I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#251

Post by jubilanti » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:22 AM UTC

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…

> Of the 50 people who end up reading my comment above, every one of you will read it a different way, and it's unlikely very many of you will read it as intended.

Because that's how language works. Stop being a pompous self-righteous ass and take responsibility for your own words.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#252

Post by Gethsemane » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:23 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #172

Animats wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what works: a 1:5 staff to student ratio. At that ratio, method matters less. Beyond that, it's a productivity problem.

With AIs as most staff, this should be very reachable.

With AIs as teachers, I disagree. But with AIs assisting routine grading, filling in the university's assessment_framework_draft_v3_final_FINAL.docx, and otherwise freeing up time to actually focus on students - maybe? Although I fear that any productivity gains will be swallowed up by further reductions in lecturer headcount...

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#253

Post by Laurel1234 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:32 AM UTC

beloch wrote: post #192

Random thoughts: - Education should probably be an area where methods are chosen conservatively based on what is proven. It's easy to forget that a change in curriculum will affect thousands or millions of kids and could have a life-long impact on them. We'd pillory someone who suggested testing new drugs on thousands or millions of kids even though the effects might be far less pronounced or long-term than a few yea…

> The quality of teachers really matters. In Canada, teaching generally requires a university degree in education or a university degree with additional education in teaching. Salaries are decent in most provinces. There are still lots of bad teachers out there. I can't imagine what it's like in places where standards and pay are lower. Perhaps we should put as much effort into developing better teachers as we do into developing better teaching methods.

This is a double edged sword, though. You have extremely knowledgeable people who can't teach because they have an actual degree in their subject matter but not in education. Also stuff like PE teachers teaching physics because they have the required education degree already and they can't find any physicists with them.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#254

Post by piokoch » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:34 AM UTC

I was wondering about all this a lot.

I was teaching a lot of stuff to students: physics, math, statistics (during my university times) now I teach programming and Machine Learning.

I am torn between instructional based approach, which has this advantage that gives people a set of minimal skills to start doing stuff by themselves and the project-based approach, which is probably more interesting, but is very hard to squeeze in a relatively short classes time and also might left gaps, even in the base areas, as there is no time to cover everything end-to-end (think of teaching people about for loop, as it helps working with lists, but do not mention a while loop).

So, there should be some ideal holy grail in between both ways of teaching: show them everything versus let them explore and invent everything by themselves.

The crux is that instructional-based approach works great if it is well tuned to the student's needs. The problem is that every student has different needs and capabilities, so it is hard to do something that will work for everyone. So something is too difficult for some people, while being too easy for others.

That's why we have Bloom's 2 sigma problem - 1:1 learning works orders of magnitude better than in-class learning.

Now, LLM AI enters the scene, as the article is mentioning - individualized instruction could be finally achievable and I am much less skeptical about that than the author, as I tested that on myself, the good thing is I can ask and ask for more and more details if I am not able to grok something and my "teacher" is always patient, has as much time as I need.

It does not mean that teachers are not needed, just the opposite, because the key problem is to know what to learn, LLM will just do what you ask for, nothing more, so one need to know what to ask about. But once someone is on the specific topic and problem, you can really go quite far with LLM as a tutor.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#255

Post by vintermann » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:36 AM UTC

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…

Well, we've all been students, haven't we? And most of us probably have experience with ways of teaching us that worked, and ways that didn't. Of course we're all going to have an opinion.

I don't have any grand theory of education, but I have some stories of what worked for me and what didn't.

I learned English from a guy with a radical method: the "direct method" or "natural method". After the first lesson explaining what he was going to do, he spoke only English in class. The textbook also had only English (vocabulary was taught with pictures). This was about third grade elementary school. This worked great for me, I always had top marks in English. German, by comparison, was always taught to me in the traditional method with grammar lists etc. durchfürgegenohneum, ausbeimitnachseitvonzu, and I still remember that crap and I still absolutely suck at German.

So one "revolutionary", running his own radical program (he would never have been allowed to do that today), helped me. I think we should let people try things.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#256

Post by redsocksfan45 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:42 AM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #231

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is when one mixes kids who don’t want to be there with one’s that do, they all suffer. Makes a lot of teacher not want to be there too! The schools also have little interest in spending time and money on the higher performing students. They teach the minimum and focus resources on the failing ones to raise school averages. Currently, tertiary education is where a lot of real learning takes starts to happen.

And why they don't want to be there? This unearths more complex topic of individuality in aproximating school, because I think every kid wants and does't want different things. And these aren't limited to school material but also include social dynamics between peers or even type of chairs (ask kids with ADD spectrum).

[dead]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#257

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:49 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #82

WalterBright wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When young people ask me why they should learn math, I point out that managing your money requires math, and there are plenty of people who will steal from you if you are unable to recognize it. An inability to understand compound interest is classic.

But that's basic arithmetic, and we have calculators to do that. Totally agree that understanding the problem and being able to frame a solution are also needed, but again, that's not hard maths. I think we're more talking about algebra or, really, anything "higher" in maths than arithmetic. Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life? And also, if we think that basic financial manageme…

> Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life?

Is there any benefit to being able to distinguish logical entailments from non sequiturs?

The things that are taught under the label "set theory" are taught elsewhere under the label "basic logic". The most primitive symbols are intentionally matched: in logic, "and" is ∧ and "or" is ∨, while in set theory, "and" is ⋂ and "or" is ⋃.

The symbols stop matching quite that well after that - compare logical ⟶ and ¬ to set-theoretic ⊆ and ᶜ - but they continue to consist of the same material.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#258

Post by literallywho » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:51 AM UTC

"Revolutionizing" is nonsense when the stuff we currently have isn't even implemented correctly. My personal assessment (from my own education and having worked in teaching positions) is that we need realistically quadruple the number of teachers and they should be paid double to attract and keep actual talent. Nobody is spending that much money. Trying to revolutionize it without massive increases in spending is pretty much a cope. You can find lectures from 20-30 years ago saying things like that and yet nothing was achieved at all.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#259

Post by martopix » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:52 AM UTC

There's a big missing point in this argument: it says "better" or "worse", "it works" or "it doesn't work", but does not specify how this is tested.

If we test students with standardized tests of their knowledge of facts and simple routines, I'm 100% convinced that direct instruction works better. I'd like to see if it's better also on aspects like student welfare, ability to reason and solve complex problems, creativity and innovation.

It _is_ possible that direct instruction also works better in these metrics, I just think this should be made explicit.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#260

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 8:55 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #90

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…

> 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. When I was just a bit younger, I detested what I'm about to say, but now know as the "reality". Your argument is focused on rationalism. You're trying to give kids/teenagers real world reasons to learn something. People are rarely motivated by reason. They are motivated by emo…

> Focus on (positive) emotions. Give kids incentives.

I taught at an English-immersion high school in Shanghai.

It's worth remarking that the boy at the top of the class in each grade was dating the girl at the top of the class.