RationalAsh comments on Two More Things to Unlearn from School - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 July 2007 05:45PM

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Comment author: Plinius 12 July 2007 06:49:19PM 7 points [-]

So there's an argument for going into the classroom (as a teacher) completely unprepared, stumble through the material, reason things out in fron of the students, go down hopeless calculations for a while, then say "scratch that", "let's see....hmmmmm", etc....Nothing should be clear, the students would have to make huge efforts just to find out what's on the hw. I know some people like this (not by design). I wonder if their students learn some important life-skills though.

Comment author: RationalAsh 30 June 2013 01:32:31PM 2 points [-]

I sort of unintentionally had this happen to me. When I was 13 I moved to a new school which was a little less competent than my previous school. In my previous school all the information was packaged and delivered to us to memorize. In this new school the teachers would just roughly go over the topic and it required a lot of independent effort on my part to understand the subject matter.

This led to this mini explosion of clarity in my head. While in my previous school I was bored of learning and depended almost exclusively on rote memorization, this new school forced me to think about why I know what I know. This transformed me into an incredible math/science nut. Just taking the information into your own hands and thinking about it turned me into someone who constantly raved about the beauty of mathematics.

Comment author: [deleted] 30 June 2013 03:40:22PM 3 points [-]

But you are probably one in a hundred, if not even rarer. I am sure that most students who have the misfortune of being taught by an ill-prepared/incompetent/overly spontaneous teacher would just perform poorly in their studies rather than turning out the way you have.