[emarsden]

In the 1600s, educators in Nuremberg (Germany) were proud of a pedagogical technique that they had developed, called the "Nuremberg funnel" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel). In this "hydraulic" model of learning, they were proud to have developed an effective technique for "pouring" knowledge into the empty brains of students. Centuries of research have shown that this model is flawed in many ways (as many commenters here have pointed out): people never have an "empty" mind and learning involves effortful integration of new concepts with existing knowledge; for the most important types of learning it requires application, exercises and social interactions.

This author seems to believe in the Nuremberg funnel and the hydraulic model of learning, but simply with a limited "flow rate" for the brain. It's disappointing to see such as simple-minded idea, which has been so profoundly debunked by huge amounts of research, on the front page of HN.

[jldugger]

> It's disappointing to see such as simple-minded idea, which has been so profoundly debunked by huge amounts of research, on the front page of HN.

My read is that the author actually agrees with you. The author points out that all students have a starting non-empty state (long term memory), and the goal of learning is to build on top of that. It's just defining the space of "learnable" things as distance from long term memory. This doesn't seem that controversial?

They even call out all the things you call out as effective:

> Everything we know about learning efficiently is directly related to memory - "good" teachers, "good" explanations, images, diagrams, maths problems, essays, practical assignments all are good for learning because they help move things into your long-term memory.

I suspect the thing upsetting you is the call out to spaced repetition?

[p-christ]

I’m not sure what you mean. I agree that learning often requires things like applications and exercises, where did I imply otherwise?

I’m saying the reason why applications and exercises are useful are that they lead to a change in your memory. Not that they aren’t useful.

[joe_the_user]

I'd offer a similar criticism. The problem with "our working memory has a maximum capacity of roughly 4 [chunks of information at once]" is that the units ("chunks" was original) winds-up undefined and moreover it tempts one just divide whatever a person seems to be able to process into four things and call them units.

And the way I'd see your "funnel" criticism applying is that each student can easily begin with a different set of mental tools, some of which let them take an idea as one relatively small "chunk" and some of which might process the idea as several "chunks".