Cognitive Limits and Education

[Demon of Undoing]

This actually dovetails rather nicely with the "Education" thread . My daughter is nine, and absorbed the first half dozen geometry lessons in a two day stretch, and assimilated them fully. I didn't do that until tenth grade, and then much more haphazardly, and then with a dozen times more investment in terms of hours. She's bright and all , but she's not some sort of Einstein. It's simply the teaching methodology and tools.

There is no reason it should take 12 years to get someone to current US high school graduate-levels of education. Six, tops.

[Tinker]

Demon, I agree. That's why I want to build a repository of instructional stuff. I might make a subforum for it when I get around to it. So much time in public school is wasted.

[anderson]

[Tinker]

[anderson]

Yes, but what I'm pointing out is that this doesn't mean you can necessarily compress in a straightforward way the time needed to deliver the elementary-secondary school curriculum. There's a certain physiological limit in terms how early some sorts of concepts and materials, particularly abstract concepts, can be meaningfully learned by the vast majority of people. The "genetic epistemology" of folks like Jean Piaget. At too young an age, the mind is just not ready for certain levels of abstraction. So the curriculum to some extent has to slow down and wait for the brains to ripen, while maintaining the prior learning and keeping it from decaying from disuse in the meantime.

[Tinker]

This is split from the Instructional Reference section as its a discussion and not actually reference. But a good discussion.

[Tinker]

[anderson]

Well, there's going to be a complicated sort of Gantt chart for the project of "preliminary education of the young person." (A person acquires a certain set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that prepare for post-secondary education, whether university or vocational training, as well as for life in general. When the physiological/neurological limits are worked in, and the pre-requisite inter-relationships of knowledge/skills(mental and psychomotor)/attitudes that influence sequencing of curriculum content across different subject domains, I'm not sure how much the project time line can be reasonably compressed for most people.

But I do agree that there is a lot of surplus time in there.
So, while it might not be reasonable to expect to get the whole task done before the age 17/18 it finishes at typically now, I think it is fair to say that there is not enough solid learning material there to justify the 180 days a year X 7 hours a day of instruction each day X 13 years of instruction received by each child.

Would probably be more productive to have the students go to class maybe 3 hours a day and then spend the rest consolidating with some sort of realistic practical or creative activity that furthers the child's ability to be a useful healthy member of the world. Unfortunately a lot of the scheduling is worked around the constraints of the normal workday as it applies to parents and educators. I.e. Teachers want a normal workday and parents need/want their kids to be usefully supervised for most of the 9-5.

[Tinker]

I mostly agree with you. I think there should be a large amount of self-directed learning time going on, in a supervised environment.

[anderson]

The question is how to administer this. How to support learners' self-directed learning. How to help them plan their learning activties, locate and use relevant learning materials, and how to self-monitor progress. The so-called "meta-cognitive" - the learning how to manage one's learning - is an essential skillset in itself beyond the curriculum content.(The Learning Management Systems used to track and administer development of knowledge, skill, and attitude competencies as part of human resources development in large organizations may be one answer in terms of supporting self-monitoring and planning/sequencing learning actvities). And what balance of formalized classroom instruction vs self-directed time to have.

[Tinker]

[anderson]

Any innovative pilot type schools experimenting with any such arrangements in your area? I know Manhattan is famed for some unorthodox experimental schools.

[Tinker]

[Azrael]

[anderson]

[Azrael]

Tinker -- I'd also be happy to discuss ideas with you via email, etc.

[Tinker]