I dunno if it's the biggest myth about education, but it's gotta be in the top 3: The myth that you can stand in front of someone, speak some words on some topic, and all humans will automatically absorb the words, retain them, correctly make all relevant logical deductions from these words, retain all of this for the next several decades, and no particular effort need to be put into the specific words used and no examination of the audience need be done because humans do all of this automatically for you, 100% reliably.
I do not know where we get this idea. Literally everyone knows from years of personal experience that it is false. I can hardly think of a claim that each and every one of us has had more thoroughly debunked, in the strongest possible manner.
Yet virtually all of us act as if it is true, and indeed, there's even a contingent of people who will attack you if you claim it isn't true.
Lectures can work if you do as described. There's some other ways to make them work too. But there's an awful lot of just standing in front of a bunch of people, flashing some slides, and reading them off, and then, I guess, expecting some sort of miracle to occur because they darned well ought to know what the result of that approach will be from personal experience.
I do not know where we get this idea. Literally everyone knows from years of personal experience that it is false. I can hardly think of a claim that each and every one of us has had more thoroughly debunked, in the strongest possible manner.
Yet virtually all of us act as if it is true, and indeed, there's even a contingent of people who will attack you if you claim it isn't true.
Lectures can work if you do as described. There's some other ways to make them work too. But there's an awful lot of just standing in front of a bunch of people, flashing some slides, and reading them off, and then, I guess, expecting some sort of miracle to occur because they darned well ought to know what the result of that approach will be from personal experience.