I often think of this as "it's hard to tell people the solution to a problem they don't have", or don't know they have.
I think it's one of the major problems in the entire structure of the educational system... it's all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet. Sometimes this is just unavoidable; I'm not sure how to turn geography into a problem you have. (I mean, you can fake it, but people's brains know when it's a fake problem.) But a lot of times in math and science I think we'd be much better off leading off with the problems, and giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers, because then the answers would stick.
I've mentioned on HN before the git training curriculum I have made for my workplace... it's an interactive tutorial, and rather than just walking you through solutions, it's really more a guided tour of the problems that every git user encounters, then the solutions. We do merge conflicts, detached head (easy for git experts to forget how confusing that state is!), getting confused about why the things I used "git add" on now doesn't show diffs, etc. It seems to work reasonably well.
> "it's hard to tell people the solution to a problem they don't have"
It's my main complaint with how maths and physics were taught in school. I didn't understand electricity, trigonometry, integrals etc until long after school when I started tinkering with microcontrollers and robots, and had to solve real-world problems. Then, suddenly all those concepts sprung into life and got real meaning with clear and observable effects.
The only standout was my biology teacher, a former agronomist at a major food producer (rare to encounter someone with real experience), who made us do all sorts of practical things. I particularly remember a display of sugar in drinks that we put together: each of us had to bring a bottle, and he gave us glasses and made us fill them with sugar to match the content written on the food label. That was the day I stopped drinking juice.
Most of my engineering degree felt like that. I especially remember control systems classes where we learned all kinds of details of how to run the math to place poles and zeros blah blah, sometimes even with some incredibly simplistic example of launching a rocket and controlling its trajectory or something, but... you just never felt like you had any idea how/when/why you would use this stuff in a real work environment. (And once I graduated I discovered that almost no one does; at best they're using basic PID controllers. I doubt even the professors could have given real life examples of the more complex stuff in use.)
Yes, that's correct, thanks for finding it fast! I have obviously constucted the youtu.be link incorrectly: there should have been "?" instead of "&" in the link. The correct short form should be
I agree with this. I was always a bit of a science nerd, even in primary school. But was just never any good at maths, ending up in the bottom stream in intermediate. It wasn't till part way through that that I started self-teaching myself programming (I had a 40 minute wait for the school bus, and a teacher who gave me an Apple II programming manual along with a BASIC disk, so a good start) that all of a sudden this maths had a place in my brain to go, made sense, and all of a sudden I was getting 90%+ in tests.
These days I can read a bunch of docs and make a start at something, but I still really like having a problem to solve in order to synthesise the information into understanding.
> I often think of this as "it's hard to tell people the solution to a problem they don't have", or don't know they have.
This may be way off in another field, but this is actually frustrating to me as a father in another way: when we watch shows or read books with our child so many of the stories are so far detached from reality as to make me ask, "Why are we asking kids to care about this?" I have particular ire for Disney's penchant to make kids think they need to be groomed for life in royal society when they have effectively a 0% chance of ever needing to learn those life skills in that context. I much more appreciate shows that explore how people need to learn to interact with their peers at home, in public, at school etc. I know it's tempting to also want to kind of detach the concept from actual people with animals and such, but my daughter is not an elephant or a car, she doesn't possess a magical amulet or the ability to fly or to submerge the whole state in sub-zero arctic winter. I know it's fun to dream and imagine, but I wonder sometimes if we're communicating: "the world around is impossibly complex and you need superhuman ability to solve it. You don't have those and so you're ill-equipped to do anything about it." Some days, that may be true, but I appreciate stories that emphasize we have a reasonable degree of power within our own human faculties and learning to leverage and use those faculties is far more effective than showing kids flashy superpowers or magical worlds they won't have or see. All this, from a guy who spent numerous of his childhood days imagining himself as Mega Man absorbing everyone else's superpowers, engrossed in Star Wars and TMNT. Shrug
I disagree. I think stories like this are important. They teach you to take a hypothetical scenario seriously. It teaches people to ask "what if X were true?" and to seriously consider the ramifications. This is a springboard into abstract thinking. Without people taking the hypothetical seriously they will want to deal with concrete things and will have trouble with abstract reasoning.
