[HN Gopher] What medieval people got right about learning (2019)
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What medieval people got right about learning (2019)
Author : ripe
Score : 142 points
Date : 2025-08-14 00:29 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scotthyoung.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scotthyoung.com)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's just an ad for a series of self-help books.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Exactly. I want a self help apprenticeship
| gattilorenz wrote:
| I find it telling that right in the first paragraph it says
| "People in the middle ages lit cats on fire for fun" as a fact,
| while it is, in the most charitable interpretation, something
| historians disagree on (and in the least charitable
| interpretation, it smells like bullshit from a mile).
|
| I certainly am skeptical of someone taking Wikipedia as the
| Truth.
| wrp wrote:
| TFA misses a key difference between apprenticeship and classroom
| learning. Apprentice training tends to be one-on-one. When
| classroom instruction is done one-on-one, learning dramatically
| improves. This is called the "two sigma problem" in the
| educational literature. Ignoring this aspect gives the other
| factors discussed in TFA exaggerated significance.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Practice is _extremely_ important, and I don 't think its
| importance is exaggerated at all.
|
| I would expect students in an environment with a typically high
| student-to-teacher ratio, but who actually _practice_ what they
| 're being taught, will significantly outperform students who
| are taught one-on-one by a personal tutor but rarely actually
| _perform_ the thing that they 're trying to learn.
|
| Obviously, "?Por Que No Los Dos?" - doing both is even better.
| But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice.
|
| As a personal anecdote (not to replace the above general
| arguments), I've gotten several hundred hours of one-on-one
| tutoring in an advanced field of physics from a number of
| experts, and yet I learned significantly less than I have from
| significantly fewer hours studying a separate (but no less
| difficult) field of math when I actually _worked the problems_.
| jonahx wrote:
| > But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice.
|
| Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked
| problems with instant feedback -- not an individual
| "lecture".
|
| While there is value to being in the forest entirely alone, I
| think for a motivated student good tutoring will outperform
| working problems on your own in speed of overall learning.
| Both are good though, and I agree working the problems out,
| and working a _lot_ of problems, is the main thing.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked
| problems with instant feedback
|
| Yes, but then we're conflating the two things we're trying
| to separate - one-on-one instruction, and worked practice.
|
| I was using "tutoring" to mean specifically one-on-ones. I
| completely agree that a good tutor will have you practice
| what you're learning, and that's definitely much closer to
| optimal than the educational mess we're currently in.
| graemep wrote:
| They are related. They are both individual learning.
|
| One thing I have observed in my own experience (my own,
| and my, mostly home educated, kids) is that both one to
| one teaching AND learning on one's own (the amount of it
| being practice varying with subject) are better than
| classroom/lecture learning. This is not a statistical
| sample or a study, but it is three people across multiple
| subjects, at a pretty full range of levels (from primary
| school level to postgrad).
|
| Maybe much learning is an individual activity and
| learning in groups is just ineffective?
| jonahx wrote:
| > Maybe much learning is an individual activity and
| learning in groups is just ineffective?
|
| Learning in groups is _wildly_ ineffective from the
| perspective of gaining functional mastery over some
| subject (whether writing well, solving algebra problems,
| etc).
|
| However, it does have a lot of unrelated benefits,
| arguably more important: learning to collaborate with
| others, understanding how others think and learn,
| understanding your own skill level by direct comparison
| with others, competition as a motivator for learning, and
| more.
| graemep wrote:
| I am not convinced that those are realised in real life.
|
| The joy of learning is a better and more sustainable
| motivator than competition.
|
| Learning to collaborate with others is an important
| skill, but I am not sure it is particular often promoted
| within classroom learning. There are lots of things you
| can do (sports, hobbies, anything that aims at an end in
| a group) that are better at teaching collaboration.
|
| Spending less time on learning frees up time for other,
| IMO better, ways of learning all those skill.s
| milesvp wrote:
| I would argue that learning in groups is potentially
| exponentially more effective. There is a lot of
| individual interactions that go on when people are all
| learning something at the same time. Tidbits that they
| each share with one another. And emotion that social
| interactions evoke is a powerful motivator for mental
| rewiring.
|
| But I don't want to dismiss your insights. I'm curious
| what the difference is that I've experienced. Certainly
| just putting random people together isn't nearly as
| beneficial as grouping by ability, or motivation to learn
| the topic is useful. Maybe that is a necessary
| requirement for effective group learning?
| graemep wrote:
| I have studied in streamed classes (in a school that was
| very selective anyway) so closely grouped by ability.
|
| I did find working with friends in small groups effective
| at postgraduate level (although we organised it
| ourselves) and I would have done better to have done more
| of that. However this was a small group, not a class.
|
| Classrooms and lecture rooms do not promote interactions.
| On the other hand one to one tuition is continuous
| interaction, hopefully with someone who is a better model
| for interaction that other kids, and who is encourages
| interaction.
|
| I think we are talking about four different things here.
| Self teaching, 1:1, small groups, and classrooms. 1:1 and
| learning oneself are far more effective than classrooms.
| I cannot compare with small groups, and they are used at
| some universities (e.g. the tutorial system at Oxford and
| Cambridge), but my feeling is that it will be highly
| effective for the right people and the right subject.
| Then again, those universities require a lot of ability
| and motivation to get into, so maybe that is why it works
| for them.
| atoav wrote:
| As a university level educator that _also_ has assistants
| that learn through practise I must say I find the question:
| "Is tutoring better than practise?" useless. Better at what?
| In which field?Thst surely highly depends at what the goal,
| the subject, the individual students character, the available
| time and teaching resources are.
|
| That means the question is so context-dependent that any
| potential answer would only bring insight with that specific
| context in mind.
