Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

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> With no structure, most people flounder.

I find the opposite -- it is impossible for me to get any kind of complex learning done while I am on a structured course. It's telling that I learned more in three weeks of being ill and choosing to passively read books on mathematics (While coughing my guts up, of course), than I did actively participating in a course. (The only reason I am participating in the course is because I need a bit of paper that says I can do foo. A few people working in foo field have said I am at their level, it's just mindless inane hoop-jumping.)

> Most people are passive. They want a teacher to lead them and guide them through the learning process.

Exactly, but IMO that is the fault of the schooling system itself. They've never had to learn anything themselves, because everything they know has been spoon-fed to them by their teachers. If we had a better (Differently structured) education system, then this would not be necessary.

Although I do not see much hope for this happening, both Russell and Whitehead made attempts to improve the learning systems in the UK, neither prevailed.

Apologies if this came across as a rant.

So they give their experiences with many, many students that they've taught over the years, and you say it's not true because you're different?

The example used is flawed to begin with, in my opinion. Some kind of structure is almost required to learn a language in a reasonable amount of time, assuming there is no immediate access to full immersion 24/7.

I have also had the experience with infomally teaching (read with a bias towards 'mentor') programming to people, along with the second hand experience of knowing numerous teachers, including my father. Along with this I was unschooled from the age of eleven, and I have seen the effects of this upon the children -- most notably with a child (Eleven years of age) teaching themselves to read to an adult level in roughly six months -> one year, simply because they were interested in a subject.

My example was anecdotal, however when combined with my (Also anecdotal) experiences concerning the education system, the second-hand experiences I noted, and the writings of Russell, Whitehead, Lockheart, and numerous others who also have expounded on the problems with overly structured teaching and similar methods, it provides me with enough evidence to convince me until equal evidence is provided to the contrary.

That is why I say it is not true -- or more accurately, that in my experience, it is not true. I accept that a structured environment is a requirement for some people to learn, but I dispute that it is a hard requirement, and I also dispute that it is natural for the general population to require structure to learn.

My anecdotal experience brought me to similar conclusions. Structure is required in schools because of the way children are taught in schools. And I'm not sure I'd do any different given the same requirements. Even though it doesn't have the best results for every child it scales well enough that most people at least do okay.

Take your average child away from that after several years of being part of it and any short term observations are going to make you think structure is critical. Before they do anything else they're going to have to learn that they don't need structure to learn and after that they're going to have to learn how to teach and push themselves.

> My anecdotal experience brought me to similar conclusions. Structure is required in schools because of the way children are taught in schools.

First off, that's a circular argument. But also note that research into education is riddled with issues (such as the researchers having moral issues with blind control groups, which results in basically useless data). Our education system is based on the gut instinct of certain administrators. People who clearly would prefer a structured system where one-size-fits-all. Not that I'm saying everyone learns differently (learning styles are also mostly bullshit), I'm saying that the current system could be much better and people who do well in the current system are very motivated to do well and will gladly push with all of their force through the bullshit so they can get on with their lives.

It's circular because it's a circular pattern that reinforces itself. If schools had a large amount of resources or didn't need to scale efficiently they wouldn't need the structure and if they didn't need the structure children (and staff) wouldn't become dependent on it.

That said there certainly are people that need structure to learn (particularly what they don't want to learn). There are several disorders or disabilities that would make unstructured learning incredibly difficult or impossible.

I too learn more deeply outside of the confines of a structured class. However, I find the structure of an OCW course nearly ideal for many subjects.

For me it seems to be at least partially a function of my ability in an area. The stronger I am in a subject, the less structure I need.

I suspect the optimal amount of structure varies from person to person and within a person from subject to subject. People learn differently.

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