"Most of the lessons students remember lack practical applications." Depends on what you mean by "practical". If say, economics teaches analytical thinking skills then regardless if students remember that the marginal revenue curve is twice the slope of a linear demand curve for a monopolist, is that "practical"? If econometrics at least causes you to be initially skeptical of popular reports on empirical studies, even if do not remember what heteroskedasticity is, is that "practical"?
It would be more useful to have laws about what does work. Obviously I have learned many things in my life that I can successfully apply. What was the secret there?
The quote below doesn’t address his hypocrisy of teaching at a university and partaking in the corruption of tax payers.
By his own admission, Bryan Caplan is a very corrupt man.
<<The most common visceral reaction to my advice, however, is to accuse me of hypocrisy: “Sure, he advises other people’s kids to think twice before they go to college. But he’d never say that to his own kids.” They don’t know me. I advise my kids the same way I advise anyone else: tailoring my message to the student. I learn their academic track record, motivation, intended field of study, marital plans, and so on. Then I tell them how various paths typically pan out for people who fit their profile. My first two sons are outstanding students interested in economics, so of course I’ll urge college. My younger two are just starting school, so the jury is still out. If either turns out to be a C student, I will gently but emphatically advise them to find a full-time job right after high school.
Finally, none of my maxims assumes human beings base their educational decisions on careful calculations of the return to education. Quite the opposite. If human beings based their educational decisions on careful calculations of the return to education, they wouldn’t need my advice because they’d already be following it! My assumption, rather, is that our educational decisions are deeply corrupted by inexperience, conformity, and pride. My goal is to save readers time, money, and grief by rooting out—or at least curbing—this corruption.>>
Since all leaders, intellectuals, scholars, generals, entrepreneurs, politicians, engineers, etc. were all students, I assume these 4 laws apply to them as well. Therefore what? I think Kevin’s comment is correct here, what is better?
You mean formal education? Everyone has to be educated to do anything. I taught my kids how to drive, and they did not forget how after they got their licenses, nor did anyone have to tell them how to put their new knowledge into practice.
What ever happened to figuring stuff out for yourself?
When you do something new that no one has done before, that's the only way forward anyway. (Think of the first person to build and drive a car or bike for example.) But even when you are far from the first person, you can still figure it out for yourself.
Knowledge workers are almost the prototypical example of people who are expected to figure new things out.
In any case, I was mostly talking about formal education. And judging by his book The Case against Education,.our host was doing the same. Both him and me have a more positive view of apprentice style education. (I use this term here in the widest sense to include your driving lessons.)
Apprentice style education sidesteps many of the problems mentioned in the post.
Part of the problem is the local incentives. The more you want people to actually be able to apply and use what they've learned the more you need to present conceptual problems and avoid rote learning of a specific class of problems they'll be tested on.
But, inevitably, people (parents and students) get angry when they are tested on things they weren't specifically prepared for and don't like the fact that you can't carry along many students (eg uninterested ones) on that approach.
"Do most children really absorb (let alone retain) the content of most of their classroom lessons? When I was a schoolboy – a bookish schoolboy – I was conscious that, whereas the teachers generally had my full attention, many of my classmates were only half-listening at best. I spent part of my working life as a teacher. The relentlessly Progressive educational theorising that I imbibed on my one-year post-graduate teaching qualification left me feeling that it amounted to an intellectual massaging of an unsayable truth.... that perhaps a majority of children have little appetite for being schooled." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well
Granted that social desirability bias likely impacts our society’s approach to education, how does this theory address secret ballots in voting? It seems to me that the most simplistically “rational” approach to voting behavior would be to loudly affirm the need for socially desirable policies and then to enter the voting booth and anonymously cast your ballot for the opposite policies.
So I suspect that this theory is not as powerful as Bryan would like to believe. It’s only explanatory if people actually DO want socially desirable things enough to secretly vote for them, rather than merely publicly affirming that they want them. In which case the theory becomes: “People vote for what they want, and they sometimes don’t fully weigh up the costs and benefits.” Next we’ll be speculating that the world is made up of atoms and that the earth revolves around the sun!
I am not convinced with fourth law. Isn't most studies on transfer of learning about transfer from a knowledge of solving concrete puzzle (e.g. tower of Hanoi) to an isomorph of that puzzle? I wouldn't say that this kind of expertise is practical.
I'll be glad for point to some experimental evidence for lack of transfer for some practical skills.
I would expect that some non-trivial portion of practical skills (driving a car, sorting letters) would generalize quite well to >similar< domains (driving a truck, sorting packages).
As far as I understand some small portion of research on transfer of learning, that given some task it is kind of a mystery what constitutes as >similar<. One would expect that isomorphic puzzles are as close as it can be, maybe even closer than driving a car is to driving a truck, but apparently this is not the case.
Disclaimers:
- I know only a tine portion of transfer of learning studies, so I might be wrong.
- Not sure what constitutes a practical skill.
- I generally vibe with the overall thesis of this post.
"Most of the lessons students remember lack practical applications." Depends on what you mean by "practical". If say, economics teaches analytical thinking skills then regardless if students remember that the marginal revenue curve is twice the slope of a linear demand curve for a monopolist, is that "practical"? If econometrics at least causes you to be initially skeptical of popular reports on empirical studies, even if do not remember what heteroskedasticity is, is that "practical"?
It would be more useful to have laws about what does work. Obviously I have learned many things in my life that I can successfully apply. What was the secret there?