|
| That being said, I am a huge fan of practise _paired_ with
| theory (this is what a good tutor would do). Many people only
| start to _care_ about theory once they have encountered the
| problems theory helps with have been encountered in the wild.
| And getting people to care is one of the first things any
| educator has to achieve.
|
| There are many who start with the base assumption that theory
| is worthless, but I'd argue having accurate mental models
| will _greatly_ improve the speed and quality of the work.
| Additionally this helps to learn faster, as the question why
| aomething went wrong in practise can be answered faster and
| more accurately.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > I find the question: "Is tutoring better than practise?"
| useless.
|
| Yes, on further reflection, you're right. My statement was
| spurred by the claim that practice had "exaggerated
| significance" in the article relative to practice, which is
| kind of a hard thing to quantify and argue about.
|
| And I definitely wasn't trying to say that theory isn't
| important! I _love_ theory - I don 't actually _like_
| working the problems - and think that it 's important, it's
| just that I've realized that lots of theory is much less
| effective without practice, even in a highly abstract field
| like math.
|
| The interplay between abstract (abstract explanation;
| theory) and concrete (concrete examples in the course of
| explanation; practice) is fascinating to me.
|
| Based on your experience, do you have any insight for
| whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction, it's
| better to start with concrete instances of a concept, and
| then give the abstract concept itself, or vice versa?
| jonahx wrote:
| > Based on your experience, do you have any insight for
| whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction,
| it's better to start with concrete instances of a
| concept, and then give the abstract concept itself, or
| vice versa?
|
| The abstract concept is meaningless without the concrete
| examples.
|
| It is only mathematicians, who are accustomed to the
| abstract theorem being the final goal, who get confused
| about this. It's only possible to _consider_ the
| "theorem first" approach as reasonable to the extent that
| you, or the students, already have the requisite concrete
| foundations to understand it. Which is to say: to the
| extent that it is not really "new".
| seer wrote:
| Practicing and getting constant feedback is so important (and
| sadly underrated in school). It still strange to me how we
| empathise rote learning in school and have the
| experimentation away from experts (homework).
|
| For example in orbital mechanics it was experimentation that
| got me to actually understand all the retrograde burns, plane
| changes and Hohmann transfers, almost exactly like the xkcd
| comic https://xkcd.com/1356/ (though without the job at NASA
| part of course)
| andsoitis wrote:
| > getting constant feedback
|
| Concur. However, how many teachers and students are willing
| to engage in candid critique of the student's work?
| musicale wrote:
| As I understand it, the (medieval?) tutorial system is still
| used at some universities, notably Oxford and Cambridge.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system
|
| Much of graduate education in the US seems similar.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This is extremely interesting, because while I'd never heard of
| the '2 sigma problem' [1] before, one university class I had
| seems to have been largely modeled on it, but with a very
| different angle. It was a 'self paced' electrical engineering
| course where we were given a textbook and free to advance
| through it at our own pace - kind of farcically, since you
| needed to complete at least 2 chapters per week to finish by
| the end of the semester.
|
| Moving forward to the next chapter required, exactly as
| described in that paper, the completion of a problem set and
| then a score of at least 90% on a test demonstrating mastery of
| the previous chapter, sometimes accompanied by also
| demonstrating that skill in a lab. But far from 1 on 1, this
| entire class was effectively 0 on infinity. The teaching
| assistant/proctors that we engaged with were there only to
| grade your work and provided minimal feedback.
|
| And indeed it was one of the most educational 'classes' I ever
| took. But I think this challenges the concept that it has
| anything to do with 1 on 1 attention. But rather the outcome
| seems practically tautological - a good way to get people to
| perform to the point of mastery is to require that they perform
| to the point of mastery. Of course, at scale, all you're really
| doing is weeding out the people that are unable to achieve
| mastery. And indeed that class was considered a weed out
| course.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem
| aaplok wrote:
| Mastery Learning, which Bloom advocates for in the two sigma
| problem paper, is an alternative to 1 on 1, not a way to
| achieve it.
|
| What you describe seems to be a very poor implementation of
| mastery learning. But if the tutor is completely disengaged
| even 1 on 1 tutoring is unlikely to have good effects.
| PunchTornado wrote:
| maybe with AI and things like guided learning from gemini we
| all can get a 1-1 instructor.
| dcassett wrote:
| I had such a self-paced course in the '70s based on the book
| "Fundamentals of Logic Design" by Charles Roth, Jr. It should
| be noted that the book was specifically written for self-
| paced study, and as such acted as a sort of tutor by
| carefully laying out a sequence of reading short segments,
| answering short questions about the material, then doing more
| involved problems. I found this course to be very effective
| and motivating for me, especially given the undergraduate
| class sizes.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Wow, care to share your alma mater? That was the exact book
| we also used - some decades later, 5th edition for my
| class! Absolutely wonderful book. Wow, what a wave of
| emotions I got when looking at that book's cover again!
|
| And yeah that course and book gave me a serious love of
| electrical engineering to the point I even considered
| swapping majors (it was part of the CS curriculum for us),
| and in hind sight I rather wish I did, but hey - wisdom to
| pass onto the kids.
| dcassett wrote:
| That was at UT Austin, where Dr. Roth was a professor.
| Another thing about that course - the problems that were
| given by the TAs for the 90% proficiency checks seemed
| pretty challenging and weren't in the book. You really
| had to know your material, yet there were no big
| surprises.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Haha, it's a small world isn't it? It was EE316k for us,
| and yeah, sounds like he set the precedent and people
| carried it on forward perfectly.
