Hacker News Reader

Comment by John7878781 | Hacker News Reader

Generally, it is true that writing by hand is better for recall and memory. However, teachers often use this as a justification to force students to handwrite everything, which can be very counterproductive for a subset of students.

I am currently in high school and have taken 17 AP classes. I have tried taking notes time and time again and have consistently found that they do not help me at all. I have a 3.99 GPA, 1570/1600 SAT, and have received 5s on all of my AP Exams. I know how to study and know what works best for me. I am not a notes person, and when teachers force their "scientific" teaching methods upon me, it does nothing but harm my learning and waste time.

I love the idea of science being incorporated into learning but we need to make sure students are allowed to discover what works best for them.

View on HN

This immediately reminded me of my experience in school. At that time, the teacher encouraged us to take notes in class, and I would desperately copy down what the teacher said, especially the “key points” written on the blackboard, for fear of missing them. But the interesting thing is that I was not “listening” at all at that time. My attention was all on copying, and as a result, I didn't remember what was actually said. After class, I almost never looked at these notes again, they just became a pile of papers in my schoolbag that made me feel guilty. Later I found that this way of learning was not suitable for me. Instead, I can remember content that has stories, pictures, and emotional resonance, rather than copying word for word. So I think that even if “handwriting” is helpful to some people, it does not mean that it is equally effective for everyone. The real challenge may be to help us find a learning method that suits us, rather than forcing a “optimal solution”.

Thinking back to when I was in school, taking notes during class didn’t do anything for me. I would never read them, and the focus on trying to get it all down meant that I wasn’t really listening, simply transcribing.

That said, I didn’t really know how to study. This was fine in high school, I didn’t need to, but in college this hit me hard. I found that if I went through the book and hand wrote a cheat sheet, even for classes that didn’t allow them, the act of making that sheet meant I remembered nearly all of it, so that turned into my study method. Though I’d only spent about 1-2 hours doing this the day before an exam, so I’m not the model of good study habits. I still don’t really know how to study, but writing helped, just not in the context of a classroom during a lecture. I did much better by simply listening. That’s all I did in high school, no notes or home studying. My grades weren’t as good as yours, but decent enough where it wasn’t a problem.

I was the same. Notes all through year 1 and 2 of university.. Less in year 3, I paid attention, and took part in class. I also recorded the lecture. My grades shot up. In year 4, I took minimal notes, and had my best year.

It's like the paper straw, or learning style stuff. Bad science lead to bad policy.

How is your learning harmed? How have you been disallowed from discovering what works best for you?

> How is your learning harmed?

One's goal when studying is to optimize learning as a function of time. When note-taking is forced, this goal becomes impossible for me. I spend time taking notes when I could be spending time on more impactful study techniques (videos, practice sets, etc). To be clear, I think the notion that "notes are useless" only applies to specific groups of people. The bottom line is that everyone learns differently, and forcing a certain approach is an awful idea.

> How have you been disallowed from discovering what works best for you?

I would not say that I have been directly "disallowed," but undeniably, there are bandwidth constraints for students. If I'm taking multiple hard courses, I only have so much time to spend. If I am spending my time note-taking, which my teacher requires to turn in to him/her, then I have less time to do other, more productive things with my time. I think naturally, freedom spurs efficiency. Free and competitive markets are more efficient than command economies. Arguably, this same principle holds true on an individual level.

>> If I'm taking multiple hard courses, I only have so much time to spend.

You’re in high school. No course is hard.

>> Free and competitive markets are more efficient than command economies. Arguably, this same principle holds true on an individual level.

This is a silly statement. Free and competitive markets are not always more efficient than command economies, and they certainly aren’t as you move away from a market to a market unit. So, no, your erroneous principle does not arguably hold true on an individual basis. There is a reason that corporations are structured more like a command economy than a free market.

I respectfully disagree :)

Not only do my peers and I find many of these courses challenging, but AP classes are widely recognized as college-level coursework taken in high school. I will have completed 17 of them by the time I graduate.

That said, my argument doesn't depend at all on whether these classes meet your standards for being "hard." Even if you believe you'd ace them with flying colors, they're still time-consuming and rigorous for most high school students. Focusing on semantics about the word "hard" instead of the point I'm making suggests there's little substance to your rebuttal.

Finally, if no course is hard, as you claim, why is note-taking even necessary?

If I'm forced to take handwritten notes I am wasting focus on that rote task instead of analyzing and synthesizing the content at hand.

That’s quite impressive, care to share what does work for you?

I'm huge on videos + practice sets.

Khan Academy has been such a lifesaver. They not only have in-depth videos, but also have practice sets after every lesson.

AP Classroom (a platform made by College Board) is also amazing. They have videos and progress checks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com