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A new school curriculum

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Re: A new school curriculum

#31

Post by motohagiography »

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> there are mental techniques, such as the memory palace, which enhance your ability to store and remember knowledge by 10x (not an exaggeration!). how did we miss that in school? Memorizing is pretty useless for doing anything except for passing highschool tests, and it can stop you from learning for real because it replaces understanding and independent derivation with recall. Of all the people I remember passing c…

Memorization is valuable for learning music and speaking performances. You can't add style and flourish to something you don't know. I'd argue you can't reason about things effectively without knowing them "by heart," either.

I do partially agree with another commenter here on Foucalt's quote about universities and education being the tools of one class levered against another, insomuch as you can apply that power relationship to literally anything, not because it's rigorous or meaningful, but because it is sufficiently abstract. Similar to comments I've made here about how "graph based," solutions to certain problems are not new solutions, as anything you can express (encode) as objects and morphisms is going to have "graph," properties. Foucalt and other post-modern (Marcuse, Derrida, etc.) writers simply characterized that simple encoding in a moralistic power oppressor/victim narrative instead of a logical one.

The public curriculum is the bare minimum, and parents and family provide the enrichment to basic education. The outcomes are going to be unequally distributed, but at least a public curriculum raises the boats.

Re: A new school curriculum

#32

Post by jedimastert »

Ctrl-f taxes: 0

This might be under "how the world works" but I think there should be a separate "how to be a reasonable citizen" like how to deal with taxes, voting, civics in general, that kinda stuff. It has a pretty big impact on day-to-day life.

Re: A new school curriculum

#33

Post by tboyd47 »

shantly wrote: post #18
tboyd47 wrote: post #10

"How to be a friendly, well-liked person" is not a "social skill." "How to use the Internet to learn: Google, Wikipedia." This is "learning about learning" to you?

Kids used to have to be taught how to use the library. Card catalogue, Dewey decimal system, all that. The kinds of things one may find at a library other than books. People aren't born knowing this stuff and may not realize what can and cannot be gained from a resource, or how to go about getting it, if they aren't told at some point. Hell, you have to teach kids about book features like captions and tables of conte…

I get that, it just strikes me as ridiculous that a curriculum about how to use the internet to learn would be summed up by: "Google, Wikipedia." Maybe the author is sacrificing too much depth here and I'm missing the overall point, but I'd rather teach my kids how not to use Google than teach them how to use it.

Re: A new school curriculum

#34

Post by jedimastert »

heynk wrote: post #27

> absolute pitch, the rare ability to identify a musical note like F# just by hearing it, can be a massive benefit to a musician. you can learn the skill in a matter of weeks, but it can only be acquired before the age of 7. only 0.01% of people end up learning it in time! I find it dubious that you can only learn this by age 7 - although I'm sure it's easier if you're younger. Is there science behind this claim? I a…

> I find it dubious that you can only learn this by age 7 - although I'm sure it's easier if you're younger. Is there science behind this claim?

A better way to put this would be "difficulty goes up exponentially, much in the same way as learning a new language".

> I am not a musician, but I have recently started learning to play piano, and training my ear is something I'd really like to learn. I've used some apps to practice ear training, and I'm able to discern intervals decently, but I can't recognize and identify a single note on its own. I do hope I can get there with more deliberate practice.

As a professional musician, absolute pitch is very helpful but definitely not necessary. Being able to hear intervals and the contours of a melody well enough to pick it out quickly (this also goes for recognizing what kind of modes scales are being used, i.e. major, minor, penatonic, mixolydian) is so helpful that I might actually call it necessary, depending on what you plan to do with your music.

Re: A new school curriculum

#35

Post by F-0X »

heynk wrote: post #27

> absolute pitch, the rare ability to identify a musical note like F# just by hearing it, can be a massive benefit to a musician. you can learn the skill in a matter of weeks, but it can only be acquired before the age of 7. only 0.01% of people end up learning it in time! I find it dubious that you can only learn this by age 7 - although I'm sure it's easier if you're younger. Is there science behind this claim? I a…

> the rare ability to identify a musical note like F# just by hearing it, can be a massive benefit to a musician

It can also be a curse. I've known a number of people with perfect pitch. Those who were pianists typically insisted on playing only electric pianos, because a typical mechanical piano that's not in a performance hall is probably not tuned until "regular" listeners can tell it is out, but it could be out enough to make it unplayable to a performer with perfect pitch.