| RataNova wrote:
| Yeah, while the article makes good arguments about learning by
| doing and context-rich environments, it probably understates
| how much of the effectiveness comes down to just personalized
| guidance
| danielbln wrote:
| If it wasn't for all the pitfalls and hallucinations (and
| even then there is probably something to be had already) LLMs
| would be perfect for this. Limitless customizable one-on-one
| tutoring. I would have killed for something like it when I
| was in school, instead the choices were expensive tutor (not
| an option) or else good luck, hope you pay attention in the
| back of the 30 student classroom.
| efitz wrote:
| 1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from the
| labor pool equal to the number of students. Apprenticeships
| remove only a small fraction of that from the labor pool
| (because the practitioner spends only part of their time
| teaching/supervising the apprentice and then makes the
| apprentice go practice the skill) and partially makes up the
| lost labor with the labor from the apprentices- apprentices are
| expected to do actual productive work, not just learn.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a crisis time-wise.
|
| In music you usually have a small amount of one-on-one
| instruction and then you practice. In tennis you usually have
| a small number of one-one-lessons and then you practice and
| play matches.
|
| You could probably do the same for maths. You're given some
| problems to try to solve and given two hours, then once
| you've made a serious attempt you get individual tutoring for
| an hour, then you go back to solving problems and there's a
| short one-on-one question session at the end, let's say 30
| minutes. Then you have a 5 hour study session with 1.5 hours
| of teacher time, so he can have around three students.
| graemep wrote:
| > 1:1 classroom instruction removes a number of teachers from
| the labor pool equal to the number of students.
|
| It does require more teachers, but not 1:1. Students being
| taught 1:1 learn a lot faster, and can be set work to do
| unsupervised. From my experience I think less than an hour a
| seek (sometimes a lot less) of tuition time (plus a bit more
| for marking, and another few hours of study by the student)
| is sufficient to cover a subject 1:1 (and it can often me a
| lot less) for teenagers (specifically for GCSEs - British
| exams sat in schools at 16).
|
| it does require a significantly higher ratio than classroom
| teaching usually does, but its a long way from needing 1:1.
| m463 wrote:
| I think another nuance is
|
| apprenticeship is learning by/while doing
|
| the classroom is learning by simulated doing
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| You seem to be suggesting he's writing from a place of not
| knowing about the benefits of one-on-one learning and the "two
| sigma problem" when this is something he frequently writes
| about.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Interestingly the Bloom study (1984) that describes the "two
| sigma problem" looked at three types of learning.
|
| a) Group Instruction: Baseline
|
| b) Mastery Learning, ensuring students master the material
| before moving on: One sigma improvement (outperform 68% of
| students in group setting)
|
| c) 1 on 1 Tutoring: Two sigma improvement (outperform 98% of
| students in group setting)
| Mawr wrote:
| Irrelevant. The actual key here is training the exact skills
| you need to do the job. No classroom instruction can ever
| replicate that.
|
| The best way to learn how to do something is to do it. There's
| no substitute.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I would wager the benefits of this model come mostly from the 2
| sigma boost one gets from one on one instruction and not from any
| sort of optimal skill tree progression a master would impart on a
| student in a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal
| knowledge and skill acquisition.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > a pedagogical environment engineered for optimal knowledge
| and skill acquisition
|
| I'm not sure how many of those we have available to us. Many
| are compromised by politics, funding, or the need to act as a
| daycare.
|
| I learned a lot at the various schools I went to, but the
| amount I learned seemed to correlate more directly with how
| invested I was in learning than how well the school was funded.
| Plenty of schools with better per-pupil funding had
| significantly worse student achievement rates than where I was.
|
| The only real exception to that is not all schools offer the
| same curriculum. Back in my day, not every secondary / high
| school had someone who could teach calculus, though now there's
| districts that are getting rid of calculus entirely to promote
| anti-racism. Honestly, I think learning calculus in high school
| was good for me, even if I've really only needed to calculate
| integrals once in my programming career.
|
| At University, things were much the same. Undergrad courses
| focused a bit more on synthesizing than memorizing compared to
| high school, but not really by much.
|
| All of this is to say that I'm not really sure it's fair to
| knock the apprentice program since we don't directly experience
| optimal pedagogy elsewhere.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Undergrad courses focused a bit more on synthesizing than
| memorizing compared to high school, but not really by much.
|
| Sorry about that. At Caltech, we were never given formulas.
| Everything was derived from scratch. I never memorized
| anything (but I found after a while I simply knew all the
| trig identifies!).
| chmod775 wrote:
| Apprenticeship is alive and well across Europe, most famously
| probably in Germany. The majority of young adults there completes
| one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany
| red_trumpet wrote:
| > The majority of young adults there completes one.
|
| Are you sure about this? Your quoted article only has data from
| >20 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if nowadays more people
| study at university than do an apprenticeship
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| Based on my experience and not hard data: Not most, but still
| quite a few. Some jobs more or less require an apprenticeship
| (carpenter and other handy jobs). Doing an apprenticeship for
| a job and afterwards going to university also happens a lot
| maverwa wrote:
| Combining both is also pretty common in my experience. People
| frist do an apprenticeship, then, for example because their
| employment situation changed, they go to university. There
| are ways for a apprenticeship to qualifiy one to go for
| university.
|
| In 2024, according to the "Bundesinstituts fur Berufsbildung"
| 486,700 people started their apprenticeship [0]. In the same
| period (2024-2025) 490,304 people started their first
| semester at university/college, according to the
| "Statistisches Bundesamt" [1].
|
| So you are right, theres more new students than apprentices,
| but its not by a lot.
|
| [0]: https://www.bibb.de/de/201811.php [1]:
| https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-
| Umwelt/Bildun...
| megamix wrote:
| Wish I practiced programming more than just trying to understand
| the perfect way to code or theories behind. Such a waste of time
| :(
| WalterBright wrote:
| I learned in college that I didn't learn anything until I worked
| the problem sets.
