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Comment by kilroy_jones | Hacker News Reader

A teacher's job, if they're doing it right, is not to provide continual feedback to 20+ kids, but to create a space which focuses them on learning a particular skill or achieving a particular goal. Kids learn best when working with other kids, usually by modeling one another and taking the best bits as they go. It's continual exploration with an expert on hand to help when they get stuck or see some basic skills training.

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I think part of the reason teaching is the way it is currently is because if you create that space for kids to work with other kids then anywhere from 20-60% of them will slack off or disrupt others. Not that it doesn't happen with the current system but it's less visible.

Like you say, it's not visible. We are forcing children to sit idle and pretend to listen to the teacher, which is an entirely unnatural thing for to them to do for several hours per day.

I would argue that children would actually learn a lot more social skills by interacting in this "disruptive" and "slacking off" kind of way, especially nowadays where children are otherwise locked up at home by overprotective parents. Those skills are far more valuable than whatever trivia the curriculum is mostly made up of.

Increasing break times I think would have a better effect at improving children's social skills. Perhaps it's a difficult pill for educators to swallow that the most important skill children learn at school doesn't involve them.

By that standard pretty much nobody is doing it "right".

I'd disagree. As someone who has been in teaching nearly two decades there is a large contingent of capable teachers who are doing it right. Some do it within the system their school or district has set up and some in spite of it.

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