[tokenadult]

An interesting essay by Nabeel Qureshi, opening up with a great example from Richard Feynman and then showing the development of the author's own thinking on how to learn. The author writes, "My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.)" And of course many people receive an education like that.

Qureshi credits John Holt's book How Children Fail

http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Developme...

with opening his eyes to a different view of education. (The same book was recommended to me by my junior high assistant principal in 1971. How Children Fail was a life-changing book for me, and I recommend it to everyone who has ever been in school.) Qureshi writes, "In the last couple of years, I’ve been going through a process of un-education: removing all the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me:

"Being afraid of failure or embarrassment"

That's crucial. To be afraid to fail is to be afraid to learn. Here's a link to a FAQ I have prepared for my local mathematics students, "Courage in the Face of Stupidity,"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php

designed to prevent the kind of misguided approach to learning mentioned in the essay kindly submitted here. School curricula in many parts of the United States (and perhaps elsewhere too, as I note the essay is from Britain?) are designed so that most pupils will succeed in school assignments most of the time. That doesn't provide enough practice in taking on HARD tasks, and inadequately prepares young learners to succeed in either

a) study of more than one really difficult subject at the same time

or

b) successful problem-solving in adult life in private employment, when the problems are often open-ended and ill-defined.

As a parent of four children, and as a teacher of elementary-age pupils, I'm all about first bolstering children's expectations that initial failure is not a sure predictor of never succeeding, and then introducing CHALLENGING problems into their education so that one thing they practice while young is overcoming failure.

AFTER EDIT:

Another top-level comment just asked,

Anyone out there tried home schooling?

Yes. And it was John Holt's writings, beginning with How Children Fail in the early 1970s, that sparked my interest in homeschooling. I have been pleased with the results of homeschooling in the case of my oldest son, now fully grown and making a living as a hacker for a start-up, and I am glad to continue homeschooling for my three younger children.

[nswanberg]

It's unfortunate that this post about a young businessman's frustrations with school showed up when you weren't reading: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5194104

It would have been nice to read your thoughts on whether he should just get a GED (or perhaps no diploma) and find other ways of educating himself.

But perhaps they would have been similar to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358559

[chatmasta]

You can preach to children the value of the process, the importance of learning, etc. But the second you give them an exam, you lose all credibility. That's the real problem with school. Even if teachers devote themselves to imbuing this "problem centric" approach in their students, the school system requires them to give examinations, which inherently encourage the "answer centric" approach.

[tokenadult]

To the contrary, I know many examples of young people who rock on exams precisely because they learn to pursue curiosity rather than to fulfill minimal school requirements. How useful an examination is depends on how it is designed and administered. How influential examinations are in an overall educational system depends on what incentives are attached to exams and what rewards and opportunities are available to learners irrespective of exams.

Albert Einstein had an interesting account of his school experiences in his longest autobiographical writing, the introductory section of a book I grew up having in my home library (because my dad bought the book when he was a student of the philosophy of science).

http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html

The examination system that Einstein encountered as a student in Switzerland actually allowed him to spend minimal time getting ready for examinations and most of his time independently pursuing his interest in physics. As Einstein wrote, "There were altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one could just about do as one pleased." If his school grades had been based more on daily homework assignments (as in the United States), then he probably would have seen his "holy curiosity of inquiry" entirely strangled by the school system, to use his words.

[dspeyer]

Those exams required minimal time (for Einstein -- a student of average intelligence might have a different experience).

If passing the exams requires spending most of your school time preparing for them, it's a very different situation.

[_delirium]

That's one reason I liked my non-science/math courses in school better than the science/math ones, despite otherwise being inclined in the other direction. It varied based on the course, but on average I felt that courses where you wrote a paper or essay took the problem-centric approach more seriously, and graded me based on whether my analysis was interesting, coherent, supported properly, took into account obvious objections, etc., rather than by whether it was the "right" analysis matching some pre-determined answer the teacher was looking for.

I did have a few project-based science courses, based more on having to propose something and justify your proposal, rather than giving a pre-determined answer. But I wasn't able to find more than a handful of those, and they tended to only be senior-level elective seminars, with a small number of students. I would guess the trend towards large, lecture-based courses (whether in-person, or MOOCs) will make them even more rare.

[qu4z-2]

Interestingly that was why I disliked English specifically. It felt like the teacher often had a predetermined view, and would grade a compelling argument for the opposite view below a holey one for the "right" one.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't understand this comment. If you don't test someone's knowledge how do you know that they have learned? Good exams aren't "answer centric" they are "problem centric". If you have learned a subject, and someone presents you a problem in that subject, you can provide a solution based on that knowledge.

When your just starting out its harder, you can't say "explain the impact of European colonization on the Americas" you have to say "When did Columbus discover America?" and yes, poor educators sometimes try to give multiple choice exams because it is easier for them, but that doesn't say anything about the need to measure the effectiveness of the child at learning the material.