The Lesson to Unlearn • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#31

Post by fhennig » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:23 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #11

I can't find whose quote it is that "the most difficult thing is to teach people to think simply". Unfortunately education cannot test that, because tests are by definition testing only a fragment of a system. Knowing and understanding one thing end-to-end is meaningful knowledge, and qualitatively better than knowing fragments of 100 things. Perhaps you can assess the former by grading a diploma thesis on a very spe…

> Tests may have an important role in motivating students to delve more deeply in subjects but they don't go beyond that.

I feel like the university doesn't allow for time to stroll from the beaten path and explore topics that you're interested in. Most people I talked to have a very stressful studying experience. You know people care about your grade in the end, and you pay a lot of money for your degree. So it makes sense to also spent the majority of your time to learn the course material in and out.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#32

Post by c64112af69ea8a3 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:25 PM UTC

jraby3 wrote: post #22

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

We thought the same way but it’s difficult to replace the social component. Still it’s hard to see how bad the school system is and force our kids to participate. It could be so much better.

Look for an unschooling school, strange as that may sound. Free democratic and Sudbury Valley model are some of the things to search for. There aren't many around but the numbers are increasing.

We send our son to one. It's a leap of faith; the kids essentially "do whatever". But it seems worth it compared to the damage done by middle and high school. And the kids that I've seen come out of this school seem to do well in society (and college) and generally seem much more mature than high school graduates.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#33

Post by nmfisher » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:26 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

I'm curious about Page & Brin - I wasn't aware they didn't go through conventional schooling. What was their background?

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#34

Post by prox » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:29 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

I remember this history teacher who was a breath of fresh air. He told us in advance his test where very simple. And the reason was quite genius: if you just listened and took a few notes here and there, you’d pass the test. Which freed the mind to really absorb the knowledge and have fun with the subject matter. He was also very good in discerning knowledge and teaching why a certain topic was good to know. I think I remember more from those classes than any other.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#35

Post by fhennig » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

thepete2 wrote: post #7

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #2

> If you merely read good books on medieval history, most of the stuff you learned wouldn't be on the test. It's not good books you want to read, but the lecture notes and assigned reading in this class. It is the professor's job to decide which parts of medieval history are the most important to learn. Therefore, those are what I need to study. Maybe not all professors do this effectively—but as long as we're talkin…

> And even most of that you can ignore, because you only have to worry about the sort of thing that could turn up as a test question.

I think we should just drop book work questions altogether and allow students to take notes into the exam. Just make the tests about analysis and synthesis, which is the stuff you should be able to do if you truly understood something and didn't just memorize some facts.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#36

Post by matwood » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:31 PM UTC

astatine wrote: post #21

I don't think students are the blameless victim of this "system". I know of a continuous evaluation system adopted in a college, where the final tests had a less than 50% weightage for the grade. Thr students rebelled. It was far easier for a majority to burn the midnight oil for a few weeks than be diligent through the course. The test model has stuck because it's convenient for everyone, regardless of its clear wea…

I'm one of those weird outliers I guess, but even when there were only 1-2 exams for the whole course I stayed diligent throughout. The night before a test I just did a bit of review, and got a good nights sleep. I never understood those who tried to cram because it's not something that would ever work for how I learn and understand.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#37

Post by anonytrary » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

> No one was pulling all-nighters two weeks into the semester.

As a physics student, I can say we definitely pulled 2am-ers 2 weeks into the semester. Our Condensed Matter professor gave us some of the most random questions that no one could anticipate. To be honest, I was one of those "diligent" students who got good grades. I'll tell you right now his quizzes were not hackable. The following held true:

  |quiz subject matter| >> |lecture matter|

He tested on the former, so we had no way of memorizing or hacking the quiz. You had to really understand the concepts to do well on his quizzes. Ditto for my grad Quantum Mechanics class.

On the other hand, I've also had professors who give exams pulled from the internet and allow use of the internet while taking those exams. I hacked that immediately during the exam, then almost got in trouble for it.

> ...if the professor tells you that there were three underlying causes of the Schism of 13... you'd better know them.

A professor like my Condensed Matter Physics professor would go on and on about 3 fundamental causes and then quiz students about the 5 fundamental causes, giving a zero to anyone who couldn't think of all the base 3, then grading the remaining students who thought creatively of 2 additional causes against each other on a bell curve. :)

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#38

Post by mattbee » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:35 PM UTC

This spends too many words justifying the stale "real hacker" tradition of dunking on education, and kindof ignores the problem of how to measure something so subjective as learning.

So people who are good at tests get ahead. We get that you're not interested in grades. We all know people who play the game and win, not sincerely engage with their job or education or whatever.

But I'd like to hear from pg / other people in YC how they think they are "hacked". What do their successful applicants actually optimise for when "delight" and even "growth" are just as subjective as "learning"? After all they fund lots and lots of companies and founders, many of whom make no returns. How do founders keep their funding "success" long past the point it was deserved?

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#39

Post by volume » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

"The capacity to just build things without fear of being judged is invaluable"

For me, I had to unlearn self judgement. This has helped so much over the last few years.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#40

Post by njacobs5074 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

That is a great essay. Thank you for sharing.

I've worked in tech for quite a while now. I used to buy into the meritocracy cant but as the years wore on, I realized how much bullshit it was.

I think the biggest moment came when I started to think about how to explain to people in my new home, South Africa, that working in tech would free you economically. There's some truth to that. But that's not the whole truth.

The truth is that all those years ago when I got my first coding job in financial services, I ticked 3 important boxes for the interview: white, male, and university-educated.