
Things I Despised About My Education - amirhhz
http://www.nabeelqu.com/blog/things-i-despised-about-my-education
======
fatbird
Another "If education had been more customized to me, education would be
better for everyone" lament. Know what, Nabeel? Few people are like you. Most
people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people
respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-
defeating. That's not to say that Nabeel is a special flower and everyone else
is a drone, it's to say that everyone is different--I mean, really different,
in a way that any education system is going to struggle with.

Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the
optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them. Some
kids really do want, and thrive in, extremely structured, rote learning
environments. Some kids really do want, and succeed best in, environments
geared for professional advancement. And others want self-directed learning.

The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all
students.

~~~
edwardunknown
I don't see how pointless memorization is helpful to anyone though.

~~~
fatbird
I learned the multiplication tables by memorization. Would I have been better
served by having numbers explained to me, and then a guided, self-learning
experience where I figured out the theory of multiplication myself?

~~~
mitchi
Even if you had achieved that, you would memorize the multiplication tables
eventually!

~~~
Crake
In many public schools, "oh you'll have a calculator for that!" is the common
response. You don't need to memorize them, so many kids won't. But if you want
to be good at foiling later on, you need to know them in your head
automatically. Refusing to require some degree of memorization is setting kids
up for flunking out of math later, and most tickets out of poverty these days
require a college degree with heavy math coursework.

------
kevinalexbrown
_the bad habits that school somehow implanted in me_

School might be a mechanism, but I doubt that's the driving force. Losing a
sense of curiosity and play is an ancient phenomenon that predates modern
education. _When I became a man, I put away childish things_ was written 10^3
years ago.

If schools are doing X, Y, and Z and students are losing curiosity, stopping X
Y and Z might not do any good unless it's part of a broader cultural problem.
More importantly, the question of whether schools are the best place to prod
cultural forces remains open. If we do decide to curate curiosity in schools,
it might be beneficial to understand why curiosity is dying in the first
place.

I'm curious if anyone has any insight into what these forces might be and why
they're so universal. Unless losing your sense of wonder is a relatively
recent transformation, why did humans evolve in such a way that wonder isn't
conserved across development?

~~~
codeonfire
"I'm curious if anyone has any insight into what these forces might be and why
they're so universal."

The force that can causes a loss of a sense of wonder is survival. People do
not just learn for the sake of learning. They learn because they are a part of
a complex system that requires knowledge to survive. At some point, the cost
of failure is no longer worth the utility of eventual success. Lots of people
quit their jobs to try something new, lose all their money, and file for
bankruptcy. If they had simple stuck to what they know, they would be in a
better position. Satisfying curiosity is not free in terms of time, money, or
happiness.

~~~
johnjlocke
Being in a better position financially often does not equate to more
happiness. This is one thing about the human spirit that cannot be quantified.

~~~
clicks
Research says otherwise.

 _Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-
being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's
everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress,
sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant.
Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when
they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness,
separately for these two aspects of well-being. We report an analysis of more
than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily
survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find
that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences
yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale)
have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to
life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are
relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log
income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with
log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of
~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such
misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high
income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is
associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being._

<http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489>

------
PavlovsCat
1\. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have to
happen often to really really sour things.

2\. Being fed a lot of crap by rote, with critical thinking only allowed in
the sharp boundaries of the expected outcome for the curriculum.

3\. The absolute unfairness and dictator-like behaviour of so many teachers,
the mediocre characters, the lame-ass half-knowledge and pseudo-funny
anecdotes they poured on the kids in between the lessons and oogling the
girls. The lack of bodily hygiene of many.

Yes, there were good teachers too, but they had the chances of a snowball in
hell. For me school was mostly a nightmare, I hated it, I ran away from it.
Now I hate the fact that everybody automatically assumes I have degrees and
whatnot because I'm smart. Fuck education, encourage curiosity... or it'll
just be another brick in the wall.

~~~
willholloway
> 1\. Getting punished for being smarter than some teachers. It doesn't have
> to happen often to really really sour things.

I have witnessed teachers putting down bright kids hundreds of times.

They often cloak it in concern.

A lot of people interpret a smarter person than themselves as a cognitive
insult, and will automatically try to bring the person they feel is smarter
than them down a peg or two.

This crab mentality is so prevalent, and gifted children feel things so
acutely that I would encourage any gifted adolescent to drop out as soon as
possible, get a GED and get on with their lives.

They will be 7-8 years ahead of their peers at 23.

