Schooling has been trying for ever to institutionalize and standardize learning without really understanding what learning is. In that absence, we've focused on learning proxies, which are tests. And tests resulted in a focus on mechanics. Meaning was and is an intangible so it got leached out. Everything school does starts at the wrong end of meaning > motiviation > mechanics > measurement.

It is possible to fix school. It needs understanding learning, and also being willing to revisit learning design at every level. How to bring meaning in?

Without meaning you could have all your fancy chromebooks and chatbots but you won't move the needle (as we are seeing)

We are actually trying to change schooling (but with a tiny experiment, knowing that scaling does not happen without changes and cultural context)

https://blog.comini.in/p/schooling-has-a-meaning-crisis-para...

Im definitely in this camp.

It seems like the biggest frustration from the teachers’ part with modern schooling is lack of engagement from the students. This is clearly telling us something.

Sure some students have not even had their basic needs met, which is a separate issue. But those that have and still don’t engage tells us that their brains have probably assigned the information they’re receiving as “having little or no value”, i.e. meaningless.

I bet if you were to lead a class of teenagers on the subject of relationships or friendship, or even how to host a successful party, suddenly you’d see a lot more engagement. Why? Because it’s actually relevant to their every day existence.

In highschool, at least, you have to somehow elevate the meaning of your subject to be more interesting than the movie theatre/concert/video game system they have in their pocket.

Kids will make eye contact with you and nod along as you teach, but they are wearing air pods and can't hear you over their spotify playlist.

Im not sure I can be more interesting than Taylor Swift, Call of Duty, MrBeast, and texting with friends all at the same time. You need the student to be a little bit receptive to even have the opportunity to convince them what you are teaching is relevant to them.

Just ban the phones from schools. Because with that you cannot compete. Instant gratification vs hard work?

I think math bas be slowly transforming more and more into word problems and scenarios. You might think oh yeah this engages the student by showing them reality, but I actually found it incredibly boring and useless, it served as a distraction from the actual numbers that I think are important to learn too.

Part of the goal there is not only "relatability" (demonstrating how this could be useful in reality) but "applicability" (demonstrating HOW to distill a math problem out of some potentially messy real world anecdote).

I have legit seen real world adults do things like say "Well, I got ten widgets because I know that's enough for two people. But there's gonna be four coming so.. uh.. 10+2=12, I'll bring 12 widgets"

Have you ever heard of John Taylor Gatto? If not, you may want to look into his books. They will help you realize that schooling and learning/education are mutually exclusive and even that schooling is counterproductive because its primary objectives are hostile to the objectives of education, real learning as a human.

The worst people in the world created schooling and the education system for their own narrow, selfish, greed and profit driven objectives. Is so deeply engrained, with the very “educators” themselves often not even realizing that through their having also done through the system, they are actually just enablers of an abusive and toxic, soul crushing system … which is precisely what it was designed for; because after all, “the purpose of a system is what it does”, and “ no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do”; both the words of a great steward of systems thinking, Stanford Beer.

Unschooling works for a fraction of kids, and at some stages of their life.

How big is that fraction? In my experience being around a bunch of home schoolers (and adjacent, and school system), some of whom were more in or out of unschooling, I think it's small enough that it should be a rarely considered option.

There are some kids where it will work _really_ well. I've interacted with a couple. There are a lot of kids where it really doesn't work, especially in a distraction rich environment.

Thanks, I have. And it resonated a whole lot! He was working within a very entrenched system. Systems have a way of achieving equilibria and then all the parts trying their best to maintain it (unions, lobbies etc) School is a practical necessity and there's a lot of good that's possible. It's easier to start outside of the system, but also consequently much harder to scale unless we build tools to help systems to stabilize.

If the purpose of a system is what it does, then what does the system of "not going to school" do?

If schooling and learning/education are truly mutually exclusive then who is the most learned and educated person you can point to that never stepped foot in a school? And how do those rare examples compare against the breadth of modern PHD holders?

There are a non-negligible fraction of kids that are kept out of school, homeschooled, etc. If school was as bad for learning as you suggest then one would expect those kept out of it to demonstrate higher-than-average aptitude.

School system was created to increase productivity.

It is also and equalizer. Unschooled kids from bad backgrounds now start even lower.

You might be interested in the experience of hackerspaces, and the "learn by doing":

https://github.com/zoobab/educode

https://www.educode.be/doku.php/educode_2019/conferences/hac...

Thanks!

Understanding learning should start by understanding how much it depends on mechanics.

I don't fully understand your comment but I think an issue with schooling is that tests are the meaning of schools - that is, test results and graduating are the objective of an education.

This is the disconnect I've always found growing up, I get told this is how you calculate angles, but besides the test, there's never the why. Granted this is a bad example because at least that one had a practical, real life application example (calculating the height of a tower in the distance based on distance + angle of the ground to the top from where you're standing), but things just get more and more abstract later on.