|
| (It always seemed like I learned it, but when faced with the
| problem sets I discovered I hadn't learned anything yet.)
|
| It's the same with everything. You can watch a yootoob video on
| rebuilding a carburetor all day, but you don't know nuttin until
| you take it apart yourself.
|
| I decided to learn to ride a dirtbike. I took some personal
| instruction from an expert, and promptly crashed. Again and again
| and again. Finally, my body figured out how to coordinate the
| controls.
|
| Can't learn how to double clutch downshift from watching a video,
| either.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I drive a stick car. Shifting gears happens smoothly without
| any conscious thought. Not with the dirtbike.
|
| Every time, I have to stop and think through it step by step.
| My recent rides have all been constantly up and down shifting,
| in order to get it properly into muscle memory. I was annoyed
| that my car shifting skills did not transfer.
| taneq wrote:
| Teaching is hard and training courses are often terrible. IMO,
| lessons need to consist of multiple (usually hierarchical)
| examples of (1) specific thing to learn, (2) high level
| motivation for doing this thing, (3) specifically when to do
| the thing, (4) specific causes and effects between your actions
| and observations during the process.
|
| I did a snowboarding course once, and it was largely useless
| because they didn't actually explain _any_ of the mechanics of
| how the board actually worked beyond seesawing mostly-sideways
| down the ultra beginner slope. It wasn't until I had a chance
| to experiment that I started actually figuring out anything
| useful.
|
| I absolutely taught myself how to double-clutch from YouTube
| and Initial D, though. :D (Plus copious practice, of course.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I taught myself how to ride a bicycle, but was baffled for a
| long time how the bike stayed up. I did some very careful
| observation of what my body was doing to make it work, and
| finally figured it out. I've had some difficulty transferring
| that skill to the dirtbike, and spend a fair amount of
| practice time just doing figure eights.
|
| Another weird thing. I've been using the same text editor for
| 40 years. I no longer remember what the commands are - but I
| can still edit files just fine. Sometimes I watch my fingers
| to see what the command actually is.
| quibono wrote:
| > I no longer remember what the commands are - but I can
| still edit files just fine. Sometimes I watch my fingers to
| see what the command actually is.
|
| I learned how to solve the Rubik cube some years ago and I
| found the same thing. I instinctively know the sequence of
| steps but I would find it very hard to actually write it
| down.
| specialist wrote:
| > _find it very hard to actually write it down_
|
| I think this is called the "assumed knowledge problem".
|
| Source: dev who has LARPed as a technical writer.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| NASA Video on how hard it can be to learn to surf
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wn5KqWwP6uQ
|
| Basically lots and lots of lots of practice.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My time on a wakeboard transferred fairly successfully to a
| snowboard.
| jrussino wrote:
| Just wanted to point out - because I was curious as to why
| they would post a video about learning to surf - that this is
| NOT a NASA video. This is from the channel of someone named
| "Tom Sachs", who happens to be using the NASA logo as his
| youtube avatar image.
|
| > These films are required viewing for Tom Sachs' studio.
| They comprise guides to studio practice and documentation of
| specific projects and installations. The movies represent
| aspects of the sculptures that exist in time. These films
| will enhance your experience with the work and are the
| prerequisite for any studio visit, employment application, or
| interview. Most were made in collaboration with Van and Casey
| Neistat.
| yogurtboy wrote:
| Not sure if you're being witty, but for the unaware, the
| channel here is that of Tom Sachs, an extremely successful
| artist who uses the aesthetics of NASA (among other orgs) in
| order to sort of capture their essence. This is not from
| NASA.
|
| I'm a little personally split on Tom Sachs as an artist, as
| he is constantly riding the line between appropriating the
| aesthetics of respectable institutions and actually emulating
| their positive qualities.
| beloch wrote:
| Medieval craftsmen often ran what we would consider to be
| sweatshops, with many young (i.e. child) apprentices banging out
| work and not receiving much instruction in exchange. We're
| romanticizing and idealizing a past that was, in realty, often
| quite exploitative.
|
| There are reasons why we started sending children to schools
| rather than businesses for basic education. There is also little
| need to reach back to medieval times when comparatively less
| exploitative (but still imperfect) apprenticeship systems are
| alive and well in the trades today.
|
| One-on-one practical instruction related specifically to what you
| want to do is awesome, but there are a _lot_ of difficulties in
| incentivizing people to supply such instruction.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Even manufacturing without instructions gives you practice.
| Also you need only so much instructions per practice, getting
| instructions won't actually help you get better you also need
| to do it.
|
| The master very much cares about your quality, because if it
| doesn't look like his quality nobody will buy it. If the
| quality goes down to much, there will be complaints to the
| guilt and he looses its ability to do business.
|
| If you have problems with your master you can look for another
| one. The good always needed to reject prentices, the bad had
| nobody showing up. In-fact you were required to stay with
| multiple masters.
|
| If you complain about them not having an 8-hour day, nobody had
| that in the middle ages. But tradesman were more of the richer
| people in a city, maybe behind tradesman.
| watwut wrote:
| In medieval setup, no you could not just look for another
| master. That is not how the society functioned. There was
| hierarchy and you had your place in it - bottom.
|
| Also, apprentices duties involved also general housework and
| pretty much any random thing they told you to do. They would
| beat you if they thought you do not do what they want and you
| would be serving literally whole day and that was it. And no
| it was not whole day of learning. Based on book I read, that
| frequently involved things wife of the master ordered - they
| had nothing to do with the trade and that was normal.
|
| With eating, you would wait behind the master while their
| lunch and tend eat whatever remained.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > general housework, wife of the master ordered
|
| Yes you were part of the family for better and for worse. I
| don't see how that is problematic, you weren't working for
| a different household, you were just part of this
| household.