Imagine you were trying to have a discussion about racism with someone. You would tell them "How would you feel if one day you woke up black and people were biased against you due to your skin color?" They would tell you that it's the dumbest thing they've ever heard. Who have you ever known that woke up with a different skin color?[0] For someone to take an argument like this seriously they have to be willing to engage in a hypothetical scenario. Waking up with a different skin color is as fantastical as the stories you're talking about. This means that they won't engage with your hypothetical scenario.
Nothing wrong with that, I don't think there's a fixed list of "Learnable things" attached to any piece of content. It's mostly about the interpretation.
So if a kid doesn't watch enough superhero/disney/scifi movies they won't understand racism...?
I agree that stoking kids' (and adults') imagination is useful and has benefits. But it sounds like you're claiming they literally won't be able to conceptualize anything outside of reality without them.
Why do you take this so literally? If you don't regularly run does that mean you're incapable of running? No, it doesn't. It means that you're not as good at running as you could be if you practiced more. The same applies to this.
If a kid is willing to take hypothetical scenarios seriously in a story I'd be willing to bet money they're more willing to take other hypotheticals seriously too. Moral reasoning tends to require hypothetical scenarios. If the other party isn't willing to engage in them then you can't make an argument based on them.
I'm simply saying that these stories help you take what if scenarios more seriously.
> So if a kid doesn't watch enough superhero/disney/scifi movies they won't understand racism...?
There is quite a massive distance between "You can take some lessons about racism from this content" and "If you do not consume this particular content you will not understand racism."
To add to your complaints, so many narratives designed for kids have such a clear delineation between the good side and the bad side. I'm not sure it's great for kids to be so steeped in the belief that the good and the bad are always and immediately obvious.
Another qualm I have, similar to yours, is the number of kids' shows that focus on "problem-solving" but then have the solution be some sort of magic item they very recently acquired, instead of needing to choose a solution from among several non-obvious solutions. Naturally, it's hard for very young children to follow anything very complicated, but it seems like at the very least, they could not opt for magic when it's entirely unnecessary (if they're trying to teach problem-solving).
I think I saw an essay linked on HN once about how many popular kids' shows have fascist worldview (examples were Thomas the Tank Engine and Paw Patrol) Now before you roll your eyes, these shows have nothing to do with murdering the "wrong kind" of people or destroying democracy, but it had a point: there is a fixed world order, the moral of the story is that of you disobey authority or move out of your role, bad things will happen.
Kids also lap this up. They are be in a phase where they need a sense or order in a chaotic world. It's a developmental phase. At some point when they grow up some great books, movies or games will hopefully provide disruption.
> I think I saw an essay linked on HN once about how many popular kids' shows have fascist worldview (examples were Thomas the Tank Engine and Paw Patrol)
Neither of those have even vaguely fascist worldviews. Particularly, non features the militarism or ultranationalism or xenophobia associated with fascism.
TTE arguably is problematic in other ways stemming from the fact that the bulk of the major characters are, in fact, items of property—technically state property though in the presentation of the narrative of the show they are virtually indistinguishable from personal chattels of the Fat Controller (Sir Topham Hatt in the US versions) or the Thin Controller (Mr. Percival in the US), including a number of them being threatened with imminent destruction for not being “really useful”.
> there is a fixed world order, the moral of the story is that of you disobey authority or move out of your role, bad things will happen.
That's not at all particular to fascism, it's the dominant rule of most historical societies and of most morality stories directed at children, including most fairy tales which long predate the development of fascism.
It's also not really a fair criticism of Paw Patrol, though it certainly is of at least much of TTE.
