

The 21st century skill students really lack - tokenadult
http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2013/05/the-21st-century-skill-students-really-lack.html

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ncasenmare
Having access to digital distractions is just half of why students get bored.
The other problem is that the material taught in K-12 schools feels
irrelevant, because it is.

As an example, OP brings up art analysis. Done properly, it is a rewarding
endeavour. But the kind of art analysis you find being taught by dispassionate
high school teachers are of the "The Curtains Were Fucking Blue" variety. And
so, students come away thinking that's what all art analysis is: irrelevant.

Students need real-world, meaningful context for what they're learning.

Not contrived word problems or symbolism-searching.

~~~
SiVal
_Students need real-world, meaningful context for what they're learning. Not
contrived word problems...._

This unfortunate meme is spreading like foot fungus in our schools, because
there is some truth to it: you DO need SOME experience applying your skills in
real-world contexts for your brain to decide they are worth keeping.

Unfortunately, this is misunderstood to mean that you don't learn things that
aren't learned in realistic contexts. This is false and reflects a
misunderstanding of the nature and value of math.

Math is the study of abstractions. When you learn that adding two apples to
three apples gives you five apples and adding two bunnies to three bunnies
gives you five bunnies, you soon discover that you can think of all such
problems abstractly: adding a number to a number. When you then study how to
add pure numbers, you are gaining _experience_ with an infinite number of
concrete, real-world problems simultaneously.

The point is not to give you experience with specific, realistic problems that
you might encounter later, but to give you enough experience with different,
concrete instances of an abstract concept that you begin to see the underlying
similarity of all such problems. You don't need the instances to be
"realistic", you need them to be recognizable enough that they lead you to an
understanding of the abstraction. If problems are too realistic, people are
tempted to solve them on the basis of domain experience and possibly miss the
abstraction they represent.

You also need enough practice working directly with the abstraction (e.g.,
adding numbers that don't represent anything specific: pure numbers) that the
result is fluency in recognizing a problem at an abstract level and easily
solving it with your skills in manipulating the abstractions.

I think applying these abstract skills to some realistic problems is a great
thing to do. But the fashionable notion among "progressive educators" that the
study of "contrived problems" and "meaningless symbol manipulation" is to be
avoided is a sad example of the blind leading the blind, robbing students of
the true power of math: the ability to think in mathematical abstractions
instead of being limited to the real-world contexts they've directly
experienced.

~~~
rickhanlonii
Willingham would be proud, as this is a recurring theme and a whole chapter in
his book "Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers
Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom." He
also made this case on this on his blog when responding to Andrew Hacker's
ridiculous suggestion to change math so that you don't actually learn math:

"The problem is that if you try to meet this challenge by teaching the
specific skills that people need, you had better be confident that you're
going to cover all those skills. Because if you teach students the
significance of the Consumer Price Index they are not going to know how to
teach themselves the significance of projected inflation rates on their
investment in CDs. Their practical knowledge will be specific to what you
teach them, and won't transfer.

The best bet for knowledge that can apply to new situations is an abstract
understanding--seeing that apparently different problems have a similar
underlying structure. And the best bet for students to gain this abstract
understanding is to teach it explicitly. (For a discussion of this point as it
applies to math education in particular, see Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996).

But the explicit teaching of abstractions is not enough. You also need
practice in putting the abstractions into concrete situations."

Neither of us, though, can make the point as well as he does. In the book he
explains what transfer is, as well as surface knowledge, deep knowledge, etc,
and how an understanding of these concepts ca inform a philosophy of education
and shape education practices.

Everyone, read his book! If the title worries you that it's too focused on
educators, then ignore the title. The content is applicable to anyone
interested in learning at all, especially if you want to improve the way you
learn. Obviously, I strongly recommend that book, but alternatively, he covers
a lot of what's in the book in his articles[2].

</willingham_fan_boy>

[1] [http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/07/yes-
algebra-i...](http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/07/yes-algebra-is-
necessary.html)

[2] <http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html>

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j-m-o
I suppose I fall into the category of a 21st century student, although I
finished my CS degree in the early 'noughts.

I think the thesis of the article is generally accurate, that students are
capable, but less inclined, to pay attention to things not deemed worthy of
the effort. However, I think the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff
of stimulus is also an important lesson.

I look back to most of my courses fondly, but there were definitely periods
where the professor was rehashing previously covered material, or pushing
their own research agendas well beyond the course curriculum. As a student
with limited hours (and in my case limited again with several part-time jobs),
does it make sense to pay perfect attention to the lectures at hand, or maybe
put the finishing touches on that assignment for another class?

That said, coming back to the author's example of art history, that was one of
the most rewarding classes I took in university. Albeit a 3-hour examination
of one work seems excessive, there's a lot to gain from the appreciation of
fine works outside of algorithms and data structures.

