The Biggest Myth In Education

Veritasium · 15.5M views · 2021-07-09 · 14:27

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Veritasium debunks the idea of learning styles, such as being a visual learner, with an interview with Daniel Willingham and a memory experiment. It argues that a multimodal approach helps everyone.

On Hacker News

The standard link whenever someone claims to be a visual learner or learning styles come up, with sources listed in the description.

Recommended by 7 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2021–2024

Topics

Education & learning Psychology & human behavior Scientific method & science communication

What people said

travisgriggs · 2021-11 · Strong recommendation
I love Veritasium. Derek has done a number of videos that are awesome like this. The videos are great and educational, but he also manages to subtly weave in an almost spiritual subtext to them as well. For example, in this one, you learn about imaginary numbers in some cool ways, history, how awesome e^ix is, etc, but also this yen-yang balance between embracing not only what is real but taking a chance on what is imaginary. Some of my other favorites: - [VIDEO] - [LINK] - [LINK] - [LINK] - [LINK] I think he’s going to lose the $10,000 bet on the car though.
Read the original HN comment ↗

matt_j · 2024-03 · Recommendation
This is debunked to some extent. Veritasium made a good video about it. [VIDEO] Personally I find a multi-pronged approach is necessary to really learn anything. Read it. Read it again. Visual guides are helpful. Work some examples. Make some mistakes, debug them, find the corner cases, write tests. Eventually when I've poked around the material for a while it starts to bed in. Three months later it's forgotten, but when I learn it the next time I move a lot faster!
Read the original HN comment ↗

irajdeep · 2023-12 · Recommendation
you'll definitely find this video: [VIDEO] interesting. Here they discuss the (lack of)efficacy of "visual learning"
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks

SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources