
The examined life - sergeant3
https://aeon.co/essays/can-school-today-teach-anything-more-than-how-to-pass-exams
======
JetSetWilly
It seems to be describing a classroom ideal for extroverts. But already
education is hugely social - much more than it used to be. Schools have loads
of group work, universities have group work, schools (here in the UK)
increasingly teach via shared activities, acting things out, debating things,
etc - in this country the whole national "curriculum for excellence" is based
around this.

Even in my job every training course I have been to lately involves
"workshops" and group activities to play-act scenarios.

But some people hate learning like this. I'd much rather have a lecture or be
given a book and just directly absorb the information without all the
patronising and time-wasting group nonsense. I feel like modern education is
actively hostile to individual reflection and deep learning.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
There's a lot of research that shows these open and collaborative environments
help kids learn. We can't really dispute that, but I'd be inclined to believe
that is because the majority of people are extroverts in the first place.

There is another trend of personalizing, tailoring education for each
individual student where this would be less of an issue. Hopefully technology
makes it more feasible.

~~~
htns
>There's a lot of research that shows these open and collaborative
environments help kids learn.

Compared to what?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Compared to the more classical lecturer at the chalkboard classrooms.

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TamDenholm
Take my opinion with a pinch of salt as my only experience is my own high
school education in the UK. My gripe is that you dont learn life skills. You
dont learn things like the difference between a debit and a credit card, how a
mortgage works, how to pay bills, learning to cook for yourself, how to do
extremely basic car/home maintenance (changing bulbs, refitting plugs, etc),
how to budget and save money, what happens if a family member dies, signing
contracts and what your obligations are (eg, a mobile phone contract, a rental
lease), and on and on.

The age old example is Pythagoras theorem, i got taught that at school and
have never used it. Anyway, enough of my rant, i'd just like to see young
people more prepared for the world, the opportunity is there and we're
squandering it.

~~~
circlefavshape
Really? Is it the place of school to teach you the basic life skills that you
might expect people to learn from their families?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Where do you draw the line between basic life skills that schools ought to
teach you and the skills that parents should teach you? And why is the idea of
overlap a bad one?

How do you clearly divide this list into scholastic and familial
responsibility, such that most people (let's say in America) will agree to it?

* English

* Literature

* History

* Rhetoric

* Civics

* Health education

* Sex education

* Mathematics

* Chemistry

* Physics

* Music

* Economics

~~~
circlefavshape
Isn't it already divided? School doesn't teach you how to wash dishes or ride
a bike or light a fire. Your parents are unlikely to teach you geometry. I
didn't mean to say that an overlap is a bad thing, rather that societies
provide many ways of learning, and school can't teach you _everything_.

If you don't know how to do something it's not necessarily school's fault, and
the solution isn't necessarily "more school"

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm not saying it's not; I'm asking whether the relatively arbitrary line as
it is currently drawn makes sense, and how hard we should all be wringing our
hands about schools not preparing our children for the real world slash
intruding on traditional family tasks or whatever.

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yanjuk
>do what Socrates did: sitting with his students, asking questions and,
through dialogue, teaching them what matters most

Nonsensical comparison. Socrates' pupils came to _him_. They weren't herded
into daycare and expected to act like calm but enthusiastic scholars of random
subjects.

Furthermore, nobody knows which knowledge matters most to other people. It's a
conceit to pretend otherwise. I suspect Socrates would have been the first to
admit this.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>sitting with his students

Additionally, much of his teaching was done while walking, rather than having
students sit still in rows.

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jimhefferon
The course listed here is in philosophy. I teach college Math so I thought I'd
mention, for the many tech-ish folks here, that there is a lot of interest in
Math in classrooms of this kind, where active exploration is a prime goal.

For instance, I teach a intro to proofs course (out of a book I wrote,
[http://joshua.smcvt.edu/proofs](http://joshua.smcvt.edu/proofs)) where
students are given the definitions and theorems on the first day, and where
the class consists of discussions that come to prove those results.

It seems to me that students learn the material better, in part because they
hear things that seem good but that more discussion shows are wrong and so
they come to appreciate better what is right. I find this style of teaching to
be a very good fit for this class because I like for future teachers of math
to have a feel for what is not right as well as what is right. But, I admit,
we don't cover as much material.

This style is called Inquiry-Based, or Discovery-Based, or sometimes Moore
Method (it has lots of variants). If you are interested then you can google
any of those terms, or you could visit
[http://www.jiblm.org/](http://www.jiblm.org/), the Journal of Inquiry-Based
Learning in Mathematics, for a collection of texts for various courses.

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nsxt
> The atmosphere in the [ideal] class is relaxed, collaborative, enquiring;
> learning is driven by curiosity and personal interest.

If this sort of environment is appealing to anyone, feel free to contact me
via the email address listed on my profile. I've set up an intellectual
community (composed of all different types, ranging from lit majors to lawyers
to educators to musicians) on Slack that discusses, among many other topics,
issues like this (i.e., effective pedagogy and epistemology). Changing
education is something we're all passionate about, and we're always hungry for
new knowledge/perspectives.

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sotojuan
"The world over, the joy of learning is being sucked out and education reduced
to a dry, soulless process of ‘delivery’ dictated by the demands of
standardised tests"

Heh, a few word changes and this applies to programming too :-)

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ourcat
Some say 'knowledge is power'. Knowledge is great. But it is not 'wisdom',
which tends to come from shared thoughts and experience.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
I saw a comment here on HN once on a related subject that essentially said,
(paraphrasing), "When wisdom is seen as a basic human need like food or
shelter, the resulting world will look very different."

That all starts with education and a different view of who and what we are. We
are not cogs in a machine, a product of a factory assembly line churning out
efficient workers.

I often wonder where I can get started to help create that world, but honestly
I have no idea.

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namaemuta
> "‘It is rather paradoxical how we never worked towards an exam and yet I
> remember far more of it than I do most other subjects I was studying at the
> time!"

Well, it was a single optional class so it's remarkable enough to be
remembered more than the rest of the classes that follow a similar structure.

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pheonikai
The anime "Assassination Classroom" provides a perfect example of an ideal
teaching environment which prepares you for life. I hope that when I am old
and have enough wisdom and resources, I pass on all my learnings of real world
to my students.

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meira
No, but a society without q formal education system is capable of forming
people for todays needs? Can we pick a amazon indigenous and put him in a
silicon valley internship?