The best teaching was always projects and internships, because they start with an objective and meaning (= build software that does this), and what knowledge you need follows from that.

I mean sure you need some basic knowledge before you can work backwards from an end goal, but surely they can teach said basic knowledge without it just being "this is how you solve this test problem"?

You may be saying the same thing in different words. Scores and graduation may be the objective for some - but that doesnt this is an effective motivation for many.

If you have ever been stuck doing a project you didnt want or like, you may relate.

> Meaning > motivation > mechanics > measurement.

You might propose that getting a good measurement is the meaning, but saying that doesn't mean a student has really or fully bought into this idea and find it compelling. i.e Their heart may not be in it.

"test results and graduating are the objective of an education"

No. The objective is for you to learn a specific topic. Tests are how we tell if you have learned it. Graduating is proof that you have learned it.

I run a microschool and also teach maths there. I love this essay, and book, but by focusing on maths as art, it focuses on only one aspect of meaning. The larger issue with the way maths is taught, and especially maths, is that it is all mechanics. Now for a certain set of students, those mechanics are incredibly beautiful. Prime numbers have a seduction to them! A few more can be introduced to this beauty and aesthetics, but many are still not into it, and that's entirely okay. What's needed for kids to see and start accepting it is meaning. And meaning comes from connection to the real world. This is why kids who are unschooled but work in shops become great at arithmetic. It's part of their daily web of life. No amount of sanitized exposure to abstract aspects, however aesthetically dressed up will help most. The mind needs to answer "why do i need to care about this" to be open to learning. And this is not something that can come with instruction. It is lived experience, culture. To fix maths education,and any education, you need to bring in meaning before mechanics. Unfortunately the curriculum, assesment, and therefore teaching inevitably end up with focus on the mechanics, which is the wrong end. It is meaning > motivation > mechanics > measurement

School inverts this. And that's a tragedy.

Wrote about it here. https://blog.comini.in/p/schooling-has-a-meaning-crisis-para...

I also love A Mathameticians Lament. I did not know about Benezet so thanks for that. I found your blog post interesting too.

A lot of this reflects the approach I took to teaching my kids maths (and everything else), both before/alongside school and after I took them out of school. They are both very good at maths and enjoy it.

Thanks! How early did you take them out of school? How old are they now.

Both at about 8 or 9. I taught them a lot before that age because of unsatisfactory schools - especially when we were living (provincial Sri Lanka) at the time I started. The older one went in an out for a bit though. Especially with maths I did a lot of fun stuff with them because I did not like what (little!) the schools were doing.

if you are familiar with the UK system they were both home educated up to GCSEs (taken at 16, end of compulsory school age here), then went to college (school for 16+) for A levels. The younger one is 18 and just finishing college - and her A level choices included maths, which is quite a turn around given she hated maths when she left school. Her older sister works in power electronics R & D.

Thanks for sharing this. So lovely to hear and hope they find their joy and meaning in whatever they do!

Agree, and it's hard to think about fixing education in isolation. But we've got to start somewhere to fix the meaning void. Easiest first step is to not take play away.

nice :) I cheated though by pasting it in because I couldn't bear the thought of having to wait for a day. Didn't even wait till the 4th try.

haha i'll take that as a massive compliment! since today's puzzle is so brutal i thought people would rage quit and never look at it again, so someone caring enough to cheat is awesome. today's stats seem to be at a 24% win rate, so i don't blame you at all.

Lovely site! Did you start this pre-AI? One issue with AI answers that will likely persist is data staleness. Having a site like this would help users find the "source" and ask actual users perhaps?

There is zero AI involved in researching or writing the content. A lot of that information was earned the hard way and put on the internet for the first time. It trained the models that are now killing the website. It's super depressing.

How?

by firing some employees obviously

It's been more than a year for us in India. We've resorted to using openrouter. How is Mythos or whatever their latest is not realizing that this is a priority - customers WANT to pay you and cannot!

Here's my armchair two cents: Whoever it is, has to be British. The language is unmistakeably British or Commonwealth. It's likely him. I'd wager if there was a polymarket bet. But I also feel for him. Does this make him a target for both half-wit criminials and rogue nation states?

The British English could be a misdirection. Satoshi was always quite inconsistent, sometimes using US spellings ('color', 'check', 'optimize'). One that always stood out to me was his use of 'gotten' – we don't typically use that word in British English, but an American English speaker attempting to disguise themselves as a Brit most likely wouldn't be aware of that fact.

This is notable as it argues against a lot of the candidates who are American, but I would say this is relatively easy to fake if you were privacy minded.

It would be somewhat harder the other way (American pretending to be British) as American English is much more prominent, but I think I could convincingly pretend to be American in text if necessary if I was only participating in generally technical discussions (and nobody asked me about cultural stuff like NFL etc.)

I am sorry but perhaps some use of AI or grammar-check would help? A lawn that's not overly manicured has its charm, but if it has one too many barren patches of clumps of overgrown grass, it doesn't appeal as much? This essay feels a bit like that.