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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

#351

Post by acamerer »

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…

Very interesting. I do know that duolingo makes a great effort into trying to simplify the learning process to reduce friction, but still structured learning is really great for learning the rules, while duolingo is better for unstructured practice with some learning, like the article mentioned about the kid and the app I believe short circuiting to the reward.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#352

Post by eldaisfish »

graemep wrote: post #337
watwut wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this is exactly how you create a population that is mathematically illiterate and ripe for manipulation by foreign powers and marketing agencies.

Our society and any democracy relies on a shared minimum level of competence. If you cannot compare costs per unit, do not understand basic biology, or cannot compare evidence, just because it does not interest you, you are cannot function in modern society.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#353

Post by g3f32r »

zipy124 wrote: post #269
socalgal2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ which claims data shows students being forced to "figure it out" is not the best way to learn. Most HNer disagree with this.

That's exactly quoted at the start of the article? "Problem-based learning tends to do worse than traditional schooling in medical education. An influential meta-analysis by Albanese and Mitchell, for instance, found that students required more time studying, had worse exam scores and ordered more unnecessary tests compared to traditionally taught students. " Problem-based learning is exactly the "figure it out" meth…

> students required more time studying, had worse exam scores and ordered more unnecessary tests compared to traditionally taught students.

While I didn't do any additional looking into it -- this is often my biggest gripe. Is the _goal_ to have better exam scores and require less time studying or is the goal to be a better problem-solver holistically?

When faced with a novel problem that neither the problem-based learning group nor the traditional schooling group - which performed better and by what metrics?

---

It seems silly to say "This group who was instructed to rote memorize material could indeed perform better on a direct memory recall examination." and then close the door on problem-based learning.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#354

Post by jon-wood »

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.

Yeah, I was that student. It was undiagnosed ADHD (because nobody thinks to go send the kids who aren't literally jumping around the place shouting for an assessment, I'm ADD without so much of the hyperactivity). Put me in a classroom where literally all there is to do is getting on with the work and I'll be mostly ok, or at least give a good appearance of being so. Once I got home though I simply wasn't going to sit down and focus on doing homework, it wasn't a case of refusing too or anything, I always had the intent of doing it, but then the morning it was due would come round and somehow it hadn't happened.

Anyway, I did fine. Through some merciful coincidence the thing I was interested in doing turned out to be a lucrative career choice in an industry populated by people with the same sort of brain. That was almost entirely fluke though, it would be nice if instead of people just shrugging and going "huh, guess he's not interested in learning" we could improve education to better accommodate people who don't fit exactly down the median path.

I'd start by doing away with with homework which really is some grade A bullshit - if my employer decided to turn around and go "oh, by the way, now the work day is over here's some extra work I'd like you to get done in your own time" they wouldn't be my employer for very long. How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks?

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#355

Post by dboreham »

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…

Both my parents were teachers so I thought I had some idea, but it wasn't until I ventured into the middle school to assist a teacher with a coding class (probably this was 10 years ago now) that I learned something about education.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#356

Post by neutronicus »

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…

In the US, it seems like malpractice to teach anything before Spanish IMO. 14% of the country are native Spanish speakers. It's hard to imagine a return on any other foreign-language instruction that would match improving communication between 45 million residents of the country and everyone else, to say nothing of improving communication with citizens of the other countries actually sharing a land mass with the US.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#357

Post by Edman274 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #183
keithnz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

schooling has to be designed around "average" teachers. Having someone who is gifted at teaching is great, but there wouldn't be many teachers if that was the standard. I often think when people idealize what schooling should be like it always seems like they are imagining teachers who are gifted.

Yes, as always, we like people to be good at their jobs instead of being bad at their jobs. But, I think teaching skills, juuuust like any other skills can be taught and improved. So if we want good teachers and educators we need to build them up, not just relie on a few good ones to carry the day. I personally reject the notion of competency in this as a matter of "giftedness", as something you either have or don't…

You do understand at least intuitively that it's not even mathematically possible - let alone practically - to train 100 percent of teachers to be in the top 10 percent of teachers, right? The definition of "good" and "gifted" is only used relative to an average. No amount of training can make the average teacher better than the average teacher; it's a logical impossibility, and misunderstands the central effect of training and the goal of the person being trained. No student nor teacher cares about be trained to some objective standard of competence. Rather, the goal is to be better than one's peers and you can't have all teachers be better than all teachers unless you reject the concept of teachers being comparable.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#358

Post by thunderfork »

anon-3988 wrote: post #166
nostrademons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I can easily claim that most kids are not interested in anything economically valuable. Probably most adults as well.

Well, there's your problem. You've gone from "teach kids" to "economic value". Keep your eye on the ball, not on the stands.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#359

Post by Lord-Jobo »

lnenad wrote: post #318
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may refuse to learn multiplication tables (a popular subject if I remember right, reciting them as far as we could, a competition) while memorizing baseball stats. Kids will learn anything that gives them social standing or self-worth in another way, whatever it takes to be a cool kid.

> "Kids will learn anything that gives them social standing or self-worth in another way, whatever it takes to be a cool kid." "nerds" would disagree with you. I think the point that OP was trying to make is the three groups are dynamic based on the topic. So the groups are not the same for biology, maths and for literature.

Nerds are a group that have a separate definition of social peer and “cool” but aspire just as much as other groups to achieve social status or coolness.

It’s exceptionally rare to encounter any person, adult or otherwise, that genuinely holds no value in any opinion of another. And even those people hold to their own self evaluations which do not spawn from pure noise.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#360

Post by rossdavidh »

It seems to me he contradicts his own thesis here: "The boring truth is that expertise in most subjects is largely a matter of having an enormous library of knowledge and skill. For example, if you want to learn a language, you need to learn a lot of words. Any method that tries to skip over the fact that there are tens of thousands of words to learn is doomed to failure. All skills are like this, it’s simply that the “atoms” of learning are usually less obvious than in languages."

...but we don't learn our first language, or any other, by first learning a few thousand words and only then speaking. We start using the very first words we learn, in real life situations, and add words as we need them. It's the real-world applicability and project-based method that he pronounces skepticism of elsewhere in the same piece.

Every coach of every sports team ever, knows that you need drills, but you also need to play actual games, to keep kids motivated to do those drills.

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