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Comment by otabdeveloper2 | Hacker News Reader

"Edutainment" sucks donkey balls.

One of the things I'm forever resentful for is the way my life was ruined by not learning things in a structured and rigorous way in childhood. Re-learning (and learning to learn) in adulthood is a pain and is never quite as good as doing it right the first time around.

Thankfully, my own kids are spared of this horror.

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So you mean you've learnt the things the "edutainment" way when you were a child and are resentful for that? I just didn't learn the things in any way in childhood. There was no edutainment, the way teachers taught most of the things were next to impossible to actually understand (I had near-zero understanding of anything in math by the end of high school, only capable to use some formulae substituting) and all the practice was debilitatingly boring.

If Mathigon, BetterExplained, Ivan Savov's no-bullshit books and things like that existed when I was a child that would be a totally different story. I'm so glad my children are going to study with these and better things given.

I think the primary gain here is the examples. When learning the eps-delta or eps-N def of limits as a child in high school (15 or so yrs old) it took quite a few examples before I grokked it, despite the concept being quite simple.

Out of curiosity, which topics would you have liked to be taught in a more structured way?

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