A new school curriculum

About 10 years ago, in my second year CS program, I created a program to Teaching secondary school students how to use the internet to find stuff online for free and learn. This was in lieu of a 6-month internship program.

I first spent weeks creating a training manual. (I should have spent time selling before spending weeks on the manual). I then talked a friend into helping me send proposals to private schools. A marketing manager friend of mine proofread the proposal letter - that's when I learned about business writing - Must Be Straight to the Point.

I approached a number of government secondary schools. The teachers there loved it but told me a government approval was necessary for the program. I pursued the approval but it didn't go through.

The private schools were lukewarm. Approached my alma mater and received the same lukewarm response. The students who I spoke to listened to the pitch and gave me a response I would never forget. They said, "Google? I know how to use google."

I didn't expect the naive response. In hindsight, I should have made up a complicated sounding title for the program. It's just that I'm a, "say it like it is person."

I sold only one copy of the manual and received a thank-you note (Found it a few months ago. Unfortunately, there was no name signed to the note and I don't remember who it was).

Now I work in a school environment and 90%+ of the students hate learning. They only go through the motions because it's required.

>memory palace, mnemonics, Sleep's role in learning, note-taking

I did teach this when I handled an elective class and my students loved it. They spread the word, and their classmates who weren't taking the subject started hanging around my class. I also taught them the difference between reading for pleasure and reading for exams. And that perfect practice makes perfect.

Reading for exams simply practices reading. But setting one's own questions, and answering past questions is much more effective at preparing for exams.

>Meditation

I thought deeply about this but never implemented it. Or I didn't know how to. Also, it kept skipping my mind.

>Writing of all forms

This was the first thing I tried with the students - their writing ability is subpar. Out of 30 students, just one did the exercise because I wasn't their English teacher and that was the end of that.

>reading old literature.

Now I mind the library most of the time (it was locked before). And I've spent on different occasions up to 5% of my salary on story books and literature. Wanted to buy 10 used ebook readers from the US (eBay) in October but couldn't work out my own shipping. Buying from sellers who send directly to my country means a 5X price increase.

>Our World

Downloaded kolibri late last month. Downloaded 2,007 khan academy videos so far. Set up one of my laptops as the server and networked it with my phone wifi with another. Created accounts for 2 senior students who are library regulars. And they love it. One other student showed interest this afternoon. Time will tell if their interest is sustained or not.

there are 100s of great resources (Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy, GitHub, Wiktionary, to name a few) and techniques (Google search tricks like using quotes, site: tag, etc., good habits like avoiding distractions) to augment Internet learning

you could evenly weight this area like any other class, and expect to spend many hours on it.

(note: which isn't to say that it's easy to avoid perception- or value-induced biases, nor that it's possible (yet, or ever) to describe all of reality in strictly logical terms; as such philosophers may paint extremely subjective characterization of models that could otherwise be better generalized in more neutral terms.)

It's like if Einstein said "gravity is oppressing spacetime": assigning intent beyond mere behavior of large informal human groups ("the rich", "the 1%", "workers", "mothers", etc) is a slippery slope down hubris-bias road, de-elevating the science in favor of perception.