A gifted child we be smarter than most of their teachers at all but the best
institutions. Their time would be better spent reading books and learning from
the eminent experts in their fields than some hack with a teaching
certificate.

Living in a place like NYC can replace the social aspect of the college
experience just fine.

There is no excuse for tormenting a gifted child with the ordinary school
system. It is designed to produce the mid-level workers capitalism needs for
it's factories and offices, it is not designed to imbue the best education
possible on young minds.

------
willvarfar
Feynman's key point is that learning rote means you can't invent new things.
Its not knowledge, its not progress.

The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not
nearly as damning.

~~~
rayiner
By and large we don't need average kids to be able to invent knew things.
Heck, even above average kids don't need to invent knew things. Most engineers
working at Boeing couldn't invent new things, but they do a perfectly fine job
of plugging in the numbers into the right equations and keeping the aircraft
rolling out.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Note, I don't mean to be in any way negative towards you in any way at all, at
all.

However, one could equally as well argue that we don't need average people to
be able to read or do maths. They can learn it all from videos on Youtube et
al anyway, right?

More seriously, the notion that most people can't produce wonderful things is
the single most pernicious lie of our times. Everyone is born with more than
enough potential to do great things, and the job of society is to give them
the tools and encouragement they need to do this.

So, don't sell the species short. We may not _need_ everyone to create new
things, but hell, it couldn't hurt, right?

~~~
rayiner
We have an economy that is structured such that we need average people to be
able to read and do basic arithmetic. We do not have an economy that requires
them to do more than that. Indeed, I'd argue that we have over-educated the
average person--too many people with college educations working basically the
same jobs they could have gotten 50 years ago with just a high school
education.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Firstly, apologies for the ridiculously late reply.

Secondly, so what? The particular structure of our economy is no reason to
constrain our abilities as a species. I would argue that we have crippled,
half educated college graduates doing pointless work across the WEIRD (google
the acronym) world, and that this is bad.

My argument is not that we have educated the "average person" (presumably
you're not one) too much, but rather that we have educated them too little.
Just enough to believe that they know enough, but not enough that they
actually reflect upon their existence.

------
amirhhz
"My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me
to value prestige, prizes, etc.) So I worked hard at memorizing things, and
anytime I wasn’t sure I’d get the right answer the first time, I’d be scared
to try, in case I failed or made myself look stupid."

Here's where the above really starts to hurt: during high school, I got away
with avoiding failure because everything is set up for you to 'succeed'. As
soon as I went to University the opportunities for failure increased by an
order of magnitude and at the same time there was nothing and no-one there to
assure you that this is OK and part of the process of learning. The spiral of
self-doubt, depression and fear that this created almost completely ruined my
academic career.

I got lucky and it all worked out such that I am now a software developer who
knows failure and experimentation (on almost any scale) are part and parcel of
getting better at what you do, and the impact of this knowledge on one's
emotional well-being is immense. It's what I would tell my 18-year-old self if
I had the chance.

~~~
shn
You were lucky at least to find a better place in college. Although not all
classes I took was as bad as high school, unfortunately I just graduated
memorizing my way out of college most of the time. The idea and the gist of
the subject was always elusive, there was no connectedness with anything else.
There was no exploration however the workload was enormous, we were taking 5-6
college level math classes per term. Quantity ruled over quality.

------
chefsurfing
Great article. Unfortunately the vast majority of the so-called education to
which people around the world are exposed is not education, it's merely
schooling. For those interested in the difference I suggest reading John
Taylor Gatto's books. Also most important is to reflect on your own
experiences of education vs. schooling. I myself have found that the two are
absolutely antithetical.

"The Underground History of American Education" available free online:
<http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf>

Radio piece w/ JTG on YouTube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKci3_cmlqI>

------
viddi
This is something I've always observed. But to be fair, there are many
different types of pupils, especially on a high school. If you were to explain
things in a way, that they actually _mean_ something, some of your students
would do really well, while the rest is unable to grasp the essence. Nowadays
schools teach in a way that works for all: Just give recipes, and hope that a
few students will motivate themselves to actually _understand_ what they're
doing. Or, let them do it for so long, that they get the idea the better, the
more often they apply the recipe.

In my case I was one of the lucky few who actually understood derivations
after the first class. At home, I thought about half an hour about it, and was
able to tell the next "recipe" on the lesson plan. (Side note: Students get
rewarded for memorizing algorithms, not understanding them. So even people who
are "good in maths" are - even in college - not always good at understanding
them.)

Now in university I'm still a bit disappointed. This could be because of my
engineering course. We're still just being taught how to do what, but not in a
descriptive way. This became extremely bad at differential equations. We
weren't even told what differential equations are, and when you use them. It
was a mere "you have this, then you have to do that". It seemed very difficult
to me, but many other students had no problems. They told me because "it's
just: you have this, then you do that".

------
jupiterjaz
"Trying to get answers before fully considering the problem." "Being
uncomfortable with not knowing."

These two things seem totally at odds to me and it's something I struggle with
constantly. How do you ever know if you've considered the problem enough? If
you come to a problem you cant solve and go to someone for help there's always
a chance that person will ridicule you and put you down, destroying your
motivation, because you didn't "fully consider the problem" in his eyes.

