Over and over, I come back to this basic heuristic:
Be Attentive -- notice what's going on around you.
Be Intelligent -- ask questions about what you've noticed.
Be Reasonable -- ask whether the answers you discover are really true.
Be Responsible -- take responsibility for your questions and your answers. Learn to experience your own understanding.
It's really validating to see all those same ingredients of authenticity expressed here, and to see how AI might participate in those actions instead of overlording them. Lots to think about as my 2yo quickly becomes too smart for me. Thanks, Tim.
This is splendid. I could not agree more that kids are often drilled in left-brain oriented rituals while being left to scramble in the deep end when it comes to more holistic, right-brain concepts, like living a good life, and I think we see the evidence in how many kids right now struggle with developing holistic selves. The expectation seems to be that they'll "figure it out" somehow, but I think we're seeing more and more that this is simply not the case.
I'd be curious to hear from Timothy about how self-directed educational approaches handle teaching more left-brained areas of study like mathematics. Do not read this comment as a critique. I am genuinely curious.
Hi Andrew. I have written about maths here. I recommend you read that if you are curious, but I will try and briefly write some responses to your questions here too. https://selfdirected.substack.com/p/maths-robots
That essay tackles the question of how maths can come up in a learning community as a natural event and is really an essay on mathematics as a community of practice. I think that there is a misconception that maths is a primarily left hemisphere task, mathematics is actually highly creative, and actually requires both hemispheres working in concert, however, school mathematics is very predominantly left hemisphere.
This comes up as a problem for me as a facilitator because this is not a school problem, but a wider problem as it is now a cultural perception; even kids who have never been to school have schooled beliefs about maths. I try to teach maths in the vein of Dr. Maria Droujkova of Natural Maths, but some young people find that challenging as that is not what they think maths is, open ended problems, sometimes without defined answers; some just want worksheets.
I can't remember if I make this point in the above essay but by the time our self-directed young people become tweens and teens they start to recognise that they need to work towards some of the same goals that their peers in school are working towards. So out of the six tweens we had last term I had four who had requested that I teach them maths. Young people will recognise the skills they need to be successful in this culture as they become older and will then naturally seek them out. The only two who didn't want to join in seemed to have some school trauma around maths, which sadly is not too uncommon given the way that is taught.
I'd be happy to answer any more specific questions on self-direction and maths that you had. Thanks, Tim.
This is very interesting and the criticism of modern education is correct. I’ve long been an admirer of Montessori (properly practiced) which emphasizes self directed learning, mixed age classrooms, mastery based progress etc. it also treats the teacher as a facilitator vs educator so these observations ring true. Hopefully will shift how/who teaches kids...
Over and over, I come back to this basic heuristic:
Be Attentive -- notice what's going on around you.
Be Intelligent -- ask questions about what you've noticed.
Be Reasonable -- ask whether the answers you discover are really true.
Be Responsible -- take responsibility for your questions and your answers. Learn to experience your own understanding.
It's really validating to see all those same ingredients of authenticity expressed here, and to see how AI might participate in those actions instead of overlording them. Lots to think about as my 2yo quickly becomes too smart for me. Thanks, Tim.
This is splendid. I could not agree more that kids are often drilled in left-brain oriented rituals while being left to scramble in the deep end when it comes to more holistic, right-brain concepts, like living a good life, and I think we see the evidence in how many kids right now struggle with developing holistic selves. The expectation seems to be that they'll "figure it out" somehow, but I think we're seeing more and more that this is simply not the case.
I'd be curious to hear from Timothy about how self-directed educational approaches handle teaching more left-brained areas of study like mathematics. Do not read this comment as a critique. I am genuinely curious.
Hi Andrew. I have written about maths here. I recommend you read that if you are curious, but I will try and briefly write some responses to your questions here too. https://selfdirected.substack.com/p/maths-robots
That essay tackles the question of how maths can come up in a learning community as a natural event and is really an essay on mathematics as a community of practice. I think that there is a misconception that maths is a primarily left hemisphere task, mathematics is actually highly creative, and actually requires both hemispheres working in concert, however, school mathematics is very predominantly left hemisphere.
This comes up as a problem for me as a facilitator because this is not a school problem, but a wider problem as it is now a cultural perception; even kids who have never been to school have schooled beliefs about maths. I try to teach maths in the vein of Dr. Maria Droujkova of Natural Maths, but some young people find that challenging as that is not what they think maths is, open ended problems, sometimes without defined answers; some just want worksheets.
I can't remember if I make this point in the above essay but by the time our self-directed young people become tweens and teens they start to recognise that they need to work towards some of the same goals that their peers in school are working towards. So out of the six tweens we had last term I had four who had requested that I teach them maths. Young people will recognise the skills they need to be successful in this culture as they become older and will then naturally seek them out. The only two who didn't want to join in seemed to have some school trauma around maths, which sadly is not too uncommon given the way that is taught.
I'd be happy to answer any more specific questions on self-direction and maths that you had. Thanks, Tim.
This is very interesting and the criticism of modern education is correct. I’ve long been an admirer of Montessori (properly practiced) which emphasizes self directed learning, mixed age classrooms, mastery based progress etc. it also treats the teacher as a facilitator vs educator so these observations ring true. Hopefully will shift how/who teaches kids...