Thread

1. basilgohar · 1790517608 · focus · HN ↗

   It's going to be a rough decade but I think we're going to come out a lot better in the long run. Education, especially in the US, has been really stagnant for a long time, and primary and secondary education has been more and more obviously just a mill to turn out middle-wage earners to dutifully pay taxes and buy products and not try to think to hard about things.

   Now that we have systems that can pass for students at this baseline level, educational systems are facing a reckoning and we can, hopefully, move past cookie-cutter education solutions and recognize the need for more hands-on, engaged education. Will it be an easy transition? No. Will all schools adapt successfully? Also, no.

   But will we finally have a path away from standardized testing, middle-of-the-road education? I am hopefully optimistic. We'll rediscover the need for human growth and development in our schools. It's either that or we lose. I'll choose the optimistic route and join and support those who believe the same.

   1. delusional · 1790521697 · focus · HN ↗

      > we can, hopefully, move past cookie-cutter education solutions and recognize the need for more hands-on, engaged education.

      I'm not convinced children need "hands-on, engaged" education at the age of 10. At some point there's no shortcut to being socialized that patterns in numbers are interesting (which is one of the national goals of maths for 3rd graders in my country). 10 year olds won't find that stuff "engaging" on their own, they must be informed by authority figures that it's a thing worth paying attention to.

      Too much of this "fuck the schools" mentality treats children as perfect little beings that must only be supported to grow into wonderful adults, when the reality is that socializing children is a brutal exercise in fitting them into norms.

      1. graemep · 1790522557 · focus · HN ↗

         They certainly can find things like patterns in numbers interesting. I just found a blog post I wrote when my daughter was a few weeks short of seven that says she found simple sequences interesting. "She was instantly fascinated, and thought that trying to figure out the rules of each sequence was a wonderful game. Whenever I ran out of ideas, she pestered me for more sequences."

         <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pietersz.co.uk&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;schools-maths-wron" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pietersz.co.uk&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;schools-maths-wron

         &gt; when the reality is that socializing children is a brutal exercise in fitting them into norms.

         No, you really, really should not be brutal to little children.

         1. delusional · 1790523632 · focus · HN ↗

            You replaced the rote recitation of faceless homework with engagement from an authority. She was not interested in the sequence of numbers, but interested in your interest. She loves you, and is reflecting your engagement back at you in hopes of getting more validation. Children do that a lot.

            You describe the homework as

            &gt; basically lots or practice in basic arithmetic

            Which is absolutely what you need for these sequences to have any meaning. There is no &quot;pure math&quot; to have a game about, without the &quot;pathetic&quot; examples of Lucy&#x27;s 5 apples and Tom&#x27;s 2. If somebody hadn&#x27;t (brutally) drilled the concept of numbers into her skull, the sequences of random symbols would not mean anything to her.

            Engaging with your child, who has already been partially socialized, is not proof that this socialization wasn&#x27;t necessary. For that, you would have to have locked your daughter in the basement for those 7 years, and then find that she was spontaneously able to do multiplication. That is not going to happen.

            &gt; No, you really, really should not be brutal to little children.

            I hope you understand that _brutality_ as spiritual. It&#x27;s the brutality of going against nature, of putting a monkey in a suit and locking it in an office for 8 hours a day to feed itself. You don&#x27;t beat math into your children, but they sure as hell don&#x27;t learn it from eating candy and watching Minecraft let&#x27;s plays.

            1. Natsu · 1790524219 · focus · HN ↗

               &gt; they sure as hell don&#x27;t learn it from eating candy and watching Minecraft let&#x27;s plays.

               I learned math from flash cards my mother was using for my brother. He got M&amp;Ms for getting them right, so of course I wanted to learn and join in. Many years later, I graduated with a degree in math.

               So you absolutely can learn math from eating candy. I did.

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