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Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

cato-at-liberty.org

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Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#91

Post by dkokelley »

sequoia wrote: post #50

I'm a parent of two who does NOT plan on putting his kids in public school because I think they won't be served well there (plan on "home schooling"). My 5yo uses Khan Academy and it seems to be great. Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school. 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 , eve…

I was home schooled, and I wish there was a Khan Academy when I was growing up. We did use something similar with DVDs and an electronic blackboard.

All in all, it worked out well for me, and I would encourage you to stick with home schooling. If you can, find a private school that allows home study. That way, you can get group field trips and sports activities while staying in control of your child's educational growth.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#92

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Seeing that it's a Cato Institute article, I anticipate a lot of noise here. I'd like to note, though, that in a standardized, rule-from-the-top system, outliers create immense problems, whether the outliers are really smart kids or kids who need additional attention.

In a distributed, self-optimizing system, this is not the case. Outliers can be handled in various ways.

This observation isn't political. You can observe the same thing in stuff all over the place, like network traffic. If you had universal rules for everything, the internet would tank. Instead we have a (somewhat) distributed and adaptive system using common protocols. Best of both worlds.

Perhaps the argument begins at how to create such adaptive distributed systems. If so, that's cool, but that should be the starting place, not a discussion of free markets or social concern, at least in my opinion. (I was very discouraged to hear Bill Gates blow right through this concept when talking about helping education systems. He's trying to quantify and create the universally-optimized teacher. Good luck with that pipe-dream, Bill.)

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#93

Post by gdfsnob »

thisuser wrote: post #46
davidw wrote: post #23

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.

I think you might be experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect. The CATO Institute has 10 Nobel Laureates in Economics associated with it.

http://www.cato.org/people/nobel-index.html

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#94

Post by jshen »

grandalf wrote: post #86
jshen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private schools will lead to a marketing driven education system that preys on peoples ignorance. Here's a simple thought experiment. Look at all the education systems around the world, and ask if the ones with the best results are private or public.

Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". Take an ad for the Macbook Air. It shows a stylish person happily using the Air to do something fun. Now consider an ad for a private school that shows a child happily benefitting from something he/she learned at the school being advertised. Maybe the ad shows a graduate getting accepted into a prestigious college or…

I don't think it's a binary choice. I think capitalism is great for most things, and bad at some things. Education happens to be one of those things.

If I buy a $30 bottle of pills that are supposed to make me lose weight, well I lost $30 and I learned my lesson. If I send my kid to a fucked up school it might take years for me to realize it was fucked up, and the stakes are much higher.

A bit of back story. I'm the only person in my immediate family to finish high school, and I was raised by my grandmother who is not educated at all. She would have been completely unequipped to make a good decision about such things. Yet here I am, a successful software engineer, due in large part to a good public education. I can't see how I would have been better served by a private system.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#95

Post by ZachPruckowski »

_delirium wrote: post #79
stretchwithme wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools are the ones who cater to the large percentage. And have no real revenue loss when they fail to deliver. 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…

That's a possible outcome, I'm just not convinced of its probability. Unless the government enforces equal prices at all the private schools, via some sort of fixed tradeable credits scheme, I would expect the most affordable schools to be those that cater to a large proportion of the population in a cost-effective and fairly standardized way, and that those would be by far the most popular schools. Essentially, that…

"I would expect the most affordable schools to be those that cater to a large proportion of the population in a cost-effective and fairly standardized way, and that those would be by far the most popular schools."

I would actually bet it would be the mid-priced schools that would be the most appealing to the masses, because nobody wants to be (or be seen as) the parent sending their kid to "the cheap school" unless they absolutely can't afford better.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#96

Post by gdfsnob »

bendotc wrote: post #4

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.

"Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News"

As if Hacker News is somehow more qualified on economic issues than Cato, which has 10 Nobel Laureates?