~~~
stephengillie
If you goto someone else for help and they ridicule you, that person is
wasting your time, and you should ignore them. If the person won't help, or at
least give you _constructive_ criticism, then ignore them.

It doesn't matter if you didn't fully consider the problem, it matters if the
other person will help you. And sometimes, if the other person doesn't know
either, he can at least make himself feel good by making you feel bad. Don't
let him.

------
ableal
_"That’s what I hated about school - it felt like such a waste of time,
learning stuff that I was probably going to forget."_

Some people go to gyms, where they exert themselves pointlessly - they're not
drawing water, generating electricity, or moving materials uphill.

They seem to think that the process somehow improves _them_. Modern medicine
apparently agrees with them.

If that is not the case with whatever exercises are done in school, perhaps we
could get better proof than _"it felt"_.

------
asselinpaul
I can also relate, studying for my A-Levels (AS) this year. The biggest part
of the problem is that everything is too academical, I'm trying to not take
into account the fact that I can learn a lot without the rigid structure of
school. Mathematics only teach you how to solve problems, it does not in any
way encompass the other parts of mathematics which are important (e.g. how do
you model a problem). Sciences are stuck in the 80's (I've been studying
Physics with a text book that is way older than me). Why cant we talk a bit
about the 'cool' new stuff in class (mentioning things such as quad-copters,
3d printers and cryptography would certainly get a lot of kids interested). I
can't relate to the more language based subjects but I hear that it is
problematic too.

Finally, I'm also preparing for the SAT, and that, that is a horrible test. It
tests you're ability to adapt to a new system/test, I really don't see how it
is a good indicator for college applications. It is awful on so many levels
and yet it remains the primary test for college admission in the US.

------
jhuni
Public education in modern capitalist society is a step up over what we had
before. When capitalism first emerged in England there were no child labor
laws so millions of children were denied an education and put into working in
slave like conditions in factories with minimal if any safety equipment.

Capitalism is based upon uneven and unequal development so much of the global
population is still denied an education and even a basic level of literacy.
Those people would love to have any education at all to complain about in the
first place.

I feel it is important to put this person's complaints into the context.
Nonetheless, I will be the last person in the world to actually defend the
education system in first world because it is just based on turning the first
world citizens into obedient service sector workers and consumers of products
mainly produced in China and extracted from the third world.

> _Our system should be producing more adults with this same fearlessness, who
> go after what they really want from the start in rational, systematic ways.
> Right now, we tend to produce ‘answer-centred’ people who are terrified of
> doing things wrong._

Capitalism is not based upon letting people go after what they really want.
Capitalism is based upon having a class of people (the proletariat) who are
alienated from their own work and for whom doing things wrong means getting
fired.

> _We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their
> innate sense of curiosity and play._

We need a system that teaches children to be alienated from the things around
them, their productive activities, their own lives, and their peers. This is
demanded by the capitalist mode of production itself and there is no way of
getting around this without revolutionizing society.

------
tokenadult
An interesting essay by Nabeel Qureshi, opening up with a great example from
Richard Feynman and then showing the development of the author's own thinking
on how to learn. The author writes, "My education taught me to value getting
the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.)" And of
course many people receive an education like that.

