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Herringtoday at 2:31 AM5 repliesview on HN

Article didn't explain why tech doesn't work in education. It's biological. We evolved to learn from and interact with other humans, preferably the same group over a long time, so we really get to understand/mirror/like/support each other. Anyone who has tried Duolingo gets this. Drop me in China with Chinese friends and I'll learn 100x faster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U


Replies

bonsai_spooltoday at 3:14 AM

> Article didn't explain why tech doesn't work in education. It's biological. We evolved to learn from and interact with other humans, preferably the same group over a long time

All of this is so far from anything evolution would have selected for that we can pick our favorite argument: 'well humans are unique in our tool use, so we should be encouraging kids to learn new tools instead of explicit teaching (like montessori)' or 'well humans never learned to read until about 100 years ago and computers can read for us so don't teach this new-fangled reading stuff'

It's not a helpful frame. The language thing is totally distinct—that really is an innate human thing among children. So again we can't make useful evolution-based claims about adult language education.

don-brighttoday at 2:55 AM

Even bird watching. I try these apps and nothing sticks. Books ok. But I go for a hour walk with experts talking and I can remember the entire scene of the bird, what it was perched on, its sound, its name, its appearance, its behavior.

ghafftoday at 2:42 AM

I'm not sure anybody disputes that immersive language learning is the best path to picking up a language. It just isn't very practical for most people.

NooneAtAll3today at 3:16 AM

"we evolved to talk not to write and read"

"we evolved to remember what happened to us, not to learn history of countries on the opposite side of the planet"

this argument doesn't work. if you want to claim harm - talk about the harm directly. stop hiding behind "evolution" and "biological"

csomartoday at 6:50 AM

So you are saying we should double down at this for the next dozen generations until our human DNA become tuned for computers/GenAI?