How is This Possible?

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I knew a lady who thought that the word animal meant mammal.

!!!

My first day of grade school EVER in my life, my grade one teacher asked the Grade Wunners to list some animals, so he could write the words on the board. This being farm country everybody said cow and horse and such.

I said, "A seagull is an animal."

He smiled gently and said, encouragingly, "No, L'il Clutch, a seagull is a bird."

I did not stomp or pout or flail, but I did set myself a bit squarer. "A seagull," I said, "is an animal."

"Nnn-o," he said, still smiling, in a close-but-not-quite tone. "A seagull is a bird."

I said no more.

My second day of grade school EVER commenced with my approaching the teacher's desk as class started, with Childcraft Encyclopedia Volume 5 - About Animals. Chapter 1, page 1, featured a large photo of a seagull, with the caption, "A seagull is an animal," which I displayed.

"A seagull," I said, "is an animal."

My teacher beamed, and thanked me, corrected himself, and treated me with the most empowering sort of respect for the rest of the year.

I think most of the wonderful and horrible experiences I eventually had with teachers can more or less be read directly off that presaging experience.

[LadyShea]

Repeat story. A friend of mine called one day and said "Turn on the TV to channel XX". It was the Hitler Channel showing Hitler.
Me "Okay Yeah?"
Her "What is that?"
Me "What is what?
Her "That they are showing on TV"
Me "...um, the Holocaust?"
She had graduated high school and had a bachelor's degree in some shit or another, and didn't know what the Holocaust was.

Another friend, just recently, called and asked me if owls were birds. I responded that yes, owls are birds...DERRR! She then told me that she lost some game because her opponents all told her that owls were not birds so she couldn't answer owl or something. So I asked "If they aren't birds, what are they seeing as how they have feathers and wings and can fly?" I was more astounded that someone I knew questioned her own belief in the birdhood of owls then I was that there are stupid people out there.

The point being Mind the Gap! But how am I to know where they are when people are walking around like my friends?

[naturalist.atheist]

I am sure it is common to encounter an instructor that could have been better. And that is part of the education.

[LadyShea]

Another story that may be a repeat. My 1st or 2nd grade teacher was talking about Arizona for some reason and kept saying tuck-sen, and got really mad when I corrected her pronunciation and was all "It's spelled tuck-sen so must be pronounced that way". For you furrners Tucson is pronounced too-sawn. Since we lived in SoCal and right next door to AZ I am unsure how she didn't know that.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Okay, well that goes back to my statement that "learning is an internal and personal experience no matter whether you are doing it in a traditional setting or on your own". You can be taught something all day, but that doesn't mean you will learn it.

As you pointed out, she had to have read or seen a definition of mammal just in passing (like on TV or in a dictionary or something), and she was almost certainly actively taught it in the school system. For some reason she didn't learn it. So what is that an example of, exactly?

It's an example of how a fundamental gap in your education can affect your understanding of more advanced topics without your even realizing it.

I like that example because it is so glaring and obvious and everyone can immediately identify the mistake and the consequences of that mistake. It's easy to see how she somehow glossed over information that didn't make sense to her because it's kind of a really basic, grade school fact. Even assuming she was taught the mistake in school at some point, certainly she later encountered other things in school that didn't jibe with it. It is a super glaring knowledge gap. Everyone has them, but the point isn't that if you go to public school, that won't happen. It's that a basic liberal arts education is the foundation to how you understand the world, and that you really need some guidance in order to know what you need to know, and you need someone checking up on you at least every now and again to make sure you don't have some fundamental misunderstanding.

So yeah, that sounds extra dumb because it's something 'everyone' knows, and it's one where everyone can pretty much identify the fundamental error. But the same or similar phenomena come in with more advanced subjects all the time too, and they can often be just as bad if not quite as easy to identify.

Because it is so easy to sort of skip ahead and learn just the things you have a particular interest in, but if you don't have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, even technically accurate information might be skewed in your mind in ways you're not aware of.

