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Surprising Things About School

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Re: Surprising Things About School

#41

Post by edraferi »

kbutler wrote: post #35
austenallred wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here (shocked to see this on HN): The context is missing but is important. When I say MOOCs have failed I mean something very specific: asynchronous online learning has proven to be so dramatically less effective than synchronous, guided learning. Better than nothing existing, but we’re learning that only a small subset of people are able to effectively learn from them. In other words, take a random sample of 100…

How are you measuring the same level of motivation? From my anecdotal experience, the people taking the "live, guided course" have committed to: - synchronous attendance at a particular time, probably at a particular place - probably a dollar investment - face-to-face contact with instructor - near-traditional learning environment People taking a MOOC have committed to: - browsing on an electronic device There's gene…

I think the time commitment is the biggest issue. Let's assume the costs are the same to me (perhaps due to employer subsidy):

When I take a MOOC, I'm pledging at least 5 hours a week. That covers 2 hours of videos, 2 hours of homework and 1 hour of additional research / review.

If I pledge 5 hours /week to a traditional class, I don't get nearly as much learning. I have to commute to the class, which is at least 30 minutes each way. Now my 5 hours buys me 2 hours of class, 2 hours of commuting and 1 hour of homework. I've lost an hour of homework and an hour of research.

I know which one is better for me.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#42

Post by watwut »

peterwwillis wrote: post #33
watwut wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can help my children to learn sport and I can help them learn math. I can not help them learn subjects I have long forgotten or was never good at in the first place. I dont expect teachers to teach my kids sport, I do expect them to teach math and history. Not sure what is wrong with that.

I think what's wrong with that is assuming teachers even can teach your child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember. Parents seem to think teachers can do things they can't do. But they're not magicians. They're normal adults with textbooks. Many times they're not even experienced in the subjects they're teaching. Teachers have to teach 30 kids at a time, who all have different backgrounds and l…

> I think what's wrong with that is you assume that teachers even can teach your child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember.

Teachers taught me things my parents were not goot at and did not remembered. Right now, teachers are teaching my kids things I was never good at. A math teacher I know (friend) it teaching kids math they parents down know - right now. And I met kids, they do know that stuff.

So yes, teachers can teach kids what kids parents don't know.

In your attempt to defend teachers, you made them sound to be completely useless. Some are, but plenty of them are not.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#43

Post by austenallred »

kbutler wrote: post #35
austenallred wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here (shocked to see this on HN): The context is missing but is important. When I say MOOCs have failed I mean something very specific: asynchronous online learning has proven to be so dramatically less effective than synchronous, guided learning. Better than nothing existing, but we’re learning that only a small subset of people are able to effectively learn from them. In other words, take a random sample of 100…

How are you measuring the same level of motivation? From my anecdotal experience, the people taking the "live, guided course" have committed to: - synchronous attendance at a particular time, probably at a particular place - probably a dollar investment - face-to-face contact with instructor - near-traditional learning environment People taking a MOOC have committed to: - browsing on an electronic device There's gene…

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner.

Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking.

We can also take students that are struggling learning from our MOOCs and they finish the live course almost every time. I know the latter is unscientific, but it becomes obvious over time.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#44

Post by baursak »

cardamomo wrote: post #2

As a museum educator turned classroom teacher, this resonates with me. Readings that may be relevant to those who find this Twitter thread intriguing: - "On the Wildness of Children," on what kind of educational experiences we might imagine for our children if we consider what children are like first: http://carolblack.org/on-the-wildness-of-children/ - "Deschooling Society" (on my reading list): https://archive.org/…

You should also check out "Free to Learn" and "Free at Last" books, and Sudbury school model. As a parent, it's something I've been contemplating a lot, but haven't quite committed to yet.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#45

Post by bitwize »

rc-1140 wrote: post #38
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #15

"17. People rely mainly on their parents for advice on what to do about education, and that has to be among the worst places to go for educational advice" This one certainly hits me hard. With a mother who dropped out of university and a father who didn't go myself and my sister both have good degrees (she's a newly qualified Vet and I'm a startup's birth and death out of uni), and nowhere to get decent advice. I kno…

> Searching for relevant mentorship is a very very hard problem. I completely agree. As someone just reaching a bit over 3 years out of a bachelor's program, I had no one that I could talk to for a solid 20 years of my life about computers, let alone what I wanted to do. Like a bunch of people here, computers were my "thing" but no one around me seemed to take much interest in them. When it came time to go through th…

> I ended up railroaded onto a liberal arts education until I reached my community college, where I encountered people - not just professors - who knew that the magic hardware box could do other things besides send and receive email.

True story: When I was in college, a girl came to me with a question: If she put Borland C++ on her laptop, could she compile programs on it just as easily as on her desktop? I replied that I don't see why not.

Then she asked: "But isn't there a chip in my desktop that does the compiling? Does my laptop have one, too?"

This was a CS major. And an A student. At a technical university.

I feel your pain, man.