I really enjoy the australian cartoon Bluey, and think it generally does a good job demoing "practical" childhood skills. And parenting skills, for that matter.
> I have particular ire for Disney's penchant to make kids think they need to be groomed for life in royal society
Er, none of Disney’s films—well, at least not the princess ones, there might be something I'm unaware of elsewhere in the body of Disney-branded (and even more likely in the broader Disney-owned) catalog—has anything to do with grooming children for life in royal society. They are largely adaptations of fairy tales that use stories of royals specifically because they are interestingly exotic to communicate lessons of quotidian life aimed directly at children of more common means (often the adaptation changes the intended message to something modern and empowering from the original message which is often something like “don’t stray from the course society has set for you on pain of death”.)
Similarly, almost all the YA novels involve a transformation from ordinary mortal, perhaps even social outcast, to someone who has superpowers and/or is the special chosen one (and the story is the journey to overcome challenges and believe in yourself). They go way past "everyone is special" into "you're a failure if you don't change the world".
Here I am, over 50 and I'm still waiting for my superpowers to kick in...unless it's the power of mostly being adequate, and occasionally useful and creative.
1) It’s boilerplate hero’s journey and that shit works. It’s a tale as old as tales.
2) Looking for agency and power over your life is a theme adolescents connect with easily.
3) Harry Potter was a bonanza. That explains the recent spate of copycats, but the actual format way predates it. I don’t know about you, but I grew up buying Spider Man comics from the rack at the bodega. It’s the same thing.
It also certainly isn’t limited to YA media, and is probably more pernicious when it’s aimed at adults who should theoretically know better. The Matrix is a prime example, but there are plenty more where that came from.
Well, superpowers are quite boring if everyone around has them as well. For example, Harry Potters wand is not that impressive compared to a smartphone.
I really enjoyed watching episodes of The Busy World of Richard Scarry with my small children. The characters are all animals, but the kids in the show solve most of their own problems and defer to adults for appropriately serious matters. They still do whimsical things like going to outer space or back in time in one of Mr. Fix-it's contraptions, but the solutions to their problems are not magical. I found any programming I selected had to have some amount of whimsy in order to retain my kid's focus. The Magic Schoolbus was another good one. Both of these shows seem to have modern sequels now, but they don't appear to be as charming as the originals.
Have you found any good counterexamples? We let our three-year-old watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and I love it because it is exactly this: short (~10 minute) stories about situations and conflicts that a young child will encounter in everyday life. I’d be really interested to hear of other good shows & books like this.
I don't know how "real life" it is, but Sarah and Duck [1] is about the best young kids show we've come across. It used to be on Netflix, but they took it off. We've bought all 9? seasons on Amazon by now though. It's a great show of just of just completely mundane things with a bit of imagination tossed in.
Pingu is also very good. If you haven't seen it, it's a Claymation penguin and his family. He's not a goody goody--on the one hand is just funny, but on the other hand it gets to explore his kid-life and kid-choices. TH other fun thing is, they all speak a language made up by the Italian opera singer that voices them.
I really, really prefer the original Mr. Rogers to Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. The latter feels like it abandoned the pacing that made Mr Rogers so calming and effective.
If I remember correctly, babies learn to distinguish vowels from consonants from near birth when adults speak to them in that annoying high pitched "coochy coochy coo" dialect. After 6-12 months of life this starts to hold them back as they need to transition to hearing normal sounds and seeing the people mouthing them. The puppets with hinge-flap mouths, exaggerated and insanely high pitched accents in Sesame Street are ridiculous. I would strongly discourage letting your little ones watch this show.
Also Sesame Street is very New York. The rest of the world doesn't live like this. I recommend local kids TV shows with real humons performing. Some short cartoons are fun, many of them are terrible, but the sum total of TV is dose dependent. Turning it off straight after their favorite show might result in a little argument but you'll be pleasantly surprised when 5 minutes later you catch them doing something (anything) else. Usually something creative, social, and developing fine motor skills, if not simply running around outside. And subsequently you'll find them turning it off themselves.
