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Comment by thomk | Hacker News Reader

Great teachers come meet you where ever YOU are at in your knowledge.

Once they are next to you, they guide you to take the very first step, nothing more. Then just the second step, nothing more. Then the third etc.

If you are not understanding what is being taught: the problem is the teacher.

Soon you both see YOU have more confidence. That confidence is called learning and the best teachers know when to pull back and let you go on your own.

Great teachers do not judge you. If you are embarrassed in front of a teacher because you do not know something; the problem is the teacher.

The best teachers let me be myself and just showed me how to take the next step.

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> If you are not understanding what is being taught: the problem is the teacher.

That's obviously false. If you don't pay attention or don't do your homework or skip classes eventually you will fall back enough not to understand what is being taught.

Teacher can't repeat basics forever because there are other students in the class too, maybe they do pay attention and do their homework and would like to learn - wasting their time because one person doesn't care is absurd.

BTW I think online remote learning (which was implemented in my country because of COVID-19) could help with this issue. There's no reason for kids to be divided into classes according only to their physical location. It's possible to organize classes from all over the country divided by results of some placement tests, where every student has problems with the exact same concepts.

This shouldn't completely replace normal school, but it could be useful tool for keeping struggling kids up to speed (let's say there's 1 hour a week of remote math class where every kid is put into appropriate countrywide group of kids with similar problems).

I agree with you both. I like to think I'm a good teacher, and if they don't understand then it's down to me not them.

But I was given an 'apprentice' to teach. He was very willing to learn, very interested in the subject (programming) but only insofar as I poured the knowledge into his ears. He would not do any work I set him so pretty soon I threw in the towel. I really enjoyed teach, he really enjoyed learning, but his dismotivation finished it, what a waste.

I appreciate your perspective but I still stand by my comment, with a slight caveat. If you are in a situation where you are open to learning and you can not then the problem is the teacher. Even if you have a learning disability it is going to be the responsibility of the teacher to recognize that and move you somewhere else where you can be more productive.

Love and agree with most of the thoughts, but strongly disagree with:

> If you are not understanding what is being taught: the problem is the teacher.

This is the case a lot of the time, but if it's applied as stated above, it misses the fact that some subjects are literally unlearnable for certain individuals and is not the teacher's fault.

Probably a statement more in spirit is:

"If you are not understanding what is being taught: The good teacher asks what methods can be changed to further learning."

> Some subjects are literally unlearnable for certain individuals and is not the teacher's fault.

This feels like a controversial starement to me. There are certainly some subjects that are currently beyond some individuals’ ability to learn, but that seems to reflect more on a lack of prior required learning than a fundamental inability to learn that subject.

It’s certainly much harder for some people, possibly to the point of economic infeasibility, but impossible seems a stretch.

I used literally, literally, because my wife is a special needs teacher. Many higher level subjects fall into unlearnable for students with severe needs where no amounts of time or care can get past the physical barrier.

It could be viewed as contrarian, but putting the blame/responsibility for a student not learning solely on a teacher's shoulders removes the human which the spirit of this post and thread embodies.

True, my objection was primarily to the idea that we should completely write-off any potential learner. A teacher’s job is not to do research, but to choose the best available known method for the situation. If that doesn’t produce results, it’s not the teacher’s fault; instead, it’s a call for researchers to search for new methods.

The focus on the social model of disability and how disabled people are first of all people and never assume someone can't do something just because they have a disability etc. has a lot of good things going for it, and it's compassionate and makes the world a better place.

It doesn't remove the fact that some people have disabilities that mean they will simply never be able to complete certain tasks, including ones of the learning kind.

“Some subjects are unlearnable”.

Everything is a continuum, it’s never so black and white.

Even if something are incredibly hard for some people to learn I think it’s worth avoiding the fixed mindset that the notion of “unlearnability” produces.

The belief that one can change things about themselves is the most fundamental attitude required for learning in my experience and opinion.

Without it, learning can only be an accident.

Had a similar conversation 4 days ago on HN, on the question of the limits of an individual's talent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23017585

I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting that one can't learn something.

I probably wouldn't be able to learn world-class violin skills even if I trained obsessively. Plenty of violinists train obsessively, from a starting age far younger than me, with more natural ability than I'm likely to have, and a tiny fraction of them become world-class. So what? I don't see this as disempowering.

that's sound from an intentionality perspective (you should actively choose what to pursue and what not to pursue based on your unique set of accidental gifts), but performance is different from learning. while we each (very likely) have differing learning horizons, it's highly dependent on interest and motivation not simply raw "intelligence".

you could learn as much about playing violins as world-class violinists if you were as obsessive about it, even if you couldn't play as well. those not-quite-world-class violinists likely know as much, but just don't have the same combination of accidental (physical/psychogical/biochemical) gifts that give them a miniscule edge.

"ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't".

> performance is different from learning

I'm not sure about that. Knowledge 'in a vacuum', separated from one's abilities to do anything useful, isn't what we normally mean by the word. To put it bluntly, no-one cares who has the most encyclopaedic knowledge of violins, they care who's best able to do the job.

Like I said in the other thread, sometimes there's no substitute for raw talent. Just about everyone is smart enough to learn algebra, and programming, but I suspect most people lack the raw intelligence to become an MIT professor, regardless of how hard they work.

You can put in as much work as you like, but if the other guy puts in just as much work and has an incredible natural ability in the field, you really don't stand a chance. Same goes for sports, where it's more about your physical limits than your intellectual ones.

Again though, I don't see that these realities should put us off self-improvement, whether learning, or sport, or any other avenue. It seems silly to even write it: learning still has plenty going for it.

> "ability" is often an illusion of opportunity costs. it's less "can't" and more "won't".

Agreed. For most of us at least, our intellectual ceilings aren't generally what steer our decisions.

> "Knowledge 'in a vacuum', separated from one's abilities to do anything useful, isn't what we normally mean by the word."

that's a different claim from before: "I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting that one can't learn something." my counterclaim was limited to the ability to learn, not perform or achieve accolades. besides, you can do something useful with just knowledge, for instance, teach others who can/will exceed your performative abilities.

> "I suspect most people lack the raw intelligence to become an MIT professor"

becoming an MIT professor is fraught with confounding variables like luck and politics, so that's not a great example of raw talent/intelligence trumping all.

> "Same goes for sports, where it's more about your physical limits than your intellectual ones."

actually the best athletes are also highly intelligent. it's part of the accidental gifts that give them another tiny edge in a winners-take-all arena. lebron is known for his "photographic basketball memory" (in reality more intelligence than memory).

also, there are plenty of coaches that are highly knowledgeable and better as coaches than they are as players. lakers coach frank vogel for instance.

people have limits but the inability to learn generally isn't, and shouldn't be, the limiting factor.

> my counterclaim was limited to the ability to learn, not perform or achieve accolades

The ability to perform is something that is learned. I'm not abusing the word 'learning' here.

It makes little difference though, as my point applies just the same. The most difficult things to learn (in the narrow sense) may still be beyond the abilities of many. I suspect this is true of many areas of advanced maths, for instance.

> you can do something useful with just knowledge, for instance, teach others who can/will exceed your performative abilities.

Sure.

> becoming an MIT professor is fraught with confounding variables like luck and politics, so that's not a great example of raw talent/intelligence trumping all.

No, the example is fine. Without a high natural intelligence, you won't even be in the running. It's necessary, but not sufficient.

> actually the best athletes are also highly intelligent

I didn't say otherwise. It doesn't impact my point, though. The average person doesn't have the natural gifts necessary to make it as a top-flight professional athlete. That takes both natural ability and hard work.

> people have limits but the inability to learn generally isn't, and shouldn't be, the limiting factor.

For most things, sure, we're agreed.

cool, looks like we've mostly conceded each others' points and are only left mainly with a semantic disagreement over the scope of the word "learning" in this context.

Sounds right.

Vaguely related interesting reading on philosophers exploring what it means to learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument#Thought_exp...

Thank you and I appreciate your comments as well.

Obviously nobody can teach quantum computing to an infant. So how about this instead?:

> If you have the ability to learn something, and you are not learning, then the problem is the teacher.

My point is that students should not feel embarrassed because they aren't 'getting it' and they should take some comfort in knowing that unfortunately there are teachers who are bad at teaching out there.

It’s not always that simple.

Context matters.

I work in metal fabrication, and more than a small fraction of the people who end up in this trade are here because they have learning disabilities, typically undiagnosed, or if they are they don’t advertise it. Many of us are in this trade because we are too dull to have chosen something higher paying with better conditions.

Additionally, may of the tools and equipment we use are inherently dangerous, so teaching might involve repeatedly showing and correcting, watching, scrutinising, and coming back again and again to review and refresh.

Kindness certainly helps though :)

> they guide you to take the very first step, nothing more. Then just the second step, nothing more

This sounds like it doesn't match this research which someone posted yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ

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