61–70 of 241 posts
Really interesting, shocking quote from the original article, but the Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News, IMO. The original Wired piece is great, though.
I suppose it's a Cato blog post, but I was hoping for a more interesting discussion than just a random call for private education, with a market-will-solve it assertion. People learning at different paces and on their own is a fairly interesting problem highlighted here, but I think it's wishful thinking to claim that the perfect answer is already known. It's not entirely clear to me that private schools would cater…
Private schools do cater to a small percentage, not everybody in a neighborhood, but a small percentage to whom the school appeals. Just like any other kind of business.
Mercedes doesn't say "screw those snobs. We want the masses." Nope, they cater specifically to a very small set of buyers.
There's no reason to think there won't be brands of schools targeted at different kinds of students.
But we won't know until people can actually make choices without having to pay for education twice. Most people can't afford to pay the taxes required to support public schools and also pay for tuition. They shouldn't have to.
In old communist Yugoslavia, the government produced one car for all. Without any competition it captured 100% of the market. And it was a piece of crap.
Competition ended that stupidity and hopefully one day it will do the same for education.
http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html
Segregating pupils by age in school began in the English-speaking world (in Massachusetts) as an imitation of the Prussian schools of that time. It was strictly for administrative convenience. It is not at all a cultural or historical universal to group school learners into lock-step groups by age.
After edit: One comment about the author of the submitted article. He is actually a programmer by occupation. When his employee shares of Microsoft stock vested, he turned his good fortune to improving education in the United States. I have known him online for years as a thoughtful contributor to discussions of education policy.
I came to Hacker News by links from Paul Graham's essays
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
and came to those because pg frequently writes about education policy and has some of his own thoughts about how schools could be better. So I've always expected threads about education policy to be within the Hacker News topic scope of "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
As the father of a near 3 year old the educational questions weigh heavily on my mind. While this is a great thought experiment ("How could we make it better?") it's scary when given a concrete example that is near and dear to your heart. I believe: [1] Each general subject has a core competency that you have to achieve at a minimum. It's broken into skills and subjects. Skills includes: programming, reading, writing…
I believe logic and basic computing (this is a folder, that is a keyboard, etc.) are necessary. In fact, these form the foundation for programming later, but how could programming be considered a skill comparable to reading or writing?
Could also mean that some teachers don't want the headache of dealing with a class with even greater disparities in skill and knowledge. It's hard enough dealing with a couple students bored in class cause they already know it. It's even harder to deal with half the class bored cause they already know it. Or it could really mean anything. Removed from context and the teacher's deeper reasoning, these quotes are large…
Clearly, if we're to reap the benefits of an aptitude-driven advancement system, we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum. (age-based peer groups, pass/fail an entire grade at a time, etc)
When students are permitted to progress in different subjects at different speeds, the desire to see "brakes" put on tools like Kahn's will evaporate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe he means the guidelines: "off-topic: most articles about politics". Anything from Cato is going to be politics.
Everything is politics. But reactionary free-market worship is too simplistic to be allowed here. Cato only exists because advocating private ownership of profit turns out to be profitable, not because they have any insightful analysis.
Allowed by whom?
Cato only exists because advocating private ownership of profit turns out to be profitable
And this is somehow not simplistic?
I'll be able to afford private schooling for my children. The average demographic here probably can. I relish at the idea of seeing how a Khan Academy Classroom could teach my child (maybe in some sort of "Free school" environment?) and I realize that public education probably wont be able to cover that.
What I worry about more is that my children's friends wont be able to go to a private school, and while I realize Khan Academy is free online. Most kids will probably be sent to public schools.
I was educated in public school and I don't think it was horrible but I do think we can do better.
I think the question is; How do we bring this type of learning to public education?
I suppose it's a Cato blog post, but I was hoping for a more interesting discussion than just a random call for private education, with a market-will-solve it assertion. People learning at different paces and on their own is a fairly interesting problem highlighted here, but I think it's wishful thinking to claim that the perfect answer is already known. It's not entirely clear to me that private schools would cater…
At the college level, private schools certainly do cater to the individual. I was fast in math, regular speed in everything else. They put me into grad level math and physics classes, while my writing/history/etc classes were still at the normal pace. I don't see much reason why the incentives would be different below the college level. Whenever you want to ask "what would a privatized primary education system do", y…
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.
If public education is not a monopoly, what is it?
Our education systems were formed as part of the drive that became known as the industrial revolution. Standardisation was a key focus, because people needed to be able to become part of the industrial processes that surrounded their day-to-day lives working in factories and offices.
Workers needed to possess skill sets that are known, and they ultimately needed to become replaceable.
It stands to reason that our education system will change as we move away from the industrial revolution and into the next.
The question should be: what do (and will) society need from an education system in the coming 50 years?