とんがり帽子のアトリエ

Theres also Richeh's former teacher too immediately discarding her magic circles instead of teaching and guiding her to improvement. That was not great teaching, but it is also something extremely common in our world. Many teachers will fail you a question if you do not give them the textbook answer they wanted. Which makes many students to just memorize text and not bother to really comprehend the subject.

That's not always a bad thing per se. Certain subjects that rely on understanding a certain type of logic will build upon that logic as the subject gets more complex. Specially in maths. Even if a student can use their own method to reach the answer at the start, it might not translate as well down the line, hence the need to teach them the standard methods of reasoning. Richeh's first teacher just sucks though and went about it in a completely unreasonable manner. Qifrey at least understands that Richeh needs more perspective and experience if she wants to avoid future slumps in her spell casting.

Sure, some specific subjects like math or some fields of medicine are good with tests that require very specific textbooks answers. That is fine. The problem is when schools and universities apply the same teaching methodology almost universally, reaching even fields like philosophy. There are many fields that greatly benefit from developing the critical thinking skills and having the student build a deeper understanding of the topic and having a teacher expect a single correct answer is not the way to go if that is your goal. And I think that is the problem with Richech's original teacher. Magic is not math or physics, it is instead clearly a field that invites you to experiment and be creative once you have a basic understanding of the components and what is taboo.

In this series, magic is very much akin to math or physics. It's a magic system that follows well-defined and logical rules, more so than a lot of the so-called "science" in most popular sci-fi. But the thing is, learning by rote memorization and only ever giving textbook answers is a terrible way to teach and learn math if you go beyond basic arithmetic. A lot of problems can be approached by more than one method and there've been times when discarding previous assumptions led to new developments and a much deeper understanding. The Cult of Pythagoras believed that numbers underpinned reality, that all numbers could be expressed as a ratio of two integers. But there's an apocryphal story that someone found a proof that the square root of two is irrational, and they were so incensed by it that they put him on a boat, went out to sea, and returned without him. Math and physics and medicine can get very complex very quickly. There is still much to be discovered in those fields but no progress will be made if people only stick to textbook answers. Especially the textbook answers that would be taught to people around the same age as Coco and co. Those textbooks are very simplified versions of what we know (and we know that what we know is incomplete), the proverbial spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum.

I’d say it’s closer to engineering: sure, every piece of the spell/magic can be defined in what they do, but there is not one exact way how to do something. Like, say you need to mow your lawn, you could have mowers powered by different sources (gas, battery, wired) and then you have riding and push mowers, or even manually cutting every single blade of grass with a pair of scissors if you were so inclined and had a ton of free time on your hands. This test, and the world in general, is more of a “cut the grass” problem than a “make a gas powered push mowers” problem. There is, more or less, only one right answer for the latter, while there’s multiple different solutions to the former, as long as it works. Sure, may be inefficient at times, but so what?

Magic is not math or physics, it is instead clearly a field that invites you to experiment and be creative once you have a basic understanding of the components and what is taboo. But the basics are often a much wider field than one (as a student) can comprehend, even if one is a know it all. Let's take an example like the arts. "Anime style" work is usually not encouraged in art schools (sometimes it's even forbidden), especially early on because if you start with that you'd start with abstraction/stylisation before you know enough fundamentals to understand when and how to bend the rules so that your work can stand on its own. And if you stick with the stuff you know and love you tend to have a very difficult time growing because your foundational scaffolding is so weak. Sure there are some teachers who take this to militant heights and you get various flavours of gatekeeping. They don't explain why your fundamentals are important but the students who insist on only drawing "anime style" because that's what they want to draw as a job anyway also tend to plateau at a certain level of competence that's usually below professional level (and that with art school, in the US at least, being really expensive). One also has to feel for those teachers when they are flooded every semester with students who "already have their style (don't steal!)" and who are stubbornly unwilling to actually learn because they think drawing a few variations of something they already know how to do (to some small degree at least) is all there is to doing art. There's a reason why professional artists tend to keep practising the fundamentals all the time, even after decades into the job. There's always something to learn and improve upon. If you look at social media feeds of established illustrators, mangaka, and animators who work in, broadly speaking "anime style", then those still practice life drawing and not stylised proportions to get better at their craft instead of only drawing "anime style". And I'd not trust any teenager to actually know enough fundamentals to be just let loose and do their thing and start experimenting and ignore teaching methodologies, textbooks, and the fundamentals. It'd be one thing to be a renaissance artist's apprentice where you start at an atelier at a very young age so that they'd already have half a decade of practice behind them by the time they become a teenager but it doesn't work like that today. You can't (and shouldn't) get such a single minded education from such a young age. And I think that is the problem with Richech's original teacher. We don't know any details about that teacher's teaching methods, just that he was an asshole about Richech's spells. It might be that he's a really good teacher with students who trust him, fit his methods, or where there's not such a level of aversion between teacher and student. But he seemed to just not like those spells for some reason and went about showing it in the worst way possible instead of being an encouraging teacher and trying to guide her to learn and improve. While the teacher is in a position of power over their students and needs to be held to a higher standard than the students, sometimes students can also be just unwilling to learn/change which can be much more harmful to their progress than any bad teacher.

While the teacher is in a position of power over their students and needs to be held to a higher standard than the students, sometimes students can also be just unwilling to learn/change which can be much more harmful to their progress than any bad teacher. It's wild to me that everyone is completely ignoring this part. Richeh's core flaw is her unwillingness to accept direction or guidance from others. I bet $10 that Quifrey could straight up say "you should draw whatever spells you want", and she would shut down and draw nothing instead because "he told me to do it". The entire point of this arc is, presumably, for her to learn how this is hindering her and to eventually get over it. The former teacher may have been a dick, but he's not around right now. Her problems are currently self-inflicted.

