“conveniently ignores the fact that the kids who didn’t have a problem with the lecture were the ones who already knew all of that from some other source.”
This is definitely not true in general and probably a rare case. N=1 of course, but I never had problems with maths lectures (or any other lectures) and I never was in the situation of knowing all of the maths before the lecture (I usually knew history and physics lessons in advance though). And it’s the same thing with my current students : even the best ones are clearly unfamiliar with the material I cover.
I think the lesswrong crowd has in general a very unusual experience with both school and maths, even compared to the average gifted maths student. Beware of the typical mind fallacy.
“conveniently ignores the fact that the kids who didn’t have a problem with the lecture were the ones who already knew all of that from some other source.”
This is definitely not true in general and probably a rare case. N=1 of course, but I never had problems with maths lectures (or any other lectures) and I never was in the situation of knowing all of the maths before the lecture (I usually knew history and physics lessons in advance though). And it’s the same thing with my current students : even the best ones are clearly unfamiliar with the material I cover.
I think the lesswrong crowd has in general a very unusual experience with both school and maths, even compared to the average gifted maths student. Beware of the typical mind fallacy.