Comments for The Dumbing Down of Students at http://freaklabs.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://freaklabs.org Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:53:04 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-908 Yep. I have to say that most of what I learned in the university is already forgotten. It did teach me some skills, but in general, most of what I've needed for real-world work has been learned through trial/error, extensive studying, and a lot of google searches. Its a running topic in the Tokyo Hackerspace on what the benefit of an education is these days. In some areas, its still very useful, but in technology subjects, the fields are moving much faster than the classes, and in some cases professors, can keep up with. - Akiba Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:43:45 +0100 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-907 The Deschooling Society article is quite astounding. The fact that Ivan I. was thinking about educational webs in 1971 is significant. My older brother never went to university to get a degree, he learnt things by real-world experience. Sometimes he annoys me like all brothers do.. I'm doing a masters at Uni but he was in London last year earning $250,000 NZ per year :o Very annoying! ;D My girlfriend did a 3 year Commerce degree in Management and Marketing. She told me how studying for these subjects was just a giant memory test, where you had to cite everything you could memorise from the text book in the exam. How does repeatitive memory practice help you perform well in the Management/Marketing fields?! It's no suprise she's learning how to program with PHP/MySQL using a DVD I downloaded. It's interactive and allows you to make/break code and learn from it. - Geoff Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:32:52 +0100 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-792 love this. there's no better way of learning than by making mistakes and breaking things first. and it's silly and old school to think that education happens in the classroom anyway. - shosho Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:26:34 +0100 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-791 Maybe you know this, maybe you don't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society - Anton123 Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:13:21 +0100 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-789 Yeah, I agree that if there's an interesting class with students that want to be there, there wouldn't be a problem with worrying about distraction. But I wonder what that means for the profs teaching classes where the kids obviously don't want to be there. Perhaps that signals a curriculum issue. Back at the public university I went to, I had to take a lot of GE classes that were supposed to round me out as a human being. I can barely recall what was taught in any of them. Thinking back, a lot of those classes were just a waste, but I guess one could argue that I'm not really a well-rounded human being either... p.s. Hope all is well. I see your project pop up on the Contiki mailing list pretty regularly these days :) - Akiba Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:34:44 +0100 http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Misc/The-Dumbing-Down-of-Students.html#comment-788 The most interesting, and usually the hardest, classes at MIT are full of students who want to be there; everyone is glued to the professor --- nobody has their laptop open. And if you don't pay attention then you'll probably fail. I'm thinking of classes like 6.302, 6.331, 6.376, and 6.828. - Mariano Alvira Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:54:01 +0100