Saying his ideas are well-supported by history is a bit generous considering his historical arguments always seem to boil down to a barrage of anecdotal evidence of dubious factual value. To be fair, I've only read the Underground History and not Dumbing us Down, but here's a quote from wikipedia:
"The publicity generated by the initial success and compounded by the publishing disagreements propelled the pamphlet to incredible sales and circulation. Following Paine's own estimate of the pamphlet's sales, some historians claim that Common Sense sold almost 100,000 copies in 1776,[13] and according to Paine, 120,000 copies were sold in the first three months. One biographer estimates that 500,000 copies sold in the first year (in both America and Europe, predominantly France and Britain), and another writes that Paine's pamphlet went through 25 published editions in the first year alone.[7][14] However, some historians dispute these figures as implausible because of the literate population at the time and estimated the far upper limit as 75,000 copies."
Now, this gets into a bit of a weird circular argument where the book didn't sell as many copies because the people weren't literate and therefore the people weren't literate because the book didn't sell so many copies. Still, claiming that the book sold 600,000 copies seems disingenuous unless Gatto expanded upon it. I don't remember him citing his sources either in his book, but it's not like I've looked at the sources either, so whatever.
So as someone who doesn't have a good grasp on copyright law, I'm not sure how 1984 is on this list. All the other books here appear to be over a hundred years old, making them public domain (I think), but 1984 was published in 1949. Pretty cool site, anyway.
George Orwell died in 1950, so it looks as though that book is already out of copyright in Australia and Canada, for example, but will remain in copyright till 2044 in the USA, while it comes out of copyright at the end of 2020 in the European Union. (But please don't rely on my interpretation of a Wikipedia page if it's important to you!)
Students attend school for 13 years. Let's say they miss out on 5/8 of a year because of this (I think the number is closer to 1/3, but it's not a big difference). So, instead of getting 100% of a "dismally low" education, they're only getting 95.2%. That hardly seems like a devastating loss to me, either from a knowledge or economic perspective.
I don't know if the US is the same as other countries.. but in the UK your birthdate defines how much schooling you get.
I'm a summer child so my first year of school consisted of a two week introduction and then the summer holiday.
My best friend at school and all of the higher performing kids (except me) were born in the first half of the year so had an extra 6 months of schooling.
Not in the early 1980s at least. You're put in a school year based on birthday, the school year starting in September. You then started at school on your 5th birthday.
It may be different nowadays; it would make way more sense to have everyone start in September. I live in The Netherlands and here kids start as soon as they turn 4. They then spend two-three years in the young kids class depending on maturity.
I feel like this page really nails down the key feature that makes great STEM notes: lots and lots of examples. And they're fully worked out too, showing all steps from formula to result.
So much technical documentation and tutorials and what-have-you seems to want to stay on an entirely conceptual level, when just throwing in a single example can make things so much easier to digest.
Thanks, In the physics class I teach we go through the examples from the notes. Then, we follow up with real world labs and engineering projects to make it even more concrete. I might make my next project documenting the demos and labs that go with each unit.
I wonder if you could connect various chapters in the notes with hands on experiments people could try based on data collected from https://phyphox.org/
I installed this app and I was surprised by all the sensors and data it can collect, but I didn't have a particular experiment in mind. It would be awesome to connect the examples and math model with real-world experiments.
> If you don't find yourself studying 6 hours a day, you're not getting an elite education.
Seems like an unhealthy attitude to me. I really dislike the perspective that education is at its best when the learning is most difficult. The best teachers are the ones that make things as clear and digestible as possible. Bad teachers are the ones that want to see you sweat.
It isn't about wanting to torture students. I never learned so much so fast before or since - and there was a lot to learn. I prefer teachers that expect a lot from their students.
It's not fundamentally different from athletics. If you want to be a good athlete, you're going to have to work your tail off. If you want to be an incredible engineer like Kelly Johnson, that ain't going to happen if you party through school. Nor would you have any chance of working with an engineer like him.
So ask yourself - do you want to design rocket engines? or cup holders?
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BTW, as for health, I came out of Caltech a far more confident person than when I entered. I knew what I could do, and was happy about it.
It's wrong to treat the brain like any other muscle. It's more comparable to a neural network (pardon the tautology). You feed in data (knowledge) in hope that some of it sticks and forms new connections that you can use to better tackle new and existing problems. There's no rule of the universe that states that the process of feeding data into the brain has to be challenging.
