Le Baron wrote:Cainntear wrote:He seems to be working in the old sense of university education (hence lecture + group tutorial + office hours) but at the same time he's teaching you how to teach yourself, so he's basically eliminated the individualised assignment feedback side of things... which is where I often find myself "breaking the budget" in times of going far beyond my contracted hours (for no extra pay!)
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I'll draw a distinction between 'guru' and 'charlatan', because Arguelles is not a charlatan, but seems to have lost a sense of perspective.
Well, that background is what affords something a sense of authority. If I go to local public meetings and say things about economics people either listen or don't listen of are sceptical, whereas if I tell them I was previously teaching and researching it at the university (which shouldn't be the checkmate), they don't feel as confident challenging me (but they should if they have a fair critique).
Hmmm... not sure. It's more like you going to a discussion about economics and saying that you know more about
learning economics than anyone in the room, and that you'll teach them how to
teach themselves economics... without actually teaching them economics. like, without telling them the stuff that you know about economics.
I don't doubt he's an expert lecturer, but I do question whether he's an expert in
pedagogy. Would you be able to teach an economist to teach economics? Probably. But are you a world expert in it? That's why the "guru" tag really kicks in here -- Arguelles may be a good teacher, but does he know why that is? There are plenty of people who will tell others how to teach like them, and then have to face the reality that it just doesn't work. The guy that sticks in my mind most is the guy who proselytised "gamified university teaching" and after a few years he just had to console himself with the knowledge that he was a good teacher who didn't actually know what made him such.
And as I say, I haven't really seen any real evidence that he has ever been the type of lecturer that causes learning to happen rather than the type of lecturer that tells you what to learn then leaves you to muddle through because you're motivated to get a degree.
If his students were teaching themselves, that calls into question the value of his experience -- they learned because of themselves, not because of him, so what is he teaching?
And if the students were learning because he taught them, that also calls into question the value of his experience -- they learned because he taught them, so how does he know anything about getting folk to teach themselves?
Maybe the 'academy' is for all those who are superhumans or have nothing else in life to detract from language learning because it can't be for ordinary people. And all that stuff about "15 minutes a day" and running many languages simultaneously, well great. I can only say try it and see. if it suits you, hooray; if not it won't be astonishing as to why.
I suspect that this will be a shipwreck. The four languages suggests he's likely to get total amateurs and the cognitive load will be too high. I agree that he needs superhumans, but the problem will be that with no language learning history, there's no way of prescreening. In universities, bad teaching is often mitigated by the selection process meaning that people who have survived poor teaching in school are likely to be overrepresented in the intake.