Learn Like Machine Learning Models
This summer, my parents and I have been giving advice to more than a dozen of relatives and friends in mainland China on their kids’ education. I sense that Chinese parents are facing unprecedented challenges:
- Schools, and people generally, judge kids almost solely by their exam scores.
- The society spreads the common belief that each step of a kid’s education the later steps and eventually their life success.
- The parent community is highly anxious and comparing.
Schools work the asses out of kids in the hope of higher scores. Kids have more homework than they can finish without going to sleep late, even in elementary schools. After school, most kids are sent to tutoring organizations by their parents. High school kids study at school Monday through Saturday, 7 am to 9 pm. A kid is almost treated as a mere number.
We all know a person is not measurable as a single number, but the important question is what to do under the environment’s pressure. I believe it is time we revisit first principles and rethink the purpose of education. My conclusion is we should borrow many ideas from machine learning for human learning, both for kids and adults.