hang out with kids and get a new perspective on why stuff doesn't get done — 80%+ of the time, nobody thinks they're being avoidant; whatever remains to be done has yet to be explicitly approved, is better left undone than "wrong," seems to have an undoable next step
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kids are *always* trying to balance the goals of satisfying adult expectations + maintaining their social position amongst the other kids; in some peer groups, the optimal strategy is to keep teacher expectations low + avoid looking like a nerd — very hard to break that dynamic
imo, even in "good" schools, where all the game's points can be scored by giving "good" answers, the game is Make Teacher Praise Me, not Think Interesting Thoughts & Get Useful Feedback — I think the latter is a game that you just can't play within the parameters of most schools
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Yeah, what if the game is of asking "good" questions? Would require a fundamental rewriting of schools.
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yep — good questions require genuine curiosity & result from points of confusion within a work-in-progress model; it's very difficult to keep enough attention on one's own thoughts to do this while operating the is-teacher-happy-with-me & are-kids-accepting-me perimeter scans
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this is a criticism I have of friends who are Ivy League educated, in mid-30s and realizing they don't know what they like I did have a glimpse of the latter in my "Knowledge and Inquiry" class in JC. was basically philosophy geekery; I loved it. we could criticize school itselfpic.twitter.com/7Sx9QuAxEv
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I was very lucky to spend a (life changing!) year in a school in the ‘interesting thoughts’ category, but I am still angry about a moment in class at a previous school in which I tried to assert something interesting - and was belittled by the teacher for being ‘wrong’
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