Many countries had local versions of Sesame Street. I watched the spanish one when I was a kid and felt totally identified with the people and scenarios there.
Neither all the characters had high pitched voices (just rewatched a bit to confirm my memory :)
I remember some Christmas special that (contrary to my country's version) had all these different characters, black and Asian kids, Big Bird and the story took place in this extremely urban setting of NY. This was in the late 80s or early 90s and I still remember how big of a difference this was for me.
I haven't been a kid in...too long, but I have a decent recollection of Sesame Street, and I don't recall an excess of high pitched voices.
Elmo and several of the girl muppets are pretty shrill, but Oscar, Grover, Big Bird, and all the humans are normal. Kermit, Bert and Ernie have that rounded "muppet voice" which is kinda in between.
Screen time isn't great but Sesame Street is hands-down among the best childrens' television in existence.
At the age when kids watch Sesame Street, they understand spoken language well and there it is ridiculous to worry about their ability to learn language.
Also, even kids that are hold back due to in high pitched accents are hold back little bit for like two months maximum, so it completely absurd to worry about any of that.
I think mythology is an important metaphorical tool, but I'm inclined to agree with you. Disney movies are engineered to sell, usually by indulging kids' fantasies. One of the big numbers in The Little Mermaid is literally, "I have so many toys, and now I'm in love." It's kid-crack. Kids like candy.
I like Mulan though, and The Lion King. I think those are some very cool movies with very good life lessons.
Mulan is great! The Lion King though, The evil dark skinned lion and his dark skinned underlings with immigrant accents take over and the world goes to shit. Only the light colored royal lineage can be in charge if you want a nice world.
Ehh, that reads like shoehorning in a political agenda to me. The hyenas aren't dangerous because they're foreign, they're foreign because they're dangerous. Their actions make them a threat - they're sneaky, mean and evil. That's why the lions don't accept them.
Timone is also foreign.
But like, if you want a parable they already gave you one: they aren't immigrants, they're Nazis.
They’re only dangerous because they’re excluded from the kingdom and are given little chance to survive. The entire narrative of Scar having control over them is based on him providing them with food, because their lands contain none. In the scene where they’re introduced, Scar brings them meat and his entire promise to them is “stick with me and you’ll never go hungry again”
Scar is evil and seeking power, but the hyenas are only following him because they’re looking for a better life, because what they have at the start is meagre.
At the end, when they turn on Scar, the threat seems to end, so it seems that only Scar has an agenda and the hyenas just want to live their lives. With Scar remover, the lands return to normal despite the hyenas still existing (although we’re not shown what happened to them, iirc).
Sure, they’re ruthless, but that’s at least somewhat understandable given their situation.
I don't think this is accurate. The hyenas are fundamentally sadistic and difficult to satiate. That's why they're poor - it's what got them banished. They make them hyenas to reinforce it's not brought on by the situation, they're just like that. You run the risk of a racial analogy whenever you use species to articulate personality but i don't think it's intended, even subconsciously.
I think it's actually a very deep analogy to real fascist regimes. Recruit the type of poor who beat people up in bars via rhetoric that implies the rich are responsible for both their situation, and that behaviour. One implication is that the rich are the only ones who are exploitative, and the leader of the revolution in particular is not. "When we win, I will be good to you." Then you end up with a dictator.
At a meta-level the point is that the hyenas are the type of people who are insatiable, which is why they're persuaded by empty promises of power and why everything turns to wasteland once they're in charge.
But even then, conflict is a fact of life. If the hyenas hate you, allowing them to take charge will suck for you, even if it's nice for them. It's not a nice point but IMO it's an important life lesson.
> The hyenas are fundamentally sadistic and difficult to satiate. That's why they're poor - it's what got them banished.
Based on what? I’m only basing what I said on the original movie as I never saw any other content. I see the lions portraying them that way, but I see no obvious reasons to believe it’s true from the content of the movie. Maybe I’m misremembering, it’s been a while, but from what I remember they were a bit extreme but that just seemed like desperation.
