41–50 of 241 posts
I like the US college system. In each track, you move along at the appropriate speed and levels.
College is not working - by the time kids graduate most of what they 'learned' in the classroom is outdated. College if anything is just a good place to gain 'social experiences'.
Its not, "How do we get better test performing students?"
Its, "How do we produce people who are at the top of their self-learning game?"
The general idea is that someone progresses from elementary school of directed learning to self-directed learning when finishing a University degree..
Some of us reach that stage when in fact we are in High School..
The education system is broken and has been for decades. The supporters of the system re-characterize criticism of the system into "attacks" on teachers (ie. union membership) and demand more money. The establishment "won" their side of the argument in many states -- states that richly compensated employees (the payscale in most NY school districts ends at $110k, plus 65% pension for life) and administrators (typical…
So I would propose to reframe the discussion. Because talking about money is silly. We know how much it costs to run a top tier school. The central question in my mind is whether we can develop new methods of education that are cheaper but achieve the same result.
I like the US college system. In each track, you move along at the appropriate speed and levels.
College is not working - by the time kids graduate most of what they 'learned' in the classroom is outdated. College if anything is just a good place to gain 'social experiences'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm probably the biggest libertarian you'd meet (that doesn't live in his or her mom's basement) and I feel like HN is pretty friendly to my thinking.
Maybe he means the guidelines: "off-topic: most articles about politics". Anything from Cato is going to be politics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?" Not at all. I would have to assume he is describing the current state of education as he sees it and not his direct experience with education from whenever he was previously in school. It is perfectly fine for him to say that, in his opinion, there are fewer good teachers today than there wer…
It's not perfectly fine without evidence, it's just unsupported rambling about how things are going to hell, in direct contradiction of what little anecdotal evidence he has, in order to prop up an ideologically favored argument.
And based on data I've seen for the past few years on the performance of our education system I would have to say he's more likely correct than you.
How did this article hit the front page? What is insightful or interesting about it? "This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as a monopoly." This is blatantly not true, in the US we do not operate education as a monopoly. There are plenty of private schools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?" Not at all. I would have to assume he is describing the current state of education as he sees it and not his direct experience with education from whenever he was previously in school. It is perfectly fine for him to say that, in his opinion, there are fewer good teachers today than there wer…
It's not perfectly fine without evidence, it's just unsupported rambling about how things are going to hell, in direct contradiction of what little anecdotal evidence he has, in order to prop up an ideologically favored argument.
Good teachers care enough about the students to sacrifice their own livelihood for the good of the student. At least, to a degree. Sometimes that means buying school supplies from their own pocketbook, and other times that means extra time spent on students who have different needs than the rest of the class, above or below.
And I'm not calling all the rest of the teachers 'bad'. The ones that do their job to their best of their ability, but don't sacrifice, are not bad. They're largely being ignore here.
It's only the teachers that do the bare minimum and only think as far as making teaching easier for themselves... Those are the bad ones. And the incentives currently favor them.
That said, I get sick of everyone piling on public school whenever something like this comes up. Public school is set to the following task: "take everyone, everywhere, all across the country, and bring them to the same level of proficiency across the board, with tightly limited funding and regardless of outside factors." Someone comes along and finds a tool that works on a teeny tiny cohort then climbs on their pedestal and declares their system better than public schools.
Personally, I think public schools are being set to an (almost?) impossible task. What the reviewer said in that article about "slow them down please" is obviously abhorrent, but the "They have a monopoly! They're monopolists!" chatter is silly, in my opinion. First of all they don't have a monopoly (for those who can afford it: private charter homeschooling etc.). Secondly, they are just trying to do their best to meet their goals with what they have. It's selfish, yes, but having students at more or less the same level of competency makes it easier for them to do the task to which they've been set.
When I was in school, the teacher would often say "Sequoia, that's a great question, but it's a bit advanced and I've got 30 other students here. I can't spend a lot of time answering advanced questions when half the class is struggling with basic concepts." That was annoying and I'm not going to send my kids to public school in part because of it, but I didn't rail against the teacher for being a selfish monopolist. S/he was just doing his/her best given the circumstances and requirements: often times public schools are doing the same.
EDIT: an article that informs my thinking here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-ch... Great article, whether you've seen Waiting for Superman (hit piece "documentary" about why public schools suck and charter schools are the answer) or not.