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Comment by preommr | Hacker News Reader

We need to seriously (or at least try to) make changes to our pedagogical processes.

Yea, struggling, is one way, but there are others like optimizing for spaced reptition, visualization, etc.

The shift should be from "grind these problems so the pain sticks with you", to "create a mini logic board in minecraft to blow up that mountain". Or, "build mini simulations to show how forces work, and tie them to an interactive applet".

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Education isn't just the acquisition of facts or problem-solving skills. There are fundamental skills like reading that have their own specific pedagogies that must be used, because those skills are taught so early on.

The discourse surrounding education is mostly a discourse of spectators. The voices who actually do the work of teaching are the quietest.

Doing only interesting things tends to leave students with serious knowledge gaps. Anyone that's an autodidact or has interviewed/trained one will be familiar with this.

Discipline and grit are perhaps the greatest predictors for success. High intelligence and the foresight to know what to work on, per Hamming, will get you much farther, but with discipline and grit alone your chances of failing completely and ending up in the poor house are much reduced.

The guys who empty our bins have discipline and grit. The same ones turn out regularly whatever the weather doing back breaking work. They work far harder than I do.

> grind these problems so the pain sticks with you

The reason you grind on a problem is because it is difficult and requires you to learn and bridge knowledge. You're not grinding through many problems for the sake of it you're doing it because they're challenging and slightly different each time.

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