This may sound odd, but until that very day, I hadn’t realized why there were such things as universities. I’d thought it was just rent-seekers who’d gotten a lock on the credentialing system. Why would you need teachers to learn? That was what books were for.
It’s not clear why it isn’t true as originally intended. Books are enough for understanding anything, you’d just need good from-the-ground-up textbooks and probably months or years to read them. Teachers are out of this loop, and from personal experience I see teacher-mediated learning as inefficient, given motivated student and availability of good textbooks.
Universities institutionalize the very process of learning, which helps if motivation is weak and goal is not even on horizon, and as a result universities supply bigger amount of trained people than would be possible by just printing good textbooks.
Books are enough for understanding anything, you’d just need good from-the-ground-up textbooks and probably months or years to read them.
In practice, this isn’t true. Some people really do have trouble learning from books. Simply reading the book aloud to them is enough to overcome the block.
I don’t know where the problem originates, however. It seems strange to chalk it up to lack of motivation or stupidity, given the people I know.
In other words, books contain all of the knowledge necessary to understand anything but not everyone can pick up the understanding itself from a book. Why, I don’t know.
There’s one major difference: people can answer learner-generated questions and engage in conversation, while books cannot. Reading the book aloud to someone probably isn’t enough; reading it aloud and then having a Q&A session after (or better yet, during) can be a major improvement.
Is it sufficient to read the book aloud to them even if you don’t understand it yourself? If so why isn’t there a profession of ill-educated freelance book-readers?
Really? One on one? I’ve certainly been to many ‘read-out-the-textbook’ lectures, but there’s a good point to those, which is why I went. One on one I’d feel very robbed.
It’s not clear why it isn’t true as originally intended. Books are enough for understanding anything, you’d just need good from-the-ground-up textbooks and probably months or years to read them. Teachers are out of this loop, and from personal experience I see teacher-mediated learning as inefficient, given motivated student and availability of good textbooks.
Universities institutionalize the very process of learning, which helps if motivation is weak and goal is not even on horizon, and as a result universities supply bigger amount of trained people than would be possible by just printing good textbooks.
In practice, this isn’t true. Some people really do have trouble learning from books. Simply reading the book aloud to them is enough to overcome the block.
I don’t know where the problem originates, however. It seems strange to chalk it up to lack of motivation or stupidity, given the people I know.
In other words, books contain all of the knowledge necessary to understand anything but not everyone can pick up the understanding itself from a book. Why, I don’t know.
There’s one major difference: people can answer learner-generated questions and engage in conversation, while books cannot. Reading the book aloud to someone probably isn’t enough; reading it aloud and then having a Q&A session after (or better yet, during) can be a major improvement.
Is it sufficient to read the book aloud to them even if you don’t understand it yourself? If so why isn’t there a profession of ill-educated freelance book-readers?
Many tutors are more or less exactly that.
Really? One on one? I’ve certainly been to many ‘read-out-the-textbook’ lectures, but there’s a good point to those, which is why I went. One on one I’d feel very robbed.
What’s that?
You can ask questions from an expert on the fly.
That’s not enough to make me not hate lectures.