I've been trying to come up with more examples of those gaps, but like I said, I don't even know what the remaining ones are, and the ones I did discover were often so long ago that I don't remember specifics well. I did uncover a lot of them in college, though, and I have no idea how many of those I would have discovered on my own if I'd just been learning things on my own and skipping ahead to the parts I cared about as I'd been doing, and didn't have some sort of directed, linear coursework that clearly referenced foundational concepts.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Another story that may be a repeat. My 1st or 2nd grade teacher was talking about Arizona for some reason and kept saying tuck-sen, and got really mad when I corrected her pronunciation and was all "It's spelled tuck-sen so must be pronounced that way". For you furrners Tucson is pronounced too-sawn. Since we lived in SoCal and right next door to AZ I am unsure how she didn't know that.

isn't that near poehoenix?

[LadyShea]

I still think you're weaseling, though pea.

It's that a basic liberal arts education is the foundation to how you understand the world, and that you really need some guidance in order to know what you need to know, and you need someone checking up on you at least every now and again to make sure you don't have some fundamental misunderstanding.

What are the guidelines and who set(s) them? What makes someone qualified to check up on another person, when they both have gaps, just different ones?

I am not disagreeing with you, really, but I don't know where you think this guidance should come from.

[lisarea]

What do you mean, like what's the core curriculum? How would I know? There are lots of different core curriculums that are used at different levels, and beyond really broad categories, I don't know what they consist of or even what's normal.

My point isn't about the overall subjects so much as it is about the fact that there are a lot of problems with learning on your own without some guidance from someone who knows the subject and can assess your progress to make sure that you understand the material and aren't missing things.

[lisarea]

Yes hello.

[LadyShea]

My point isn't about the overall subjects so much as it is about the fact that there are a lot of problems with learning on your own without some guidance from someone who knows the subject and can assess your progress to make sure that you understand the material and aren't missing things.

I thought you were talking about the general "these are the subjects/specific topics everyone should know", and not about learning any individual subject with support.

[lisarea]

Well, yes, there's that too. I just have a hard time believing you're still asking me that after I've said like fifty times that I do not know and that I'm the last person who would.

[Ensign Steve]

But then the question is, who? The state? Committees? PTAs? Because, yuck on all that.

So then the other question is, which is worse? A self-guided education by a curious and critical learner, or a directed one crammed full of absolute mis-information and bullshit indoctrination? As the great prophet Gertrude Stein said, "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I was more astounded that someone I knew questioned her own belief in the birdhood of owls then I was that there are stupid people out there.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

But then the question is, who? The state? Committees? PTAs? Because, yuck on all that.

Of course. I'm not defending the implementation of educational systems, particularly not those in the US, but the concept of directed education as a rule.

You can't effectively 'learn math|science|history|literature,' especially as a kid, without some expert guidance to help you understand and put that information into context.

So then the other question is, which is worse? A self-guided education by a curious and critical learner, or a directed one crammed full of absolute mis-information and bullshit indoctrination? As the great prophet Gertrude Stein said, "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."

Yes, exactly. Everyone should go to the worst school possible, ideally year round, and learn everything they know from overworked, underpaid, and wholly incompetent teachers. No unauthorized or independent study permitted.

[livius drusus]

This is like that episode of Star Trek when Spock and Kirk had to fight to the death. I'll have you all know that I'm armed with a faux fatal injection should need arise.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Of course. I'm not defending the implementation of educational systems, particularly not those in the US, but the concept of directed education as a rule.

You can't effectively 'learn math|science|history|literature,' especially as a kid, without some expert guidance to help you understand and put that information into context.

Yes, exactly. Everyone should go to the worst school possible, ideally year round, and learn everything they know from overworked, underpaid, and wholly incompetent teachers. No unauthorized or independent study permitted.

Oh, yeah, no, yeah I know how this is like one of your favorite things to fight about, but we pretty much agree about most or all of this stuff. Especially since now that I have my own bachelor's degree, I can be like "oooh, doggie, people sure have a lot of gaps in their educations including me just a couple years ago!" unlike that burnout hippie LS who doesn't even know what she doesn't know. I just mean, the current system and its options sure do suck, don't they?

But srsly, if you were benevolent dictator of the world, who would you put in charge of developing a core curriculum? Teachers, scientists, parents, kids? Committees thereof? Since I know you don't want to do it, I wonder who you personally think would be up for the job.

