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I should have loved biology

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Re: I should have loved biology

#251

Post by rwnspace »

verisimi wrote: post #245
rsp1984 wrote: post #232

It's not just biology. It's basically every subject in high school. The amount of knowledge in the world has exploded in the last 100 - 150 years, yet our school system refuses to adapt and pretends we're still in the early 1900s. Back then you actually could get a good and reasonably in-depth overview of what makes the world work before going to college or work. But those kinds of aspirations are completely futile t…

Perhaps you're labouring under the illusion that education is for your good as opposed to the good of those who manage people? Why change a winning formula?

The practical purpose of public schooling is to A) catch the odd prodigy to send to the big leagues with the private school kids, B) get the well-behaved used to 9-5 hours, and C) have somewhere to keep the rest while the parents work.

University used to be just the first group, nowadays it includes the second.

Re: I should have loved biology

#252

Post by teekert »

todd8 wrote: post #186

I had been putting off quantum physics and time was running out. I was worried forth semester physics at MIT was going to be tough, but then through some miracle of providence the EE department decided that a solid state chemistry chemistry class plus Into to Biology could be substituted for quantum physics. Because I had already taken a solid state chemistry class, all I had to do was take a basic introductory biolo…

I think this depends a lot on the person. For example, my brain is apparently good at completely memorizing a biology book. I fill in gaps in my knowledge (which seems to exists as a series of images and animations in my head, call it a "world" model perhaps) with what I read. It all makes sense.

Maths however... It takes me seemingly endless amounts of energy to grasp things. My PhD was in Biophysics, and my colleagues were mostly physicists and they felt the other way around. They didn't understand how it could be harder to derive almost everything from basic principles and techniques than to memorize a colorful story about how life works.

Together we could do nice things though, me drawing pictures on one side of the white board, colleagues writing equations on the other side. It was a nice time.

Re: I should have loved biology

#254

Post by meigwilym »

rsp1984 wrote: post #232

It's not just biology. It's basically every subject in high school. The amount of knowledge in the world has exploded in the last 100 - 150 years, yet our school system refuses to adapt and pretends we're still in the early 1900s. Back then you actually could get a good and reasonably in-depth overview of what makes the world work before going to college or work. But those kinds of aspirations are completely futile t…

UK centric, but I think the first three years of high school/comprehensive should be selling the subjects to the kids, before they start their GCSE at age 14/15. Teachers should inspire children and make them have that feeling of wonder for three years.

Re: I should have loved biology

#255

Post by stared »

somethingreen wrote: post #246
rsp1984 wrote: post #232

It's not just biology. It's basically every subject in high school. The amount of knowledge in the world has exploded in the last 100 - 150 years, yet our school system refuses to adapt and pretends we're still in the early 1900s. Back then you actually could get a good and reasonably in-depth overview of what makes the world work before going to college or work. But those kinds of aspirations are completely futile t…

There's an argument that the role of school is not just to dispense knowledge, but to also act as a gym for the student's brain, teaching and training it how to process different kinds and structures of information, how to solve different kinds of problems. And I would add that one aspect of this training is the ability to deal with subjects student isn't particularly interested in. With this in mind, I don't see wha…

> but to also act as a gym for the student's brain

It sounds like a good goal. But in most cases, it is the opposite - based on memorizing facts or applying simple algorithms. These tasks are easy to measure and standardize, and after reducing their difficulty, ensure everyone can pass.

It's all incentives for the administration (who are the decision-makers), not - students.

Re: I should have loved biology

#256

Post by Yaina »

I think the horrible truth about the education system is, is that it discourages wonder.

In college, you have 5 courses per semester, possibly homework and an important test at the end.

The homework has to be finished, essays need to be written and facts need to be learned for tests. All of this times 5. I think the most mentally draining part of it all is the constant context switching.

In the end the hunger of students to delve deeper is not super high, and a lot of lecturers want to stay close to the courses structure they originally planned out (sometimes years or decades ago).

A good lecturer can make one course go a little better, but IMO it's the system that discourages interest.

Re: I should have loved biology

#257

Post by mettamage »

Yaina wrote: post #256

I think the horrible truth about the education system is, is that it discourages wonder. In college, you have 5 courses per semester, possibly homework and an important test at the end. The homework has to be finished, essays need to be written and facts need to be learned for tests. All of this times 5. I think the most mentally draining part of it all is the constant context switching. In the end the hunger of stud…

It didn't with me. In fact, with computer science it encouraged it. I had a hard time learning programming, but one TA was amazing. He helped me get through it, slowly I got the required skill set needed to have a more comfortable experience to understand CS material.

All anecdata of course. With that said, are there any studies done on this? I have a hunch the answer is not really. If there are some, then my hunch is: not all that much.

Re: I should have loved biology

#258

Post by SyzygistSix »

valenterry wrote: post #248
somethingreen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an argument that the role of school is not just to dispense knowledge, but to also act as a gym for the student's brain, teaching and training it how to process different kinds and structures of information, how to solve different kinds of problems. And I would add that one aspect of this training is the ability to deal with subjects student isn't particularly interested in. With this in mind, I don't see wha…

> And I would add that one aspect of this training is the ability to deal with subjects student isn't particularly interested in. What good does it do? I don't think that you improve the ability to ingest irrelevant information and make them stick. What you can do is to try to trick your brain into thinking it's relevant - but then, why not make it relevant? In the end, we don't learn for nothing, we learn because it…

It teaches you that you don't just get to do that things you are good at and enjoy, which is an important life lesson.

Re: I should have loved biology

#259

Post by Avamander »

april_22 wrote: post #208
todd8 wrote: post #186

I had been putting off quantum physics and time was running out. I was worried forth semester physics at MIT was going to be tough, but then through some miracle of providence the EE department decided that a solid state chemistry chemistry class plus Into to Biology could be substituted for quantum physics. Because I had already taken a solid state chemistry class, all I had to do was take a basic introductory biolo…

The amount of things you need to learn in biology is truly hard, though from what I've heard, there's nothing harder than quantum physics, since it's so fundamentally different from how we're used to seeing things.

Biology does have quite a few phenomena that rely on quantum effects. I would be careful of calling something that's just a subset harder than the whole larger set.

Re: I should have loved biology

#260

Post by Avamander »

gorgoiler wrote: post #236

DNA is like source code written one line at a time with a million branches each with a different engineer that merge once or twice after 20 years of random hacks whose merge conflict resolution is non deterministic and error prone yet amazingly produces syntax errors very rarely*. I take umbrage with the idea this is a technology from millions of years in the future. It’s literally the background noise technology tha…

If you're making a comparison to code, then DNA is just so much more. It's an approximately four billion years old legacy codebase, where execution depends on so much more than just one "line".
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