Another thing I noticed which I thought was surprising - they weren't notably better composers despite their "better understanding" of pitch.

Re: A new school curriculum

#36

Post by titzer »

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> there are mental techniques, such as the memory palace, which enhance your ability to store and remember knowledge by 10x (not an exaggeration!). how did we miss that in school? Memorizing is pretty useless for doing anything except for passing highschool tests, and it can stop you from learning for real because it replaces understanding and independent derivation with recall. Of all the people I remember passing c…

Disagree strongly here. Memorization is a workout for the brain. Being able to recall the exact words of, e.g. poetry or prose, admits them to reflection at any time, not just when notes are available. There is no substitute for knowing something without reference; it then becomes part of consciousness, not another book on the shelf that yeah, could be opened at some point, but in practice. Your brain is weaker and emptier when you opt out of actually committing things to memory.

Re: A new school curriculum

#37

Post by shantly »

tboyd47 wrote: post #33
shantly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids used to have to be taught how to use the library. Card catalogue, Dewey decimal system, all that. The kinds of things one may find at a library other than books. People aren't born knowing this stuff and may not realize what can and cannot be gained from a resource, or how to go about getting it, if they aren't told at some point. Hell, you have to teach kids about book features like captions and tables of conte…

I get that, it just strikes me as ridiculous that a curriculum about how to use the internet to learn would be summed up by: "Google, Wikipedia." Maybe the author is sacrificing too much depth here and I'm missing the overall point, but I'd rather teach my kids how not to use Google than teach them how to use it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully that's an incomplete list of examples.

Re: A new school curriculum

#38

Post by hereme888 »

Warning: comment strongly biased towards a specific type of learning technology :)

At a molecular level, all memory (dendritic spines) declines at roughly the same rate. Some memories last much longer because the dendritic spines formed were much stronger (such as traumatic event, a well-formulated memory, or a memory strongly linked to other things such as a smell). But they all decline at the same rate nonetheless. I've been a fan of spaced-repetition learning for a few years. Programs like Anki use a variation of an old algorithm (SM-2) based on decay-rates for memory extrapolated from data gathered through tens of thousands of people over many years. I use a similar program for rote memorization first, and then to remember concepts.

After I grasp the basics of a subject I can eventually delete that flashcard and create a concept-based flashcard that allows me to understand the forest for the trees. Example: "very frothy urine is a possible clinical symptom of what disease? Proteinuria/Nephrotic syndrome" → "what macro-nutrient, when mixed vigorously in liquid, makes it frothy? Protein". So now I understand the key concept for both nephrotic syndrome and why I should only add whey protein to my shakes at the end of the mixing to avoid creating bubbles, etc.

If I had started using these programs when young, I would have saved years of life not having to re-learn the same thing year after year, because it takes much longer to re-learn than to remember. And now imagine I hadn't been forced to rote-memorize useless things just to pass a boring exam. Years of life... I wonder if spaced-repetition can also be used to remember skills that aren't practiced often.

The only limitation I know with spaced-repetition algorithms is that the data shows that it's not very useful for children until they're about 7 yo. This is because the algorithms are tuned to adult-level memorization, and children under 7 usually aren't nearly as good as adults at retention (for many reasons).

Re: A new school curriculum

#39

Post by SolaceQuantum »

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> there are mental techniques, such as the memory palace, which enhance your ability to store and remember knowledge by 10x (not an exaggeration!). how did we miss that in school? Memorizing is pretty useless for doing anything except for passing highschool tests, and it can stop you from learning for real because it replaces understanding and independent derivation with recall. Of all the people I remember passing c…

Minor exception: Language. Memorization is extremely important in developing language- you're sure as hell not going to derive Chinese from academic linguistics first principles!

Re: A new school curriculum

#40

Post by maemilius »

tboyd47 wrote: post #26
pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "How to be a friendly, well-liked person" is not a "social skill." Why not?

Being "friendly" and "well-liked" sound like the kinds of goals children would come up with on their own because they crave attention and positive reinforcement, not what adults should be teaching them.

The ability to be friendly in adverse situations is absolutely a social skill. I have a couple of coworkers that have the ability to remain friendly even in intense situations. I find it really helps deescalate situations (or keep them from escalating in the first place) without derailing the conversation.
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