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.<p>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.<p>The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students.
<i>the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me</i><p>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. <i>When I became a man, I put away childish things</i> was written 10^3 years ago.<p>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.<p>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?
1. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to happen often to really really sour things.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Feynman's key point is that learning rote means you can't invent new things. Its not knowledge, its not progress.<p>The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not nearly as damning.
"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."<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>"The Underground History of American Education" available free online:
<a href="http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf</a><p>Radio piece w/ JTG on YouTube:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI</a>
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 <i>mean</i> 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 <i>understand</i> 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.<p>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.)<p>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".
"Trying to get answers before fully considering the problem."
"Being uncomfortable with not knowing."<p>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.
<i>"That’s what I hated about school - it felt like such a waste of time, learning stuff that I was probably going to forget."</i><p>Some people go to gyms, where they exert themselves pointlessly - they're not drawing water, generating electricity, or moving materials uphill.<p>They seem to think that the process somehow improves <i>them</i>. Modern medicine apparently agrees with them.<p>If that is not the case with whatever exercises are done in school, perhaps we could get better proof than <i>"it felt"</i>.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>> <i>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.</i><p>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.<p>> <i>We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play.</i><p>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.
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.<p>Qureshi credits John Holt's book <i>How Children Fail</i><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Development/dp/0201484021/learninfreed" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Developme...</a><p>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. <i>How Children Fail</i> 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:<p>"Being afraid of failure or embarrassment"<p>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,"<p><a href="http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php</a><p>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<p>a) study of more than one really difficult subject at the same time<p>or<p>b) successful problem-solving in adult life in private employment, when the problems are often open-ended and ill-defined.<p>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.<p>AFTER EDIT:<p>Another top-level comment just asked,<p><i>Anyone out there tried home schooling?</i><p>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.
"We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their innate sense of curiosity and play."<p>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 <i>politically viable</i> ideas for fixing the system.<p>Anyone out there tried home schooling?
I'm currently an A-Level Student in the UK. I can agree with all the points made.<p>The education system believes you still need to go to college, uni etc.<p>I don't anymore.<p>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).
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.
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.
This emergence of "essays" lately is interesting, and I've been thinking about the differences between them and blog posts.<p>Conclusion: essays don't have a place for comments on the bottom.
Convex vs. concave. See: <a href="http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/" rel="nofollow">http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma...</a><p>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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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).<p>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 <i>superficial</i> reliability will be the main criterion for advancement.