The culture of learning
I have just discovered the blog of jan awa (or ava). She writes a lot in toki pona(it is a conlanguage), if your on her blog then english stuff is in the right of the header.
I think ill take a note from imperfect for this.
Everything is a remix
Ava has written a bit about the social and cultural expectation of math in school living in South Korea. in Why do systems rule us all she shares a discussion to her friends;
i say: "i'm doing 대수," i don't really feel like i deserve to learn 대수 since i barely know 공통수학2. "but i'm confused with 공통수학2 so i'll have to relearn that." (for reference, 공통수학1 and 공통수학2 is 10th grade level, 대수 is 11th grade level, and we're in 7th grade)
I currently am in year 9 and doing year 10 math. However I am doing this because I feel my school doesn't push my learning as much as it should. When I used to go to a private school I didn't go ahead in math because that school pushed learning really fast, which reminds me of avas experience with hawkwons(Korean for a private school/class) in Goodbye to my math hawkon
most hakwons value quantity over quality. do your homework. get a good score on your daily test. get things done fast. listening to video clips, rereading the textbook, or taking notes to understand what in the world you're learning? yeah, you can do that, if you have time.
Ava also says that:
the people who didn't go far enough to learn this still think "learning at a higher grade level = good" because everyone keeps saying that. and why does everyone say that? the system. it yells, "if you follow me you'll be better off in school!" and it does not.
Which shows a cultural difference in Korea to where I live in Australia. Most people in my school would drop out given the first opportunity and pick up an apprenticeship in some random trade and never see an educational facility again.
I don't make plans, I recently started keeping a calendar and that has turned into a record of what I do not an account for what i will do.
Ava also mentions:
i wanna reflect on what ms.hj (english hakwon director) said. she told me i should delve deeper into things. go on rabbit holes, read books, form opinions, make things, and most importantly, record what i did and learned.
Which is very close to what I think my learning is, driven by the dopamine I someone squeeze out from reading the wikipedia page on grass or watching a youtube video about how concrete is made.