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@InquilineKea:That's one of the things I loved about Feynman. He stated in his biography as well as in his documentary that he hated honors, he hated recognition. He hated it because he felt all that mumbo jumbo diluted the brain, diluted the pureness of thought, the pureness of love, the pureness of curiosity. 'Cause then people would just do things for the sake of competition, for the sake of being recognized, and though they would think they are being encouraged to do better than they otherwise would perform, they have no idea how it feels to do things, to work hard at things for the reason of just doing what you did, for the pure reason of developing curiousity, and just finding things out, whether it is a solution to a possible threat a plaintiff may use in a court case as a lawyer, or whether it is a solution to the incompatibility of quatum mechanics with relativity as a physicist.
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<p>Haha, we all love Feynman (in a cynical world where many attributes are no longer as valued as they used to be). The only problem is that his case is especially unique (few people are as intelligent/curious as he is). Perhaps people would be more open if they were subject to a laissez-faire educational system - but such a system still wouldn't turn them to Feynmans.</p>
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But doesn't the weekly evaluation miss the point of the free-style school? I think that with any school, students are likely to form some sort of scale based on relativity of talent or supposed intelligence. Maybe not grades or test scores or number of APs but there will always be some other quality that varies in degrees within the group that will be tagged and used. Which is not necessarily bad in itself. But it would just end up forming another hierarchy in which the point would be to get to the top.
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<p>Yes, students will always form their social groups and hierarchies. But at least the quality would be different.</p>
<p>The free-style school, in its most pure and theoretical form, would not have weekly evaluations. But unfortunately, we cannot have systems that perfectly emulate the free-style school (because of human nature). Thus, we need to find a way as to provide incentives (incentives that are based on a scientific understanding of human nature) to desired outcomes.</p>
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What would be your ideal system for the high school/college transition, i.e. preparing for college, getting into college, college admissions, etc...?
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<p>You know, I kind of believe that college isn't really necessary. You can learn all you want from a college from course materials (and textbooks) online. The problem is that a lot of instructors believe that students should have access to information that no one else should have access to - just because such students are "paying" for their education.</p>
<p>As for discussions, I think forums are an excellent venue for classroom discussions. For one thing, you can actually keep your discussions years after you take the course. You can have people from across the country enter the discussions. And the discussions can of course be moderated.</p>
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<p>I find websites like these ( <a href="http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/51551.html%5B/url%5D">http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/51551.html</a> is an example) far more exciting than lectures. The ideal skill in the information age: encouraging students to be able to distinguish between the (a) relevant/irrelevant (this depends on the student - so a student's self-awareness is important for this) and the (b) reliable/unreliable sorts of information. Instead of lectures, there could be links to this that discuss interesting topics that aren't in a textbook.</p>