[HN Gopher] The Lesson to Unlearn (2019)
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The Lesson to Unlearn (2019)
Author : tosh
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-08-19 11:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| DEADMEAT wrote:
| This is why things like 2-year vocational schools are so great!
| They tend to focus on competency-based outcomes, where "tests"
| usually involve demonstrating a skill in a simulated environment.
| Though I will definitely admit that this is not the best option
| for all areas of knowledge.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > No, no, no, experienced students are saying to themselves. If
| you merely read good books on medieval history, most of the stuff
| you learned wouldn't be on the test. It's not good books you want
| to read, but the lecture notes and assigned reading in this
| class. And even most of that you can ignore, because you only
| have to worry about the sort of thing that could turn up as a
| test question. You're looking for sharply-defined chunks of
| information. If one of the assigned readings has an interesting
| digression on some subtle point, you can safely ignore that,
| because it's not the sort of thing that could be turned into a
| test question. But if the professor tells you that there were
| three underlying causes of the Schism of 1378, or three main
| consequences of the Black Death, you'd better know them. And
| whether they were in fact the causes or consequences is beside
| the point. For the purposes of this class they are.
|
| This is something I had to "teach" (hah) my classmates in a
| history class in college. I did benefit from a way above average
| memory at the time (diminished as I've aged, but still better
| than many of my age-wise peers) which helped me out a lot, but
| even without that advantage it wasn't hard to become an A student
| in that class. My method was to:
|
| Take notes (no slides or handouts from the professor) in, more or
| less, an outline form. If there had been handouts, these would
| have mimicked them. They were not detailed, but mostly a way to
| pay attention to the lecture. If you didn't have a memory like
| mine you'd want more detail or to actually study these notes
| later.
|
| "Read" the relevant chapters. "Read" because I didn't really read
| the whole thing. I read the intro/outro of the chapter and each
| section within the chapter. Then I read the first sentence of
| every paragraph. If any paragraph had a fact (dates, names,
| places) I'd make a note of it (highlight, underline, marginalia,
| or a note in a notebook, all can work), this was usually obvious
| by the first sentence of the paragraph without needing to read
| more. Again, if your memory wasn't like mine you'd need to
| actually study these notes (and today I'd have to).
|
| That was all there was to getting an A in that class, and nearly
| every other fact-heavy class was the same. I learned a lot more
| about those subjects from my extra-curricular reading and
| experiences.
| brudgers wrote:
| The focus on grades seems to me to be a symptom/side-effect of
| deeper structure. The structure of time that emerges from
| educational organization.
|
| Imagine a job where there were six or seven unrelated cognitive
| tasks and one of them was running round physically and each of
| these tasks was allotted about an hour of each work day and
| management wasn't coordinating the work load among them.
|
| And every few months the cognitive content of the tasks changed
| as did the nature of the running around.
|
| Grades are the only common thread in the first sixteen or so
| years of education.
|
| What people have to unlearn is distraction. Or rather what they
| have to learn is how to concentrate on one thing over a period of
| years...is it surprising the degree this sounds like grad-school?
| Or studio art? Or internship? Or the sort of interests that kids
| pursue outside of school?
|
| The thing that has to be learned is flow. That is what ordinary
| forms of school remove. No time blocks of reading a book all day.
| nine_k wrote:
| Hey, here's the red flag:
|
| > _unrelated cognitive tasks_
|
| The tasks should be very much related! The stuff you learn in
| math class should directly apply to stuff you learn in physics
| class and in the economics class, and what you learn about
| economy and civics should dovetail with your history class,
| which should go hand in hand with your geography class, etc,
| etc.
|
| The terrible thing is that they are taught in such a way that
| many kids don't make many of these connections. Much of my
| self-education was learning connections between things I
| learned in school and in university; much om my self-taught
| math, for instance, showed me important connections between
| different parts of math, physics (including pedestrian things
| like weather of metal cutting), CS, and daily programming
| practice. Much of the reason I love to read a random Wikipedia
| article is that it often shows me a connection between two
| things I was aware of, but hand no idea they are related, and
| how.
|
| Th school system is ripe for a reform, and I hope whatever
| other approaches will be tried will include more connections
| between things, and more teaching how to look for and find
| these connections.
| xmprt wrote:
| I've forgotten almost everything from a lot of my old
| biology, chemistry, geography, and history classes but I feel
| like I've gotten so much more real world experience and can
| make so many connections that it would probably be much
| easier the next time around.
|
| Especially things that I felt like I was forced to memorize
| actually make sense once you draw connections to other
| places. I wonder why these things aren't taught like that. Or
| maybe it's just too difficult and too personalized for the
| current education system.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Education cannot be optimal because it cannot be individual.
| Whatever you do you ll leave some behind. At first sight I d
| tend to agree with you, but the disjointed education I had in
| a French school, where each subject is its own universe made
| me less utilitarist, made me accept philosophy and chemistry
| dont work in concert to make me a better tool but instead
| broaden my horizon to let me think on several modes.
