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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

#451

Post by boringg »

SoftTalker wrote: post #449
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…

One of my sons is one of those. He's smart, tends to creative pursuits, and while he will research and learn on his own about stuff he's interested in, put him in a classroom setting, for something he doesn't really care about, and he just won't do the work.

I'm guessing your past this option but you could try a Montessori classroom -- less structured and allows children to chase their own pursuits. My sense is its stronger for years 1-6 as opposed to later years. Also it doesn't feel like Montessori tries to grind down the children - school/teachers dependent for sure (same could be said for other systems).

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#452

Post by Edman274 »

bccdee wrote: post #411
Edman274 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> it's not even mathematically possible to train 100 percent of teachers to be in the top 10 percent of teachers …yes, but it's totally possible to (by, say, 2036) train 100% of teachers to perform at a 90th percentile as compared to teachers from 2026. That's how improvement works, which is what people are describing here. > No student nor teacher cares about be trained to some objective standard of competence What…

Okay, then by 2036 the curriculum and standards of teaching will have been updated too, the expectation of what teachers will be able to teach will have been updated too, the competence of students will have been updated, and the hidden expectation will still be that every teacher can do as well as the "gifted" teachers of 2036. You can predict that this is what will happen because this has been happening for the last century. Up until the last five years student test scores were improving, and if you believe that teacher performance is at all linked to student performance, then improving student test scores ought to draw from teachers getting better too, but that's not good enough. Why? Because the concern - after a baseline is established - is seeking exceptional performance, which definitionally cannot be made routine.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#453

Post by graemep »

eldaisfish wrote: post #352
graemep wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite the opposite. A better education overall makes you better at maths, and more able to think critically. Killing kids love of learning is not the way to a better education. Drilling and memorising does not help you learn to think better. Engaging with things you are interested in does.

I find it very frustrating that people just refuse to believe there cannot be a better way to do things despite all the evidence (many, many academic studies) and the experience of people who have tried doing something different.

> If you cannot compare costs per unit

You are missing the point. You can make learning to do these things fun so kids want to do it. They will find a need for basic arithmetic to do something else and learn at that point.

> do not understand basic biology

Why not? Lots of people do not know basic biology after going through the school system.

> or cannot compare evidence

Why would someone who follows interests not be able to compare evidence? Every field has arguments and requires evidence.

For all these, my experience (and the available more formal evidence) is that allowing kids to follow interests (with guidance, help, suggestions as required) leads to far better results than forcing them to sit through a rigid and boring curriculum.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#454

Post by SoftTalker »

boringg wrote: post #451
SoftTalker wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my sons is one of those. He's smart, tends to creative pursuits, and while he will research and learn on his own about stuff he's interested in, put him in a classroom setting, for something he doesn't really care about, and he just won't do the work.

I'm guessing your past this option but you could try a Montessori classroom -- less structured and allows children to chase their own pursuits. My sense is its stronger for years 1-6 as opposed to later years. Also it doesn't feel like Montessori tries to grind down the children - school/teachers dependent for sure (same could be said for other systems).

Oh he's well past that now. He did graduate High School, kept his grades up enough to be eligible to participate in some extracurriculars that he enjoyed. He made a couple attempts at community college, but it didn't go well and we agreed that we'd stop wasting money on that for now.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#455

Post by j45 »

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.

That's an odd comment below to see die from crm9125.

I'm not sure what's so offensive about it?

If it was downvoted, what interests could want to draw attention away from those sentences, and why?

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crm9125 13 hours ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]

Also there are about 2 billion children on earth, each with their own different idiosyncrasies. Good luck finding the grand unified theory of pedagogy for that.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#456

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

> they should be more rigorous about carefully defining the knowledge objectives of the class, thoroughly breaking down complex skills into components, and doing lots and lots and lots of practice

> 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

Why not spec out the curriculum and spec out the approach (regular quizzes, etc.), then use that to guide the AI? Make the skill gap an objective thing.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#458

Post by graemep »

simiones wrote: post #382
graemep wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with your argument is that you are placing teaching as something done to students at the centre of your view, rather than something done by students. It assume classroom learning. That rules out any really different approach. The fundamental problem is trying to revolutionise schooling rather than learning. > They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there. Then they should not be there…

The point of a fixed curriculum is that there is a minimal level of knowledge on various subjects that we should expect all of our fellow citizens to have. Maybe you find biology very boring, but that still doesn't mean you should be able to finish school without knowing that living organisms have cells that power them, that all animals have hearts, that plants do photosynthesis etc. It's alright to not like history,…

Why does it have to be a fixed curriculum? Individualised learning can still cover everything important.

> The point of a fixed curriculum is that there is a minimal level of knowledge on various subjects that we should expect all of our fellow citizens to have.

Do they actually have it? Do you think schools that have fixed a fixed curriculum are successful at teaching this to everyone? Try picking some average people and asking them to explain Boyles Law, or why and how Rome became an Empire or the causes of the Second World War.

Is the level of minimal knowledge the same for everyone regardless of talents? Some kids will know before they are teenagers than most adults ever will about any of the topics picked, and many more.

I am confused about why you think knowing Latin somehow excludes knowing history of physics or biology.

You are arguing from a position of not having an experience of eduction outside the school classroom setting. I am speaking from experience and from having actually read up on the evidence.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#459

Post by graemep »

g3f32r wrote: post #366
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

> learn multiplication tables I think sibling comments are taking issue with `learn multiplication tables` versus `memorize multiplication tables`. I find no value in the latter in kids but incredible value in the former. What I'm teaching my homeschoolers is to instead be able to quickly derive the table from the "easy" ones. Everyone practices counting by twos, fives, and tens at an earlier stage of math. So when m…

True, you need to understand and teach techniques rather than memorise.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#460

Post by HappMacDonald »

verall wrote: post #441
vablings wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 probab…

If we're discussing pedagogy, hearing a word and repeating it with a human judging your pronunciation is miles better than IPA.

This makes me think that "accent/dialect reviewer" sounds like a rich option for something to train neural networks to do. :)
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