Meta-view on the problems of (un) educated youth

We all went to school, and many after school at the university or university, someone continued in graduate school. Many people continue to study after this: someone is on courses, and many are engaged in self-education. Many are faced with the problems of education of their children, and someone and grandchildren. And in principle, the problems of education and special education are not indifferent to everyone, because everyone wants the doctor, if he had to go to him, to be qualified, and the oncoming driver would know the rules of the road.


(G. and A. Ogorodnikovy)

Well, some are involved in education on the other hand: someone teaches at school, someone teaches at an institution of higher education, someone just teaches his child to read and consider, someone shares his experience with a young employee who has recently come, etc. . I have a very modest teaching experience, but it was successful. Now I do not teach and I may not know current trends. But I am also interested in learning problems from the point of view of AI, sharing the opinion that in teaching artificial intelligence, in many respects it is necessary to copy the methods of teaching the natural intelligence, just as the properties of natural neurons are copied into AI. In the social group of young people do not enter. However, despite this, a wave of Habra publications on the topic of "uneducated youth" interested me, like many, so much that I took part in the discussions. And he said so much that he decided to make a kind of digest from his own auto-repetitions, adding additional explanations and taking into account the objections heard in the discussions. Below is the view of a bystander. I think that critics have already sounded abound, so I will focus on constructive ideas.

First of all, I repeat , pointing to the well-known facts that the education of children from the times of cavemen is compulsory for everyone, even the hero Kipling Mowgli is taught to read the jungle book. Many masters and good specialists in various fields study all their lives, but still for a large number of adults, education is not considered as compulsory as it is considered mandatory for a child. In this regard, not minimizing the role of self-study, one still has to admit that, traditionally, all nations focus on training, and on rigid modal training like “do this.” So basically, parents, educators and school teachers teach and educate: “my hands before eating”, “don't bite your nails”, “don't hold a spoon in your fist”, “you should hold a soldering iron like a pencil”, “don't postpone for tomorrow what you can do today, ”“ you cannot work with a lathe in a tie — you can wind and choke ”,“ you should not do to others as you would not want them to do to you, ”etc. In this case, the justification is optional. Indeed, you can try to explain to the child why you need to wash your hands before eating, but it’s much harder to explain why you can’t keep your spoon in your fist - because it’s more convenient for her to hold it. Each student will understand that moving parts of the machine may wind a tie, but there are debaters who say that a tie can be short, that a long one can be pinned with a pin, etc. The standard line of conduct for teachers and instructors is to avoid such disputes: “these are safety requirements and they are not discussed.”
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Self-education in children's education usually plays a secondary role. Of course, there are talented children, and there are many cases in which an interested schoolchild independently learns something that is not part of the school curriculum on books. However, such cases are usually considered as exceptions, albeit rather numerous, from the general rule. In this case, it is usually noted that the knowledge gained by a schoolchild as a result of such self-study is usually superficial and not systematic, and sometimes even erroneous if he could not figure it out or did not understand so. Obviously, for a sufficiently educated adult, self-study usually proceeds much more fruitfully.

Note that:

In developed countries, secondary education, starting from the 20th century, is compulsory and universal. ( Wikipedia )

Currently, in some countries (for example, in Russia), general education is not only a right, but also an obligation of citizens. ( Wikipedia )

Indeed, it is difficult to prosecute a citizen if he is illiterate. Thus, the school is obliged to give every schoolchild an established stock of basic knowledge, and every schoolchild is obliged to get it. Otherwise, it will hide from an airplane flying overhead, mistaking it for a dragon - even a loader will not be able to work. The choice of work, or rather, the provision of the possibility of a conscious professional orientation is the most important task of a general education school. Without basic knowledge, informed choice is not possible. Of course, the school still has educational tasks, but these tasks are beyond the scope of our discussion.

Children grow up at different speeds, but some in the lower grades are beginning to show interest in some school subjects with partial or complete lack of interest in others. However, if the student does not want to learn uninteresting subjects, then the school is obliged to force him , which happens with varying degrees of success and non-success. This problem has been known since ancient times and, apparently, is completely insoluble, since no acceptable general solution has been found. However, private solutions are known. One of them is special educational institutions where individual subjects, for example, language schools, physics and mathematics schools, etc. pass in depth. But in the case of non-deepened study a very strong minimization is needed. But each teacher is interested in his subject, so there is always a desire to increase the volume of the material being studied and to increase the requirements.