|
| > They would beat you
|
| Sure life sucked back than. There is a reason we are not in
| the middle ages anymore. I would say that was more a
| problem with the general attitude in society, not specific
| to masters.
|
| > no you could not just look for another master
|
| But you were required to look for a different master every
| few years? That claim doesn't make sense to me.
|
| Of course not everything was all roses, it was just
| different. You didn't had a social net from the state,
| there wasn't an independent police you could report
| beatings from the master. On the other hand you had a
| social security net by the family/household currently
| living in (meaning your master's in this case) and if you
| have rows with everyone you can just walk for a day to the
| next city, where nobody knows you, and start afresh. The
| latter isn't possible now anymore.
| watwut wrote:
| > Yes you were part of the family for better and for
| worse. I don't see how that is problematic, you weren't
| working for a different household, you were just part of
| this household.
|
| No you was not part of the family. And this was not part
| of the family thing either. It was more of the sweetshop
| with workers who have no choice thing.
|
| > But you were required to look for a different master
| every few years? That claim doesn't make sense to me.
|
| You was not given choice to shop around or change up
| however you wanted. That was not a thing. Occasionally
| you could be asked to move to different master at
| predetermined set points. But not always. I do not even
| see what is nonsensical or hard to understand about such
| setup.
|
| > you had a social security net by the family/household
| currently living in (meaning your master's in this case)
|
| Your master was not your security net. You would be
| kicked off and expected go back to your actual family.
|
| > if you have rows with everyone you can just walk for a
| day to the next city, where nobody knows you, and start
| afresh
|
| That was definitely not a thing either. They would vet
| you and your character with where you came from. There
| was a lot of suspicion about new people. You would have
| quite a difficult time to establish yourself or even find
| a living. Being banished was a punishment for a reason -
| and other village you go to will be very aware newcomer
| might be a troublemaker they did not wanted elsewhere.
|
| > The latter isn't possible now anymore.
|
| That is significantly easier now.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > No you was not part of the family. And this was not
| part of the family thing either. It was more of the
| sweetshop with workers who have no choice thing.
|
| Name it part of the household then. In a modern sweetshop
| you get some money (or not) generally too less to pay for
| food and other things. Nobody cares if you die or just
| don't show up the next day.
|
| As a prentice, you don't get money, but you also don't
| buy food and you don't pay for a roof. Your master can
| not afford for you to not show up or be invalid for work,
| because he can only afford to house and teach so many
| prentices. He also can't afford you producing low-quality
| goods, because the goods get sold in his name.
|
| > You were not given choice to shop around or change up
| however you wanted.
|
| I think this conflicts with that you were required to
| have served multiple masters as part of your education.
| When a prentice shows up to a new master, it means the
| new master gets an already trained workforce while not
| having to pay for the expenses of the education. Your old
| master will not be willing/able to afford that loss, so
| you need to mess up some money before you get kicked out.
|
| > Your master was not your security net. You would be
| kicked off
|
| When you become invalid indefinitely, yes. When you get
| sick for some days, your master will get you back to work
| as soon as possible.
|
| > expected go back to your actual family.
|
| When you show up broke after years, I bet you get kicked
| out there also. You have better choices moving to a new
| city or living off the streets.
|
| > That was definitely not a thing either. They would vet
| you and your character with where you came from. There
| was a lot of suspicion about new people. You would have
| quite a difficult time to establish yourself or even find
| a living. Being banished was a punishment for a reason -
| and other village you go to will be very aware newcomer
| might be a troublemaker they did not wanted elsewhere.
|
| Having an influx of new people from the landscape were
| how the cities operated. Having more people made the city
| richer and more powerful. It really depended on how
| skilled you were. If you can claim to be able to do X and
| you are able to show it, than you have a good chance to
| find work. If you don't, then good luck dying in the
| streets.
|
| > That is significantly easier now.
|
| Being a criminal and trying to flee? Good luck with that
| in the time of surveillance and world-wide police
| cooperation. Nowadays you can pretty much only double
| down on being criminal, be convicted or flee to a third-
| world country, where you will probably die soon/ have a
| way lower living standard. In the past you also had the
| opportunity to just switch jurisdiction and stop being a
| criminal, while not having a different living standard.
| watwut wrote:
| All the stuff you wrote is purely imaginary and has
| nothing to do with how people in medieval times actually
| behaved. You just made it all up, completely, based on
| what you want history to be.
|
| In particular, if you was too sick or invalid or
| whatever, you got kicked off. That is it. No one expected
| the master to care for you or handle your healthcare. It
| is true you was not paid and worked for food.
|
| If you produced low quality work, you would get simpler
| jobs (cleaning, wood chopping) for a but, would not learn
| and would eventually be kicked off too.
|
| > When you show up broke after years, I bet you get
| kicked out there also. You have better choices moving to
| a new city or living off the streets.
|
| Generally, they were unwilling to kick you off family,
| unless you was disobedient. That would be shameful for
| them. This was your safety net and related social
| obligations were actually strong.
|
| You was not better off "living in the streets" of a town
| (which were significantly smaller).
|
| Like, cities had very real limit of how many people they
| could accommodate before it became impossible. Newcomer
| with troublemaking potential was not making it richer nor
| was welcome.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > You just made it all up, completely, based on what you
| want history to be.
|
| I'm sorry, I'm not yet 500 years old, I have only
| knowledge based on school and it being portrayed in
| public media. Do you have sources for your differing
| knowledge.
|
| > No one expected the master to care for you or handle
| your healthcare.
|
| Yes nobody is going to sue him. However when one of your
| prentices vanishes, there will be gossip, that's bad for
| business. Also I argued that this is bad for the master
| purely for economic reasons (sunken costs), because
| feeding someone is not cheap especially in the middle
| ages.
