John- An excellent post; and I'll have to agree with most of it, including your conclusions at the end, especially in relation to choosing educational strategies based on empirical research.
Some minor comments below. John Zelle wrote: > On Thursday 28 December 2006 12:51 pm, Ian Bicking wrote: > >>Paul D. Fernhout wrote: >>>Ian Bicking wrote: >>I offer keyboarding as a counterexample. > > > I'll be keeping this reply very short, as I never learned to touch type. My > keyboarding style is, at best, idiosyncratic. I'd score that one for Paul, > based on my experience. I never "learned to type." I just do it. > Actually, and unfortunately, I am a self taught keyboarder. I started on the original Commodore Pet chiclet calculator style keys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET I've tried a few typing tutors since (twenty years or so into typing) but never stuck with them. I can type at 60+ words per minute, but, I still mostly need to look at the keyboard, and my accuracy is not 100% (so, more revision is needed, especially if I am excited and type faster). Fortunately, spelling checkers help with some of my loss of accuracy (though sometimes introduce semantic mistakes if I don't read over things carefully, so another cost of being self-taught here). So, I'll have to agree with both you guys -- you can be self-taught and really good at something, but you may still have lost something. A typical example from music is classical pianist training versus jazz pianists who picked it up on their own (and have quirky styles and can never play as complex pieces). On the other hand, today's typing tutor programs have become so interesting that there is little question in my mind that if I had been offered access to one from the start on full sized keyboards, I would have learned as a young kid (the value would have been obvious to me, and the experience interesting). I think my best bet at this point if I wanted to learn to touch type (having a previously learned system to overcome) would be to use a different keyboarding modality. I tried a chord keyboard, but the one I picked (the twiddler) was unergonomic. So, I should either get another one or perhaps get a Dvorak lettered keyboard. http://www.maltron.com/maltron-press.html On the other hand, and perhaps I am wrong i thinking this, it seems quite a few people do not have my ability to take somewhat-legible written notes without looking at the paper (except occasionally). And that just emerged. Still, there is another issue here that for *writing* like emails, touch typing can be a big win. But for *programming* (especially in some languages with lots of symbol characters or numbers) touch typing is not so much of a big win. Programmers spend most of their time reading code (why Python is such an innovation), and when they write code it often has symbols in it or unusual words (so conventional keyboarding training focusing on letters is limited). Also, the task of browsing and editing code is much more mouse intensive than just writing emails, and using the mouse is disruptive to touch typing. So, when writing code, lowered keyboarding performance isn't quite the problem as with writing text. Still, even their, I'll agree, compared to someone who is a touch typist, like my wife, it still would be better to touch type, to improve the flow from ideas to screen. Now, to go on the offensive here, Doug Engelbert and others clearly showed even in the late 1960s and early 1970s that a set up with a chord keyboard in one hand and a mouse in the other is much father than a full keyboard and a mouse when using a typical computer application. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_keyset Then why doesn't everyone use this settup? My only conclusion is that there seems to be a general problem with people investing in IT skills and technology. :-) And that was a big part of Doug Engelbart's point: that people have to be willing (or able or aware) to invest in technologies that make them more productive. Note that court stenographers do use chord keyboards: http://www.slate.com/id/2119534/ and othter compression practices, resultign in accordign to the following link approximately 225 words per minute at very high accuracy (many users of this machine can even reach 300 words per minute): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype Why don't we all make this investment to multiply our text input speed by a factor of five? Especially the people here advocating touch typing. :-) I know for stenographers it is a very high investment (two to three years, thought I am not sure how much time per day is spent on typing). http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos152.htm So perhaps another issue comes up here of diminishing returns. But in any case, I don't think learning keyboarding skills (which is perhaps the one most important thing a kid can learn in the internet age, until voice recognition accuracy improves) can justify thirteen years of compulsory education. Maybe as a compromise, we can think about which of these things are *really* important and whittle the compulsory part down to a few years. :-) >>>Nothing is more likely to make children not want to read or write than >>>following standard pedagogical advice and breaking reading into a series >>>of incremental hoops (learn letters, learn words, learn simple sentences, >>>and so on) which is just going to bore most kids out of their skulls. Can >>>you imagine if we tried to teach kids to listen to spoken language