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Comment by ChaitanyaSai | Hacker News Reader

Schooling has been trying for ever to institutionalize and standardize learning without really understanding what learning is. In that absence, we've focused on learning proxies, which are tests. And tests resulted in a focus on mechanics. Meaning was and is an intangible so it got leached out. Everything school does starts at the wrong end of meaning > motiviation > mechanics > measurement.

It is possible to fix school. It needs understanding learning, and also being willing to revisit learning design at every level. How to bring meaning in?

Without meaning you could have all your fancy chromebooks and chatbots but you won't move the needle (as we are seeing)

We are actually trying to change schooling (but with a tiny experiment, knowing that scaling does not happen without changes and cultural context)

https://blog.comini.in/p/schooling-has-a-meaning-crisis-para...

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Im definitely in this camp.

It seems like the biggest frustration from the teachers’ part with modern schooling is lack of engagement from the students. This is clearly telling us something.

Sure some students have not even had their basic needs met, which is a separate issue. But those that have and still don’t engage tells us that their brains have probably assigned the information they’re receiving as “having little or no value”, i.e. meaningless.

I bet if you were to lead a class of teenagers on the subject of relationships or friendship, or even how to host a successful party, suddenly you’d see a lot more engagement. Why? Because it’s actually relevant to their every day existence.

In highschool, at least, you have to somehow elevate the meaning of your subject to be more interesting than the movie theatre/concert/video game system they have in their pocket.

Kids will make eye contact with you and nod along as you teach, but they are wearing air pods and can't hear you over their spotify playlist.

Im not sure I can be more interesting than Taylor Swift, Call of Duty, MrBeast, and texting with friends all at the same time. You need the student to be a little bit receptive to even have the opportunity to convince them what you are teaching is relevant to them.

Just ban the phones from schools. Because with that you cannot compete. Instant gratification vs hard work?

I think math bas be slowly transforming more and more into word problems and scenarios. You might think oh yeah this engages the student by showing them reality, but I actually found it incredibly boring and useless, it served as a distraction from the actual numbers that I think are important to learn too.

Part of the goal there is not only "relatability" (demonstrating how this could be useful in reality) but "applicability" (demonstrating HOW to distill a math problem out of some potentially messy real world anecdote).

I have legit seen real world adults do things like say "Well, I got ten widgets because I know that's enough for two people. But there's gonna be four coming so.. uh.. 10+2=12, I'll bring 12 widgets"

Have you ever heard of John Taylor Gatto? If not, you may want to look into his books. They will help you realize that schooling and learning/education are mutually exclusive and even that schooling is counterproductive because its primary objectives are hostile to the objectives of education, real learning as a human.

The worst people in the world created schooling and the education system for their own narrow, selfish, greed and profit driven objectives. Is so deeply engrained, with the very “educators” themselves often not even realizing that through their having also done through the system, they are actually just enablers of an abusive and toxic, soul crushing system … which is precisely what it was designed for; because after all, “the purpose of a system is what it does”, and “ no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do”; both the words of a great steward of systems thinking, Stanford Beer.

Unschooling works for a fraction of kids, and at some stages of their life.

How big is that fraction? In my experience being around a bunch of home schoolers (and adjacent, and school system), some of whom were more in or out of unschooling, I think it's small enough that it should be a rarely considered option.

There are some kids where it will work _really_ well. I've interacted with a couple. There are a lot of kids where it really doesn't work, especially in a distraction rich environment.

Thanks, I have. And it resonated a whole lot! He was working within a very entrenched system. Systems have a way of achieving equilibria and then all the parts trying their best to maintain it (unions, lobbies etc) School is a practical necessity and there's a lot of good that's possible. It's easier to start outside of the system, but also consequently much harder to scale unless we build tools to help systems to stabilize.

School system was created to increase productivity.

It is also and equalizer. Unschooled kids from bad backgrounds now start even lower.

If the purpose of a system is what it does, then what does the system of "not going to school" do?

If schooling and learning/education are truly mutually exclusive then who is the most learned and educated person you can point to that never stepped foot in a school? And how do those rare examples compare against the breadth of modern PHD holders?

There are a non-negligible fraction of kids that are kept out of school, homeschooled, etc. If school was as bad for learning as you suggest then one would expect those kept out of it to demonstrate higher-than-average aptitude.

You might be interested in the experience of hackerspaces, and the "learn by doing":

https://github.com/zoobab/educode

https://www.educode.be/doku.php/educode_2019/conferences/hac...

Thanks!

Understanding learning should start by understanding how much it depends on mechanics.

I don't fully understand your comment but I think an issue with schooling is that tests are the meaning of schools - that is, test results and graduating are the objective of an education.

This is the disconnect I've always found growing up, I get told this is how you calculate angles, but besides the test, there's never the why. Granted this is a bad example because at least that one had a practical, real life application example (calculating the height of a tower in the distance based on distance + angle of the ground to the top from where you're standing), but things just get more and more abstract later on.

The best teaching was always projects and internships, because they start with an objective and meaning (= build software that does this), and what knowledge you need follows from that.

I mean sure you need some basic knowledge before you can work backwards from an end goal, but surely they can teach said basic knowledge without it just being "this is how you solve this test problem"?

"test results and graduating are the objective of an education"

No. The objective is for you to learn a specific topic. Tests are how we tell if you have learned it. Graduating is proof that you have learned it.

You may be saying the same thing in different words. Scores and graduation may be the objective for some - but that doesnt this is an effective motivation for many.

If you have ever been stuck doing a project you didnt want or like, you may relate.

> Meaning > motivation > mechanics > measurement.

You might propose that getting a good measurement is the meaning, but saying that doesn't mean a student has really or fully bought into this idea and find it compelling. i.e Their heart may not be in it.

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