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Comment by alexland | Hacker News Reader

Am I old school for thinking that giving kids complete freedom isn't the best way to do things? I like a lot of the ideas being used at these schools, but as a kid I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do or learn most of the time, and having some guidance to show me different subjects was a huge help in nurturing curiosity and passion for them.

Even now I prefer having someone with some experience helping me along when I learn a new skill/tool/language, so I can ask dumb questions and learn more efficiently.

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My school as a kid was Montessori, not Sudbury, but a lot of the ideas are the same. Yes, I think you're old school for thinking that. Kids learned fine for tens of thousands of years by following adults around, watching what they did, and doing whatever they found interesting at the moment.

The industrial-era "place the children in a big concrete box until they are ready to go to either a factory or jail" model is a dinosaur, and I really hope some kind of asteroid strikes it soon.

Not "old school" but you have a different learning style than I do, as I prefer to puzzle things out on my own.

It took me to my 30s to realize that not everyone wants to learn on their own (or are capable of doing so), even if I still don't understand why they can't learn on their own (the pivotal moment was when a friend complained she didn't know how to use Microsoft Word and wanted to take a class. I asked her why she couldn't just start using Word. I mean, it has a help system, there are books on using it. What's with the class? But that's her and her learning style. Like I said, I still don't quite grok it).

I wish we could do counterfactual analysis. I would love to see if it was traditional education that led people to requiring a class to learn or if it is intrinsic.

As a species, we certainly have strong mentoring needs for learning mastery. But that is quite different from requiring a class.

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