|
| > It is true you was not paid and worked for food.
|
| Yes and this is not something bad at all. It is just a
| different economy.
|
| > Generally, they were unwilling to kick you off family,
| unless you was disobedient.
|
| Yes and your father would claim you were disobedient to
| your master when you have not learned enough, as he has
| sent you there. That's why I would earlier that it's
| kind-of like you are now part of the master's family.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > it being portrayed in public media.
|
| I'm not sure why the media would more accurately depict
| vampires than a blacksmith.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Is that sarcastic or what do you want to say? Do you
| claim the media represents vampires or do you claim it
| represents blacksmiths?
| watwut wrote:
| Public media are entertainment made by artists. They did
| not study history nor are attempting to paint it
| accurately. They are trying to create something for for
| their contemporaries, sorta kinda inspired by history.
|
| Their blacksmiths are as accurate as their vampires as
| sibling puts it. Which is ok, the rest of us are supposed
| to realise the difference between a fiction , random tech
| guy or economist blog and actual history.
| RataNova wrote:
| The romanticism around apprenticeships misses how tricky it is
| to scale personalized, practical instruction without either
| underpaying the instructor or pricing out the learner
| towledev wrote:
| Very true, but the benefit to one-on-one instruction is so
| enormous that we should find ways to apply it fractionally if
| we can't apply it fully. One thinks eg of the one-room
| schoolhouses of the 1800s, with younger students learning
| from older students.
| jojomodding wrote:
| It's still that way. Germany has an apprenticeship system that
| is supposed to work just like the medieval system: You work in
| a company for 2-3 years at low pay, but you get trained in
| return. (Nowadays you spend some of that time in a trade
| school). The promise often is that if you do good, the company
| will hire you as a regular employee afterwards.
|
| Unfortunately, experiences vary. The promise works out for
| some, but others have a shitty boss that does not teach them
| anything and makes them do menial jobs that do not require or
| teach any special skills (e.g. cleaning up the workshop or
| cooking coffee).
| obscurette wrote:
| It's not that bad in theory, but it's true that modern "no
| homework!", "no boring practice!" etc directions have done a lot
| of damage during last decades. But it answers quite well to
| common complaints why we are still learn to solve quadratic
| function in school although almost nobody uses it later in their
| lives? It's because quadratic function is a simplest way to lay a
| foundation to understand a tons of broad theoretical concepts
| about functions - turning points, zeros, decreasing, increasing,
| symmetry etc.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd generalize this even further. Math, especially higher level
| math, often turns into a sort of puzzle. And solving quadratic
| equations is the first step going from learning how to execute
| basic arithmetic to using it in the process of solving a
| puzzle.
|
| The fact that these puzzles can then be used to do cool things
| is almost just a fortunate coincidence.
| dwd wrote:
| Fortunately this model is still partially used for some careers
| like medicine and veterinary practices where you have a mandatory
| internship of at least a year before you can be admitted as a
| practicing GP or Vet.
| HPsquared wrote:
| And pilots. Lots of "hours" required for the different grades.
| analog31 wrote:
| And physicists. Good degree programs involve labs, undergrad,
| and graduate research.
| Ekaros wrote:
| When you really think of it is doctoral programs in
| academia apprenticeships? At least in fields where you do
| need laboratories and such...
| analog31 wrote:
| That's a good way to think about it, though one still has
| to ask: "An apprenticeship in what?" Optimally thesis
| means you're given a nebulous problem within an area of
| interest and asked to manage a project to solve it and
| communicate the results. My own field, physics, is
| particularly loose in terms of what tools you might need
| to adapt and create.
| syphia wrote:
| I'm not sure if concerete seeing/doing is the only, or even most
| effective, way to learn.
|
| I've often learned by recalling the concepts from a lecture,
| reasoning about the material, and imagining what some of the
| problems would look like while sketching out solutions in my
| head. It's not any easier than doing the homework, but it is more
| convenient and flexible. And it can sometimes help with physical
| skills.
|
| Theory is still important because it communicates how _other_
| people understand what they do. But it 's certainly not a
| replacement for reasoning and experience.
|
| I've found the best model of learning is to... not have a
| "learning process" in the first place. I try to understand as
| much as possible from as many angles as possible. This means big
| concepts, minutae, my ideas, other people's philosophies,
| imagined scenarios, hands-on-experiences, tangentially related
| concepts, and so on. Being able to answer questions or do the
| task is more of a side-effect than the intent.
| attila-lendvai wrote:
| compulsory education is a main pillar of the twisted power
| structure in our society.
|
| power in society comes from a knowledge gap, and powerful people
| have all the incentives to sustain it. consequently education is
| a battleground, and we, the honest people, have pretty much lost
| the battles for about a century now.
|
| the OP only makes sense when also considering this aspect of the
| question.
| RataNova wrote:
| School teaches you about things; apprenticeships teach you to do
| things. Huge difference.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| That's essentially the difference between education and
| training
| Zobat wrote:
| > Human beings, it appears, are nearly unique in the animal world
| for being able to learn something by watching somebody else do
| it.
|
| This is just blatantly wrong. If nothing else I myself have shown
| dogs how to solve problems, but here's a link to Wikipedia for
| good measure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_in_animals
| stripe_away wrote:
| octopuses learn by observing other octopuses
|
| See for yourself
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw
|
| or if you prefer,
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801...
| khalic wrote:
| Honestly, it's not worth your time, a lot of presumptions, false
| premises and incomplete hypothesis. Also, apprenticeship didn't
| disappear, it's still very much in use in many countries. The
| focus is just different. Classroom education allows a plethora of
| secondary skills to be trained without the pressure of
| performance. For some, it's essential.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Much of Europe still has apprenticeship programs for the trades.
