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Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

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Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#71

Post by dxbydt »

ltfey wrote: post #13

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one. Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion. In school, you learn that hard work is rew…

Both corporate & school seek feedback. Guess who acts on it ?

Here is some stellar feedback:

https://google.com/search?q="worst+professor"+https://www.ra...

Literally none of these fine folk have been fired. They have a job for life. For life. I can give you a long list of professors who have been utterly unethical in their dealings, but I could do nothing about it because they have tenure.

Whereas when corporate gets blackballed on their glassdoor, current employees bail, future employees won't bother to apply, word spreads & market justice is swift, stock ticker points down & to the right.

Now tell me who is meritocratic.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#72

Post by brimble »

halgir wrote: post #14
hhmc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young children are not famously good decision makers, and it's easy to imagine them making very limiting choices that they would later come to regret.

Young children are also famously voracious learners. That is, until institutions like schools get in the way. Plunging young children into an anarchical learning environment with nothing but YouTube to guide them won't end well. But if you add guidance that encourages their strengths and tolerates their weaknesses, I speculate that net learning will exceed that of today's school system.

The challenge in public education reform is doing anything interesting/useful without doubling teacher headcount and increasing salaries (at the very least, to increase supply without decreasing quality).

All sorts of approaches are possible with 5 students per teacher, but not 10, and with 10, but not with 20—let alone 25 or more.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#73

Post by austinl »

> Looking back on it, most of our essays were not good. They were rubbish.

It makes me cringe to look back at my high school essays, like I was trying to write with a thesaurus. Thankfully, senior year, a friend who went on to write professionally edited one of my essays. He crossed out almost every adverb, and over words like "utilize", he wrote "use".

It made me realize that myself, along with many students, mask their points with language because they have nothing to say, or are afraid to say it clearly (which is a separate problem altogether).

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#74

Post by brimble »

lordnacho wrote: post #36
em-bee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have kids. the age difference matters for the development of each individual kid, but it us rather useless as a measure to compare the development of different kids. in the first few years, the development of each kid is so different that no two kids of the same age are alike. you can have a four year old with the maturity of a two year old, or a three year old going on five. a wider age range allows children with…

This I can agree with. I benefited a lot from having older cousins around. At the moment I have a kid who is asking me about chemistry, and I can't just wait 5 years for him to get to that age where they teach people specifically chemistry (as opposed to general science). There's no reason I can't tell a 9 year old about valencies and that kind of thing, so why does school wait with it?

> There's no reason I can't tell a 9 year old about valencies and that kind of thing, so why does school wait with it?

Not enough staff (teachers) to differentiate instruction that finely.

A lot of stuff sounds like a great idea until you're looking at a classroom of 18-28 students and everyone else around you is trying to deal with a similar-sized class of their own. Special-ed kids might get help down to having one entire adult just to help and follow around that single kid all day (!) but there's no stomach for spending that kind of money to help kids who are ahead, or to reduce class sizes so regular classroom teachers can realistically do a better job of differentiation. Best most places get are very-part-time gifted programs.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#75

Post by Retric »

BobbyJo wrote: post #45
ltfey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> profits aren't the true goal... Ok, we can all stop there and go home. This person knows more than every economist and game-theorist on the planet. >They're all kinda the same, though, and the system is designed that way. I take it you haven't had many jobs I've worked at 5 different corporations and this is just verifiably wrong. 'The system' you're referencing is voluntary exchange, and it's not designed, it emer…

> every economist

This is well known in economics, perverse incentives is one example used to describe this kind of discrepancy. Help desk people hanging up on what is expected to be very long calls when average call length is considered a critical metric.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#76

Post by whoibrar »

thenerdhead wrote: post #64

I think there's two things. 1. The school system has been broken for many years. Learning from people who are not passionate about what they teach is the main concern I have. You can easily tell the difference of "engaged" students who have a great teacher they will remember forever vs. "disengaged" students who will be able to tell you how bad their teacher was. I think Montessori-esq / curiosity driven schooling is…

> You can easily tell the difference of "engaged" students who have a great teacher they will remember forever

Have you ever come across some topic of history or biology that just seemed soo boring at the time it was taught in school. But only years later watching some random YouTube video explaining it and now you realise how interesting it has always been.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#77

Post by vikingerik »

thenerdhead wrote: post #64

I think there's two things. 1. The school system has been broken for many years. Learning from people who are not passionate about what they teach is the main concern I have. You can easily tell the difference of "engaged" students who have a great teacher they will remember forever vs. "disengaged" students who will be able to tell you how bad their teacher was. I think Montessori-esq / curiosity driven schooling is…

These ring true for me. I had both of these experiences you describe, and I feel like my life approach is a mix of them. I went to a Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten, then regular public school after that, and was in fact my high school valedictorian.

