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I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

scotthyoung.com

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Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#31

Post by tshaddox »

freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

Why is it obvious to you that children should be coerced into learning something?

Let's say that you have some curriculum C that you think is vital for children to learn, and you want as many children as possible to learn C.

Even ignoring ethics, it's not obvious to me that attempting to coerce all children into learning C is the best way to accomplish your goal!

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#32

Post by Vinnl »

psadri wrote: post #14
freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

If you had the budget for two teachers, I’d utilize them as one teaching in the traditional way, and the other spending 1:1 times with each student (20 students in a class → 1-1:30 hr / student).

If we had budgets that allowed for one teacher per ten students, I imagine many problems in education would already be solved.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#33

Post by FloorEgg »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #20
freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

> I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. I have a real issue dividing kids up along these lines. I've found that virtually all young kids love to explore and learn things, and if anything schooling can extinguish this innate desire when it becomes a source of stress.

While my experience relates to learning in higher-ed, I completely agree with those three categories... Though a helpful nuance may be that it's a spectrum, not hard boundaries, and every subject/exercise can have a distinct relationship with the learner and context.

When rubber hits the road with a learning objective, I think the two most important axis are: how much does the student want to learn (this), and how easy is it for the student to learn (this)?

Both can depend on a variety of factors... For example a masters student paying their own way mid career maybe really wants to learn as much as they can, but a specific research report assigned during a busy work week, and some family emergency, etc. may mean they treat the assignment as "I just need to get this done" instead of "I want to get as much as I can out of this", and one way that can show up is how much they depend on an LLM to do the work for them...

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#34

Post by [deleted] »

tshaddox wrote: post #31
freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

Why is it obvious to you that children should be coerced into learning something? Let's say that you have some curriculum C that you think is vital for children to learn, and you want as many children as possible to learn C. Even ignoring ethics, it's not obvious to me that attempting to coerce all children into learning C is the best way to accomplish your goal!

[deleted]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#35

Post by layman51 »

aeternum wrote: post #17
apsurd wrote: post #7

- "Learning made easy" is an oxymoron. Learning is biologically required to be hard. (brain needs a forcing function to get out of its default-mode and pay attention to the novel stimuli) - The hard part about education has little to do with learning and a whole lot to do with socioeconomic realties. - Education and learning is a public good. Any for-profit initiative (ed-tech) will not be incentivized to improve lea…

>Learning is biologically required to be hard. I think we all know this to not be true. We've all had a super engaging teacher or task in which we learned quickly and efficiently without it feeling hard. I've learned far more through natural interest or through pursuing a goal than I have forcing myself to engage with a subject. >Any for-profit initiative (ed-tech) will not be incentivized to improve learning outcome…

> Any for-profit initiative (ed-tech) will not be incentivized to improve learning outcomes. There's no money in it.

I think a point to keep in mind is that even if some team cracked the ed-tech challenge and created a software that was wildly effective at getting students to learn, it would actually still be very difficult to get public schools to actually adopt it, unless they have some incentives like it being heavily subsidized, or free. And even then, it might not be free forever. That's part of the reason why ed-tech (even when it is proven to work) doesn't really make money.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#36

Post by b112 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19
singpolyma3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this is the fundamental question and disagreement. I certainly don't think coercion is ethical.

We "coerce" children to do all sorts of things. We make them go to sleep. We make them learn to use the toilet.

Indeed. Children and not "little adults". They are emotionally and intellectually immature, literally with the brain and body growing into to the capabilities of an adult.

And if good habits are not instilled, they will have a difficult life ahead of them. It's far easier to learn those habits when young, than to try to independently course correct as an adult.

Not coercing a child towards correct behaviours, is doing them a great disservice. In some circumstances, it's child abuse to not coerce those bahaviours.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#37

Post by Avicebron »

XorNot wrote: post #16
pokstad wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something lopsided about education for boys. The system appears to favor girls heavily. There’s projections that college student populations will have shrinking male population. I think this is a systemic issue with school being built to favor a certain philosophy that isn’t well thought out for 50% of the population.

What philosophy? The gender based outcomes people never seem able to come up with any coherent explanation of what they think the problem is other then to play to stereotypes.

> What philosophy?

They might be referring to the TED Radio Hour "Beyond the manosphere" by Richard Reeves. I think it was on NPR a while ago, I looked it up because the "school isn't designed for boys but girls" sounded familiar.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#38

Post by [deleted] »

rootusrootus wrote: post #28
XorNot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What philosophy? The gender based outcomes people never seem able to come up with any coherent explanation of what they think the problem is other then to play to stereotypes.

The explanation that I’ve seen floated is behavioral. Boys are active and physical and don’t focus as easily as girls, who are more amenable to sitting quietly and paying attention. The idea is that the current predominant K12 style favors students in the latter behavior group. I have two kids in K12 and I don’t think it’s that simple. Not that I have a good explanation of my own, mind you.

[deleted]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#39

Post by Etheryte »

tshaddox wrote: post #31
freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

Why is it obvious to you that children should be coerced into learning something? Let's say that you have some curriculum C that you think is vital for children to learn, and you want as many children as possible to learn C. Even ignoring ethics, it's not obvious to me that attempting to coerce all children into learning C is the best way to accomplish your goal!

In broad strokes, learning leads to better life outcomes just like brushing your teeth leads to better health outcomes, or any other example you may prefer. Brushing teeth is a chore so a child won't generally pick it up all by themselves without some nudging. If you don't do the nudging you're essentially letting a child be free, yes, but also willingly letting them end up worse off when they're too young to know any better. Learning is the same.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#40

Post by bilbo0s »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #8
madrox wrote: post #2

I was a horrible student as a child, and in my 20s I strongly held the belief that education was broken. Now that I'm a few decades older I wonder if my problem was not education but life. I did not fit in at most schools, and that had a negative effect on my desire and ability to learn. That's what led me to teach myself computers as a teenager...education and online socialization combined. Win/win. I think the auth…

Any time you try to randomly assort 30 children of the same calendar age into a room with a single (or even several) teacher, it's going to be bad for nearly everyone except those in the very middle of the curve. A very narrow portion of that middle too. It can't not be. And if the teacher tries to cater to the slow kids and the "gifted" kids even a little, then the middle-of-the-curve children will suffer for that t…

I think I should also gently suggest here that the issue could also be expectations. The idea that you put 30 random children in a class and that therefore there must be some who are "gifted", and there must be some who are "slow".

I don't know man? I'm just saying that sometimes sure, all the kids in your neighborhood could be above average. But most of the time, all the kids in a class are just average. And now the poor teacher has to explain to irate parents that their kid's not any more special than the other kids in the class. (Only we don't. We acquiesce to their insanity and label average at best kids as "gifted" and then have everyone be shocked when those kids don't gain admission to Ivies. Ma'am, that kid was lucky to get into his/her state flagship. And even at that state flagship, s/he probably ain't gonna be majoring in ChemE or anything if you want my honest opinion.)

Sure, you can have slow kids in a class. But, really? 30 random kids? Is it statistically likely that any are "slow"? Or is it more likely you're dealing with no good parents who don't work with their children at home? Then those same parents come to berate the teachers for not doing enough to teach a fourth grader addition and subtraction. With absolutely no reflection on why a fourth grader, with no learning disability, doesn't understand addition and subtraction.)

I don't envy teachers because these are the attitudes they have to deal with.

Public Service Announcement: No people, your children aren't "gifted". And it's very unlikely that your kids are "slow". Your kids are very likely, (horror of horrors), just average. Every one of them.

If we can just get past those things we can start looking at some of the real issues.

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