas more, even if in the end they don't agree with them.

pizza 13y ago

> autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
I feel a TV show pitch coming on (I'm sure it's been done). A small group of people are chosen with a similar job/background - all professors of Physics say, or all refuse collectors, or all high-school drop-outs, ... Those people are then given a challenge to do something that is known to be outside of their locus of experience - make a souffle, do a science demonstration, play a musical instrument. One is given a professional educator with the relevant experience of the field and a budget of money for resources, the other is given nothing except the same money for resources (which can not in this case be people). A prize is offered for the best results (in order to try to account for poor will-power; perhaps the prize is split between trainer and trainee if they win). The results are recorded for the entertainment of the masses. So, Endemol, call me ...?
gruseom 13y ago
That is a pretty striking finding. Has it been reproduced and is it accepted outside the work of that one researcher (and his students)?

com2kid 13y ago

> Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. I call bull. I can learn from a math teacher in an hour what would take me possibly years, or a lifetime for that matter, to discover on my own. During 2 years of college lecture classes one can learn what took philosophers and eventually mathematicians nearly 2000 years to discover. But what about the arts? Again, same story. Thousands of years of progress and theory can be summed up and taught in just months. (A wee bit of practice may then be required to master certain skills! ;) ) Yes some self directed learning is valuable, and indeed almost every class I took had aspect of self guided learning in it. Teachers loved leading us halfway to the goal, pointing us in a general direction, and then letting us go forth and discover the answer for ourselves. Now do I think how public schools are currently ran is ideal? Heck no, far from it. No Child Left Behind was a huge damaging blow to the American educational system. But what I always wanted out of school was more direction, not less. I passionately hated assignments where students had to go off and make their own video presentations and other such activities. Yet in theory, giving presentations is of some value, it requires the students to acquire information on their own, summarize it into a communicable form, and then share that information with others. (I just despised how much class time was devoted to watching very bad presentations...) But hey, that sounds like self guided learning, at a public school no less! One thing to remember is that trying to dictate any one educational style is going to fail some non-trivial percent of students. As I said in another comment, I did horrible in unstructured classes. More structure would have been my desire. IMHO school would have benefited from having 2 hours set aside just for an open study room for students to do HW in. But that is mostly because as a kid, left to my own devices, I would go home and play games rather than study. Heck I'd read a month's worth of reading assignments on the bus home, then never do the book reports! Likewise for finding study groups. As someone with social anxiety (which was much worse as a kid!) asking the class to form groups would result in me hiding in a corner somewhere. Suffice to say I never was good at getting language practice in either! But lab classes, oh wow I rocked at those. Love'd them. On a related note, questions come up as to the suitability of unstructured learning for certain topics. E.g. How would unstructured learning have students do genetic modifications of bacteria? Or play with explosives? Both are some of my fondest memories from high school! Both involved very explicit step by step instructions written down that we followed to the letter! (For good reason!) I guess my overall point is that ideologues of any type tend to have a drum and enjoy beating it, much to the determent of someone somewhere else.

Steko 13y ago

"what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning." Grand claims require grand evidence. Until then what we have is the widespread observation that compulsory schooling appears to have outcompeted it's competitors everywhere.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

> Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor. If by industrial moguls you mean thousands of locally-elected school boards in rural, agrarian small towns. During the period that public schools caught on in the U.S., the society was still a thoroughly decentralized Jeffersonian republic. Democratic centralism had not yet won any level of government, let alone the present nationalized education swamp. Autodidacticism only works for people who are highly intelligent, who have attention easily captured by books, and who have strong verbal skills. The other 99.5% of people need teachers. The Sudbury school produces graduates who have gaping holes in their knowledge, on whatever topics did not aggressively capture their attention.