[jerf]

By far the most annoying myth I face when trying to discuss the pros and cons of various education techniques is the pervasive idea that everybody is a magical knowledge sponge and will go to their grave still remembering how to integrate by parts and every detail about some particular battle they covered in seventh grade, and therefore, if we slightly tweak a curriculum plan to drop something that was included on theirs we'll be stealing that knowledge from all the 70 year olds who will eventually have been on that plan.

Where this idea comes from I have no idea. Personally looking around in school itself it was plainly obvious this was all going in one ear and out the other for the majority of students even at the time. The better students retained it long enough to spew it out on the test but that was already above average performance. That doesn't mean there isn't still a certain amount of value in that in terms of what that knowledge may do to their brain during the brief period of time it is lodged in there. (I think there's a lot of value in just learning the "shape" of all this stuff, and perhaps having some index of what might be valuable to know.) But the idea that we can spend 15 minutes and a one-page homework assignment on something and expect that to last 60+ years is just nonsensical.

I mean, honestly, anyone over the age of 22 or so ought to be able to notice a distinctly sub-100% retention rate simply by looking inside themselves.

Yes, to a first approximation everyone with a normal education in the US has been present while some sort of trig was discussed. Not all of them, but still quite a lot of them, were present for the Taylor expansion discussion. The vast bulk of them have had it decay by 25, and there simply isn't anything to be done about that if you're talking about humans and not some homo educationous who mythically retain all knowledge they were exposed to even for 30 seconds just as the mythical as homo economicus perfectly rationally conducts all their economic business at all times. Perhaps they're actually the same species.

[simiones]

I remember being amused by this same observation when my own country decided to reduce mandatory education from k+12 to k+10 (cutting two years of high-school). They immediately began re-arranging the curriculum in high-school, for example to move organic chemistry from 11th grade to 10th grade, on the basis that it's important for students who only finish the mandatory 10th grade to know some organic chemistry as well, instead of the old curriculum which would have only taught them inorganic chemistry after 10th grade (this has the bonus of making the chemistry curriculum inorganic I -> organic I -> inorganic II -> organic II, for maximum confusion).

To me, even though I was barely out of high-school at the time, this was obviously absurd - expecting especially someone who wants to drop out of high-school early to retain any notion of organic chemistry taught in a school year, that they couldn't learn on the job if it was really required, seems so obviously nonsense that I couldn't help but laugh. Especially since the same thing was done to basically every other subject as well, with the same intentions.

One note: in my country, the curriculum is completely centralized; there is some small amount of choice, but it amounts to, at most, 1-2 classes per semester; everything else is fixed.

[PKop]

Think it's part of the equality/blank-slate myth that everyone is the same and has the same potential and natural abilities.

[nightpool]

Actually, it's almost entirely the opposite—the idea that students are a "sponge" that can soak up knowledge perfectly is then taken directly to mean that some students are better at soaking up / retaining knowledge then others, and that the "smart" kids who do the best on the tests are the ones who are going to retain the knowledge the best. And then the ones that were the best knowledge-sponges will eventually go on to become the next generation of teachers, since they know the most information. Whereas for most kids it's completely the opposite—they memorize the information in their short-term memory without understanding the fundamentals, they do great on the tests, and then they forget all of it immediately. But they stand out from their peers as better students, because they're able to play the "game" of school better and optimize for being a knowledge-sponge that will absorb the most information as possible and forget it as quickly as possible.

[ngc248]

>>> simply isn't anything to be done about that if you're talking about humans and not some homo educationous who mythically retain all knowledge they were exposed to even for 30 seconds just as the mythical as homo economicus perfectly rationally conducts all their economic business at all times. Perhaps they're actually the same species.

Yeah they belong to the genus homo mythicus

[airstrike]

I just wanted to say I deeply appreciate the eloquence of this comment. Thank you