and to >>>talk that way? Thankfully, kids learn to listen and talk on their own by >>>just absorbing language in their environment and trying to use it to >>>accomplish goals meaningful to themselves. > > > Here, things get a little silly. Is there really evidence that children who > are motivated to read (say because their parents read to them) are somehow > then de-motivated by having that skill taught to them in a sane way? And yes, > I'm afraid there is research showing that it's sane. Children who already > know their letters pick up reading faster than those who don't. Starting with > simple sentences leads to faster learning than starting with Shakespeare, and > the best way to quickly enhance reading is to tackle "graded" texts that are > at about 75% comprehension. Any easier than that, and you are not learning > anything new. Harder than that, you don't have enough scaffolding to figure > out new constructs from the context (since the context makes no sense). Not > only is that common sense, I believe it's supported by > _actual_reading_research_. I might also add that around my house those > incremental "hoops" are themselves bringers of much delight. Successfully > learning the alphabet is a source of joy to children. > > However, I really want to weigh in on the second point of this paragraph, as > it brings up a faulty analogy I often see in educational debates (even those > surrounding programming ;-). I have considerable background in the areas of > learning and language acquisition (specifically machine learning for natural > language). The consensus of modern linquists is that learning to speak is > almost nothing like learning to read (or driving or programing or...you name > it). Learning to speak is in your genes. We are adapted through evolution to > be a speaking species. Our ability to learn language is so innate and acute > that it's arguably best thought of as a "speech organ" or "language instinct" > (see Steven Pinker's excellent book of that title). No normal child fails to > learn speech in _any_ culture, even those that Ian points out below do not > necessarily encourage it. Learning to speak is an inevitable developmental > phenomena that requires only exposure to speech at an appropriate age. > Just like children don't need to be taught to recognize their mother's face, > they do not have to be "taught" to speak. Overall, I'll have to agree with you based on the facts that humans are wired for language. And you are right to say the specifics of language learning are different because of that from many other human learning tasks. (My undergraduate advisor, George A. Miller, http://wordnet.princeton.edu/~geo/ would also probably be very displeased if I said otherwise. :-) Still, clearly if we did teach language like we taught other things, the basic machinery would probably have a hard item with it, you have to admit that -- we would be going against the grain of how humans are set up to learn language. So, clearly, there is precedent for saying, humans naturally learn well a certain way, and trying to structure such learning in certain unnatural ways may actually reduce progress. Still, even for foreigh language, the "puberty" argument by itself is being discredited (even as it is less common to learn languages later, and certainly much harder to speak them without an accent). On accent, what seems to be more the case is that kids learn to *not* distinguish certain sounds in the first year or so of life (that is, the processing ability for , say, distinguishing between "r" and "l" is lost early on for Chinese speaking natives). We can get that discrimination back somewhat later, but it is very hard. As for "puberty", as kids get older, lots of other things get more interesting. See: http://ivc.uidaho.edu/flbrain/latelang.htm "Merrill Swain (1979), a leader in the field of foreign language learning, believes that early immersion students enter into the process of learning a second language at a time when it does not compete with other interests, as it is an integral part of their normal school activity. Older students, on the other hand, quickly recognize that learning a second language involves considerable time, dedication and effort, consequently preferring to spend their time and energy elsewhere. In other words, older students may excel in their initial rate of second language learning as input is more comprehensible for them because of their background knowledge--they are faster acquirers as well as faster learners and because of this they have a greater ability to consciously learn grammar rules (Krashen & Terrell, 1983), while younger students excel in long-term second language achievement. However, it is a myth to think that children find the process totally painless (Hakuta, 1986). The most difficult learning task for children and adults alike may be the attempt to acquire second language proficiency in school environments (Asher, 1982). It is simply not true that young children learn a new language more easily and quickly than adults because the many variables that are directly involved in the process of learning a language such as specific situations, input, interactions and most importantly, the amount of time invested in language learning in a quality program make language learning hard work for both groups." I think there is some other research somewhere that says when adults are taught the same way as kids are taught, that is with pointing and naming of objects, and short social interactions, that