| The loss of this in the US and the UK shows in the quality of
| work: anyone can claim to be a carpenter, or painter, or
| whatever: whether or not they have any training.
| chriseidhof wrote:
| This really speaks to me.
|
| I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes.
| The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just
| read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I
| teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my
| explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The
| feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that
| people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to
| confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better
| than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I think I'd prefer overview, exercise, details. You need some
| kind of mental framework. I guess you don't just dive right in,
| otherwise you wouldn't be getting good feedback ;)
|
| What I really hate is explaining the solution before explaining
| the problem. It's a terrible way to teach and it's quite
| common. I like to say that there are two bad ways to teach: The
| cookbook (do this, then do that) and the maths textbook
| (solutions without problems or context). The good way is a
| combination of them with some additional things that neither of
| them has, like motivating examples, relevant anecdotes etc.
| analog31 wrote:
| Granted I've been out of school for decades. The textbooks were
| always an accessory to classroom instruction and not intended
| for stand-alone learning. Math students quickly figured out
| that the most important thing was doing the problems, the text
| was essentially a reference, and the classroom was for guidance
| through the concepts, and for motivation.
|
| Of course the humanities classes were _about_ books, so
| learning how to study the books themselves was a major part of
| the practice.
|
| Programming seems to lend itself particularly well to self
| learning because the computer allows for endless trial-and-
| error practice.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| The author is a good writer, able to expand upon (and illustrate)
| ideas articulately and convincingly. However, quite a lot of this
| doesn't quite apply to actual practice in education, particularly
| in science.
|
| High-school and undergraduate science classes tend to pair
| lectures with labs. Practical work is very much the focus of
| those labs, and the lab instructors work closely with students
| who need help. And a postgraduate degree typically involves a
| student working side-by-side with a professor on practical work.
|
| As for the pyramid model, I think the author makes some good
| points, especially for the grade-school level. However, it's
| simply a fact that being comfortable with adding comes in handy
| before moving on to multiplying.
|
| Good teachers find ways to motivate students, and adjust those
| ways as the years flow by. They know how to do their job, and I
| trust them to find the best practices.
|
| One thing I've heard from many teachers, especially those who are
| notably effective, is that teaching theorists are not of much
| help. And I see that in the silly trends that higher-ups impose
| on teachers. That way of teaching multiplication that has worked
| for generations? No good -- we must scrap it. The practice of
| teaching students to write cursive? So quaint - time to toss that
| in the trash bin. Years later, I see the results of these trends,
| when students come to university.
|
| The problem of teaching theorists coming up with silly ideas is a
| result, I fear, of the system of educating educators. How do you
| get a PhD in a subject? You have to come up with a new idea.
| Nobody got an advanced graduate degree in education by writing a
| thesis that said "teaching is fine as it is." No, that PhD
| student has to say "this is broken, and here's how to fix it."
| But some things just aren't quite broken, not really. Sure, some
| adjustments might be helpful. More one-on-one tutoring would be
| great. Although then, the non-theorist immediately sees a
| problem: we don't have enough teachers, as it is.
| danielam wrote:
| Apprenticeship is generally for the so-called _servile arts_. The
| article completely neglects medieval _education_ in the form of
| the _liberal arts_ , and specifically the trivium and quadrivium.
| These are experiencing a minor resurgence in various forms in
| classical education curricula.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| People back then just needed to learn one skill, say baking. Then
| they ply that trade for their lives.
|
| Our economy changes so fast that we need more generalized skills
| to adapt. If you were apprenticed as a telephone operator, what
| would you have done? So we learn math, science, communication,
| etc.
|
| Kids are absolutely right - much of it you will never use to make
| money. But if you learn how to learn, then that will help make
| you successful no matter where you go.
| jjcob wrote:
| So I don't know what medical education is like in other parts of
| the world, but in Austria it involves a lot of practice. Doctors
| spend a lot of time practicing medicine under supervision before
| they are allowed to practice on their own. Specialists work as
| "assistant doctors" for a few years before they can open their
| own specialist practice.
|
| It's not a question of theory or practice; you obviously need
| both to learn advanced skills.
| rodrigo975 wrote:
| You mean, they start practicing before learning the theory, or
| they learn the theory then start practicing :p
| jjcob wrote:
| Sorry I got confused by the many meanings of practice :)
| piombisallow wrote:
| This is a very utilitarian view of learning. Mass education isn't
| meant just to teach you marketable skills, it's quite explicitly
| designed to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation.
| Plus in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where
| someone lectured you from a book, with similar goals in mind.
| stripe_away wrote:
| > in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where
| someone lectured you from a book,
|
| The idea of church as "someone lecturing you from a book"
| describes only a few christian denominations, few of which were
| active/existant in medieval times.
|
| I agree that many churches in the US are "20 minutes singing
| followed by a 1 hour sermon", which is what you describe, but
| there are also many denominations where the focus is on the
| liturgy and the sermon is a side note.
|
| liturgy is basically a spiritual practice you do as a group.
|
| say that week's prayer (from the prayer book)
|
| read the psalm, call-and-response (so the congregation is
| talking half the time)
|
| say the confession of sins
|
| say the Lords prayer
|
| someone reads 1-2 sections from the bible
|
| a quick sermon
|
| eucharist/communion
| stripe_away wrote:
| Which doesn't take away from your main point. A liturgically
| oriented church does build community.
| Paul_Clayton wrote:
| Most parts of the liturgy are teaching. Scripture readings
| might compare with text book reading; the Lord's Prayer and
| other formulaic recitations are often taken from Scripture.
|
| The eucharist is more "ritual" than "overt teaching" but it
| is meant to call to mind one loaf -> one body and the cost of
| forgiveness.