F. A. Hayek

Milton Friedman

James M. Buchanan

Robert Mundell

Edward C. Prescott

Douglass C. North

Vernon L. Smith

Gary S. Becker

Ronald Coase

Thomas C. Schelling

http://www.cato.org/people/nobel-index.html

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#97

Post by jshen »

losvedir wrote: post #85
jshen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private schools will lead to a marketing driven education system that preys on peoples ignorance. Here's a simple thought experiment. Look at all the education systems around the world, and ask if the ones with the best results are private or public.

> Here's a simple thought experiment. Look at all the education systems around the world, and ask if the ones with the best results are private or public. Are we allowed to include universities?

Hm, interesting question. I was thinking specifically of primary education, most people never go to a private college and it's a very different situation.

For example, my wife is a teacher, and one of her biggest challenges is dealing with kids with severe behavior problems. They disrupt the entire class, but these kids still need an education. If you remove those kids from the class the rest of the kids benefit, but our goal as a nation isn't to only educate good kids.

This seems to create a perverse incentive in a private system. Private schools will do everything they can to be selective about there students, because their ultimate goal isn't to educate the nation as a whole, and that seems like the wrong goal to me.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#98

Post by grandalf »

jshen wrote: post #94
grandalf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". Take an ad for the Macbook Air. It shows a stylish person happily using the Air to do something fun. Now consider an ad for a private school that shows a child happily benefitting from something he/she learned at the school being advertised. Maybe the ad shows a graduate getting accepted into a prestigious college or…

I don't think it's a binary choice. I think capitalism is great for most things, and bad at some things. Education happens to be one of those things. If I buy a $30 bottle of pills that are supposed to make me lose weight, well I lost $30 and I learned my lesson. If I send my kid to a fucked up school it might take years for me to realize it was fucked up, and the stakes are much higher. A bit of back story. I'm the…

Fair enough, but many US colleges and universities are private and are the best in the world.

I think your worry about someone starting a school that is actually a sham are very much out of proportion. In today's public schools, many kids can't read or do basic math, so it's hard to imagine something worse.

Also, the monopoly system is the only reason parents can't easily switch their kid to a different school. If this were an option, parents would be much more critical. Most parents today just settle for whatever is publicly available b/c it's "free" to them and they'd have to move to a different district to put their kid in a different school.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#99

Post by sequoia »

klenwell wrote: post #75
sequoia wrote: post #50

I'm a parent of two who does NOT plan on putting his kids in public school because I think they won't be served well there (plan on "home schooling"). My 5yo uses Khan Academy and it seems to be great. Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school. 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 , eve…

Well put. Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school. I was ready to agree with this. But then I reflected. What I really hated were my rotten peers (and, to an extent, my rotten self) from around the start of junior high to the end of high school. They weren't horrible, mind you. Just middle-of-the-distribution-curve kids, with the inevitable psychopath or two. I don't think privatization is going to fi…

By no means universal, merely a reflection of my experiences.

For example, I was an exchange student for a year and when I came back I was told I'd get no credits for it because I couldn't produce a report card , so I was held back (i.e. punished for studying in a diff. country for a year).

Same year: moved from another state, forced to take freshman "earth & environmental sciences" because it's a state requirement. I requested being able to take AP Environmental Science instead: "no, it's a requirement." So I'm turning 18, held back to 11th grade because I got an exchange scholarship, forced to take a freshman (remedial) course surrounded by kids straight out of middle school (embarrassing and discouraging as a teenager) when I'm willing to take a comparable AP course.

This stuff happened with me all throughout school. To be fair I was somewhat lazy, but much of this was due to the feeling of powerlessness and inevitability public school is designed to instill.

inb4 someone who had a different, great public school experience. As I said, this is my experience.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#100

Post by pnathan »

Pointsly wrote: post #29
pnathan wrote: post #26

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'.

Crap, I didn't know that. My big-O notation is out of date, as is my knowledge of calculus.
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