Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

xsrus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 117 posts

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

#91

Post by Retric »

BobbyJo wrote: post #80
Retric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don’t agree with his comment and sure in a theoretical round cow in a vacuumed sort of way sure workers and managers incentives should align with company profits.

My point was economists spend a lot of time investigating the mismatch because no company gets this completely correct.

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

#92

Post by brimble »

kqr wrote: post #84
brimble wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Student-to-student mentoring is a part of the solution. Empirically shown to work really well. I don't know why more schools don't do it.

I do not know if it's the case for this particular approach, but it's often the case that very effective reforms that don't require increasing teacher head-count do rely on having very good teachers and admin.

Which means that a wide roll-out would require one or both of: more spending on training; more spending on salaries to increase the quality of the candidate pool.

A top-quintile teacher may be way more effective than a middle-quintile teacher, to the point that entire education frameworks and strategies are viable for them that aren't for the middle quintile, but the trouble is only 20% of your teachers are top-quintile. Ditto admin. You'd be amazed at how mediocre admin can completely ruin a good plan.

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

#93

Post by lordnacho »

Zircom wrote: post #89
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…

WGU is an online, fully accredited college that does exactly that. You pay for 6 months at a time and can do as many classes as you're able to complete within that time frame. I just started at the beginning of February and have already knocked out an entire course in the past 10 days, it's honestly the best experience I've ever had with schooling. I like to work at my own pace because my motivation to get things don…

And WGU is short for what?

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

#94

Post by alexktz »

oneoff786 wrote: post #90
minihat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High school (in the US) is so easy for gifted students that they barely need even try to earn a 4.0 and be the valedictorian. Not all kids with good grades go on to do awesome things. But it makes sense that many of the best and brightest, the 'eccentric' ones, happen to have an easy time in school.

I certainly learned to do the bare minimum required to get a 4.0. It was pretty easy in the end.

And then had the shock of my life at college to the point where I said "screw this" and dropped out. Got a dead end job. Realized I did actually need to put some effort in and went back and graduated. The school system is not fit for purpose! Higher ed does OK.

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

#95

Post by alexktz »

vikingerik wrote: post #77
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…

Would you have preferred to stay in Montessori for longer?

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

#96

Post by FastEatSlow »

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…

I agree that it's very easy to tell between the students of a great teacher and a bad teacher. I've found that the best teachers are ones that came from industry, they did their work, and then went into teaching. That's why my school's engineering department is great, as is one of the physics teachers who sadly only teaches me once every 2 weeks.

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

#97

Post by WillPostForFood »

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…

I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want.

Great for high achieving, high conscientiousness kids, but it isn't going to work for a lot of kids, especially those without academic support at home. The last two years have been an approximate experiment in this; in the sense that kids who didn't want to participate had an easy out. What we saw is the bottom fall out.

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

#98

Post by svilen_dobrev »

well, English (and not only) word "School" comes from greek, via latin. And it has also another teutonish meaning of "crowd", i.e. Schooling as in school of fish... Few languages have another word for it, closer to "Learn". But.. the overall system rots there too.. slowly turning into existing for the sake of existing.

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

#99

Post by oneoff786 »

alexktz wrote: post #94
oneoff786 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly learned to do the bare minimum required to get a 4.0. It was pretty easy in the end.

And then had the shock of my life at college to the point where I said "screw this" and dropped out. Got a dead end job. Realized I did actually need to put some effort in and went back and graduated. The school system is not fit for purpose! Higher ed does OK.

Hmm no I found college much much easier than high school.

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

#100

Post by vikingerik »

alexktz wrote: post #95
vikingerik wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you have preferred to stay in Montessori for longer?

I'll never know, but in hindsight I think so. I probably would have been better off going at my own pace for longer, rather than becoming accustomed to the rigid pace of public school.
Post reply on HN