Suppose a student draws well and dreams of becoming an artist, any computer science, mathematics to him to the bulb. Troika in these subjects for such a student is quite natural. But often, both at school and at home, such an apprentice experiences strong constant pressure for these triples (and the deuce is generally a tragedy). Of course, it is difficult to disagree with the arguments of adults and experienced people around this student: interests may change. Very often it happens, and yesterday's artist suddenly begins to spend all his free time reading books about great geographical discoveries. It is even harder to object to the diligent study of languages ​​- native and foreign: after all, it is necessary for both physics and lyricism. And how to argue against mathematics? - After all, it is the language of science. Lyric, however, needs mathematics within the limits of receiving delivery at the store. Like it or not, but in many cases, until the student understands the need for some kind of school subject for him, all the persuasions of teachers and parents are a waste of their nerves and of the child. There are, of course, innate lazy. In this case, especially, persuasions and punishments do not always give a positive result.

Of course, each case is special and there can be no general prescription, but the teacher should be wary of devaluation of punishments. If a student over and over again gets twos and only twos - he can get used to, get used to and for him it will cease to be a punishment. In the university, the situation is different: there is a retake system and, as a last resort, deductions. Therefore, in the university, higher requirements are more achievable. In school, IMHO, the minimum score, except in exceptional cases of outright sabotage, should be three. That is, it is necessary to set such basic tasks that everyone will cope with satisfactorily (i.e., 3) . But besides the main tasks for all, additional ones are needed for those who have done it, otherwise some of them will become boring and they will not keep pace. It is clear that for successful (and even partially-successful) solution of more difficult tasks and the assessment should be higher. For those who are passionate about the subject they need electives, for a long active participation in which only an excellent mark is given. In practice, none of the teachers have to be persuaded not to put too many twos - no one will be allowed to make almost half of the class as permanent losers. It is just that some teachers should realize the deuce as an exceptional and not too frequent measure , and therefore use it consciously, and not emotionally. To do this, you need to understand that, with all the desire, a school, even a special one with in-depth study, for example, computer science, cannot provide complete systematic knowledge of computer science, because too many other subjects that will not allow interested students to focus only on computer science. In particular, this school is fundamentally different from the university, although secondary schools usually have secondary subjects, but it is much easier for students than for schoolchildren to distribute their time properly. As it was said, the school is obliged to force everyone to study all subjects, for which almost daily almost total control is practiced. Students are not so controlled - they have to take coursework, tests, exams, but not daily homework, etc.

The standard argument that many school teachers like to use is ridiculous: how can one allow a student to not know such an elementary thing! “Well, don't they really understand that many of their students will not need the Pythagorean theorem or knowledge of the blue vitriol formula for all their lives?” If, after studying at school, the student has not become interested in chemistry and mathematics, then he will choose a specialty for himself where he will not need it. And in this case, the school fulfilled its duty, providing him with an informed choice, despite the ignorance of a number of elementary things by this student. It may, of course, happen that unexpectedly for him in the chosen specialty will need chemistry or mathematics. Nothing can be done - you will have to either change the specialty, or fill in the gaps in your education. The school is not to blame for such spaces.

However, turning to informatics, an important gap must be noted in which the school is to blame: in particular, in the discussions at Habré, the opinion is often expressed that many programmers do not need to know mathematics. Why mathematics for the "riveting" of web sites or the simplest mobile applications? - And how can a person without mathematics knowledge understand the meaning and necessity of modern security principles for web sites ... Will follow the path of least resistance by “encrypting through xor” in full confidence, which provided a high degree of protection. Many of the knowledge is applied unconsciously, so a specialist who has received a good university education, it may seem that he does not use mathematics in his daily work. For example, when choosing an algorithm for computational complexity. But if the other "special" does not see any fundamental difference between the exponent and the polynomial, then as a result, even a simple application may be too slow. Of course, this “HTML coder” can of course find an ecological niche where it will work for many years.

However, dismissal from work can turn into a personal tragedy for him. The gross underestimation of the role of mathematics in programming is due to the enthusiasm in school computer science for technologies, for example, the study of modern, but not the simplest PL. They make a beautiful GUI in this language, and everyone is happy. And none of them wants to understand that technologies are quickly becoming obsolete, they are being replaced by new ones and they are not the main thing. And most importantly - the algorithms . The study of computer science needs to begin with the study of classical algorithms, and the implementation language must first of all respond to the principle “the simpler the better” in order not to distract too much attention to form from the algorithmic essence. In principle, it is possible to study algorithms without PL. In the end, Euclid and Eratosthenes formulated their great algorithms in natural language, not knowing the artificial ones - there was no PL at that time. Much later, a certain role was played, for example, and an extremely simplified Russian algorithmic language . However, schools now have other opportunities, and it is hardly worth returning to this PL. But it seems to me that, if possible, the best choice would be in favor of a language that minimally distracts students from the main goal. The code should be as clear as possible for the student. Unfortunately, in any language, you can write confused code. I believe that both the PL and the teacher should prevent this first. In particular, do not play in reducing the lines of code. For example, the program for finding Fibonacci numbers on Python can be written as follows :

fib = lambda n: fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) if n > 2 else 1

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