[hn_throwaway_99]

> I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager.

I have a real issue dividing kids up along these lines. I've found that virtually all young kids love to explore and learn things, and if anything schooling can extinguish this innate desire when it becomes a source of stress.

[anon-3988]

> I have a real issue dividing kids up along these lines. I've found that virtually all young kids love to explore and learn things, and if anything schooling can extinguish this innate desire when it becomes a source of stress.

This is a very bold claim. I don't think most kids are curious about the multiplication tables

[graemep]

Why learn multiplication tables when everyone carries a computer around with them? My kids never did (ineffective school plus later home education) and are good at maths as adults. A previous HN discussion contained this post

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395840

and ultimately this about a successful experiment in other approaches to maths:

https://www.inference.org.uk/sanjoy/benezet/1.html

[g3f32r]

> learn multiplication tables

I think sibling comments are taking issue with `learn multiplication tables` versus `memorize multiplication tables`. I find no value in the latter in kids but incredible value in the former.

What I'm teaching my homeschoolers is to instead be able to quickly derive the table from the "easy" ones. Everyone practices counting by twos, fives, and tens at an earlier stage of math. So when multiplication tables come around, if you can fill 2s,5s, and 10s out easily, then any other thing you need is (usually) just one simple addition or subtraction operation away.

I do it this way for the same reason I'm against learning "tricks" like FOIL ( first-outer-inner-last) for binomial multiplication. You end up learning the narrow-scoped trick or you end up learning the table, and not a framework by which to solve problems of a broad class.

---

I've seen entirely too many kids who memorize the table up to 10x10 and then are totally stunlocked at 11x11.

[graemep]

True, you need to understand and teach techniques rather than memorise.

[revolvingthrow]

Why learn to read and write when everyone carries a computer capable of TTS? Why learn anything when your pocket computer has access to AI doing the thinking much better than the average highschooler and has 100x the knowledge?

[graemep]

Because learning to read and write still develop your mind and capabilities. memorising stuff does not.

A better analogy would be "why stop memorising long works now we can read things instead". No one memorises epic poems anymore but we read novel instead.

[rimliu]

This is very close to "Why use brains".

[graemep]

No its not, its why use your brains for useless things. Because my kids did not spend as much time on arithmetic and rote learning they learned algebra much earlier than most do. My older daughter did IGCSE physics when she was 11 and maths when she was 12 as a result. Their ability to read was always well ahead of average for their age.

[HappMacDonald]

Learning to read must have meant memorizing vocabulary though, right?

A multiplication table is just a single-digit multiplication vocabulary.

[graemep]

Except you do no need to sit with a list of vocabulary to learn. You pick it up by reading stories etc.

[nostrademons]

The claim was that "virtually all young kids love to explore and learn things", not that "virtually all young kids love to explore and learn multiplication tables".

[anon-3988]

I can easily claim that most kids are not interested in anything economically valuable. Probably most adults as well.

[thunderfork]

Well, there's your problem. You've gone from "teach kids" to "economic value". Keep your eye on the ball, not on the stands.

[bigstrat2003]

Sure. But the fact of the matter is that we must teach kids many diverse things, and most of them are going to be things that some (or even most) of the kids have no interest in learning. So one has to grapple with the question of how to teach kids who don't actually care about learning what you're teaching.

[bawolff]

I think a lot of kids can be motivated for that by having a game out of counting in multiples (e.g . Have them count by 4s, 5s, etc). Which is good enough for practical purposes.

[ChiperSoft]

> I don't think most kids are curious about the multiplication tables

Which is exactly why they stopped teaching them in US curriculum under No Child Left Behind.

[rvrs]

what? I started school in the early 2000s, after no child left behind started, and definitely learned multiplication tables lol

[ChiperSoft]

You're right, apparently this was a much more recent thing and california only. I just knew neither of my kids were taught them, so I assumed it happened longer ago.

https://www.thewellnews.com/opinions/california-removes-memo...