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chipsy
The replacement is already being piloted in schools: mindfulness meditation.
It encourages the same kinds of depth and discovery, in a more general-purpose
fashion.

After all, if you aren't patient enough to do nothing at all, how are you
going to be patient enough to study challenging material?

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nsxwolf
I don't see the ear/squirrel/shoulder thing mentioned in the article. I looked
really hard.

~~~
pistacchioso
you can spot the resemblance only after two hours of staring at the painting.

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jwatte
The other half of patience: grit. Also lacking.

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gdsimoes
School sucks and students are aware of it.

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NoodleIncident
I want to comment, but I feel obliged to study this article for two more hours
before I do so.

~~~
tokenadult
_I want to comment, but I feel obliged to study this article for two more
hours before I do so._

Isn't the time limit for editing a Hacker News comment approximately two hours
long? Go for it.

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cinquemb
Seeing how the educational system that we have now was nonexistent 100 years
ago that routinely offers information one can find online now, I feel like the
author is referring to something that was more valuable and more applicable to
a point in history than the current state of affairs (at least in the way our
society values/rewards formal education with assumed employability and/or a
necessary prerequisite for any further study for many things) .

Though on some level I can appreciate the need for patience when undergoing a
process with a well defined end-point worth the wait that is understood by the
person doing the waiting, I am failing to see how the current state of affairs
in the education system deliver this to the students as they apparently have
in the past (which I doubt seeing they ways things are now).

I would even doubt career academics would attribute their success to their
patience (or being told that they should be patient) before their own
curiosity.

~~~
coldtea
> _Seeing how the educational system that we have now was nonexistent 100
> years ago_

I'm not sure what you mean with "nonexisting". Attended by fewer people? If
so, yes.

Still, a century ago (and quite a lot more for that matter), there were
excellent universities and great curriculums, of the kind that put a lot of
modern university curriculums to shame. Is fields such as literature, history,
sociology and such there is no comparison even, compared to the watered down
modern equivalents. But also in hard sciences. Our knowledge might has
progresses, but university courses have more often than not declined, to adapt
to "market needs" (something with is also widely admitted by professors).

> _that routinely offers information one can find online now_

It's not about information, it's about knowing how to evaluate information.

Information without the skills to evaluate it is just white noise.

To put it in another way, a 20 year old with full access to the Internet, is
not (as a sum of his and the internets information) smarter and wont be more
productive than Einstein or Bertrand Russell.

> _I feel like the author is referring to something that was more valuable and
> more applicable to a point in history than the current state of affairs_

Nope. The availability of huge amounts of information online even makes it
much more important a skill -- for if you can show the necessary patience,
then you have much more information at your disposal to evaluate and take
advantage off.

Just the information without the patience = the typical internet user's
attention span and non-productivity.

> _I would even doubt career academics would attribute their success to their
> patience (or being told that they should be patient) before their own
> curiosity._

Most of them (of what I've read in biographies and interviews) attribute their
success to hard work and study, which sure sounds like "patience" to me.

Curiosity without patience = Reddit.

~~~
cinquemb
> _I'm not sure what you mean with "nonexisting". Attended by fewer people? If
> so, yes. Still, a century ago (and quite a lot more for that matter), there
> were excellent universities and great curriculums, of the kind that put a
> lot of modern university curriculums to shame._

I'm talking about K-12 and the notion of public schools as well not just
universities themselves.

> _To put it in another way, a 20 year old with full access to the Internet,
> is not (as a sum of his and the internets information) smarter and wont be
> more productive than Einstein or Bertrand Russell._

I was implying nothing of the sort. I see it as those who would never have the
type of access to the infrastructure associated with our educational system
(you know, K-12, free lunch, public transportation, student loans, and etc),
could learn how to evaluate information without the aid of a such an
institutionalized system (and even as the cost of the degree goes up, most
americans are going to essentially be priced out of even mediocre universities
if they don't want to live their productive lives paying student loans if they
can get a job not soon to be automated by computers/robots, of course, for the
chance [seeing as students today are lacking this ability even with the degree
according to this author] to learn how to evaluate information with patience).

The 20 year olds I sat in class with during MatSci seemed to equate evaluating
information with regurgitating what the professor regurgitated from his
lecture notes that he wrote up and posted online in the previous years, and
seemed so incompetent when unable to apply their "evaluation skills" when
trying to etch/dope wafers in lab (but able to deftly copypasta a lab report
together with their peers for that good ol' "A").

> _Most of them (of what I've read in biographies and interviews) attribute
> their success to hard work and study, which sure sounds like "patience" to
> me. Curiosity without patience = Reddit._

Notice how I wrote " _…would attribute their success to their patience (or
being told that they should be patient) before their own curiosity._ " and not
"Curiosity without patience" as I noted before that when I qualified the
circumstance where patience would be valuable in this context.

