Learning without pressure of grades.

[Brian37]

I've always accepted science even though I sucked at it in high school and college. Best grades I got were Cs. Last night in less than two hours I figured out the basics of something that totally intimidated me in school.

The periodic table of the elements. Yep, all those letters and symbols and numbers. I knew what protons neutrons and electrons were, but never put it all together until last night. So much fucking easier than I thought.

This started yesterday when I had the boob tube on and got tired of all the bad news in the world and flipped over to mind rot tv, decided to watch some Neil Degrees Tyson videos. Can't watch stuff like that without hearing about atoms. So after that I said "fuck it, I am going to look up that periodic table of the elements and figure that shit out". I did have some help with my friend Bob Spence. I am blown away because what I could not understand in years in a classroom I picked up on in under two hours.

I now know what atomic weight is, what isotopes are, and covalent bonds vs ionic bonds, and I can calculate the number of neutrons in an atom.

I have had a couple moments of crying being that I am 47 and having longed so much to understand this. No I am not going to become a chemist, but damn, I am so glad I understand it now.

[Napoléon]

Yeah, to be honest in school so many things were taught in such a boring way. History especially, but now that I've left I have the urge to research and learn about these things in my own time. Maybe going off on a bit of a tangent, but I find that schools nowadays just push people into what they appear to be good at, or force kids into thinking about what they should be doing for the rest of their life when in reality they aren't prepared to make those decisions. There's too much pressure on kids to 'do well' rather than 'to learn'. I'm doing a degree in IT now but to be honest, it's just made me realise I don't want to do IT for the rest of my life. I'm only doing this because I seemed to fall into it at school, because nothing else was really interesting at the time. I find history and science far more interesting now, but in school they were taught in such a drab, soulless way. I think for the most part a lot of science that was taught in my school was pretty fucking pointless. Most of the time we just spent burning things with a bunsen burner whilst supposedly doing some pointless chemistry experiment nobody understood the need for. I mean, they never taught us hardly anything to do with physics, and pretty much everything else was taught in such a way that you couldn't really grasp why it was important in the real world. In the end, I fell into the subject that seemed to have the most relevancy, but not necessarily the one that is the most interesting. I feel like my school and the general education system has let me down in a way because there isn't enough emphasis on getting you to enjoy what you're learning. If they did that I think more people would be in careers that actually excite and motivate them. Right now I'm absolutely not...

/tangent

[Brian37]

Yeah, to be honest in school so many things were taught in such a boring way. History especially, but now that I've left I have the urge to research and learn about these things in my own time. Maybe going off on a bit of a tangent, but I find that schools nowadays just push people into what they appear to be good at, or force kids into thinking about what they should be doing for the rest of their life when in reality they aren't prepared to make those decisions. There's too much pressure on kids to 'do well' rather than 'to learn'. I'm doing a degree in IT now but to be honest, it's just made me realise I don't want to do IT for the rest of my life. I'm only doing this because I seemed to fall into it at school, because nothing else was really interesting at the time. I find history and science far more interesting now, but in school they were taught in such a drab, soulless way. I think for the most part a lot of science that was taught in my school was pretty fucking pointless. Most of the time we just spent burning things with a bunsen burner whilst supposedly doing some pointless chemistry experiment nobody understood the need for. I mean, they never taught us hardly anything to do with physics, and pretty much everything else was taught in such a way that you couldn't really grasp why it was important in the real world. In the end, I fell into the subject that seemed to have the most relevancy, but not necessarily the one that is the most interesting. I feel like my school and the general education system has let me down in a way because there isn't enough emphasis on getting you to enjoy what you're learning. If they did that I think more people would be in careers that actually excite and motivate them. Right now I'm absolutely not...

/tangent

It wasn't for me about "boring" . It was more about having the entire sink thrown at you at once image wise. I do not do well in situations where I am thrown in the deep end all at once. I do better with baby steps taking one part at a time.

[Napoléon]

It wasn't for me about "boring" . It was more about having the entire sink thrown at you at once image wise. I do not do well in situations where I am thrown in the deep end all at once. I do better with baby steps taking one part at a time.

Yeah that too I guess. I do think a lot of topics are rushed over as well simply because schools have a set curriculum they need to cover. Often you'll spend 2 weeks on one topic but then something equally as important only gets a small mention. And kids (people) in general learn at different paces. One of the things that always bugged me with maths, and why I'd always hate it was because the teacher would expect you to pick up something like simultaneous equations within 2 lessons. Most of the class probably would but I'd still be sitting there like "wtf is this shit". You're then chastised by said teacher when you don't know what you're doing. In the end you just disengage with what's going on, at least that's what it was like for me.

[Brian37]

It wasn't for me about "boring" . It was more about having the entire sink thrown at you at once image wise. I do not do well in situations where I am thrown in the deep end all at once. I do better with baby steps taking one part at a time.

Yeah that too I guess. I do think a lot of topics are rushed over as well simply because schools have a set curriculum they need to cover. Often you'll spend 2 weeks on one topic but then something equally as important only gets a small mention. And kids (people) in general learn at different paces. One of the things that always bugged me with maths, and why I'd always hate it was because the teacher would expect you to pick up something like simultaneous equations within 2 lessons. Most of the class probably would but I'd still be sitting there like "wtf is this shit". You're then chastised by said teacher when you don't know what you're doing. In the end you just disengage with what's going on, at least that's what it was like for me.

Yea, and society does not understand that you cannot slap the same teaching tactics on individuals.

Again, I can now look at that chart without even telling you the name of each element and still be able to calculate the number of neutrons in each.

It is so fucking simple. All atoms have 3 main parts, protons, electrons and neutrons. The only difference between the elements are the amount of those three parts. Once you understand that the math is fucking simple.

Where I got stuck was on all the fancy names and you could easily call them Frank or Barney or whatever, and all you are doing is giving a name to the different amounts of those three particles.

[davidMC1982]

Most teachers don't teach, they regurgitate facts and processes. In the same way, most pupils don't learn, they remember facts and processes.

Really, pupils should be "taught" to be inquisitive, to discover, to question, to experiment, but you can't produce a standardized test for that so.....

This essay on the state of mathematics teaching is worth reading if you have the time:

https://www.maa.org/external_archive/dev...Lament.pdf

[Thumpalumpacus]

I've built and sold/given away/had destroyed by fire two personal libraries stocked with topics I find interesting, mainly science and history. Some of what I learnt in college was interesting, useful, and absorbing, but most wasn't -- I was a double major AA, Lib Arts and Fire Science.