Anyways, it’s been about 15 years, but the thing that made an impression on me was that it wasn’t just one invention. Gutenberg basically had to assemble like two dozen separate innovations to make it all work.
The type alloy (3 metals!) had to be just soft enough to cast easily, just expandable enough to set well, just hard enough to last. How to cast in quantity and re-melt as needed. The ink had to be just runny enough to apply easily but not so runny it gets everywhere, sticky enough to stick to type, and dry at a good middle speed. The blotter to apply the ink to type. The system of wooden casing to hold the pieces together with the right spacing, that won’t fall apart. How to set up the casing. The screw press needed to have very even pressure. The paper needed to be able to slide and take ink properly without spreading but also not tear. Proper fonts and ligatures for the type. And so on…
IIRC most things stayed pretty similar for a few hundred years, mostly changing stuff like the paper feeding mechanism or tweaking ink application or minor variations in how the lever or screw work. So to be honest, Gutenberg did almost all the hard work himself. It was a big deal because a lot of these smaller inventions had to come together for a narrow purpose all at once (on top of the obvious huge historical effect of cheaper books!)
Really fond memories of my visit, you can tell when someone is passionate.
It was such a fun birthday. It was basically a conference, haha.
The trouble for Gutenberg was it was too easy to duplicate his press, and that combined with not being good at business led to his bankruptcy.
It's never been easier for you and interested kids to learn these things on their own.
Easier on its own is therefore effectively meaningless when people aren’t actually learning beyond the most superficial layers.
People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better.
Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical classroom, because as it is self directed, self paced, can use the best materials someone can find and a whole variety of them vs. whatever was assigned, etc., but it takes a lot of skill (which comes from past practice) and effort on the part of the learner. Many researchers/scholars are doing significant amounts of self-directed learning as their career, and can get very good at it with decades of practice.
The speed of learning in a classroom with 15+ students is inevitably unbelievably slow, and the time is used incredibly inefficiently. This isn't any particular problem with specific teachers, but as far as I can tell an inherent problem with aligning a bunch of people's preparation, motivation, and attention, and a problem with giving feedback in a 1:many setting. Teaching/learning speed generally seems worse at a primary school level vs. at a college level, given a very good teacher in both; I'm not sure if this is because of better prepared (because older) students, or just more motivated students.
I agree that school curricula is often bad. I disagree that we should just accept it as hopeless and not hope it could get better.
I didn't say anything is hopeless. It's just that adding more good and lofty ideas and topics to the curriculum isn't addressing the actual bottleneck.
At least the education system enforces some baseline level of standards