|
| If I speak english today it s not because it was deemed
| useful to understand computers when I was 12, it s because it
| was its own little science, important because of its own
| beauty.
|
| Sometimes, you have to make kids understand there is no
| optimum or rule, just the joy of knowing more things.
| nine_k wrote:
| Perfection is indeed impossible, but a better equilibrium
| most likely is. You can't teach kids so that learning is
| pure joy every minute for everyone. But you can teach kids
| so that their kmowledge is more interconnected, less of it
| is forgotten, more of it is applied in later life. Even
| more importantly, you can teach kids how to learn, and why
| to learn.
| evilotto wrote:
| He's correct that focusing on grades is bad. But one key point is
| very wrong:
|
| > In theory, tests are merely what their name implies: tests of
| what you've learned in the class.
|
| This is backward. In theory, most tests should be testing that
| the teacher is effectively teaching the material. If a student
| does badly on a test it should be interpreted as that student
| needing more help.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| > If a student does badly on a test it should be interpreted as
| that student needing more help.
|
| This is not always true. Any of these can lead to bad grades:
|
| * Min/maxing your study success. A passing grade can be totally
| sufficient and you are able to focus on a course threatening
| your graduation more.
|
| * External factors (needing to work, personal issues) unrleated
| to the course make the student unable to put in the time.
|
| * Student is simply not interested.
|
| * Student is lazy.
|
| * ...
| pphysch wrote:
| "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once
| pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." (Goodhart 1975)
|
| Or:
|
| "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| measure." (Strathern 1997)
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
|
| Graham invents the notion of "authoritarian" tests, like school
| exams, and non-authoritarian tests, like football matches. But
| this is a poor distinction. Originally, sports were a genuine
| test of physical prowess. Eventually, the institution took over
| by enforcing rules. This is the same situation in education,
| except mental prowess is considered.
| vladf wrote:
| > Hackable is the default for any test imposed by an authority.
| The reason the tests you're given are so consistently bad -- so
| consistently far from measuring what they're supposed to measure
| -- is simply that the people creating them haven't made much
| effort to prevent them from being hacked.
|
| In proof-based math classes in college, there really was no
| hacking them. You had to build up an intuitive understanding of
| the concepts and think on the fly to come up with a proof for a
| test.
|
| Sure, you could try to seek out "all relevant questions" and
| memorize the proofs but there's such a large universe of possible
| problems to ask you'd never have enough time to study this way.
| some_furry wrote:
| [censored]
| nine_k wrote:
| I'd say that submitting a link to HN is not about having it
| handled in the most just and impassionate manner. This is a
| social media site, it's prone to fads and mood swings.
|
| If you think something is worth considering, submit it in the
| right time: when the news feed is not yet very crowded but the
| readers are already there, or when the home page is already
| discussing a related issue, or has discussed it yesterday, etc.
| If not successful, use the "second chance", at the right time,
| again. In any case, bring good material.
|
| Schooling is an ever-important topic, and with September
| looming closer, it's on many people's minds. PG used to write
| quite good essays, with important ideas, so people don't mind
| upvoting, just in case someone missed it in 2019.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I recently posted the Wikipedia article for the Tesla Valve, an
| invention more than 100 years old, and it was upvoted a lot,
| and then I learned had been posted many times before. I don't
| think the affair harmed anyone.
|
| Hacker News is whatever the community wants it to be. We have
| no obligation to ensure the title of the community conveys any
| information about our activities.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I never had to unlearn this lesson. There's a second, related,
| lesson to unlearn though: The idea that the teacher is an
| antagonist.
|
| The way it works is the teachers set up obstacles to you getting
| good grades, and any way over, around, or through the obstacles
| is fair game. Any good teacher is there to help you learn the
| material. They are your learning ally.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Does this extend to salary, wealth, or other more adult signals
| of status and achievement, or are those actually the goal?
|
| There are just a few logical steps off the path of social
| expectation that will lead you to either solipsistic narcissism
| or the opposite direction to Zen Buddhism. The middle path is
| there not because we agree with it, but because we can't decide
| what we do agree with.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| (quoting the article:) > Now you can make lots of money by
| making cool things
|
| I know I am in a forum that talks about startups etc. But I
| wish and believe this "get loads of money" mentality will die
| in this century. This is an even more important lesson to
| unlearn. I also believe that if it does not die, its side
| effects, like climate change, will kill us.
| jdlyga wrote:
| The problem is, grades are everything in school. I just finished
| a high stakes algorithms class where 75% of our grade was exams
| with only a few questions. A decent chunk of the class has to
| retake the class each semester, so it's important to do as well
| on the exams as possible. At a certain point, it's not only about
| learning the material but practicing exam-type questions over and
| over.
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