Reviews and Comments

Some stuff feels dated, most of it was pretty interesting. It's definitely a shame that he didn't get to develop his thoughts more.

Here's some of what I got out of the book:
- a sense that other computer people care about good things without being total techno-utopians
- a lot of Swartz's influences seem like they'd be good reading - sometimes it feels like his thoughts are not quite as well-developed as whatever inspired them, if that makes sense
- the idea/distinction between measuring one's legacy by what the world would have been like without one's existence. This biases against competing to do the same Big Thing that lots of other people are trying to do, and instead trying to change the world in a way that only you would have. Not sure how much I agree with this but it's an interesting way to think about things. (Not sure, even, if I want to have a Legacy.)

Finally finished this after a several year journey - I first picked this up after reading 'This is An Uprising' after Trump's election. Here are a few things that I, as someone who is not involved in community organizing, was able to take from this (and there would have been much more had I been an organizer!):

- the idea that the power of a leader or a system comes from the people & institutions within it, which I think is often referred to as the 'pillars of support' model
- the idea that nonviolent struggle is often helpful against dictators because dictators are really good at violent struggle, and the larger idea of "pick your battles"
- the importance of a positive strategy - aiming at a new order, instead of just toppling the old one - and then the guts and judgement to stick to it until it doesn't work anymore

There's a lot of more practical advice that I would find helpful if I was building a movement, but so far as I have been participating in activism it has largely been as a metaphorical foot soldier. I did think about some of these things while trying to effect change in my workplace but I found it difficult. Maybe I should have thought harder?

Pretty interesting book about Holt's experiences in the classroom. I really liked the notebook-esque format as well as the later commentary. As I was thinking about my own frustrations with work at the time, this seemed to also be a useful book about company management.

A few takeaways:
- "children fail because they are afraid, confused, and bored:" this seems like a pretty helpful framework, not only for thinking about the circumstances in which children disengage, but also for thinking about how adults lose motivation.
- the idea of "producers" vs. "thinkers." I see "producer" behavior frequently, even among adults, where people freeze up and stop thinking when they feel pressure to give the right answer. I do think that framing it as behaviors instead of character traits might be more helpful.
- John Holt's journey from "how can I make school work for these kids?" to "School sucks, kids need to learn in self-directed ways" is fascinating to follow.

An engaging collection of essays about, well, teaching and learning. Duckworth's writing is generally clear, and certainly thought-provoking. Here are some thoughts that were provoked:

- There are many skills involved in not knowing something, which are critical to learning and also tremendously undervalued by The System. This makes me think about how interviews at tech companies fall into this trap of caring more about what people know than about how people deal with not knowing.
- It's important to try to understand what the students are thinking; by doing this you help them clarify their own thinking and find new avenues of interest. Duckworth also mentions that this applies not only in a traditional classroom setting; obviously this would be helpful in a tutoring situation.
- Tied in to the above, it's very hard to make someone understand something your way by telling them. But if you can get them to think about their own understanding maybe that understanding will change. It's interesting to think about this in a situation where I disagree with someone's politics.