Education must go beyond the mere production of words • Hacker News Board

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#71

Post by mncharity » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

Two analogies for thought:

There's a meme, "Why develop one's own expertise? It's a poor investment. When you need it, you can hire it." Does AI make us all trust-fund kids?

An intro-physics educator at a first-tier university, observes that their entering students, having attended such well-funded schools, with such highly-skilled teachers, presenting material so clearly... widely lack both the skills and inclination to wrestle with a body of knowledge to extract their own understanding. To the detriment of their early-college education. The sci-ed snark version is, raising all students to the level of these, would be both an unimaginably immense triumph, and an ongoing profound failing to teach well. Will AI give everyone material presented so clearly?

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#72

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #8

rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

> I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware I’ve never been an arts person and I’ve been a very, very logical person, so it’s very odd to me to realize that my answer to this is: poetry. More and more these days I look for ways to both reason with and frame the world and current events. I’ve followed years and years of people putting forth logic and reason as explanations.…

As a slight tangent here, it's not just poetry. When you read something like 'The Republic', especially with regards to Plato's views on the cyclical nature of political systems and the end of democracy (and what it turns into), it reads a lot like an edgelord speaking with vaguely disguised metaphor with a rather large helping of hindsight bias. But the fact that it was written some 2400 years ago changes everything and emphasizes that history doesn't just repeat, it plagiarizes itself.

I've come to realize that the the past ~80 years since the first nuke, the only world nearly all of us have ever known, was a major outlier. Nukes prevented direct conflict between major powers and digital tech alone was more than enough to drive economic progress, regardless of how dumb our decisions may have been on relations or economics. Those times, on both accounts, are effectively over. And so the chaos and uncertainty of this brave new world we're now living in isn't, in fact, new. Rather it's the world that humanity has lived in for the overwhelming majority of its existence. And we're now simply returning to the world that these great works were written in and for, and they've become more relevant than ever.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#73

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #16

globnomulous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's one thing to memorize arguments in favour of a position. It's another to actively defend your positions against those aggressively invested in proving you wrong. John Stuart Mill argued that only the latter activity produces the real understanding that allows an argument, or a tradition, to be renewed and kept alive across generations against constant attempts at refutation. If you are regurgitating a stance i…

Chess Grand Masters have large repertoires of memorised openings. They do not play rote games with no understanding. They run variations, twists and traps, on recalled openings and duel and fool by creating and breaking expectations. In line with a number of other activities rote core skills and reflexes are foundational but not all, they're essential to practice and to dealing with situations where they don't fit bu…

Chess960 was invented to shatter this disgusting debasement of chess. That's not just my opinion, that's Bobby Fischers! Opening books, endgame tablebases, piece square tables, etc heuristic hacks that both grand masters and chess engines use is evidence that Chess needs to be replaced with variants that are resistant to letting "strong memorizers" beat actually good tacticians and strategists.

This is why Stratego, or various grand/large chess variants, or Chess960 needs to have replaced standard chess yesterday.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#74

Post by beej71 » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

stogot wrote: post #33

obscurette wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of education has never been to teach specific skills. The purpose of education has always been to provide literacy — the ability to understand the world, process information, and learn. Yes, this is done through activities that are relevant in the world at that particular moment, but that is simply an inevitability. And the reason is very simple — we don’t know what skills the people currently in school w…

Compulsory education actually reduced US literacy levels after it was introduced, and it’s also not its original stated goals, nor is today any better at literacy 54% of adults lack proficiency in literacy Public schools have failed to “educate” https://map.barbarabush.org/

> Compulsory education actually reduced US literacy levels after it was introduced

I can't find any data that supports this causal assertion, and I can find plenty that contradicts the premise that US literacy rates have reduced since compulsory education began.

Citation?

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#75

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

justonceokay wrote: post #7

quantified wrote: post #5

A lot of being Catholic is just receiving and producing words. Mass is basically an exchange of words. With a little music and a one-way flow of cash. Confession is, well, words. The profession of priesthood is basically one of words. Yes, there is day labor in some charitable activities, but those same activities are performed by non-Catholics and the irreligious as well. Better to to tie education of words and numb…

> What happened to shop class? Generation of parents who were ashamed of their kids having to swing a hammer for a living. See my comment below. When I started working in the trades every single person said it would be hard on my body. Some days it’s hard on my body. But I honestly would break my knee again if it meant I could be assured that I’d never have the mental anguish of pretending like I cared about a comput…

Given that construction is THE ONLY INDUSTRY that's had significant productivity backsliding over the last 40 years, I hope we wage spiritual warfare against the current crop in the construction industry. It's currently ontologically bankrupt and needs to be cleaned out and replaced with a new crop/generation of workers who actually care about what they do.

