Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#21

Post by protomyth » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

Who exactly is going to teach children to build rockets and robots? As a country we have pretty much run all the vocational teachers out of the schools. The vocational teachers were good because most did contracting during the summer. Add to this the decline in schools teaching programming[1]. We need to figure a way to get qualified technical / vocational people back into the schools and realize that they need to paid more because of demand in their field.

Standardized tests suck, but they suck less than every other way we have to measure schools in a country-wide manner.

[1] I am wondering where the next generation of programmers is going to come from.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#22

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #12

Sorry, but I thought that was a great question. If you have ever used a microscope before it's obvious and if you have not you can still figure it out in under 30 seconds of logical thought.

It's also explicitly stated in the fourth caution item.

The author seems to be presenting the question as a boring context that students have to deal with, but there are plenty of tasks where some degree of self control is required to read and understand a few hundred words that aren't real exciting.

To me, the big problem with testing is that it is not particularly adaptive. Students that demonstrate a reasonable level of reading comprehension when they are 10 probably don't need to be evaluated for it 5 more times before they leave school (of course tests do get successively more difficult/higher level, but doing that in lockstep by age is a waste).

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#23

Post by ktizo » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

domwood wrote: post #18

ktizo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of my primary school's request to my parents that they stop me from having access to books at home as it was making me difficult to teach.

Upvoted a thousand percent. This sums up everything that is wrong with education. (EDIT: spellchecking my dumb arse)

My dad had to explain to them how this wasn't really achievable, even should they want to, as he worked in libraries.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#24

Post by lukeschlather » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:53 PM UTC

I'll preface this by saying that I hate standardized tests, but this is a good reading comprehension question (and the author clearly has poor reading comprehension.)

The description clearly says:

> 4. To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the lens close to the specimen and back off focusing.

This article seems to be celebrating that people can't follow instructions properly. If I were to get some students to play with robotics kits (which may or may not include microscopes) step 1 would be making sure that they understand the instructions for the kits. And a series of questions like this seems like a pretty valid way to test that. Tests are good. I'd even say tests can be crucial before you let kids play with expensive electronics and explosives.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#25

Post by finfun » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:53 PM UTC

I have 5 implementable ideas how to bring out schools into the 21st century:

1) Let children solve real world problems. They learn skills that they can use in most every job.

2) Let the children decide which problem they want to tackle. Excellent skills to have: Coming up with ideas, convincing your fellow students to focus the rest of the year on that one problem and focusing on the solution for the rest of the school year. [I can't wait to find out what they will do.]

3) Share the problem, proposed solution as well as the whole process on the web with the world Wikipedia style. We live in a networked world, let’s use that opportunity to the fullest. Track progress weekly for a great review at the end of the year and for others to learn from everyones else’s progress.

4) Big hand-over of the solution via a presentation in front of students, teachers, parents, … Great skill to have to be able to present your ideas and solution in front of a larger audience.

5) Project Fridays: Every Google employees is allowed to focus 20% of their time on a project of their choosing. Let’s do the same with our children in school. 20% is the equivalent to one school day a week. Let’s do it on Friday.

My hope is that the first thing the children will do is create the environment for them to tinker to try out solutions in their schools.

Just presented these 5 ideas at TEDx Creative Coast too: http://www.aliveschools.org/2012/06/video-replay-tedxcc-5-id...

Please join the movement to make our schools come alive: http://www.aliveschools.org/2012/05/hello-world/

Thanks, Mark.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#26

Post by hencq » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:53 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #19

Sigh. You need both. The reality is that there's a lot of book-learning in the world. You're never going to build a rocket to the moon by starting in your backyard with some sheet metal - your lifespan isn't long enough if you take that approach. You have to read books written by people who have gone before, and learn from their mistakes, which you can do at a far more rapid pace than you can by making all those mist…

I agree: of course there is a lot of value to book learning as well. However, I do think that practical or hands-on learning can be a way to show the relevance of the material taught in books. I remember having trouble with probability and statistics in high school, because it was very abstract. It wasn't until university when things clicked. Mainly, because I all of a sudden saw why it was useful.

In the same way I believe you can make some of the book learning more interesting by relating it back to the hands on learning. Explaining the physics of shooting a rocket up into the air is a lot more interesting if you ran into some of these problems yourself. Of course, this isn't always practical to do for all subjects.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#27

Post by ktizo » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #21

Who exactly is going to teach children to build rockets and robots? As a country we have pretty much run all the vocational teachers out of the schools. The vocational teachers were good because most did contracting during the summer. Add to this the decline in schools teaching programming[1]. We need to figure a way to get qualified technical / vocational people back into the schools and realize that they need to pa…

[1] Brazil, Russia, India, China...

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#28

Post by bilbo0s » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:55 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #6

amcintyre wrote: post #2

Don't be silly--we won't be eliminating standardized tests any time soon. You can't easily produce huge reports full of meaningless charts or fluff up politicians' resumes with rockets and robots. Standardized tests produce orderly, easily measured numbers that make for lots of easy bean counting.

Don't forget - realtors love to sell houses in towns with high standardized test scores. Why they can't just show a map of median household income (which is a pretty good proxy for standardized test scores) is beyond me.

Actually you are thinking about that a little bit backwards. That is to say, high test scores are a pretty good proxy for not only income, but other less tangible things.

Consider, you can get high income in some suburbs of rust belt cities... doesn't mean you want those kids at Governor Dummer's.

In essence, some people want to buy real estate around 'the right kind of people'. There is more to it than just income, and test scores are a good proxy for figuring that out. Of course, that's normally only for a fairly select group of 1%'ers. But that's also where your big commissions come from in real estate.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#29

Post by domwood » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:57 PM UTC

ktizo wrote: post #23

domwood wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted a thousand percent. This sums up everything that is wrong with education. (EDIT: spellchecking my dumb arse)

My dad had to explain to them how this wasn't really achievable, even should they want to, as he worked in libraries.

Oh, the beautiful but saddening irony.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#30

Post by droithomme » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 2:58 PM UTC

I agree with the article and would go further. In the modern era of information availability and the incredibly high quality of online courses and resources, school is obsolete for all but the really dumb kids that just aren't motivated because their parents are stupid or on drugs.