I think people mainly apply things they’ve learned “the hard way” or things that were unexpected when they learned them.
Learning that the world isn’t the way they thought it was will stick with them and be applicable.
Thank you Bryan.
I hope you can stop being such a hypocrite one day.
Looking forward to your resignation from your professorship
See his Case against Education for an explanation why he's not a hypocrite.
Which chapter and page?
By the way, all hypocrites have excuses for their hypocrisy but this never stops Bryan from accusing the likes of Hassan Piker.
The quote below doesn’t address his hypocrisy of teaching at a university and partaking in the corruption of tax payers.
By his own admission, Bryan Caplan is a very corrupt man.
<<The most common visceral reaction to my advice, however, is to accuse me of hypocrisy: “Sure, he advises other people’s kids to think twice before they go to college. But he’d never say that to his own kids.” They don’t know me. I advise my kids the same way I advise anyone else: tailoring my message to the student. I learn their academic track record, motivation, intended field of study, marital plans, and so on. Then I tell them how various paths typically pan out for people who fit their profile. My first two sons are outstanding students interested in economics, so of course I’ll urge college. My younger two are just starting school, so the jury is still out. If either turns out to be a C student, I will gently but emphatically advise them to find a full-time job right after high school.
Finally, none of my maxims assumes human beings base their educational decisions on careful calculations of the return to education. Quite the opposite. If human beings based their educational decisions on careful calculations of the return to education, they wouldn’t need my advice because they’d already be following it! My assumption, rather, is that our educational decisions are deeply corrupted by inexperience, conformity, and pride. My goal is to save readers time, money, and grief by rooting out—or at least curbing—this corruption.>>
Since all leaders, intellectuals, scholars, generals, entrepreneurs, politicians, engineers, etc. were all students, I assume these 4 laws apply to them as well. Therefore what? I think Kevin’s comment is correct here, what is better?
Why were they all students?
Are you trying to imply that everyone around the world and throughout history got a formal education?
Burke summed this up:
"Experience is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."
How do knowledge workers happen?
Not necessarily via education.
You mean formal education? Everyone has to be educated to do anything. I taught my kids how to drive, and they did not forget how after they got their licenses, nor did anyone have to tell them how to put their new knowledge into practice.
> Everyone has to be educated to do anything.
What ever happened to figuring stuff out for yourself?
When you do something new that no one has done before, that's the only way forward anyway. (Think of the first person to build and drive a car or bike for example.) But even when you are far from the first person, you can still figure it out for yourself.
Knowledge workers are almost the prototypical example of people who are expected to figure new things out.
In any case, I was mostly talking about formal education. And judging by his book The Case against Education,.our host was doing the same. Both him and me have a more positive view of apprentice style education. (I use this term here in the widest sense to include your driving lessons.)
Apprentice style education sidesteps many of the problems mentioned in the post.
Part of the problem is the local incentives. The more you want people to actually be able to apply and use what they've learned the more you need to present conceptual problems and avoid rote learning of a specific class of problems they'll be tested on.
But, inevitably, people (parents and students) get angry when they are tested on things they weren't specifically prepared for and don't like the fact that you can't carry along many students (eg uninterested ones) on that approach.
Excellent case against school!
Ship this over to Freddie de Boer—guaranteed he'll be a fan (not so much a subscriber...).
"Do most children really absorb (let alone retain) the content of most of their classroom lessons? When I was a schoolboy – a bookish schoolboy – I was conscious that, whereas the teachers generally had my full attention, many of my classmates were only half-listening at best. I spent part of my working life as a teacher. The relentlessly Progressive educational theorising that I imbibed on my one-year post-graduate teaching qualification left me feeling that it amounted to an intellectual massaging of an unsayable truth.... that perhaps a majority of children have little appetite for being schooled." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/teach-your-children-well
Granted that social desirability bias likely impacts our society’s approach to education, how does this theory address secret ballots in voting? It seems to me that the most simplistically “rational” approach to voting behavior would be to loudly affirm the need for socially desirable policies and then to enter the voting booth and anonymously cast your ballot for the opposite policies.
So I suspect that this theory is not as powerful as Bryan would like to believe. It’s only explanatory if people actually DO want socially desirable things enough to secretly vote for them, rather than merely publicly affirming that they want them. In which case the theory becomes: “People vote for what they want, and they sometimes don’t fully weigh up the costs and benefits.” Next we’ll be speculating that the world is made up of atoms and that the earth revolves around the sun!
See the Myth of the Rational Voter by our host. He has already answered that objection.
I am not convinced with fourth law. Isn't most studies on transfer of learning about transfer from a knowledge of solving concrete puzzle (e.g. tower of Hanoi) to an isomorph of that puzzle? I wouldn't say that this kind of expertise is practical.
I'll be glad for point to some experimental evidence for lack of transfer for some practical skills.
I would expect that some non-trivial portion of practical skills (driving a car, sorting letters) would generalize quite well to >similar< domains (driving a truck, sorting packages).
As far as I understand some small portion of research on transfer of learning, that given some task it is kind of a mystery what constitutes as >similar<. One would expect that isomorphic puzzles are as close as it can be, maybe even closer than driving a car is to driving a truck, but apparently this is not the case.
Disclaimers:
- I know only a tine portion of transfer of learning studies, so I might be wrong.
- Not sure what constitutes a practical skill.
- I generally vibe with the overall thesis of this post.
Too much school, not enough learned, remembered, or properly applied. Other than that, a good comment.