mao-wave

  • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    a large portion of my education was “shut up and do what you’re bloody well told”

    to such an extent that part of me does despite my knowing better resent people who won’t

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        if when you learned geometry for example you also learned about Pythagoras and the ancient Greeks

        that would slow it down quite a bit though. Are you sure you aren’t just more interested in history and philosophy than maths. Because I did get taught historical context along with my maths and science lessons and found it hopelessly boring.

        Maths would do better to be taught as the creative subject it is. I had a really fun maths teacher who taught us how once you understand how an equation works you can apply it to solve a variety of problems in interesting ways.

        I think the way schools teach obedience is less in the subjects themselves but the constructed social atmosphere. The calling people sir, the being grouped into classes and forced to stand in lines, we had one PE teacher that would make us do punishments from WW1 for backtalking (there’s some historical context for you!) the fact it was a collective punishment also didn’t help

        • Maths would do better to be taught as the creative subject it is. I had a really fun maths teacher who taught us how once you understand how an equation works you can apply it to solve a variety of problems in interesting ways.

          Would you say that you’d extrapolate that sort of thinking to lots of other things in life?

          • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I agree that letting kids chose what to study is a good thing but I think that’s more for older kids for a number of reasons.

            1 - they need some experience with the subject to know if they like it and it would be a shame if they gave up on maths or history entirely because of a bad impression at the very beginning stage when if they got to know the subject better they might love it

            2 - young children if left to their own devices probably won’t do the early childhood work they need to. Children mature as they age and I would argue it’s abusive to give them responsibility for their decisions before they are old enough to make them properly

            3 - society and the children themselves do need them to have a baseline level of knowledge in various subjects.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Sure, but different students approach maths in different ways. Some prefer applied math with clear, preferably cool, use cases. You want to teach those the rocket equation and orbital mechanics first.

          Other’s want everyday or civil applications. Or historical context of how the problems were developed.

          Still others want pure math and proofs and the really abstract stuff and how it fits into modern bleeding edge math.

          And still others are reading Russell and Whitehead at age 13 and should have math taught from a philosophy perspective.

          • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            yeah but there are limited resources per student (although we grossly underprioritise education children are our future)

            I’m not an expert on this stuff though I’m just basing my thinking on my own school experience