[JoeAltmaier]

They may refuse to learn multiplication tables (a popular subject if I remember right, reciting them as far as we could, a competition) while memorizing baseball stats.

Kids will learn anything that gives them social standing or self-worth in another way, whatever it takes to be a cool kid.

[lnenad]

> "Kids will learn anything that gives them social standing or self-worth in another way, whatever it takes to be a cool kid."

"nerds" would disagree with you. I think the point that OP was trying to make is the three groups are dynamic based on the topic. So the groups are not the same for biology, maths and for literature.

[Lord-Jobo]

Nerds are a group that have a separate definition of social peer and “cool” but aspire just as much as other groups to achieve social status or coolness.

It’s exceptionally rare to encounter any person, adult or otherwise, that genuinely holds no value in any opinion of another. And even those people hold to their own self evaluations which do not spawn from pure noise.

[FloorEgg]

While my experience relates to learning in higher-ed, I completely agree with those three categories... Though a helpful nuance may be that it's a spectrum, not hard boundaries, and every subject/exercise can have a distinct relationship with the learner and context.

When rubber hits the road with a learning objective, I think the two most important axis are: how much does the student want to learn (this), and how easy is it for the student to learn (this)?

Both can depend on a variety of factors... For example a masters student paying their own way mid career maybe really wants to learn as much as they can, but a specific research report assigned during a busy work week, and some family emergency, etc. may mean they treat the assignment as "I just need to get this done" instead of "I want to get as much as I can out of this", and one way that can show up is how much they depend on an LLM to do the work for them...

[jltsiren]

When I was involved in higher education, people talked about three motivations: passing the class, being good at whatever is being measured, and learning the topic. Those were not distinct categories but separate axes, and they were understood to be situational rather than inherent qualities of the person. We didn't care much about the people who scored low on all three axes. Education was free, and if you didn't have the motivation, you were probably better off doing something else.

In any case, people who wanted to learn were easy to deal with. The other two motivations could be used to coax the person to learn, but they required different approaches.

[FloorEgg]

That sounds right to me. I like that model and will remember it, thanks.

[snhshshjss]

I used to believe this until I got kids myself.

There is no stress, they just don’t want to “explore” things they see as non-urgent.. basically everything you need like writing, reading and calculating properly.

No amount of coaxing, gamification or whatever works consistently. The only thing that got my smartest kid through anything is by force. Not too much, but still, they need some amount of coercion no question about it. Anyone that denies this I find very, very hard to take seriously.

Interestingly the slightly less cerebral one is easier to guide through gamification. I guess the smarter you are the easier you see through BS. It’s easier to just learn to suck it up and Do The Thing instead of “learning is fun”. It isn’t and it doesn’t matter.

[ambicapter]

Then think of them as the same child in different phases between "extinguished innate desire" and "loves to explore and learn things".

[arjie]

I’m curious about homeschooling and alternative methods of schooling so this is of interest to me. By “virtually all” I assume you mean “all but those developmentally delayed”. Have you run a program that uses your principles or have you tested your thesis in some way that you are willing to share?

[ai_critic]

Real talk: which kids have you interacted with? What social class? What ethnicity? What household structure (nuclear, multigenerational, single parent, single parent plus intermittent partner, divorced with shared custody, dirtbag but grandparent covering)?

I've found that the people who are more optimistic about kids tend to live in a particular category of socioneconomic bubble.

[eszed]

Ignoring whatever you mean by injecting "ethnicity" into the question, I've interacted kids in all of those socio-economic situations and think both that GP's point about innate curiosity is true, and that GGP's unwilling / coaxable / eager concept is a reasonable framework. That's not to say that I'm necessarily optimistic - socio-economic difficulties create absolutely enormous challenges to learning - just that I've never encountered a group of kids, regardless of background, where there weren't students in each of those (unwilling / coaxable / eager) sets.