adults learn language faster than through conventional adult means of text books and repetition of dialogues. Which makes sense if you think some basic wired machinery is being properly activated. Throughout human history tribes with differing languages have been neighbors and learning multiple human languages informally has been an important survival skill. Almost everyone agrees that if you want to become fluent in a language, the best way (and perhaps only thorough way) is to live somewhere it is spoken as a part of normal life. Having said that, almost every academic likes to think their specialty is of special importance. Linguists are more likely to be right, of course. :-) Still, many people communicate via sign language, or touch codes, are via typing and reading, even from birth, and so clearly "language" like capacities are also applicable in other modalities than speech and hearing. > Skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, and programming are not innate. > In fact, even with great effort, many people do not learn to read well. There > are precious few self-taught readers. The analogy to speech just doesn't cut > it. It's even less appropriate for considerations of writing and mathematics. > Even learning a second language after a certain age (around puberty) simply > does not (and cannot) happen the way we learn our first language as children. > Second language learning draws on different cognitive mechanisms. So all > those language courses that promise you can learn effortlessly the way a > child learns language are just blowing smoke. > Now, agreeing their may be special wiring for language, consider how people learn so many things -- playing the piano, how Unix directory structures work, really big philosophical ideas, or learning some aspect of programming. Often times we need to return to something over and over again (in slightly different contexts) before one day it just "clicks" and becomes clear. That is a function of how a neural network is processing information. And it is clearly not just "hierarchical". I'm sure everyoen here has had "aha" moments like this abotu a lot of things. Sometimes they are not obvious -- like when you get new glasses and a fewer days later you stop noticing them. Hierarchical presentation may help some in some cases (depending on the skill). Maybe even a lot in a lot of cases. I have no problem arguing for the value of well written tutorials, innovative learning games, texts of increasing structured difficulty, or whatever. It is more the compulsory aspect and the timetable aspect I have problems with. And those are aspects which deny that we don't really understand what is going on in that neural net, and also often deny the role *intrinisic* or what I might call "extrinsic direct value" motivation plays in learning. By extrinsic direct value I mean you see directly the value of what you are learning to solve a problem of importance to you (e.g. touch typing or driving); it isn't just about a grade. We don't know all the details about motivation and learning, but we do know motivation is a really important part of learning; and we know that frustrating and boring kids repeatedly turns them off learning in an area. One can, even for language, distinguish between "immersion" and "submersion" :-) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_immersion >>Teaching is central to the idea, but it is decentralized insofar as it >>doesn't expect or rely upon a professionalized set of teachers, and that >>success in the system depends on children becoming teachers themselves. >> Part of the community structure is to help those children become >>*good* teachers, by teaching each other how to teach. > > > Teaching at its heart is really just good communication. Part of > communication > is making sure you have a receptive audience, that's where I see all the > various discussion of things like enthusiasm and internal vs external > motivations. And I think Arthur's original post about taking on interested > learners, vs. getting them interested is an important distinction to think > about. BUT. The second part of communication is providing the right > information that will most effectively communicate. Teachers have been > teaching for many centuries now. We know a lot about how children learn, and > many ideas that have been demostrated through both experience and research > are now standard parts of educational curriculum. Now, I'd be the first to > admit that I have very little patience with a lot of so-called educational > research, but finding better teaching methods can (and should be) an > empirical, scientific process. I have _no_ patience for the "everything we're > doing now is just plain wrong" crowd. These sorts of claims are seldom backed > up by any evidence except vague hand-waving and appeals to ideology > (centralized, hierarchical BAD, unstrutured GOOD, "coercion" BAD, voluntary > GOOD, lecture BAD, contructionism GOOD), or false analogies (kids should > learn to read the same way they learn to speak). > > Can we improve education? Almost certainly. But I'm sure we can also make it > much, much worse. Before we throw out the bathwater, let's see what's > actually in it. I'll have to agree. Still, even the results of scientific studies can be biased, based on the funder, the assumptions, the researcher, the peer review process, and so on. All the best. Wish I had more time right now to reply more fully. --Paul Fernhout _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
