Open thread experiment
Because what do we have to lose! [eye twitches involuntarily]
I’m forever wanting to write more. There are patterns I’m prewriting, big essays I’m polishing, a book I’m outlining, and… gah, it’s not enough.
Yesterday my mind flitted back to how delightfully December’s impromptu AMA worked… and it occurred to me that one way to squeeze more words out of my carapace might be an open thread. So what the hey, let’s try!
Talk about anything. Well, nearly anything: everything related to the culture war will be zealously deleted, as will anything that smacks of being less than respectful to someone you disagree with, because
we will become the community we pretend to be online.
Feel free to talk ideas, talk learning, talk teaching, talk talking, talk talk talk talk.1 Pose your problems with Egan. Ask about where this project is going. Recommend homeschooling curriculums, or great YouTube channels, or whatever.
It’s an experiment! I’ll keep it on for a week. Let’s see how this goes.
A new book review of Egan:
Reader and commenter
has started a substack about education — and his second post is a review of one of Egan’s practical books, An Imaginative Approach to Teaching! In the comments, he and I have started kicking around the limits of when Egan’s method can be used.
You might enjoy joining in (especially if you know Chinese, or read Egan academically, or know about the history of English spelling). In one comment, I mention an Egan-inspired idea I’ve been playing with to help multiplication facts stick in people’s minds. I won’t say anything more about it here, but I will show these two images as a taste —
Wait: why don’t we pronounce the “l”?
This is super helpful and insightful. Having an 8 year old who finds school tremendously boring (plus stressful, boring + stressful = who would ever wanna go there) has definitely opened my mind to the issues with current education system. Do you believe schools will do a better job at teaching if the main focus was fostering curiosity and creativity? If it was a requirement for teachers to prioritize connection with their students? If they added a boat load of funny? If there is a degree of novelty? And teachers are paid in six figures at minimum?
Am I thinking about this the right way?
So what should schools really teach?
I really love the topics you choose and how you teach about teaching :) I teach English and "accidentally" forwarded your email about secret messages to a student. I would love to read some research about how kids are using LLMs and where it might lead. thanks for the blog <3