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

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#331

Post by everdrive » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

I've really yet to see a coherent discussion about what's even _wrong_ with schooling. It's possible that coherent discussions are happening and I'm just not aware of them. I see two different patterns:

  - A list of complaints about what people did not like about school. eg: "The teacher yelled at me too often and then I became discouraged in this subject."

  - Working backwards from bad outcomes. "Numbers are getting worse. It must be that we're not _empathizing_ with kids enough!"

Neither seem to offer a real, coherent theory. The first argument totally fails to address if school is doing the most good for the most kids, and it was just a poor fit for you. The second problem is more general -- it's really difficult to build meaningful theories about complex systems.

The topic seems politically fraught enough (and for good reason, I suppose) that it's hard to imagine landing firmly on the correct answer. No matter how many good ideas you have, there will be so much complexity in the system, so many schools and systems that don't fit your model, that it will be possible to point to failure for any reform.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#332

Post by mrngld » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #161

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 just assume that they've never actually taught anyone anything I care about teaching my students leadership, because all real problems are political. What exactly is the "test" for this? To me, revolutionizing school looks beyond "problem solving," because the parents and students who are excited about the thing they call "problem solving" - it's invoked in the article, it's talked about by many of the other comm…

Got to disagree, there's been a cohort of teachers pursuing that avenue of thought and all it's led to is colleges that shout down anything that'd pierce the monoculture and employees so politicized they lose some utility in actually doing the useful work that the company or entity exists to perform.

It's a side effect, perhaps, of the modern "main character syndrome". An electrician doesn't need political "leadership". He needs to know how to wire a house quickly, efficiently, and above all, safely. He doesn't need extensive training on how to help bring about a proletariat revolution. That's an example from the trades, but same in the white collar world; my employers accountants weren't hired because of any activism, but because they know accounting rules and regulations so the rest of the business doesn't have to think about those things as much.

If anything, modern generations need reminders that 99.99% of us are NPC's and the best thing we can do for the world, our families and those around us are to be really good, competent NPC's.

Let me also point out we landed on the moon without that view of education. People, on the moon, with all the technological and institutional advances necessary to make that happen.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#333

Post by satnhak » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:44 PM UTC

Good teachers have a thorough understanding of what they are teaching. My guess is that most teachers in UK schools don't. From my undergraduate degree, many years ago, the only people who went into teaching were bottom of the class. For example after a 3 year maths degree a guy who was enrolled in a teacher training course after graduation did not know what a linear function was (y = Ax + C simply blew his mind). It's hard to attract talent because at best it's a lifestyle job that is kind of awful while you're doing it where the pay is low and the expectations are low, but gives you 1/3 of the year off as compensation. Unless your primary concern is a job that fits around childcare, then teaching is not the job for a capable person (pragmatically). Also 80% of the concern in schools now is "safeguarding", which from what I can tell assumes that everyone is a constant threat to everyone.

Learning is not supposed to be fun, the way playing games is supposed to be fun. Sitting alone with books for hours at a time and thinking on problems has a certain joy to it, but that's hard won. Kidding children into thinking that it is, is a huge disservice to them.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#334

Post by rustcleaner » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

burnt-resistor wrote: post #329

dash2 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's huge value to learning Latin, but that's because it was the core language of European civilization for millennia more than because it's a gateway to English. Ancient Greek is a very difficult language. It takes a solid decade of work to learn, and the payoff is you get to read a few - admittedly brilliant - authors. I would not automatically prefer that to being able to talk to everyone in the Spanish…

In a 1940 Massachusetts public school, my blue collar grandfather was required to take Latin, immersive French, and was graded on handwriting. Latin plus a foreign language like Mandarin, Hindi, or Spanish should be the table stakes minimum standard. English composition, creative writing, and reading classics should also be nonnegotiable essential requirements too.

[flagged]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#335

Post by selimthegrim » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

wagwang wrote: post #214

geysersam wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think kids have a right to be exposed to these ideas. Stratifying society even further, only exposing select sections of the population to advanced ideas in philosophy or science, will not help build a solid democratic society.

Works very well in Germany. Devastating student loans is contributing way more to the stratification of society.

Have you asked some people of migration background lately?

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#336

Post by wizzwizz4 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

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…

> Duolingo is just one example that there is plenty of money to be had even with dubious claims and a product that doesn't actually work that well.

No, Duolingo is an example that proves that there is plenty of money in taking a flawed-but-useful education tool, and making it much worse in specific, habit-forming ways. I don't know that it proves anything about the profitability of providing learning: merely about the profitability of providing the perception of learning / a habit-forming activity that you can persuade yourself is a virtue.

Perhaps showing people metrics derived from the "proved it with data", after each session, to provide the perception of progress even when the learning task is frustrating? Looking into gym psychology, rather than (video) game psychology, might help. You'd want to try to encourage intrinsic motivation, rather than extrinsic motivation, but I'm not aware of any research on how to do that.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#337

Post by graemep » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #262

graemep wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most teaching until uni is mostly forced upon students. That is the problem. It should not be forced. People naturally love learning and its a matter of facilitating that. Not going into details here as I have recent comments on this and other threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409530

People naturally like learning some things and dislike learning others. The idea that if some learning is not interesting to everyone is misguided. And no, something being useful and relevant does not make it interesting on itself. Even if you know it is useful you can just dislike having to learn it.

What is wrong with focusing on what you find interesting and doing only what is really necessary of what you do not? The problem is forcing everyone, regardless of talents or interests or aims, to follow the same curriculum

If you know its useful you are still motived. if you are motivated overall you will develop the discipline to get through what you do not find interesting and put the work in. it avoids situations like this from the first comment in this thread: "they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade."

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#338

Post by liveoneggs » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

bigthymer wrote: post #46

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…

Having multiple parallel tracks for different types of students is controversial. Schooling tends to be cyclical with periods with more tracking is popular shifting to periods of less tracking and more classroom mixing. It really depends on what you want to optimize for. More tracking benefits the highest achievers. Less tracking raises the bottom and the average but at the cost of not maximizing the outcome of the t…

I find these arguments ignore one of the most obvious and important parts of school: discipline/behavior.

A really small number of disruptive kids will destroy the learning of the entire middle. The top kids will figure it out at home and survive, or their parents will separate them through brute-force - a few borderline high achievers will probably be brought down too.

In the poorer neighborhoods around me the school performance is actually shameful and the kids are being subjected to the worst of their peers constantly, destroying their ability to succeed. Many will (hopefully) drop out/get arrested by late middle/early high school but the damage they do to their entire neighborhood along the way is massive.

Cohorting the highs and the well-behaved middle would probably work out just fine but unless you can eliminate the disruptive and the very-behind it's just the worst of all worlds.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#339

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

DroneBetter wrote: post #281

bjourne wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This comment made me roll my eyes. :) Giving students high grades for little effort is a cheat code for being considered a great teacher. Most everyone working in academia knows that.

this is not necessarily the case; the coursework could have been produced by a different person from the teacher (although generally at my alma mater the 'module organiser' fulfils both roles).

I’m not sure GP’s point landed. As I read it, it had nothing to do with who created the curriculum or even how much the student learned.

“Anyone who applies the smallest amount of effort gets a B and anyone who really tries gets an A” is a path to being seen as a great teacher in the eyes of the students, especially the students who got a B.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#340

Post by peterfirefly » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #203

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.

> Problem is when one mixes kids who don’t want to be there with one’s that do, they all suffer. At what age do you think kids should be able to leave school?

closer to 12 than to 15.