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Comment by redahs | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's suitably addressed in current education structures.

Under the principal of spaced repetition, you might also want people in the workforce infrequently tutoring college students, graduate students infrequently tutoring high school students, college students infrequently tutoring middle schoolers, so on and so forth.

The teacher-student heirarchy was decent way to mass produce educational services during industrialization but creates unnecessarily rigid classifications between learners at different levels of knowledge.

I think there is room for a more mutualistic exchange, between tutors who would like to clarify their existing knowledge, and between students who like to learn something new, to emerge in the future.

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That is just your opinion. Repetition is currently working extremely well since we are able to train experts in fields that require a wide variety of knowledge from various sciences. Medicine, bioengineering, astronomy, military, education, and so on come to mind.

We are also having university "students" tutor younger people. These are called teachers and professors.

There is little to compare our approach to. Does it really take 17+ years of education before the average person is ready to enter med school? Must the average person really be 32 before they can become a specialist doctor?

k-12 (13 yrs), Collage (4yrs), Med School(4 years), Residency (3 years), Specialty medical training (3yrs) = 28 years. Ignoring pre k and the fact that this is the happy path.

Even with clearly above average students, it is rare that they reach, e.g., med school before their peers no matter what and the difference is a year or two, which is insignificant. There's also more to maturation than education and some people never become fully mature adults, for instance.

Why does 32 seem old to you? Residency and fellowship are real doctor jobs doing real doctor work.

I am over 32 so it does not seem old, still it's a late start even when everything goes well. Many specialists start closer to 40.

Residency starts out with extreme levels of supervision. The end of fellowship is the point where they are considered competent enough to not need direct supervision. Though doctors still have plenty of people looking over there shoulders.

The point is 32 is when doctors can start paying back significant amounts of there student loans and saving for retirement. Including interest it's not hard to be 32 and have 1/2 million in debt.

PS: Also, specialist's can't afford to make the path cheaper for the next person as they need to constrain supply to keep there wages high. Which not only increases cost of healthcare, but also medical research.

Then your complaint is more with the artificially manipulated financial structure of medical careers, than the education path.

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