alt Hacker NewsThe vast majority of people vastly overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education.
Easier on its own is therefore effectively meaningless when people aren’t actually learning beyond the most superficial layers.
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English is my second language I learned outside of school. Formal education is pretty worthless all around in my experience, as they only tell you what you should learn on your own but make no effort to actually teach you. Otherwise every person leaving school would be fluent in at least two languages.
The most incredulous part is how easy it was to learn English on my own. It took less than two years after having failed to do so with 10+ years in school.
It’s not only feedback, having arbitrary checkpoints like exams is an important motivator, and it also creates a whole culture around it that makes the learning experience into a social one.
> overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education
People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better.
Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical classroom, because as it is self directed, self paced, can use the best materials someone can find and a whole variety of them vs. whatever was assigned, etc., but it takes a lot of skill (which comes from past practice) and effort on the part of the learner. Many researchers/scholars are doing significant amounts of self-directed learning as their career, and can get very good at it with decades of practice.
The speed of learning in a classroom with 15+ students is inevitably unbelievably slow, and the time is used incredibly inefficiently. This isn't any particular problem with specific teachers, but as far as I can tell an inherent problem with aligning a bunch of people's preparation, motivation, and attention, and a problem with giving feedback in a 1:many setting. Teaching/learning speed generally seems worse at a primary school level vs. at a college level, given a very good teacher in both; I'm not sure if this is because of better prepared (because older) students, or just more motivated students.