wow, I love this! I've had the pleasure of having had some really good teachers in the last year and it makes such a big difference! that's when you can start coming up with your own exercises specific to your needs because you have understood the principle of how learning the skill in question might work...
Yes, exactly! Reality becomes your teacher. You can trust your own interest to draw you into what's good for you to learn. A good teacher will help this happen more for you. I'm glad you've gotten some really good ones recently!
I recently wrote a very similar mini-rant response to someone complaining about high-schoolers cheating at essays using Chat GPT.
> 1) Learning to WRITE well is a primary way people learn to THINK well.
That's true, but I don't think it supports your point. What makes you think the... THING most English classes teach has anything to do with writing WELL? Writing is for communication. That means good writing is a form of self-expression. You can't even practice that unless you have something *you* actually want to say. This means asking the student to fill some pages to prove they read whichever random book you assigned them this week mostly fails to work out that muscle. Actually it's a bit worse than merely wasting their time if they're effectively being trained to bullshit.
I think I'm missing your point. Forgive me if I'm not speaking to it. But to maybe clarify: I don't mean to claim that writing well teaches good thinking (though like you I suspect that's true). My point is more that there's presumably SOME REASON English teachers want students to learn to write well. So if they want students to WANT to learn to write well, they need to sell the students on the REAL REASONS for learning to write well, whatever those might be. Instead of using coercion to try to force learning.
And yeah, I think the result of not building the material on students' desires is much worse than just wasting students' time. It's hard not to train a mind to practice BSing when it's given coercion-based incentives.
Ah, right, the pronouns are confusing. The ">" was someone *else*'s words and the stuff below it was my response to that person, not you. I thought the first line would convey that context, but I guess it didn't.
I agree that AI can have potentially negative effects on how students learn, but all I ever see is people stating this without elaborating, or making any suggestions for a workaround. It really is refreshing to see such a well put together essay on what's going on, why, and what we can do to make a change. This made me realise that the teachers I've always liked are the ones who guided me into a healthy relationship with the subject itself, without the use of blind devotion to coerce me into following exactly what they do. And their influence still sticks with me to this day. Thanks for sharing, I found this super interesting :)
I think bad teaching can be (and often is) worse than no teaching. Much like an abusive relationship is usually worse than being single even if you're lonely.
People are very good at learning if they both (a) care and (b) have an opportunity to learn. For the most part we could improve teaching by offering access to things and getting out of the way.
It'd also help if we stopped insisting that we know better what others need to learn than they do. Even when we're right, I'm pretty sure that overall social & mental health is much better served by earning learners' trust that we know what they should learn. Instead of using coercion to force them to learn against their will.
Basically none of that requires having an abundance of good teachers. It just requires that we develop some sincere respect for students. Let them live their lives.
For instance, I really do believe that the world would be much better off if everyone were much more skilled in math. I have quite a few reasons to think this. But I also would rather math education were completely dropped than that educational coercion continue. I'd rather we didn't teach math than that we keep inflicting math trauma on children.
Well, I’m now invested in knowing the answer to why you teach math!
I feel like, the biggest problem is students not fully knowing what their ‘why’ is. Especially, with social media occupying most of their headspace. I quit social media (except substack :)) for some time and that was the first time i started to elaborate my ‘why’ in everything i do. Liberating, but frustrating at times. Thank you!!!
I just finished a piece partly answering why I teach math! Coming out tomorrow.
I get the impression that people are quite good at knowing their "why" if we don't block their interests with irrelevant social problems. And yeah, I can imagine social media inducing a lot of irrelevant social problems!
wow, I love this! I've had the pleasure of having had some really good teachers in the last year and it makes such a big difference! that's when you can start coming up with your own exercises specific to your needs because you have understood the principle of how learning the skill in question might work...
Yes, exactly! Reality becomes your teacher. You can trust your own interest to draw you into what's good for you to learn. A good teacher will help this happen more for you. I'm glad you've gotten some really good ones recently!
I recently wrote a very similar mini-rant response to someone complaining about high-schoolers cheating at essays using Chat GPT.
> 1) Learning to WRITE well is a primary way people learn to THINK well.
That's true, but I don't think it supports your point. What makes you think the... THING most English classes teach has anything to do with writing WELL? Writing is for communication. That means good writing is a form of self-expression. You can't even practice that unless you have something *you* actually want to say. This means asking the student to fill some pages to prove they read whichever random book you assigned them this week mostly fails to work out that muscle. Actually it's a bit worse than merely wasting their time if they're effectively being trained to bullshit.
I think I'm missing your point. Forgive me if I'm not speaking to it. But to maybe clarify: I don't mean to claim that writing well teaches good thinking (though like you I suspect that's true). My point is more that there's presumably SOME REASON English teachers want students to learn to write well. So if they want students to WANT to learn to write well, they need to sell the students on the REAL REASONS for learning to write well, whatever those might be. Instead of using coercion to try to force learning.
And yeah, I think the result of not building the material on students' desires is much worse than just wasting students' time. It's hard not to train a mind to practice BSing when it's given coercion-based incentives.
Ah, right, the pronouns are confusing. The ">" was someone *else*'s words and the stuff below it was my response to that person, not you. I thought the first line would convey that context, but I guess it didn't.
Ah! I see, you were kind of copying your reply to THE OTHER PERSON whom you were quoting! Sorry I missed that, and thanks for clarifying!
I agree that AI can have potentially negative effects on how students learn, but all I ever see is people stating this without elaborating, or making any suggestions for a workaround. It really is refreshing to see such a well put together essay on what's going on, why, and what we can do to make a change. This made me realise that the teachers I've always liked are the ones who guided me into a healthy relationship with the subject itself, without the use of blind devotion to coerce me into following exactly what they do. And their influence still sticks with me to this day. Thanks for sharing, I found this super interesting :)
Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm glad this resonated with you.
I think this is a beautiful ideal but might ask too much of many teachers. do many of us not agree how hard it is to find "a good teacher"?
Then if so, what happens in the absence of a good teacher? What should the mediocre case look like?
I don't think anyone contests that a great human expert is still better than an LLM. Unfortunately that's what's in short supply.
I think bad teaching can be (and often is) worse than no teaching. Much like an abusive relationship is usually worse than being single even if you're lonely.
People are very good at learning if they both (a) care and (b) have an opportunity to learn. For the most part we could improve teaching by offering access to things and getting out of the way.
It'd also help if we stopped insisting that we know better what others need to learn than they do. Even when we're right, I'm pretty sure that overall social & mental health is much better served by earning learners' trust that we know what they should learn. Instead of using coercion to force them to learn against their will.
Basically none of that requires having an abundance of good teachers. It just requires that we develop some sincere respect for students. Let them live their lives.
For instance, I really do believe that the world would be much better off if everyone were much more skilled in math. I have quite a few reasons to think this. But I also would rather math education were completely dropped than that educational coercion continue. I'd rather we didn't teach math than that we keep inflicting math trauma on children.
At least, that's my take so far.
Well, I’m now invested in knowing the answer to why you teach math!
I feel like, the biggest problem is students not fully knowing what their ‘why’ is. Especially, with social media occupying most of their headspace. I quit social media (except substack :)) for some time and that was the first time i started to elaborate my ‘why’ in everything i do. Liberating, but frustrating at times. Thank you!!!
I just finished a piece partly answering why I teach math! Coming out tomorrow.
I get the impression that people are quite good at knowing their "why" if we don't block their interests with irrelevant social problems. And yeah, I can imagine social media inducing a lot of irrelevant social problems!
You mention it's frustrating at times…? How so?