And yes, for undergrad education, community or even state college may be more suitable to your interests. A hard-learned lesson for me. The goal of Ivy League undergrad, it seems, is to mold you into a "certain kind of man". "Harvard men", for instance, look and behave a certain way, and know and say the right things. So that when the Harvard men at the helm of power see you, they recognize you as "one of their own" and "good people".

Some of us already have some idea what sort of person we are, and don't want to become anything else. The good news is, we can get all the education we need for pretty cheap, even in the USA. The bad news is, Google is looking for "Stanford men"...

(I should have replied, "Yes, it's called the CPU. And yes, every computer has one.")

Re: Surprising Things About School

#46

Post by dsr_ »

austenallred wrote: post #24
VLM wrote: post #16

The failure of MOOCs #10 is a failure of metric measurement. In the old days if you wanted to learn something, often you'd pay $20 to $50 for a book. For example, Amazon order search claims that somewhere I have a copy of "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming" by Norvig, which is supposed to be a decent book in the field, cool. Ironically maybe that IS the textbook for the famous AI MOOC class, I don't kn…

OP here (shocked to see this on HN): The context is missing but is important. When I say MOOCs have failed I mean something very specific: asynchronous online learning has proven to be so dramatically less effective than synchronous, guided learning. Better than nothing existing, but we’re learning that only a small subset of people are able to effectively learn from them. In other words, take a random sample of 100…

Major counterproof: The Open University.

Sounds like MOOCs need to learn from educational institutions that actually have a track record in distance learning.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#47

Post by maxerickson »

faitswulff wrote: post #37
austenallred wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was the reverse. Parents that grew up poor and saw college as the way out but didn’t understand dynamics beyond that, so it was, “Go to the best (most expensive) college you can, study anything at all, and you’ve got it made” which is either OK advice or terrible advice depending on what college that is and what you happen to study.

I got similar advice from my parents and followed it, somewhat bitterly. My dad regrets dropping out of college, but he also paid $400/semester for tuition, not $20,000 like I did. I feel like "any degree == $$$" was much more true in the 70s and 80s than it was when I graduated.

A much smaller fraction of the population earned a college degree 30-40 years ago so it was more of a differentiator.

It's still pretty clear that a (4 year) degree changes access to jobs, I guess it's less clear that it will matter for a given person.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#48

Post by mcherm »

bane wrote: post #14
triplesec wrote: post #3

Pullout: "We had one student on the edge of homelessness, was $400 short on bills and almost had to quit because of that. I personally loaned him the money, and his income moved from $10/hr to $70k+/yr. It only took $400, but he didn’t have anywhere to get that from. Insane."

I don't think it's that surprising. Anecdote: Right after I barely graduated from High School after my family clawed its way out of homelessness, I spent a few years working minimum wage jobs with long commutes in an old car. I could barely afford gas and groceries let alone decent housing and college. After about 3 years of work, I managed to scrape together just enough to enroll in my local community college for tw…

It is incredibly surprising.

You aren't surprised because you have experienced this. But any economist would look at this and say something like this:

> You claim that there are people where an investment of $400 would > quickly (within a couple of years) give them a salary increase in > the range of $20,000 to $50,000 per year. That is obviously untrue. > If it WERE true, then at lease ONE person in the country would have > spent $4,000 to seed a 10-person program which granted the $400 in > exchange for a promise to contribute $8,000 back in a couple of > years. A x20 replication factor would easily swamp administrative > costs and participants who refuse to pay afterward and the program > would still be growing exponentially.

I think the source of the fallacy is that while there ARE people for whom $400 is a difficult-to-surmount barrier beyond which no other major impediments stand between them and middle-class success, they are an impossible-to-find minority in a sea of people who are willing to ASK for $400 and those for whom $400 is a major impediment, but further impediments would prevent them from succeeding.

Alternately, we can look at the literally thousands of charities (including schools themselves) that offer merit-based and need-based scholarships, and conclude that the economist is partly right and the system DOES exist, but isn't meeting all of the need.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#49

Post by peterwwillis »

watwut wrote: post #42
peterwwillis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's wrong with that is assuming teachers even can teach your child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember. Parents seem to think teachers can do things they can't do. But they're not magicians. They're normal adults with textbooks. Many times they're not even experienced in the subjects they're teaching. Teachers have to teach 30 kids at a time, who all have different backgrounds and l…

> I think what's wrong with that is you assume that teachers even can teach your child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember. Teachers taught me things my parents were not goot at and did not remembered. Right now, teachers are teaching my kids things I was never good at. A math teacher I know (friend) it teaching kids math they parents down know - right now. And I met kids, they do know that st…

They're not useless, they just have a job which is far more difficult than people give them credit for. When some kids get bad grades, people point at the teacher, even though other kids are getting good grades. Or the same teacher teaching the same curriculum for 20 years will suddenly find their whole class failing - and they point at the teacher. But the teacher never changed.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#50

Post by fwdpropaganda »

carlmr wrote: post #13

I disagree with #6. I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste of time, but I need to jump through this hoop to get a job for which I didn't require much more knowledge than the programming knowledge I had after high school (self-taught). But then again I went to school in Europe with cheap tuition, so time is the biggest investment here.

"I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste of time" is a humblebrag.

There, I said it.

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