[livius drusus]

Boo! More h8!

[Clutch Munny]

Remarkable learning can be done by autodidacts, but they too are, without question, learning from people in some way or other. And the very existence of books to be read and lectures to be watched and so forth is very largely an artifact of a structured education system and communities of experts. Why those books, on those topics? Why that lecture, by that person? Well, because that's what some researcher researched, and what some prof or teacher taught, given the general assessment of researchers, students, funding agencies and publishers to the effect that that was worth doing.

So there is very little room, I think, for the idea of self-directed learning that somehow escapes or avoids constraint by the standards of relevance that systems of experts adopt in aggregate (which are, after all, incredibly broad and tolerate many internal tensions). But there is lots of room for self-directed learning that fails, through a haphazard or a la carte approach, to note some important concepts, facts and intellectual connections between topics and ideas -- that is, concepts, facts and connections that the politburo committee for indoc many, many other interested learners and experts over the years have found to be fruitful, illuminating, and informative of related problems and discussions.

Can an autodidact avoid having knowledge gaps that amount to some kind of (let's say) socio-epistemic dysfunction? Yes. Can a directed learner have such gaps? Yes. Which is the better bet for avoiding them, all things considered? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

[lisarea]

I have no idea who specifically should be in charge, or if anyone would even really need to be. There are basic core curriculum committees and stuff like that for various grade levels and areas, and there's probably at least some germ of a basic curriculum in some sort of average of those or something to give some idea of what basic minimum levels are at different grades.

Obviously, I don't have a ready solution and am not qualified to devise one. I spent like all day yesterday trying to think of different ways to explain that I do not know because I didn't go to regular school much at all and have all kinds of shit that I didn't know, and also things I don't know I don't know.

Broadly, though, you begin with the top level of the taxonomy of human knowledge:

Animals, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Humans, Vampires, Types of batteries, The humorous names from the begats part of Genesis, Punk rock history and genres, Dogs, Types of filesystem, Scary stories about surgery, The Bhagivad Gita, The Elvis Costello songbook, Mid century industrial design, Multiple murder in practice and theory, and Bees in popular culture.

[livius drusus]

Lisassori schools need to happen.

[Ensign Steve]

That is exactly why she needs to be in charge.

Why do you shirk, pea? Why do you hate America?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Well, yes, there's that too. I just have a hard time believing you're still asking me that after I've said like fifty times that I do not know and that I'm the last person who would.

I know, and I am not trying to frustrate you. Truly. But I have a hard time believing that you still make a case for directed, linear education that includes a canon of specific shit, but you don't know what that looks like. I can't agree with you under these conditions!!

[LadyShea]

Can an autodidact avoid having knowledge gaps that amount to some kind of (let's say) socio-epistemic dysfunction? Yes. Can a directed learner have such gaps? Yes. Which is the better bet for avoiding them, all things considered? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

As a gap-filled audodidact that doesn't know what I don't know, I know that I don't know what socio-epistemic dysfunction is or how to tell if I have it.

[Clutch Munny]

Why does directed education have to be linear (or, maybe, what would it mean for directed education to be nonlinear)? And why does directed linear education mean a canon of specific shit? I think you could definitely have directed education (in that it was guided) that was linear (inasmuch as one thing tended to come after another), in which the things that had come before, plus the learner's burgeoning and changing interests, made a difference to which things that came after, but didn't have to conform to some prearranged canon.

In fact, I look around me at university, and that is practically all I see. With only a few program-specific exceptions, I think the modern Western university curriculum experience is largely CYOA.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What are the guidelines and who set(s) them? What makes someone qualified to check up on another person, when they both have gaps, just different ones?

I would suggest that people who have recognised expertise and experience in an area and who are involved in teaching probably have a pretty good idea of what they consider a good grounding in the basics, and what the common gaps and misconceptions are. You'd want several such people to be involved to cover as best you can for these people's own gaps and biases. It won't be perfect, but a consensus of experts is going to come up with a more comprehensive grounding than someone following their own nose.

Speaking as a self-directed learner who ended up getting quite a lot out of a degree programme.