> Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them.

This really resonates with me. I love math now, but absolutely loathed it in high school. The curriculum lacked any sort of way to apply math to real problems. I simply cannot learn things in the abstract like that. It's like learning a programming language without ever building a program.

Same. I stopped "caring" about math when we started to learn polynomials. Binomials..ok. Trinomials...ok. But then it just became repetitive when the class was just adding more terms to the functions that over the semester I ended up spending most of the class daydreaming.

Man, you just triggered me. This was also me in school.

I even have a huge interest in history, but I remember my first history exam on World War 1. I was ready to answer questions on its causes, the people, how industrial war changed the nature of fighting, the new countries that formed after the war... First Question: What was the date the Serbian nationalist Gavrillo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Second Question: What was the dates each country declared war...

It also took me years to actually sit down and read JRR Tolkien as we read the Hobbit as a class book in grade 8. First question for the test: List the names of the 13 dwarves that attended the party at Bilbo's house (1 point each for a test out of 30 IIRC).

If you guys were so smart, then how come you didn't simply memorize the words in a book? Regardless of any excuse like "They're not memorable or exciting."

Whatever happened to discipline and simple obligation? Or are we defining things based on how we feel instead of what is objectively true and out there right in front of our faces?

Discipline and obligation refer to things that materially matter to the people around us, and to society - not rote memorization of pointless facts.

And intelligence is just as much about identifying and applying effort towards useful goals - your "if you're so smart" is anything but.

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I think that's a poor way of framing it.

If the work is genuinely worthwhile, and the people who do it are respected, there will be people to do it.

Teaching people to suffer through work without any apparent reason - that's something capitalist society wants, not liberal democracy.

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Please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42807938

Holy crap - I have read the Hobbit many times (and LoTR a few less) and I would never have taken the time to commit 13-character names to memory - most of them simply were not that memorable.

The rhyming sets are a bit of a crutch, at least (Fili + Kili, Óin + Glóin, Bifur + Bofur + Bombur, etc). But you're right - most of the dwarves are individually forgettable. Only two are substantially characterized - Thorin the leader, and Bombur the comically fat.

Heh - exactly - the only truly easy character name that has always stuck in my mind was from "Snow Crash", I mean - who can forget "Hiro Protagonist"...?

You hit it right on the head, I think.

Even at my own university, I struggle to maintain a 3.0 GPA while at the same time actively tutoring students for the very courses I'm failing.

The issue isn't knowledge or competency, it's a mix of work ethic and tolerance for menial busywork.

I think some of us just aren't made for the academia grind...

It's true, and okay, that the academia grind is only for a subset of us. It is not the only meaningful path! I went on to gradschool by rote, and I do not push it on my high-school students or anyone else. It took me about 40 years to find a sense of purpose (having a child was the catalyst). Sadly, the push for STEM seems motivated by capitalists wanting further control of valuable labor, so I'm really chuffed by Bryan's Show HN post- even though open-source can be leveraged by capital, it doesn't have to be. It is a non-walled-garden model, and an example of what we can do collectively. Even if the Linux kernel is largely funded by corporations, it doesn't have to be.

A concern is that a laptop is still not something my community can make with the local resources, and thus the exploitation of land, labor, and money continues.

What would a fair-trade laptop cost?