Qureshi credits John Holt's book _How Children Fail_

[http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-
Developme...](http://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-
Development/dp/0201484021/learninfreed)

with opening his eyes to a different view of education. (The same book was
recommended to me by my junior high assistant principal in 1971. _How Children
Fail_ was a life-changing book for me, and I recommend it to everyone who has
ever been in school.) Qureshi writes, "In the last couple of years, I’ve been
going through a process of un-education: removing all the bad habits that
school somehow implanted in me:

"Being afraid of failure or embarrassment"

That's crucial. To be afraid to fail is to be afraid to learn. Here's a link
to a FAQ I have prepared for my local mathematics students, "Courage in the
Face of Stupidity,"

<http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php>

designed to prevent the kind of misguided approach to learning mentioned in
the essay kindly submitted here. School curricula in many parts of the United
States (and perhaps elsewhere too, as I note the essay is from Britain?) are
designed so that most pupils will succeed in school assignments most of the
time. That doesn't provide enough practice in taking on HARD tasks, and
inadequately prepares young learners to succeed in either

a) study of more than one really difficult subject at the same time

or

b) successful problem-solving in adult life in private employment, when the
problems are often open-ended and ill-defined.

As a parent of four children, and as a teacher of elementary-age pupils, I'm
all about first bolstering children's expectations that initial failure is not
a sure predictor of never succeeding, and then introducing CHALLENGING
problems into their education so that one thing they practice while young is
overcoming failure.

AFTER EDIT:

Another top-level comment just asked,

 _Anyone out there tried home schooling?_

Yes. And it was John Holt's writings, beginning with How Children Fail in the
early 1970s, that sparked my interest in homeschooling. I have been pleased
with the results of homeschooling in the case of my oldest son, now fully
grown and making a living as a hacker for a start-up, and I am glad to
continue homeschooling for my three younger children.

~~~
chatmasta
You can preach to children the value of the process, the importance of
learning, etc. But the second you give them an exam, you lose all credibility.
That's the real problem with school. Even if teachers devote themselves to
imbuing this "problem centric" approach in their students, the school system
requires them to give examinations, which inherently encourage the "answer
centric" approach.

~~~
tokenadult
To the contrary, I know many examples of young people who rock on exams
precisely because they learn to pursue curiosity rather than to fulfill
minimal school requirements. How useful an examination is depends on how it is
designed and administered. How influential examinations are in an overall
educational system depends on what incentives are attached to exams and what
rewards and opportunities are available to learners irrespective of exams.

Albert Einstein had an interesting account of his school experiences in his
longest autobiographical writing, the introductory section of a book I grew up
having in my home library (because my dad bought the book when he was a
student of the philosophy of science).

<http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html>

The examination system that Einstein encountered as a student in Switzerland
actually allowed him to spend minimal time getting ready for examinations and
most of his time independently pursuing his interest in physics. As Einstein
wrote, "There were altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one
could just about do as one pleased." If his school grades had been based more
on daily homework assignments (as in the United States), then he probably
would have seen his "holy curiosity of inquiry" entirely strangled by the
school system, to use his words.

~~~
dspeyer
Those exams required minimal time (for Einstein -- a student of average
intelligence might have a different experience).

If passing the exams requires spending most of your school time preparing for
them, it's a very different situation.

------
msluyter
"We need to find a better way to teach children, one that doesn’t kill their
innate sense of curiosity and play."

But how do you objectively measure creativity and play? You can't. So it's not
surprising that American public education is moving in exactly the opposite
direction, drifting ever closer to a system where high stakes standardized
tests determine your entire future. At the root of this is some deep seated
hysteria about being overtaken by China or whatnot. It's madness, but I have
no _politically viable_ ideas for fixing the system.

Anyone out there tried home schooling?

~~~
mdkess
Can't we meet in the middle somehow?

I think that there is merit to rote learning. When I practice piano, most of
the time I practice scales. Not creative at all - mind numbing, really, but
fundamentally important. When I play a piece, it in theory the rote learning
(ie. scales) gives me the dexterity and muscle memory to be creative within
the piece of music.

I believe that this translates into education as well. I think it's important
that people can do mental math quickly. I think that it's important that a
computer scientist can implement merge sort or a min heap without having to
resort to Wikipedia. They should be able to explain it too, naturally, but I
think that the baseline of knowledge is required to be creative with more
difficult problems.

I think that the important thing though, which music gets quite well yet
academics mostly don't, is to separate the two. You practice scales, and
mechanical exercises, so that you have the ability to be creative when playing
the pieces. If they were more clearly separated, I think that it might be
better, instead of confusing the two constantly. This is where I think the
fear of failure comes from. With the mechanical side, failure is almost always
bad. If you are not able to play the scale correctly, you haven't practiced
enough - this is your own failing. With the creative side, failure is not
necessarily bad, and success is not necessarily good. It's an experiment, an
expression, and if it falls flat, you get knowledge from it, and if you're
always succeeding, you're not pushing your limits. When the technical and
creative get blurred, I think that it becomes natural to mistake the creative
side as the technical side, and assume that failure is always bad.

