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Fuck Your Miracle Year

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Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#71

Post by chmod600 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #50
nerdponx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have become convinced that inadequate public schooling is the reason why America has come to rely so much on college to make people "ready for society". Teachers are criminally underpaid, unsupported, and overworked, while parents are not engaged with their children's learning. It's a bad mix. Not to mention the politicization of teacher unions.

If they’re overworked, what is it they’re working so hard and so ineffectively at?

Accommodating students unwilling to learn or unprepared.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#72

Post by s5300 »

ironmagma wrote: post #64

> Also, stop meditation and trying to optimize your mental and physical performance. Has anyone who’s ever had a miracle year cared about any of this shit? I’d say Lex Fridman is in his equivalent of a miracle year, or was last year anyway. Keeping the body tuned is important for mental ability which is important if you’re trying to be productive at all, much more to achieve a miracle year.

Lex presents as one of the biggest self absorbed pseudo-intellectuals of the 21st century. Perhaps a miracle year in being a joke of a philosopher I guess.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#74

Post by ajmurmann »

jameshart wrote: post #42
spir wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how slowly high school math moved. How uninspired English class was. The poor curriculum and tools in programming class. imo, there is definitely a primary and secondary education problem vs. the early-life academic environments that helped to produce yesteryear's great thinkers. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...

One of the things that is deeply ingrained in education curricula, yet which doesn’t seem remotely justified pedagogically, is the timetable. The idea of studying lots of subjects, all at once, via daily or weekly sub-hour-long bite-sized lessons. If you threw out all the context switching and review and catch-up, you could probably teach most year-long high school subject curricula in a week.

I think you are on to something. At the same time I wonder about content sticking if you don't practice the subject for months. Doing math two months of the year (ignoring the math you might need in physics class) might mean you have to rehash a lot. That said, for many subjects this wouldn't even change anything. How often does learning something in history class currently rely on what you learned a few months ago? Rebec in my biology classes things rarely were connected. For a few weeks we talk about fungi and then for a few weeks about the cardiovascular system.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#75

Post by angrais »

oldstrangers wrote: post #57

I don't understand either one of these articles to be honest. We're talking about Einstein and Newton as if their success is reproduceable if we just give people time to think? We don't have miracle years now because people like Einstein are impossibly rare. That's assuming Einstein was even human. We also don't have "miracle years" because the term doesn't actually mean anything. It's not real. Maybe the pressures o…

I'm confused... Are you suggesting Einstein was not human, e.g., an alien?

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#76

Post by hello_popppet »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #56
throwaway1777 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree. It’s kind of a power law distribution thing where 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs. We should absolutely optimize for geniuses.

> 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs That is maybe the single most dubious statistic I've seen thrown out so offhandedly in my entire time on HN.

No post body was provided.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#77

Post by glitchc »

K12 education used to be about teaching, but the No Child Left Behind policy changed goalposts. It’s now about maximizing the percentage of students that graduate. Since it’s unlikely students are getting smarter, the curriculum needs to be less intensive to lower the threshold for graduation. Net result is more students graduating per capita at the cost of a dumbed down curriculum.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#78

Post by otras »

angrais wrote: post #75
oldstrangers wrote: post #57

I don't understand either one of these articles to be honest. We're talking about Einstein and Newton as if their success is reproduceable if we just give people time to think? We don't have miracle years now because people like Einstein are impossibly rare. That's assuming Einstein was even human. We also don't have "miracle years" because the term doesn't actually mean anything. It's not real. Maybe the pressures o…

I'm confused... Are you suggesting Einstein was not human, e.g., an alien?

Einstein aside, the jury is still out on a few Martians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#79

Post by mellavora »

nsxwolf wrote: post #50
nerdponx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have become convinced that inadequate public schooling is the reason why America has come to rely so much on college to make people "ready for society". Teachers are criminally underpaid, unsupported, and overworked, while parents are not engaged with their children's learning. It's a bad mix. Not to mention the politicization of teacher unions.

If they’re overworked, what is it they’re working so hard and so ineffectively at?

I notice that you have perverted the meaning by adding the word "ineffective" which was not in the statement you are replying to, though you imply it was and that teachers are.

As if the only way a person can be overworked is by not being effective at their job.

And thus it is the teacher's failing that they cannot keep up with the workload, not the people assigning the workload.

It seems you have had a very rare and fortunate life. I am happy for you, though I wish you had more respect for others.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#80

Post by mellavora »

jameshart wrote: post #42
spir wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how slowly high school math moved. How uninspired English class was. The poor curriculum and tools in programming class. imo, there is definitely a primary and secondary education problem vs. the early-life academic environments that helped to produce yesteryear's great thinkers. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...

One of the things that is deeply ingrained in education curricula, yet which doesn’t seem remotely justified pedagogically, is the timetable. The idea of studying lots of subjects, all at once, via daily or weekly sub-hour-long bite-sized lessons. If you threw out all the context switching and review and catch-up, you could probably teach most year-long high school subject curricula in a week.

It might not have been the teachers who decided on this schedule.

I hear some tech workers complain that their days are made ineffective by lots of pointless meetings.

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