[jampekka]

I think more intuitive/holistic ways of teaching would be a lot better. But it's hard to do, especially in dead tree format.

To get someone understand something holistically, as in link to their previous knowledge base, requires knowledge of what their knowledge base is. Traditionally this has been done with structuring the teaching with prerequisites etc and hoping it works.

I struggle with this quite a bit when I teach students with heterogeneous background. To be effective, one has to first probe what the students already knows to be able to relate the new stuff to that, and this requires interaction. Hypertext is/would be helpful for self-learning, but it's sadly very underutilized. LLMs may be better. But probably even those can't at least in the current form replace interactive human teaching as they don't really form/retain a model of what the user knows.