Now, I'm not arguing that hard work has no merit. Clearly, working hard can increase your rate of knowledge-consumption and get you further faster. For some people, you included it seems, that works out great. For others, the ever-present "110% or bust!" attitude can have serious mental consequences. Accepting that education can happen without rigor won't harm those that intend to push themselves anyway, but it sure would benefit the constantly stressed-out students.
> Assuming there are at least some things that require a minimum effort that is uncomfortable before allowing you to see their benefits, you will discover more guided by qualified people and well-designed curricula than on your own.
Perhaps, but sitting in the lecture hall isn't the only way you can get thorough instruction from professionals. Books exist, and they don't suffer from the same monetary, timing, and pacing issues that classrooms do.
The primary historical disadvantage of books- that they weren't interactive and you therefore couldn't get help if stuck- is no longer an issue with the internet. It's possible that the internet is too disorganized and low-quality to be one's primary teacher, but its amazing supplementary value makes other media tenable.
Those are my anecdotal opinions, anyway. But I'm curious, what do you think physical teachers have to offer that Books/Online Courses/Podcasts/Whatever + The Internet don't?
I think that structure, accountability, and community are the big draws towards school. For young people I think that these are extremely important- when I was in school- taking 6 classes meant I spent a roughly 40 hour work week on school stuff. I had a really hard time doing half of those hours when I wasnt in school.
Obviously that's more of a me issue than an issue inherent to self-learning, but many of us have me issues.
If you're not the type of person who would benefit from structure and community- the value proposition clearly doesn't make sense. Even if you would benefit from those things- the value proposition isnt clear at all- its tremendously expensive.
I guess part of "community" is your peer group, but also access to an authority to whom you can address questions (that won't leave you hanging, most of the time).
> Why do the teens of today think this? Because simply, they don’t care. All they want is a computer that works, and that runs their text messaging, anti-privacy and social media apps.
Wanting technology to just work without having to deal with esoteric nonsense? How childish!
That “esoteric nonsense” is how all this stuff actually works, and if you don’t have a grasp on the basics, it’s hard to tell when you’re being taken advantage of. (And these days, it feels like everyone’s looking to take advantage of unsuspecting users.)
When I have a problem with my car, I take it to a dealer or a certified repairshop. I effectively know jack-all about the workings of that machine. I can be easily conned into paying for repairs that don't need doing. Do you wish to claim that no such context exists for you?
It's easy to gloss over the fact that for >99% of users the machine "just needs to work", and I don't think that's unreasonable. There will be a subset of kids that /do/ take an interest in this stuff, and will pick it up as the next generation of "IT magicians".
Funnily enough, The Case Against Education made me more comfortable with my place in the education system, because it gave me a better idea of what I'm actually accomplishing as a student. Definitely cleared up a fair bit of angst and resentment for me. I wish I had read it in high school, but better late than never.
Not only are the results good, but the music is generated decently rapidly. The implications are clear: whoever wants to make a quick fortune on YouTube should start converting and uploading truckloads of songs as fast as possible. The demand is there. I could easily see that bringing in millions of views.
Trying to figure out how a single compressed/encrypted buffer works given only it and its resulting image is certainly an unwinnable task, but increase the sample size to a few million or billion and I don't see why the algorithm couldn't eventually be cracked.
"The publicity generated by the initial success and compounded by the publishing disagreements propelled the pamphlet to incredible sales and circulation. Following Paine's own estimate of the pamphlet's sales, some historians claim that Common Sense sold almost 100,000 copies in 1776,[13] and according to Paine, 120,000 copies were sold in the first three months. One biographer estimates that 500,000 copies sold in the first year (in both America and Europe, predominantly France and Britain), and another writes that Paine's pamphlet went through 25 published editions in the first year alone.[7][14] However, some historians dispute these figures as implausible because of the literate population at the time and estimated the far upper limit as 75,000 copies."
Now, this gets into a bit of a weird circular argument where the book didn't sell as many copies because the people weren't literate and therefore the people weren't literate because the book didn't sell so many copies. Still, claiming that the book sold 600,000 copies seems disingenuous unless Gatto expanded upon it. I don't remember him citing his sources either in his book, but it's not like I've looked at the sources either, so whatever.