The Myth of 'Learning Styles' • Hacker News Board

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#101

Post by Izkata » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

haZard_OS wrote: post #79

This is an example of a myth that just won't die. The Skeptics Society (to give but one example) has been trying for years to put this nonsense to rest: https://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-myth-of-learning-styles/ I have even made multiple visits to my children's schools and tried to explain the actual research connected with pedagogy and communication but to little avail: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journal…

> Like the myth that "we only use 10% of our brains"

I've heard that the commonly-debunked version of this is a totally misrepresented version of the original claim. The debunked one being that we only use 10% of our brain matter ever, while the original claim was something more like "at a given instant in time, only ~10% of your neurons are firing".

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#102

Post by taejo » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 11:39 AM UTC

oldmancoyote wrote: post #82

Bull Pucky! Let me tell you my story. By third grade I could not read. I didn't get it. How could people remember all those words? Yet I had one of those off the wall IQs. In third grade they put me in Remedial Reading taught by Mrs. Gordon. If there is a Heaven, then there must be a special place in it for people like Mrs. Gordon. Up until then we were supposed to learn to read by reading. It was the big thing then:…

> Up until then we were supposed to learn to read by reading. It was the big thing then: learn to read the same way we learned to speak: by doing it. It worked for lots of kids. Not for me.

My impression is that it's pretty much settled science that Mrs. Gordon was right and phonics is better than or as good as look-say for the vast majority of children.

Most children might cope better than you did, but they may have done even better with Mrs. Gordon's phonics, and moreover the most successful ones may be "secretly" using phonics-type methods which they either worked out for themselves, or learnt at home or kindergarten.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#103

Post by taejo » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 11:47 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #101

haZard_OS wrote: post #79

This is an example of a myth that just won't die. The Skeptics Society (to give but one example) has been trying for years to put this nonsense to rest: https://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-myth-of-learning-styles/ I have even made multiple visits to my children's schools and tried to explain the actual research connected with pedagogy and communication but to little avail: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journal…

> Like the myth that "we only use 10% of our brains" I've heard that the commonly-debunked version of this is a totally misrepresented version of the original claim. The debunked one being that we only use 10% of our brain matter ever, while the original claim was something more like "at a given instant in time, only ~10% of your neurons are firing".

> "at a given instant in time, only ~10% of your neurons are firing".

At any given instant in time, your computer is using less than 50% of its RAM: more than half of the bits are off!

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#104

Post by innocentoldguy » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

j10sanders wrote: post #61

innocentoldguy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment on being "focused." In analyzing my own learning preferences, I found it is much easier for me to stay focused if I can speed my way through something. Speed is the key for me, not the format. For example, if I have the choice to learn the same information via a video or book, I'd opt for the book because I know I can read a lot quicker than the person in the video is going to speak. This he…

I highly doubt you absorb much at 4-5x speed. 3x speed is very fast -- if the speaker talks quickly, it's borderline unintelligible.

I understand where you're coming from. When I first started doing this, 1.5x was the maximum I could go and still retain information. After a while, I was able to retain information at 2x, then 2.5x and so on. It took me a year or two of practice to get to this speed. It also depends on what you're trying to learn, how clearly the speaker is enunciating, and whether the speaker has a heavy accent or not, I guess, but it works for me in most cases.