The Montessori "curiosity-driven" approach definitely stuck with me. I'm always interested in reading and learning about how anything works, and to get my hands on some introductory way of doing it myself. But I don't have the drive to turn that into any bigger successes. I skated through public school and never really learned to work hard, and I'm now that "average" valedictorian as you describe - pretty good 9-to-5 software job, but I'm not going to be achieving anything bigger.

I find my greatest satisfaction in small self-contained challenges. Things like competitive board games, Rubik's-cube type puzzles, juggling. Where I can hold the entire activity in my head. But then I lose interest when it reaches a level of complexity that requires a more disciplined and organized approach. I ascribe these tendencies to having the Montessori education early to be curious and hands-on about everything, but then the public school education which just teaches to the next test and doesn't train for anything bigger.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#78

Post by peterangular »

whoibrar wrote: post #76
thenerdhead wrote: post #64

I think there's two things. 1. The school system has been broken for many years. Learning from people who are not passionate about what they teach is the main concern I have. You can easily tell the difference of "engaged" students who have a great teacher they will remember forever vs. "disengaged" students who will be able to tell you how bad their teacher was. I think Montessori-esq / curiosity driven schooling is…

> You can easily tell the difference of "engaged" students who have a great teacher they will remember forever Have you ever come across some topic of history or biology that just seemed soo boring at the time it was taught in school. But only years later watching some random YouTube video explaining it and now you realise how interesting it has always been.

Often.

I do know YouTube-based learning has it's flaws, but I find it much more enjoyable to engage with vs. the 9-5 teachers/professors I had growing up. The YouTube essayists are often way more passionate and informed on their topics as well.

Then you get the value of a community coming along for the ride... In school there wasn't a comments section where discourse can happen regarding the subject being discussed/instruction. I get that YouTube comments are often horrible, but for many of the educational stuff I've watched good/insightful/corrective comments do seem to trickle to the top.

Also - there's the "my time" aspect of it. This is _huge_ in comparison to normal education. I can move the slider back and listen to a part over and over again - sometimes topics are tough for me and I need to hear it 3-4 times. I can put the video on 1.25/1.5x if I want to bump the pacing up. I can study/learn when I personally learn best which tends to be late at night.

Finally there's the technical aspect of it. I didn't go to a nice college - I went to a very expensive private school in the midwest. I went for both design and computer science. With 100% confidence I can say that every topic that I studied from math, to programming, to electronics, to art history, Adobe Suite... _all_ of it has more up-to-date and functionally better instruction on YouTube available 100% for free. This sounds like an exaggeration - I promise you it is not.

Yes - YouTube learning has it's problems... but anecdotally I have learned so much. I have saved money fixing my own cars. I have jumped into topics that would have _never_ interested me before. I have improved skills professionally. It's a resource that I now can't imagine going without!

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#79

Post by chasd00 »

nisegami wrote: post #15
lordnacho wrote: post #3

I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want. This should be easier now with video classes. Just let people take the algebra or calculus or whatever module, when they feel like it. There would still be some sort of minimum requirement so that you can write a decent email, but there would be no reason to lock people in year groups. Year groups are still important socially, but th…

School is glorified babysitting until university. Actually learning is just a convenient but ultimately secondary use of that time.

> School is glorified babysitting

as a parent of a 12 and 9 year old i mostly agree. You really have to augment and reaffirm the material being taught in school outside of the school setting and with a different approach. It takes a lot of work to nurture and grow a love-of-learning vs just "did you do your homework? yes? good.". No parent is perfect though, it takes a lot of effort and trial/error to learn what works and doesn't work with your particular kid.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#80

Post by BobbyJo »

Retric wrote: post #75
BobbyJo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> profits aren't the true goal... Ok, we can all stop there and go home. This person knows more than every economist and game-theorist on the planet. >They're all kinda the same, though, and the system is designed that way. I take it you haven't had many jobs I've worked at 5 different corporations and this is just verifiably wrong. 'The system' you're referencing is voluntary exchange, and it's not designed, it emer…

> every economist This is well known in economics, perverse incentives is one example used to describe this kind of discrepancy. Help desk people hanging up on what is expected to be very long calls when average call length is considered a critical metric.

Perverse incentives exist. 100%. However, they are studied as a failure in the system, something to fix. They are not designed or intentionally created as part of the system as the parent comment posits.
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