[Cushman]

> Teachers talk endlessly about methods of engaging children and teenagers

Step 1: Force all children to go to a big building eight hours a day for twelve years "to learn".

Step 2: They aren't learning. Figure out a way to make the average child interested and engaged by this circumstance.

Step 3: Who knows?

I'm sure teachers are, by and large, intelligent, caring people who really want to help pupils to fulfil themselves. But that doesn't help much if (as is being proposed) the education system itself is founded on flawed principles.

> Some are curious in ways that are useless for education.

Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity? As I define it curiosity means wanting to know more; I can't make that be not useful for education in my head.

[DanBC]

> Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity?

Boys like learning lists of names and stats. You'll have met boys who can give you a very long list of dinosaur names or pokemon or supercars. But that's just rote recitation of facts; there's nothing in there about why things are how they are. Feynmann gives an interesting anecdote about his father talking about birds and trees. He'd rarely give just the name, but he would talk about why the tree had broad leaves or such.

[Cushman]

Sorry, are you implying that there are kids out there who are drilling a list of dinosaur names every night without any interest in what those dinosaurs looked like, or sounded like, or ate?

Every kid who's ever wanted to tell me about all the X she knows hasn't been able to wait to tell me all kinds of facts and details about each X, and was eager to hear if I knew something interesting about X.

That's not rote recitation; that's knowledge.

[fatbird]

The problem with Step 1 is "all". The whole point of my initial post is that children vary, and the methods by which they're educated need to vary as well. "All children will be lead into the forest by an experienced guide who will let their curiosity guide them in a journey of self-exploration" is just as wrong.

Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity?

My friend's son is endlessly curious about dinosaurs, so much so that he refuses to invest any time in math homework. In general, curiosity leads to specialization, which is great only to the extent that it doesn't preclude some time being exposed to other subjects. Curiosity is like having a favourite food: Children need to learn a balanced diet, lest they die of malnutrition for eating nothing but candy.

[Cushman]

> The problem with Step 1 is "all". The whole point of my initial post is that children vary, and the methods by which they're educated need to vary as well. "All children will be lead into the forest by an experienced guide who will let their curiosity guide them in a journey of self-exploration" is just as wrong.

It's not just as wrong, and I think that's the friction we're having. The original premise is, "Our one-size-fits-all approach is obviously not working, we need education to be more self-directed." I hear you saying, "Some people might not be able to learn in a self-directed way, we need some other director." That may well be true, but it still leaves our current system undirected which is definitely worse.

> My friend's son is endlessly curious about dinosaurs, so much so that he refuses to invest any time in math homework. In general, curiosity leads to specialization, which is great only to the extent that it doesn't preclude some time being exposed to other subjects. Curiosity is like having a favourite food: Children need to learn a balanced diet, lest they die of malnutrition for eating nothing but candy.

Sorry, that just sounds like speculation to me. If you can demonstrate somehow that forcing everyone to study arithmetic is necessary for us to have a happy, productive society, I'll accept that; as it stands, I know a lot of people who were forced to study arithmetic for many years and still struggle with basic math. Is it possible that we just wasted a bunch of their time?