> They make them hyenas to reinforce it's not brought on by the situation, they're just like that.
Except real Hyenas aren’t just like that which is why the movie got criticised by hyena conservationists.
I haven't seen the movie since I was a kid, but don't the hyenas live among the bones of elephants? That gives me the impression of insatiability. They gorged themselves on elephants yet they're still hungry.
Or maybe they were driven out of the fertile food-rich lands by the lions? Why is it presumed that they must be evil, their motivations were only ever shown to be that they were hungry.
You might like My Little Pony. It is with animals, but it is a lot about how relationships really work.
I am with you on superheroes. They do nice power fantasy, but lack actual tension, because main hero is unrealistically over the top strong. Consequently, the mechanics of "how the world works" are also all wrong.
+1 on My Little Pony. Equestria Girls is great - characters can be irrational and selfish and mean, and friends have serious arguments and fallings-out, but their commitment to their mutual friendships works out in the end
Yeah, I agree. It seems to support the idea that you’re not good enough, pretty enough, etc. And then you go to Disneyland pay them to make you feel special after all the issues of self-worth they fueled with their shows.
> it's all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet
This is why I think really getting started on an activity is so important. Those imagined problems become real problems.
Traditional education tries to take a stab at this with “project based learning”. But the huge problem is actually trying to apply the skills you learned in a class will probably just show you how terrible the class is. So the projects get all twisted up or dropped.
I think this is very insightful. I hated higher level mathematics specifically because I couldn't see any use for it. Due to a variety of circumstances I ended up taking my math classes out of sequence with the physics and EE classes in my EE degree and as a result I'd get a concept introduced in math that had no apparent use, only to find out the next semester or year what you would use it for. Very frustrating at the time.
As I developed my 'self learning' style it became clear that I was way more successful (retained more knowledge with a better understanding) if I could "make up" some problems and then work them out with the thing I was trying to learn.
>>> I hated higher level mathematics specifically because I couldn't see any use for it.
That's why I loved it. But I think this is a dilemma of teaching any number of subjects: How to convey both the useful aspect and the intrinsically interesting aspect, for lack of a better term.
Why not? It's a stereotype for pure mathematicians to like what they do because it's not applied, even though - like all stereoptypes - it has to be taken with a grain of salt.
The thing is, once something is applied, it has to deal with all the complexity and uglyness of the real world. But if you stick to abstract ideas, you are only limited by your imagination and logic. The mundane aspects of an applied field can detract from the pure beauty of an abstract subject.
I am not saying that this is always true, and sometimes it is nice to see applications of some abstract concepts. But many people intentionally shy away from applications towards a more theoretical field.
My relationship with math had two sides. In college, I majored in math and physics, plus I was also learning electronics and programming on my own. So I was immersed in the uses of math.
But you kind of get to a point after a couple years or so where you've learned enough math to handle the physics coursework -- including being able to pick up new math topics quickly as needed. And that's also the point, like 3rd year, where math really begins to come alive as an end unto itself. I loved the abstract stuff and the beauty of proofs, and it was as much of an escape from reality as a way to engage with it.
Abstract math is a good proxy for how human mind works and deduces and reasons about complex topics. I can understand if you do not see beauty in that, but stretching that to "you liked it because it had no use" is inappropriate.
Edit: I imagine you were just tongue in cheek, though.
While you could construe the negation to be what you propose, it's not uncommon to read it as "not having to have a use in mind".
Yeah, me too! It also opens up the question about how we adapt the curriculum to every individual student? Or at least select for more likeness in interests so the lectures would be more suited (though of course, majority of uni professors would feel it's either "my way or the highway").
