[andrei_says_]

Trying to make kids memorize a bunch of stuff that's unimportant to them is incredibly inefficient and the information fades fast.

Having them do this at the expense of play (accelerated self-guided learning through social simulation, art and sports), at the expense of physical activity and in an insanely toxic social environment, is plain crazy.

Apprenticeship, where one learns what they need to learn when they need to apply it, and then uses the newly learned skills to achieve own goals beats that hand down. Look up Tobi from shopify and his posts about his learning to write software in Germany's apprenticeship programs.

Convincing kids that they are smart or stupid based on their teacher's opinion on the kids' obedience and ability to regurgitate uninteresting (to them) data is harmful at best. Convincing them that what they are experiencing in school is learning is even more harmful.

Schools are great at efficiently enacting a plan that has little to do with children's needs and little to do with learning.

Like a close friend who attended an elite private school with tiny classes and a lot of self-elected subjects, time allocation and projects said, "when I went to college I thought I was surrounded by idiots. Later I realized these were kids who didn't get a chance to learn good writing, or public speaking, or to plan, schedule and execute on their own nprojects, or to navigate bureaucracy."

I'd say same goes for other important life skills, like financial planning, media preparedness (understanding propaganda and advertising), job hunting, entrepreneurship, art, etc.

[V-2]

"Trying to make kids memorize a bunch of stuff that's unimportant to them is incredibly inefficient and the information fades fast."

I've come to the conclusion that it's not about this information itself. It's more about learning how to learn. This is the skill that the education system helped me develop, and which is useful for me long after the "training data sets" the school used have fallen into complete oblivion. Personalized mnemotechnics.

[CuriouslyC]

The problem is almost all schools fail miserably at teaching people to learn.

First off, we learn best when our learning is motivated by something more concrete than "good grades". As an example, I had a hard time with advanced math in school. When I went on to build engineering projects that required advanced math, the same concepts that mostly eluded me previously became fairly straightforward.

Secondly, learning happens best when the material presented is varied, and revisited many times over a long period of time. Schools tend to compress learning about a given subject into a limited time frame, then only revisit it in final exams.

Third, learning occurs far better from trying to recall and apply information than from having it passively presented to you. Instead of having school be mostly lecture with a few exams, school should be mostly tests, with the teacher going back and clarifying only things that many students had trouble with.

In the end, school mostly teaches people to sit still and follow instructions.

[andrei_says_]

> In the end, school mostly teaches people to sit still and follow instructions.

And we all know that following instructions does not lead to fulfilling lives, and that sitting still for long periods of time is a sure predictor for a shorter lifespan.

Schools were institutionalized and were good for preparing cheap factory labor.

Our society no longer needs this.

So schools fail the economy and the kids. Preparing today's children for yesterday.

The very institutions that proclaim themselves as the beacon of knowledge and enlightenment act as the opposite.

Ironic.

[existencebox]

The problem with that, however, is that how I learned to learn in school was entirely ineffective for me. I struggled for YEARS, barely passing math courses, needing special tutoring, HATING history, because it was all presented as some sort of "GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD" problem. There was another HN discussion slightly digging at public schools, let me make clear this was across both private and public schools, the public in fact being _far better_ at treating students like individuals for the most part.

It took me the better part of college to re-teach myself how to think, I largely attribute it to learning how to be a good CSer on my own effort. (To be clear, not that my effort was anything special, but it let me for once see how I wanted to approach the work, rather than a parent or teacher pressing their structure on it)

I'm not sure what my full takeaway from this is, I certainly expect my anecdote not to hold true universally, I think I mostly intend to warn against an inflexible framework for "teaching learning" (as schools so often tend to be, through natural if unmalicious incentives), lest the process become nothing more than an indoctrination into the life lesson of "you will sit here, do this terribly boring and unproductive thing, and have no say in the matter, and will likely be punished regardless".

[kaid]

"toxic social environment"

I like how you describe the social environment in schools. Going through current schooling system, will most likely result in a damaged personality. And it takes quite a lot of time and effort, to heal the damage, and to re-evaluate experience/knowledge that had been infused.

[alejandrohacks]

I see the value of apprenticeship, learning skills on demand. However, I don't think everything should necessary be learned only on the base of apprenticeship. Correct me if I am wrong but I am guessing you probably did not imply this. Lessons that shape your worldview, those that shape you as a person, are extremely valuable and should always be taught. Also learning things out of curiosity and not necessarily on demand is also extremely valuable. Sometimes you can only connect the dots looking backwards.

[andrei_says_]

You are correct, I did not propose apprenticeship as a methodology for learning everything.

I however think that treating the human mind as a bucket which can be filled with knowledge at a specific speed following a plan, is disastrous.

Children at young ages have dramatically different levels of development, interests, subject specific curiosities even at the same age. Treating them as if they are all the ideal child, ready to learn what the plan says they should, is ignorant at best.