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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

#131

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

parpfish wrote: post #58
bwhiting2356 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to convince kids why they should learn advanced abstract math, beyond what is necessary to calculate the tip on a restaurant bill. The number of high school students who will use advanced math beyond high school is very small, but those that do will have high impact, which is both in society's interest and their own interest as high earners. The kids that study and apply themselves, I don't think it's so mu…

re: not teaching math to kids is a pet peeve of mine. the number of adults i've met who cannot add two fractions together is depressing. at some point each of them had decided "i'm just bad with numbers, hahaha" and they gave themselves permission to stop trying math. worse, society gives you a pass at not knowing math. we need to apply the same constant social pressure to mathematics skills that we do for learning t…

They're even proud of it, heaven help us. How many posts on HN by SWEs have we seen saying that people didn't lose any skills of importance when calculators became widespread?

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#132

Post by rahimnathwani »

He's broadly right. And you should read some of the people he mentioned, like Greg Ashman.

But this part misses the point:

"As someone who makes use of AI quite a bit in my own learning, I can say that it’s still relatively weak at having a good model of an individual’s skill gaps and conceptual weaknesses."

It seems like he is expecting a chat-based LLM to maintain a model of the user's skill tree. But it wo:

- create a detailed skill tree for whatever subject

- have the user try to apply the skills

- store the user's mastery level for each node, in some structured format

This isn't something ChatGPT is going to do if you just starting chatting with it.

But you can design a system to do it, which is what the Math Academy folks have done.

Edtech tools don't have to have user-facing AI. They can use AI under the hood, or use no AI at run time at all.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#133

Post by crm9125 »

j45 wrote: post #129
tombert wrote: post #70

I'm not the first person to state this, but it bears repeating: nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. I'm not exempting myself from this. I was an adjunct lecturer for two semesters. I did have some fun with it, but it was way harder than I thought it would be, and I think that university is probably considerably easier than elementary or high school. I had students that…

How to teach isn't always aligned with how to learn. How children learn is not how adults learn.

[dead]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#134

Post by nostrademons »

anon-3988 wrote: post #114
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. This is a very bold claim. I don't think most kids are curious about the multiplication tables

The claim was that "virtually all young kids love to explore and learn things", not that "virtually all young kids love to explore and learn multiplication tables".

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#135

Post by necovek »

tombert wrote: post #70

I'm not the first person to state this, but it bears repeating: nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. I'm not exempting myself from this. I was an adjunct lecturer for two semesters. I did have some fun with it, but it was way harder than I thought it would be, and I think that university is probably considerably easier than elementary or high school. I had students that…

I never taught myself, so take this with a grain of salt (though I do think it is extremely hard to do well).

I did, however, have a teacher who taught an advanced subject and I found his instruction so good that I did not have to bother with homework and assignments if I was happy with B grades — as I wasn't particularly motivated, only occassionaly did I put in the effort for an A.

I could, however, see the level of preparation that he put into it. When students confronted him with a difficult task, he'd not attack it right away but instead prepare for it for the next class so he'd provide the most effective instruction (it was not about being embarrased to show how exploration is sometimes messy because he'd quote that as the reason he won't do it right away). He was also so focused that he kicked out a school director when he tried to interrupt class with some sales pitch for whatever.

Not everybody could score a B grade just out of his instruction, but nobody was failing a class because the instruction was so good.

I will also openly admit: I had exactly one instructor like this in my life, so it is a high bar to clear ;)

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#136

Post by s5300 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #25
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.

This. A math test is a math test is a math test. What's the math teacher supposed to do? I hate to be that guy, but I think it should be pointed out that asian boys don't seem to have much of a problem. If there's a gender bias, why do they succeed?

[dead]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#137

Post by ChiperSoft »

anon-3988 wrote: post #114
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. This is a very bold claim. I don't think most kids are curious about the multiplication tables

> I don't think most kids are curious about the multiplication tables

Which is exactly why they stopped teaching them in US curriculum under No Child Left Behind.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#138

Post by bluGill »

fhe wrote: post #110
tombert wrote: post #70

I'm not the first person to state this, but it bears repeating: nearly everyone thinks that they know the right way to teach, and most people don't. I'm not exempting myself from this. I was an adjunct lecturer for two semesters. I did have some fun with it, but it was way harder than I thought it would be, and I think that university is probably considerably easier than elementary or high school. I had students that…

based on your description, one reasonable way to 'revolutionize' school might simply allow people (who don't want to be there) to leave.

That might be fine for someone in the wrong college degree, but I - as a tax payer - need every sixth grader to learn essential the same things. I need kids to grow up able to provide life support for themselves so I can retire as by body fails from old age. I'm investing in the future of many kids I otherwise don't know or care about because making their life better makes mine better.

Even in the case of a college degree some are better than others

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#139

Post by nostrademons »

I don't think there's any way to revolutionize schooling on average. I do think that there are ways to make it dramatically better for specific kids. Pull up the tails of the distribution and you do improve the average, but not by a whole lot, since most kids by definition will still be...average.

I went to a charter school, and one with a very different (project-based) educational philosophy. The charter school was founded by, among others, a business leader who had previously exited a startup he founded. He thought it would revolutionize education for his kids. Instead, his kids did extremely poorly at this school, and ended up going back to their normal public schools, where they did great.

I ended up going to work for his next company as my first job out of high school, and he was recounting this story to my boss, who was a grizzled childless 50-something programmer without a dog in this fight. The school founder had soured on charter schools by then, and said somewhat sarcastically "Well, they work for some kids." My boss was like "Maybe that's the point, that the kids who they work for get to attend a school that works for them."

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#140

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

hunterpayne wrote: post #94
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #47

1. the best teachers (of anything) rarely convey information or skills in any direct sense. Instead, they create the conditions where (willing) students will (or are at least more likely) to have experiences that cause them to learn. 2. John Holt (look him up) 3. I always wanted to offer people the chance to both leave and return to K-12 education. Lots of kids want out as teenagers, and we should make that possible…

You are projecting. Those things are true of teachers who worked the best for you specifically. In some classes, these can work. Unless you have a high tracked class of kids with engaged and pro-education parents, it won't. It also tends to work better with kids in a specific age range, generally 10 to 14. But its not universal and don't project it into public policy that tries to maximize educational outcomes for th…

Those things were not true of the teachers who worked the best for me specifically. I cite them based on stuff I've read during 40-50 years of reading about education and what actually works and how it works.

People do not, as a general rule, "learn" stuff by people telling them stuff. The retention rate is incredibly low, the comprehension is even lower. Now, it is often the case that good learning environments in our culture combine being told stuff with the sort of experiences that really lead to knowledge and skill acquisition. But everything I've read suggests that it is the latter, not the former, that generates the results we're hoping for.

Also, it may not be obvious, but sometimes testing is a critical part of those successful educational experiences. Nobody learns their times tables because a teacher told them the times tables ... but if you put children in an environment where they can both experience the patterns (or not) in the tables and where there is suffficient incentive to memorize either the tables or some heuristics, then they learn them.

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