The double problem, is that groups who historically were lower class, successfully realized they could grift by building really low quality houses nationwide. Now, the atrophy in skills in literally any kind of blue collar work means that even garbage shit "plumbers" or "electricians", etc are successfully charging at least 150+ an hour in rural west virgina just to do very basic work. I got quoted 500 USD to change an ANODE ROD in my water heater. Every single fucking contractor I get ALWAYS goes to home depot and finds illegal immigrants to do the labor THEY should be doing for peanuts, is verbally abusive to them while they are doing the real work, and exploits them. All because the market allows and radically rewards this.

So unironically most workers in construction and many other trades have been a significant part of the decline in QoL in this country, and especially in causing housing inflation.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#76

Post by mncharity » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #67

mncharity wrote: post #62

> More oral defense of arguments. [...] More [...] work in which students must explain not only what a result shows but what it does not. More rough-quantitative reasoning? Fermi questions. Especially if done by collaborative iterative bounding "Who can suggest another soft/hard upper/lower bound? ... What do you think of that argument?" In contrast to a plug-and-chug theme, illustrated by an ideal gas law problem in…

Terrible word problems bug me. They seem to say, "this isn't actually useful in the real world, and we couldn't come up with even one realistic example." I know some of it is the result of the incremental way we teach, such that there isn't any meaningful use of this step until it's combined with others. Still, students can only find the amount of fence required for a field before concluding that it does not in fact…

> and we couldn't come up with even one realistic example

This worries me about how we approach teaching rough-quantitative reasoning. It's widely thought of great importance for expertise. But even when there seems outlier opportunity (a first-tier institution emphasizing teaching, a dedicated class, for non-freshman, in physics), the questions... "Calculate how long to cook a turkey for, without reading the label or googling?" Really? Getting to a clear payoff may require a broader scope, or a different emphasis, or a reimagining.

> isn't any meaningful use of this step until it's combined with others

A kindergarten science educator suggests their students have a human right to understand their physical world then, not a lifetime (for them) later. Intriguing to think what that might look like as a goal... at any level.

Science education research, like teachers, is focused on the possible. Existing students, with existing resources, and constraints, and objective metrics. There's little incentive to stack counterfactuals: what if my incoming students had been taught A successfully, and B and C successfully, then done together, they enable D, and oh wow. Not when we're struggling to manage even one with any consistency. Disaster-triage chain-of-care doesn't encourage funding of population heath research. Especially when the possibility space is so little explored, that we don't even have a vision of what an E and F might look like. A incentive bootstrap challenge.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#77

Post by djeastm » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #68

rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

> I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware It's curious that most game shows require a vast knowledge of useless trivia rather than reasoning skills.

There's that show "The 1% Club" that is reasoning-based, but trivia is a lot faster to come up with, lends itself to showing lots of pretty pictures and can make for good, but subtle product placement opportunities. Additionally, everyone knows at least a little trivia and can play along whereas some people will get stumped on the easiest of reasoning puzzles.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#78

Post by _DeadFred_ » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

LOL 'technophobic tendencies'.

'all you anti-medical compound people who keep crack illegal and it's use limited are stifling medical progress'

Wanting to approach LLMs with intention and thought is not inherently 'technophobic'.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#79

Post by graemep » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #64

graemep wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it means a type of (established, large, non-profit) what Americans call a private school. We call the latter in general independent schools.

In the rest of the world "public school" vs "private school" is pretty clear, I think you guys in UK are the only one to call private schools "public school" and public schools "state school".

I think some other countries historically used British terminology and maybe some of its own (e.g. "government school").

The distinction between public and and private that British English historically had was useful too. State school is more accurate too (its distinguishing characteristic is state control and funding).

I also think the old (probably a century ago, or decades ago) "privately education" is a far more accurate description of what is now called "home education" in the UK and, even less accurately, "home schooling" in the US).

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#80

Post by _DeadFred_ » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #53

zozbot234 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repetition of basic knowledge is actually a big part of a successful education, Even schoolkids in the earliest grades can actually learn surprisingly complex subjects by heart simply by blabbing everything back word-for-word. Problem solving skills can then be built up on these basics.

I am not convinced by that. Kids tend to learn problem solving (and other) skills if given a chance. i do not think encourage huge amounts of rote learning is an optimal, or even, useful say of doing that. My experience (with myself and my kids) has been the opposite.

Making music would suck if I hadn't spent years of (fought against every day) practice/rehearsal. We need to practice learning the tools, not just understanding we have them. So many rote things opened so many doors for me to explore later.

My creativity would be way less if I hadn't spent hours listening to others music. I think it applies to less fun/interesting things as well.