My favourite course in school was computer graphics. The final assignment,
worth 20% of your grade if I recall correctly, was this: "Make something
awesome with what you learned. You'll have 10-15 minutes to demo it to the
professor. You have 3 weeks." So you had better be darn comfortable with
perspective transforms and normals and writing shaders, which you are, because
you've built up that knowledge over the rest of the course. Now with it, you
are given a platform to be creative. We were tested on the rote learning stuff
- the exams required us to transform vectors and decompose matrices and write
down lighting equations, but this was a test of ones creative ability. I think
it's almost perfect in this regard, in getting a lot out of both worlds in a
way that is focused and guided but not on rails.

I had friends who wouldn't take this course with me in school because they
were worried that the courses would hurt their GPA.

~~~
Crake
I really love the music analogy. I wish people would view math in that light,
too, because I feel like it translates extremely well.

------
bencevans
I'm currently an A-Level Student in the UK. I can agree with all the points
made.

The education system believes you still need to go to college, uni etc.

I don't anymore.

I've learnt more outside of college (internet, local groups, friends in the
area I'm interested in) than what the teachers can teach (I wish they were
researchers rather than "curriculum" pushers).

~~~
disgruntledphd2
I both agree and disagree with you there. I would agree that I myself have
learned more from independent study than I have from formal education (and
I've almost finished a PhD) but, I did learn a lot of things that I didn't
realise I needed from college/university.

Granted given the recent changes to fees in the UK, I completely see where
you're coming from. I suppose in your situation (as a (presumably bright) A
level student in the UK) it would probably only make economic sense to attend
a Russell Group University, preferably Oxbridge.

Then, the real returns from education are not (in my experience) economic.
Mind you, money is nice, so don't completely ignore economics.

------
robryan
The bit that I struggled with in high school a bit was gaining an
understanding of where certain areas of maths were useful. If an area of maths
isn't immediately useful at least some explanation of why we should appreciate
it and how it relates to other math concepts would be useful.

------
mp01
Does anyone have suggestions for good books/websites where I can learn more
about education and our educational system? I'm really interested in trying to
make it better, but I don't feel like I know enough yet to come up with
significant changes.

------
dougk16
This emergence of "essays" lately is interesting, and I've been thinking about
the differences between them and blog posts.

Conclusion: essays don't have a place for comments on the bottom.

~~~
nqureshi
I've actually always had comments on, but recently switched to a CMS I wrote
myself. I haven't had time to implement comments yet, but it's on the todo
list. :)

~~~
dougk16
Good to hear. Might I suggest linking to the HN discussion in the mean time
(and/or wherever else it's discussed)? Your essay/blog is well-written and
valuable, but comments can add at least as much value, and not everyone who
visits your site will know to come here.

~~~
nqureshi
good suggestion. done.

------
neverlsmice
[http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-
rote...](http://sthomme.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/on-the-value-of-rote-
learning/)

------
jimhefferon
It is not a good sign in a teacher to use the word "despised."

------
michaelochurch
Convex vs. concave. See: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-
end-of-ma...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-
management/)

The old-style, industrial-era education was based on limiting mistakes and
reducing variance. Produce 100 widgets, by deadline X, with low variation.
Reliable, low-variance work is still important, but machines do it a lot
better than we do.

We've handed the concave world over to machines. They do that stuff far better
than we can. Now the only marketable human labor is the convex stuff where the
variance-reducing approach that has characterized 200+ years of industrial
capitalism fails (because when the input-output curve is convex, you want
variance).

The way we do things in the U.S. is ideal for the concave world and utterly
incapable of preparing people for convex work, in which autonomy is no longer
a rare reward but a prerequisite for producing quality work.

It's not just education that has become outmoded. Our attitudes have as well.
We understand natively that both talent (to be judged at best) and character
(to be judged at worst) are important in assessing other people (building
teams, choosing leaders) but we also conflate superficial reliability with
character, to disastrous results. It turns out that the people who most easily
maximize superficial reliability ("team players") are often the people of the
worst character (psychopaths).

The educational process is designed to (a) inculcate reliability appropriate
to a concave world, and (b) prime the smartest people for a world in which
_superficial_ reliability will be the main criterion for advancement.

------
enupten
Sadly, things don't change all that much in Grad school either.

