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Comment by ajkjk | Hacker News Reader

The problem isn't writing a better text, it's having departments willing to teach it, or to try alternate approaches at all.

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The OP referenced the Khan Academy as an attempt to displace the ossified educational institutions we have. But it has its own limitations and challenges, some of which will soon be rendered moot by the coming wave of AI technologies, perhaps giving it the final push it needs to truly take hold.

Can imagine a world where it doesn't matter where or how you get your education, all that matters is that you can have your knowledge verified by an accredited _testing_ institution. This would open education up to a world of creative competition for students, and allow individuals to find a learning paradigm that best works for themselves.

This might work well for knowledge/IC-based attainment. There are still other groups, who are possibly the majority when combined:

Some people are there for "the experience", no matter how much it costs, nor how little benefit it results in. They will still be paying $80k for an experience that qualifies them for nothing, even though they had that qualification already before they started.

Some other people are there for the network, and/or will learn leadership skills in that environment. They can't build/learn those things in an online environment.

Agreed. One size does not fit all. It's just the hope that options like Khan Academy are made truly viable for those who are well served by such options.

You have to have a pretty helpless attitude to blame someone else (teachers) on your inability to learn from a good textbook.

How are you ever going to learn anything truly novel in the world if you always delegate teaching to a teacher?

I shouldn't need to read a 500page textbook to understand a class that a teacher has been 'teaching' for 20 years. He's there to give me an understanding of the subject. I have at least 5 classes each semester which are very technical and difficult, it's impossible for me to read a textbook on each while also reading a 20-30 page lab instruction each night, all written in a technical language which I barely understand. I can try but so many times constant consumption of this literature lead to burnout

no one is there to give you anything

they are there to give you a chance

maybe it is impossible for you to do this, but it’s clearly not impossible for others

that challenge is valuable information

maybe a different area is a better pursuit for you

or maybe a better way to view learning

good luck

"Technical and difficult": there are both important concepts and broad strokes that your teacher should be good at explaining, and important details that should be explored in a textbook because they need good pictures, data, editing etc. more than good explanations.

Taking a longer time than normal to learn a topic and prepare university exams might be a good alternative to burnout; or maybe your lifestyle and/or intellect are incompatible with studying.

The entitlement in your comment is staggering...

Why such a desire to be spoonfed, whining about having to put in the work?

Am I not supposed to expect a quality lecture from a university professor? I have had such a bad experience with certain lecturers, I'm certain what they were saying wasn't incorrect but the way they were speaking made it impossible to follow. It wasn't just me who thought so. I admit I've had learning difficulties my whole life but I believe it is actually impossible to learn all the material from the classes with all the details from books. You can pick a field or two which interest you the most and delve deep into the details. An extremely fundamental topic at my uni is called "introduction to circuit analysis". It was taught by a professor who was so bad at teaching it there was no point in coming to his lectures. You would learn more from watching youtube videos. Everyone was aware of the state of that class. Even our lab professors would mock his teaching style. Now if every class was like this we would be lost. I'll give a recent example of another lecturer who I also consider bad, but fortunately he is teaching an easy subject. First class a kid asks 'what's the difference between a router and a switch'. The professor answers 'a switch works on layer 2 and a router works on layer 3'. In my opinion this is a non answer. Yeah he said the truth but it didn't mean anything. If that student didn't know the difference between a switch and a router then surely he doesn't know about the ISO OSI model. Before you think he probably didn't have time to answer more specifically to make sure he understands. This guy notoriously keeps digressing from the subject. As that classes subject is one I am familiar with I knew the way he taught it was impossible to make sense of because he never answered in a concrete way, everything felt so drawn out and lacking a focal point, it's hard to describe. It took him four hours to go over the ISO OSI model and honestly while I wasn't paying attention to every single word he said. With all the digressions and constant comments about stuff you just couldn't follow his train of thought. On the contrary electromagnetism class was absolutely amazing. It's still a difficult subject, at least for me because I've always been pretty bad at physics but the lad who taught it was brilliant. He made sure we all understood, he started with very basic concepts that everyone knew, just to be certain everyone is on the same page. His presentations were concise, easy to follow with links to read up/watch stuff that you didn't fully get or wanted to learn more about. They had plenty of visualizations with gifs of stuff. It's a pleasure going to his classes. So I think that I should expect the lectures to give me an understanding of a subject. If I had to read a book for every class there wouldn't be enough time in a day for me to catch up.

We call this "University"

You are just wrong. There is a lot more that goes into teaching a subject better than 'generating a better textbook'. There are thousands of hours of work that need to happen to figure out how to make the subject make more sense. It is not a question of 'writing down known result sin a different order'. The subject needs to be reworked in its entirely. Advanced results need to be made elementary. Simple formulations of complex ideas need to be discovered, articulated, and developed into exercises. Out of every available model the best models need to be picked and refined and tested. Etc. And then you have to get everyone on board with the project!

Almost none of the work is 'rewriting the book.'

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