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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

#341

Post by somenameforme »

bluGill wrote: post #319
somenameforme wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with this conclusion from another angle as well. It seems slightly odd to me that people think there must be a single "right" way to teach. What works for one student, one group of people, doesn't necessarily work well for another. And it also goes the other way as well. One form of pedagogy might work excellently for one teacher, yet he may do abysmally at another. What's "right" for him may be wrong for a…

Humans are not so different from one other that we need different ways. However there are a lot of ways that work and it is very hard to run a real study to figure out which is best. You cannot isolate all the variables (several of the different ways claim teacher quality is important - just one variable that is hard to isolate)

Why do you think? For an example of something in support of my argument, China (and a number of other East Asian countries) use a very hardcore memorization + training routine. And they are having literally the best educational outcomes in the world from it, but such a thing would almost certainly fail catastrophically in a contemporary American classroom.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#342

Post by graemep »

revolvingthrow wrote: post #261
graemep wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why learn multiplication tables when everyone carries a computer around with them? My kids never did (ineffective school plus later home education) and are good at maths as adults. A previous HN discussion contained this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395840 and ultimately this about a successful experiment in other approaches to maths: https://www.inference.org.uk/sanjoy/benezet/1.html

Why learn to read and write when everyone carries a computer capable of TTS? Why learn anything when your pocket computer has access to AI doing the thinking much better than the average highschooler and has 100x the knowledge?

Because learning to read and write still develop your mind and capabilities. memorising stuff does not.

A better analogy would be "why stop memorising long works now we can read things instead". No one memorises epic poems anymore but we read novel instead.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#343

Post by peterfirefly »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #165
nhinck2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a shift towards too many jobs requiring a tertiary education. But good luck reversing that trend.

This is not true. There has been a shift in requirements to combat credential inflation. The average person is not smarter or more capable.

reading skills are important.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#344

Post by graemep »

rimliu wrote: post #267
graemep wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why learn multiplication tables when everyone carries a computer around with them? My kids never did (ineffective school plus later home education) and are good at maths as adults. A previous HN discussion contained this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395840 and ultimately this about a successful experiment in other approaches to maths: https://www.inference.org.uk/sanjoy/benezet/1.html

This is very close to "Why use brains".

No its not, its why use your brains for useless things. Because my kids did not spend as much time on arithmetic and rote learning they learned algebra much earlier than most do. My older daughter did IGCSE physics when she was 11 and maths when she was 12 as a result. Their ability to read was always well ahead of average for their age.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#345

Post by Wowfunhappy »

simiones wrote: post #320
rustcleaner wrote: post #313

One revolution that backfired massively: the departure from phonics reading to some sort of contextual whole-word one, where students were reprimanded for trying to sound the word out. By extension the loss of basic Greek & Latin has had a terrible impact; at least teach just enough to learn that most English words are compounds of simpler Greek/Latin words strung together (like German's adjectiveadjectiveadjectiveno…

I fully agree on phonics, but teaching Greek and Latin before any modern language? That seems deeply weird as an idea. Especially since Greek (by which I assume you mean Ancient Greek) is a pretty isolated language, with relatively little relation to any modern language except modern Greek. Another huge issue with Ancient Greek and Classical Latin is that they have extremely complex grammars compared to any modern Eu…

> Classical Latin [has] extremely complex grammars compared to any modern European language

…I know almost nothing about this topic, but this doesn’t line up with what people who know Latin have told me. They’ve frequently cited the language’s simple grammar as something they like about it.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#346

Post by vablings »

simiones wrote: post #320
rustcleaner wrote: post #313

One revolution that backfired massively: the departure from phonics reading to some sort of contextual whole-word one, where students were reprimanded for trying to sound the word out. By extension the loss of basic Greek & Latin has had a terrible impact; at least teach just enough to learn that most English words are compounds of simpler Greek/Latin words strung together (like German's adjectiveadjectiveadjectiveno…

I fully agree on phonics, but teaching Greek and Latin before any modern language? That seems deeply weird as an idea. Especially since Greek (by which I assume you mean Ancient Greek) is a pretty isolated language, with relatively little relation to any modern language except modern Greek. Another huge issue with Ancient Greek and Classical Latin is that they have extremely complex grammars compared to any modern Eu…

It's not even really about learning Greek or Latin as a true spoken language. It's about known the roots of the linguistics for understanding why a word is even created in the first place.

English is a really messy language but there are many simple underlying roots that can tell you what the word means with context clues after hearing it for the first time.

Also learning the International Phonetic Alphabet is probably another huge boon for comprehension, the nicer books often include IPA spelling for crazy off the rip words

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#347

Post by red-iron-pine »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #345
simiones wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree on phonics, but teaching Greek and Latin before any modern language? That seems deeply weird as an idea. Especially since Greek (by which I assume you mean Ancient Greek) is a pretty isolated language, with relatively little relation to any modern language except modern Greek. Another huge issue with Ancient Greek and Classical Latin is that they have extremely complex grammars compared to any modern Eu…

> Classical Latin [has] extremely complex grammars compared to any modern European language …I know almost nothing about this topic, but this doesn’t line up with what people who know Latin have told me. They’ve frequently cited the language’s simple grammar as something they like about it.

i did Latin in HS. it's not simple, and classical Latin is "static" compared to modern Latin-based languages, which have evolved.

Good for getting SAT scores, but 3 years of actual French or Spanish would have done far more for me.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#348

Post by red-iron-pine »

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 had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then 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. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there.

"The A students lead the C students who direct the B students"

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#349

Post by timbit42 »

method_capital wrote: post #18

The reason schooling is hard to change - here in the US - is because the teachers unions and politicians work together to reduce hours, reliance on standards, eliminate "work" (homework isn't good for them!), and increase spend and pay. Government is incredibly inefficient at most tasks - on average things the government does cost twice as much - but it's incredibly terrible at education. Spending has increased - per…

Many, perhaps most, of the teachers are underpaid. If spending more money isn't helping, there are probably too many middle-managers sucking up the money. Remove some of the middle-managers and divert their money to the teachers.
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