The part I hated about maths was all the memorization required ;)
I think it's one of the major problems in the entire structure of the educational system... it's all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet. Sometimes this is just unavoidable; I'm not sure how to turn geography into a problem you have. (I mean, you can fake it, but people's brains know when it's a fake problem.) But a lot of times in math and science I think we'd be much better off leading off with the problems, and giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers, because then the answers would stick.
This is known in educational psychology as 'generation' and is considered an effective strategy for learning.
> "But a lot of times in math and science I think we'd be much better off leading off with the problems, and giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers, because then the answers would stick."
i usually make this point this way: we're all experiential learners. experience is evolutionary pressure at work and is therefore the most reliable teacher. learning other ways relies heaviliy on our ability to simulate, be present in, and empathize with the problem, which is a larger ask of the learner, and why it's less successful (but not unsuccessful, as we have the capability).
Yeah definitely. Get the kids to plan a trip around south east asia. What do you pack, what languages do you need to learn learn, what customs should you be aware of? How much would you need to save to be able to afford the trip?
By the end of that they'll know where Laos is, you don't need to rote memorize that fact for an exam. It's a fake problem, but also a fun one, with learning being the side effect.
> it's all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet
I think this applies more so to adults who've had their childhood curiosity crushed.
Children are naturally curious. The problem with the educational system is that we want to apply the same lowest common denominator formula to most kids in most schools.
If you let kids do a little bit of what they actually want, you'd have chaos with a ratio of 20-30 kids to a single adult. That's what makes school suck - the only way to make school work is to crush children's natural urges and make them sit and be quiet.
This works well for producing obedient workers to send off to spend their life in factories.
Yuck, we don't even need that many factory workers anymore, so now we're sending everyone to do more schooling, to work in paper-pushing factories called corporate America. It's all quite unfortunate.
This comes with the assumption that everything worthwhile to learn is interesting.
Having boring stuff to learn has its own merits. If everything is fun to learn, how do people learn to learn? Or rather: How do they learn to find the interesting angle in a boring problem?
Everything worthwhile to learn is interesting, more specifically, if you identify what makes you worthwhile to you to learn, that also makes it interesting.
> I'm not sure how to turn geography into a problem you have
An old office mate once quipped that: "Ham radio is just a conspiracy on the part of the world's geography teachers to make their subject interesting."
"[Education is] all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet" — I experienced this exact thing very acutely in college.
In the first year of my EE degree, I had to jump back a quarter in math to relearn some concepts I just hadn't grasped in high school. This complicated the rigorous schedule laid out for the first two years, as it meant I was no longer taking the prerequisite math classes the quarter before the required EE classes — instead I was taking them concurrently.
Despite the troubles I had with the college of engineer's registration process (I wasn't following their rules), taking the classes concurrently with the EE courses that actually applied that knowledge (for example, taking Electricity and Magnetism at the same time as 3D calculus) was a completely different educational experience! Maybe I was lucky in that the classes were paced similarly, but learning theory in math class and then going the next day to a practical application of that knowledge was an amazing experience.
In my senior year, I worked with the professor I was doing research under to give feedback to the engineering and math departments about my experience, but sadly I don't think anything ever came of it. It's really too bad too — it's a pretty small change to make in the scheduling and I think it would help the people who are more practically minded vs. theoretically minded (builders vs. thinkers). My education was much more tailored to the latter, despite me being squarely the former.
> giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers, because then the answers would stick
Well said :- )
How do I create a computer game with monsters and a hero? By learning how to program. Ok so I need to learn how to program
Leading off with the problem, caused years of intensive studies, in my case (long ago). But if instead starting with for loops and if statements, I'd think that would have seemed boring.
The example of git has another aspect to it - teamwork. If you are working on your lonesome then you really can have just the one branch and use git for backup purposes. You get a nice record of your work and you can roll back files to before the stage when you broke them. The rest of git beyond that seems a bit complicated, perhaps something that a genius linux developer might need but not necessary for your simple presence on the web. Heck, tarballs seem better suited to the task in hand and git really does seem to be solving a problem you think you don't have.