|
| The earlier poster's point was more "with similar goals in
| mind" (i.e., "to create a shared understanding of the world,
| a nation") rather than emphasizing the mechanism (I think).
| "Marketable skills" is different from social/civic
| skills/responsibility.
| rodrigo975 wrote:
| It seems that the author prefers to ignore the fact that,
| throughout history, apprenticing has been reserved for the common
| people, while teaching was reserved for their masters, the rich
| and the powerful.
|
| Having both is better, but at some point you need to learn the
| theory.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think even more so apprenticeships were for skilled workers
| or somewhat "middle-classes". Majority that is farmers well
| either you worked with your parents or seek employment from
| someone else in various farming jobs. Sure they trained you to
| do that, but it was not so much complex jobs but labour.
| graycat wrote:
| > Classes are divorced from the practical applications of
| learning. Apprenticeships train in exactly the situation you'd
| want to apply the skill.
|
| Hmm .... Something like in the movie "The Hunt for Red October",
| the US Navy wanted:
|
| (1) Start with recordings by US submarines of underwater sounds,
| and write software to estimate the power spectra using the FFT
| (Fast Fourier Transform) and the Blackman and Tukey, "The
| Measurement of Power Spectra".
|
| (2) Given ships at sea and a war, how long would the US
| submarines last? Start with some WWII analysis of search and
| encounters by Koopmans and do a Monte-Carlo Markov process,
| generate many independent sample paths and average.
|
| Gee, how could I do those without my academic courses in analysis
| and probability? And there are more examples, including the
| crucial, original core math in my startup.
| Shorel wrote:
| I like that we talk about practice, and we need to add this to
| our learning. Even more now, when apprenticeships are a dying
| practice and everyone is vibe-working.
|
| But dismissing theories, and just saying "most theories are
| wrong, anyway" smells too strongly of anti-intellectualism, and
| it just rubs me in the wrong way. I don't like this trend at all.
|
| Theory is as important as practice. The two depend on each other.
| derelicta wrote:
| I've done an apprenticeship in IT and CS, the first two years of
| it felt more intense than my 4 years of university education. We
| used to have waves of exams every 6 weeks for the first year.
| Then on the second, every 8/12. Was crazy but it was thrilling.
| 16yo me was incredibly happy to have gone to trade school instead
| of high school.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I think this article shows nicely what we in modern days get
| wrong about education, even though it's premise is wrong in my
| opinion. These are just my opinions, and I am not an educator by
| trade, so take it for what it's worth.
|
| This article starts with the premise that we go to school to
| learn how to work. In a world where that is the case, yeah,
| apprenticeships are far better. It happens that many people look
| at schooling that way, but I don't believe that's even the
| correct way to think about schooling.
|
| School originally was not about learning to do a job. It was
| about learning _how to learn_. That 's why writing papers and
| doing homework used to be such a big deal, because while you
| might have been stuffing your brain with knowledge about, say the
| history of bronze-age Europe, what you were really doing was
| learning how to find facts, how to organize them, and how to take
| useful notes.
|
| The problem is that in the past 80 years or so, we've started to
| see school as training to work. Whether it's primary school
| teaching us to be good factory workers, or college teaching us to
| be good office workers. College and university came to be viewed
| as a way for poor children to move up the social ladder. But to
| do that, you need a good job. And the best way to get that good
| job is to teach you to do it in university. So you end up in a
| situation where schools don't teach students how to learn, and
| since group instruction is a bad way to learn how to do a job,
| they don't really teach students how to do a job either. And in
| some countries you pay out the nose for the privilege.
| wosined wrote:
| The author constructs a straw man in a simplified universe that
| is utterly unrealistic and then proceeds to defeat this straw
| man. Most real teaching is not done as it is described in the
| text. That is why there is nothing readworthy in it. It is
| probably a hidden form of marketing to buy the books they are
| selling.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I feel like this article hits on a good observation but draws the
| wrong conclusion. Education may have very well come to
| underemphasize practice. However, I think that a pure learning by
| doing approach throws the baby out with the bathwater. It's also
| not what I've observed in my (admittedly limited) experience with
| apprenticship:
|
| I worked as a field service engineer setting up servers and
| similar systems for a while. The place I was sent wasn't a union
| job but many of the workers were from the local union. I was very
| impressed with the apprentices. They would work half their week
| at our site and the other half attended training at the union
| hall. It seemed to work well for everyone: they seemed to learn a
| lot, the union developed it's next generation, and we effectively
| got an extra worker for half of every week.
|
| It would be interesting to see a model like (half on the job and
| half in the classroom) that applied to more professions. E.g. in
| programming, universities seem to neglect the practice while
| bootcamps seem to neglect the theory.
| bjourne wrote:
| He's right, but it has been known for decades that learning by
| doing is the most efficient way of learning. The reason it is not
| panacea is because it is hard to measure. A test is easier to
| administer than reviewing source code to determine whether
| someone can build web sites well. Learning by doing also requires
| more freer forms of education, hence it is resisted by
| Conservative politicians who'd rather have the students learn
| more discipline (i.e., if you aren't suffering you aren't working
| hard).
|
| Moreover, a country that emphasizes learning by doing over
| education focused on test taking will likely score worse on
| international student assessments, such as PISA. For the simple
| reason that if students are better at doing their own research,
| writing reports, etc., they are probably also worse at test
| taking.
|
| There's too much paranoia and prestige involved in education. It
| would be better if education was based on the science of
| education, rather than the whims of politicians, but it's not...
| it's like the prerogative to control the young generation is too
| important to let people like "professors in pedagogy" decide.
| Cause what the fuck do they know? I was a kid once and I learned
| things in school, kids these days suck, yadda, yadda.
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