Magic is not math or physics, it is instead clearly a field that invites you to experiment and be creative once you have a basic understanding of the components and what is taboo. Funny, you've pretty much described what math and physics actually is. Like sure, there are some "correct" facts like you can factor x 2 -2x +1 = (x -1) 2 but there's like a million "correct" methods you can use to factor that equation. Similarly, Newton's Laws are based on empirical observation and always hold true (in the classical regime) but there's a bunch of different ways to express and apply them, all of them leading to various different ways to represent reality, from position and momentum vectors to phase spaces and Hamiltonians and constraints. In a way magic is very similar, I think. There are fundamental facts that can't be changed, but there's plenty of wiggle room for creativity to flourish.

Counterpoint: During my college experience I nearly failed basics of programming because I didn't give textbook answers. My answers were technically correct, at that point I had been programming for 2 years already so the test was super easy... yet, because my answers didn't follow the college's stupid, unreasonable, and archaic rules they were "wrong". Example of some dumbass things we had to follow: declaring your variables all at the top of the program (the reason this is stupid is because... in order to do this, you'd need to have figured out the whole program before you've even begun writing! and yes, writing. We had to pen down our programs.) Hmm, I can't remember the rest of the B.S, it's been too long since then but yeah.

The reason for why the tests are made that way is actually very logical. There's a standard practice in the field. If you develop your own apps and programs and no one else is going to go through your code, it doesn't really matter. However, if you are working with a team of developers, it makes it easier for everyone if they all know how it's supposed to be structured and look like. Before AI, looking through someone's homecooked spaghetti vibe coding meant hours of unnecessary headaches. I will agree that the pen and paper part is very counterintuitive and impractical.

No, no, the programs we wrote were entirely contained within a single function, no classes, namespaces, etc. I'd understand if we had to declare class members, that is necessary after all but in this case it's arbitrary and pointless. The coding style of the programs we were given was pretty ugly, if I'm remembering right. Coding style wasn't even covered in the class, btw. You could name your variables in pascal case, snake case, camel case at the same time and the teachers wouldn't care. The main thing though is that the graders were too lazy to go through the code properly, instead they skimmed and compared your answers to the textbook answers. Ugh, now I'm remembering just how much I hated that damn place.

I remember one teacher failing a kid for coloring the 'wrong' half of a circle. He colored in the 'bottom half' instead of the 'side half,' which was how the teacher did it in all their examples. But since the kid wasn't directly copying what the teacher was doing, then the kid was clearly not 'learning' from the teacher. And that was the shit stain's excuse. It's about pride and control, not teaching. Do as I say, and no questions. There are far too many teachers like that.

Theres also Richeh's former teacher too immediately discarding her magic circles instead of teaching and guiding her to improvement. Was it just me, or did he look exactly like Kokrow? Different voice though Edit: Okay wait, tinfoil dunce cap theory time. Kokrow, Richeh's former teacher, and this Brimmed Hat are the same person. The fact that Richeh's teacher and Kukrow have different voices is meant to signal us that he uses voice mod spells.

I'll have to see them do a single good thing first before I believe they're anything but but. So far every action the brim-hats have taken has been a disaster that has negatively affected 1 or more of the characters. Giving coco a spellbook that includes a "stone your own mother" spell, sending 4 kids to get eaten by a dragon, giving Coco the atomic bomb of casting ink without telling her. I'm going to assume the brimmed hat on the cliff side is also probably here for no good.

I just learned that I have to add [Hogfather spoiler] before each spoiler section or it gets caught in automod's net. I just wanted to have nice flowing dialogue 😕 Repost: That's originally from Hogfather of the Discworld novels! That book has one of the best, concise talks/quotes/discussions about human values: [Hogfather spoiler] Note: Death talks in All Caps to show the inhuman chill of his voice [Hogfather spoiler] “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." [Hogfather spoiler] REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. [Hogfather spoiler] "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" [Hogfather spoiler] YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. [Hogfather spoiler] "So we can believe the big ones?" [Hogfather spoiler] YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. [Hogfather spoiler] "They're not the same at all!" [Hogfather spoiler] YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. [Hogfather spoiler] "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" [Hogfather spoiler] MY POINT EXACTLY.”

Seems like a side effect of the Pointed Caps society. Ironically like the Rononen (I cant remember their names) they've created a society based of exclusivity and learning "the right way". I won't be suprised if it becomes their downfall too And can I say that I cried when I saw Euini berate himself? I thought Kukrow was Richeh's former teacher too, but regardless I've been in that position where a teacher makes you feel useless because you don't want to do things their way/ they only seek perfection. I felt so bad for baby and so happy when he succeeded through aurafarming

Can’t imagine how bad Euini’s teacher is when his self-esteem is this low. According to Euini, Kukrow tells him "you can't do it, it's beyond you" every day . Even if that's an exaggeration – and I do NOT believe it is – that's not a good thing for a kid to say! And that's not going into how he clearly was Richeh's last teacher and was throwing away all of her spells to teach her "the right answers!" AWFUL teacher. Kukrow should straight up not be allowed to teach children. He should be banned from it entirely and have his last test nullified.

Just contrast the way Alaira looked him versus how Kukrow stared at him in the flashback. Alaira was staring at him intently with no judgement, just waiting to see what he could do without trying to pressure or force him into anything, but Kukrow got right up in his face with a look of disdain and derision like this was a waste of his time but he was going to put pressure on Euini to deliver anyways.