However, if you are working in a team with live code that needs to be updated in a formal way then the rest of git makes sense. It no longer seems to be theoretical mumbo jumbo, you have to learn this stuff to get work done and to stay on the team. At that stage you have someone such as a team lead who is able to actually teach you. It does relate to the project in hand and is not just some textbook example. You become a convert and git is solving problems you do have.
There is a slight chicken and egg with this though as you need to be able to use git to be in the team but learning it properly needs the team environment. It is like learning to play cricket all by yourself.
Maths is not something that the real world provides great examples for. Personally I get excited if I have to use basic trigonometry for work. If I have to use something like simultaneous equations I am ecstatic about it. Yet in maths education this real world 'advanced stuff' is just beginner grade. It doesn't even get a mention in the two inch thick maths textbooks from my undergraduate degree. The two inch thick maths textbook is utterly devoid of a single real world application, it is just symbols all the way.
If I was to make a TV series then it would be on the history of mathematics. In the day job I once used a formula that some Persian guy worked out 2500 years ago. I can't remember the specifics but I had a great feeling of standing on the shoulders of giants. This Persian guy didn't have a calculator, a computer, a biro, paper as we know it, the internet to quickly find answers or even the number zero. Yet his maths was neater than every example on Stack Overflow I found to help me with what I needed. So what was the problem he had to solve to come up with brilliant maths? How can we use his maths to solve problems in today's world? As soon as you start looking at maths with some incredible history telling the story it comes alive and is interesting. Importantly in this way of learning maths the actual formulas can be looked up rather than learned by rote. It is the application that matters rather than the abstract.
Trouble is, it's hard to get a class of 30 kids interested in the same problems at the same time for exactly as long as the mass-production curriculum allows.
Agree. I'm against the cohort system. It was at best an accident of history that it was the best we could do; it shouldn't be considered a virtue and we should be moving away from it as rapidly as we can.
> leading off with the problems, and giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers
Sounds good, but how do you get them to grapple? You only turned "tell people the solution to a problem they don't have" to "tell people of a problem they don't have". I don't see how this (alone) will make a difference.
You can tell people a problem that they would realistically run into in the near future. Built it up in a way that they can actually see they having trouble due to the problem.
To flip that around, if you cannot make them grapple with the problem, you’re not actually teaching them. You could coerce/persuade them to follow the process and hope they get it soon enough, but you might likely be flushing all that effort down the toilet, from a long term perspective (if they don’t grapple with the problem soon enough before they forget about the process). For the really important few processes, you could try to encode them into rituals.
That's too powerful an objection; you haven't proved that I'm wrong, you've proved education in general is impossible for certain people who take certain attitudes towards it, if they refuse to engage at all.
I'm going to surprise you and just agree. Some problems don't have solutions. That doesn't mean that the people who are willing to engage and will grapple with the problem won't find my way a lot more effective.
In my experience pushy parenting works. Kids tend to come out of it kinda awkward but broadly academically successful and morally upstanding. No way in hell I'd do that to my kid, but it's not a strategy doomed to failure.
In education this is called “project based learning”. It can be difficult without a budget and often requires buy-in from administrators, but is definitely a thing.
I think it's one of the major problems in the entire structure of the educational system... it's all telling people solutions to problems they don't have yet. Sometimes this is just unavoidable; I'm not sure how to turn geography into a problem you have. (I mean, you can fake it, but people's brains know when it's a fake problem.) But a lot of times in math and science I think we'd be much better off leading off with the problems, and giving the students time to grapple with the problems without the answers, because then the answers would stick.
I've mentioned on HN before the git training curriculum I have made for my workplace... it's an interactive tutorial, and rather than just walking you through solutions, it's really more a guided tour of the problems that every git user encounters, then the solutions. We do merge conflicts, detached head (easy for git experts to forget how confusing that state is!), getting confused about why the things I used "git add" on now doesn't show diffs, etc. It seems to work reasonably well.