I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#361

Post by red-iron-pine » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #168

necovek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never taught myself, so take this with a grain of salt (though I do think it is extremely hard to do well). I did, however, have a teacher who taught an advanced subject and I found his instruction so good that I did not have to bother with homework and assignments if I was happy with B grades — as I wasn't particularly motivated, only occassionaly did I put in the effort for an A. I could, however, see the level o…

schooling has to be designed around "average" teachers. Having someone who is gifted at teaching is great, but there wouldn't be many teachers if that was the standard. I often think when people idealize what schooling should be like it always seems like they are imagining teachers who are gifted.

the market also prices out these gifted teachers.

you either struggle to pay the bills and teach -- a thankless job, often -- or you take those gifts and double your pay working in industry.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#362

Post by Rohansi » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #175

Rohansi wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've discovered is your learning style. It's not the same for everyone so it's an important thing that everyone should discover about themself. There are visual learners out there. Being a visual learner doesn't mean you don't need to do the work, it means you typically need some visualization for things to click, and then you practice applying it like everyone else. Some people can even manage with just lectu…

> What you've discovered is your learning style. I have difficulty believing that my learning style is uncommon. Consider trying to build muscle. There are techniques that are proven to work best. There are no individual "muscle building styles" that work better, unless the person has a disability. And I don't believe that in general the kids in classes are mentally disabled. Yes, I know about ADHD, autism, and dysle…

It's definitely not uncommon.

I think it's more of a motivation problem. Not all students are eager to learn. They may not be interested in the subject for whatever reason. It's hard to teach someone who isn't open to it. Learning styles can help bring some of those barriers down by shifting the material into a form that they are more open to.

The same applies to building muscle. Not everyone is self-motivated to do it. There are different ways to motivate people to work out. But in the end they all need to do the work/practice.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#363

Post by simiones » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #345

simiones wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree on phonics, but teaching Greek and Latin before any modern language? That seems deeply weird as an idea. Especially since Greek (by which I assume you mean Ancient Greek) is a pretty isolated language, with relatively little relation to any modern language except modern Greek. Another huge issue with Ancient Greek and Classical Latin is that they have extremely complex grammars compared to any modern Eu…

> Classical Latin [has] extremely complex grammars compared to any modern European language …I know almost nothing about this topic, but this doesn’t line up with what people who know Latin have told me. They’ve frequently cited the language’s simple grammar as something they like about it.

(Classical) Latin nouns have one of 3 genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and each noun has 12 possible forms (6 cases * 2 numbers); pronouns follow similar rules; and the adjectives modifying a noun have to agree with it in case, gender, and number (so typically a single adjective has 36 possible forms). Verbs vary by voice (active/passive), mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, participle, gerund, supine), tense (different moods have different numbers of tenses, with 6 for the indicative), number (singular or plural), and person (3 persons); overall, a single verb will have more than a hundred different forms.

Because verbs have so many specific forms, it is also pretty common in Latin, as in most modern Romance languages, to omit the subject of a sentence, as it can typically be inferred from context plus the specific verb form - so, you often have to recognize the verb form to be able to understand who the sentence is even talking about (e.g. a sentence might say "amo regem"; if you recognize the words but not the specific forms, this means "love king"; but this unambiguously means "I love the king").

Now, there is quite a bit of regularity here - there are 5 categories of regular verbs (plus some specific irregular verbs), and 5 categories of nouns (though there are multiple sub-categories, as there is some variation in noun forms even in the same category; plus of course some irregular nouns).

Overall no, I don't see any comparison where you could say that Latin is a simple language. All modern Romance languages have universally merged or dropped various of these features. For example, Spanish drops the case system entirely, drops the neuter gender, and reduces the number of moods for verbs.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#364

Post by groundzeros2015 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #193

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. There has been a shift in requirements to combat credential inflation. The average person is not smarter or more capable.

I think you misunderstood his comment, because you agree with him. He's not saying require as in needed to do the work, but required as in unnecessarily needed to be accepted for the job.

Then I agree. I read it as the argument that the economy is actually more technically complex and requires additional education, which is a common argument made be politicians and university admins.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#365

Post by alexpotato » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

It's amazing to me how some of these techniques are part of certain cultures already.

Case in point:

In the book Angry White Pyjamas [0], the author is British and living in Japan.

He is going through the Tokyo Riot Police training which involves a lot of aikido training. He is also teaching English to high school students.

He points out that the techniques used for training aikido worked well with the students as well.

Specifically:

- show the technique

- have someone try out the technique

- talk about what they did well and what they didn't do well

- have everyone else practice

Highly recommend the book btw if you are interested at all in Japan, martial arts, living abroad etc.

0 - https://amzn.to/4v3rHdq

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#366

Post by g3f32r » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #244

anon-3988 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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

> 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.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

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Post by goldylochness » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

i honestly don't care what other people do, there's no way my children will be sitting in a desk for 8 hours a day instead of learning how to live their life and survive

school was a massive waste of potential

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

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Post by upfrog » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #356

simiones wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree on phonics, but teaching Greek and Latin before any modern language? That seems deeply weird as an idea. Especially since Greek (by which I assume you mean Ancient Greek) is a pretty isolated language, with relatively little relation to any modern language except modern Greek. Another huge issue with Ancient Greek and Classical Latin is that they have extremely complex grammars compared to any modern Eu…

In the US, it seems like malpractice to teach anything before Spanish IMO. 14% of the country are native Spanish speakers. It's hard to imagine a return on any other foreign-language instruction that would match improving communication between 45 million residents of the country and everyone else, to say nothing of improving communication with citizens of the other countries actually sharing a land mass with the US.

If we find a way to make 4-6 years of language instruction reliably lead to a reasonable level of language competency, maybe. But until then, the student's underlying interest in the language is much more important than any abstract sense of usefulness. I took Spanish in highschool, and despite being moderately ambitious about it, never got very good, and never got much use out of it, despite living in Florida and Texas. I suspect (although alternate history is hard, so I can't guarantee) that I would have gotten a lot more out of Japanese, simply due to alignment of interest.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#369

Post by bawolff » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #181

bawolff wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Art, while cool to look at and experience, has a pretty low efficacy in terms of "motivating people to do work, or removing obstacles, to carry society forward" Idk, the soviets didn't invest in socialist realism propaganda for nothing. Less sarcastically, art has had an outsized influence on society and culture. Take any social movement you want, and there was probably some novel or work of art that galvanized it.

My argument isn't that art doesn't have an impact, my argument is that the artists to impact ratio is insane. 10,000 artists in, one $20k work of art out. Whereas something like the engineer is closer to 5 engineers in, $500k of work out (and even that is pretty conservative)

I'm not sure i agree witb the ratio. I think its much more lopsided. E.g. 100,000 artists in, one trillion dollar work of art out. (I'm counting indirect value. e.g. All the people who read Dune or a silent spring and become environmentalists as a result should have their value attributed to that work of art)

Also i'd point out the selection bias of not counting people who fail out of engineering school but still counting every unsuccessful artist.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#370

Post by foltik » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #363

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Classical Latin [has] extremely complex grammars compared to any modern European language …I know almost nothing about this topic, but this doesn’t line up with what people who know Latin have told me. They’ve frequently cited the language’s simple grammar as something they like about it.

(Classical) Latin nouns have one of 3 genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and each noun has 12 possible forms (6 cases * 2 numbers); pronouns follow similar rules; and the adjectives modifying a noun have to agree with it in case, gender, and number (so typically a single adjective has 36 possible forms). Verbs vary by voice (active/passive), mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, participle, g…

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