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Comment by m4r35n357 | Hacker News Reader

We used to understand how to educate. The hippies broke all that. Education is about learning skills, not "having fun".

Agreed. While having fun can increase learning it's not a direct requirement nor is having fun all the time beneficial to learning.

It's much more important that people feel like they have learned instead that they feel like they are having fun learning.

I would strongly disagree with that. From my experience, someone who feels like they have learned would be proud of themselves for a while and then usually go on and forget the learning while happy with their "success"; someone who is having fun learning will go on learning.

In my experience, having fun while learning really takes away from learning. It slows down and hinders progress and becomes obnoxious after a while.

The target of comprehensive school and upper secondary is to teach people as much about different things as possible, have them learn social interaction and a small amount of how to learn and how to adapt information. They will likely not learn as much and as varied information ever again.

The target of a university education is to have people learn how to learn, do research and apply that information, and drill into a single field and learn about that field and make progress in that field.

Mixing "fun" into this is counter productive for the most part.

I think that intrinsic motivation is almost important. If a child shows an interest in something that they should be encouraged to pursue it. For example if a student in grade 8 says that they are interested in scuba diving, they should be giving the opportunity to take a 2-3 week intensive 16hr a day boot camp. A motivated kid can easily do 16hrs days. Such programs should be ready to implement the moment a kid shows interests. Strike while the metal is hot.

I've seen bored kids in class, not understanding a lesson, and not caring. They're doodling away, and interested in graffiti. If I could, I'd put such a kid in a calligraphy boot-camp, 16hrs a day. Not only would they learn something that they are interested in but, all learn to learn - and be better in all subjects.

In Toronto some kids that are on verge of dropping out are transferred to a special school that focuses on skate-board building, and the business around selling skate-boards. http://oasisskateboardfactory.blogspot.com/ Its had some success.

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