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A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

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Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#31

Post by gbog »

DanBC wrote: post #8

I thought (from the headlines) that this was going to be like Summerhill School. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School ) > It is run as a democratic community; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do…

The great essayist Simon Leys said one day that education task was to prepare pupils to be the best citizen in a democracy, but that democracy is not part of the tools used to achieve education.

I think these differing views coke from different understanding of democracy. On one side democracy is reduced to "decide together", and is applied to school management, experimentally. The real democracy is on the other side.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#32

Post by gbog »

yeukhon wrote: post #30
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, but they do have less women than the average French school, and the OP gave a bunch of serious reasons why this might be the case. They could try to eliminate those policies, and see if it increases female enrollment.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

No, the fair policy is to just not count the gender is the ranking.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#33

Post by innino »

yeukhon wrote: post #30
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, but they do have less women than the average French school, and the OP gave a bunch of serious reasons why this might be the case. They could try to eliminate those policies, and see if it increases female enrollment.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

The fair policy is to take the most competent candidates, regardless of gender.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#34

Post by yeukhon »

gbog wrote: post #32
yeukhon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

No, the fair policy is to just not count the gender is the ranking.

Are you saying we don't care how many male/female applicants and just accept the one we think fit the school?

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#35

Post by yeukhon »

innino wrote: post #33
yeukhon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

The fair policy is to take the most competent candidates, regardless of gender.

That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female.

So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#36

Post by gbog »

yeukhon wrote: post #34
gbog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the fair policy is to just not count the gender is the ranking.

Are you saying we don't care how many male/female applicants and just accept the one we think fit the school?

Yes, as long as "fit in the school" do not include any race or gender requirements.

That's one understanding of equality. Another includes positive action, etc, but one may argue that by giving more chance to women, black people, etc, at one step in their lives, is not helping them in fact, because this "positive action" makes them weaker for the next steps, which will be harder.

I think I remember a book or a movie, where a very good village teacher was helping farmer kids climb the ladder He did so partly awakening their minds to the things of culture, but also most importantly being doubly harsh on them. That's because he knew he was in the best position to teach them to live under harsh conditions, to defend themselves, to overcome difficulties, etc. This guy was really giving farmer kids a fair chance to climb the ladder, and the way is not to just let them in and be kind with them.

I think someone would want to help female student in IT should do the same, teach them to overcome half-sexist jokes, to live in a male-oriented environment without losing their feminity, and to be geeker than geeks.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#37

Post by kevgnulldev »

While I have reservations about this particular instantiation, discussion does seem to notions, at least vaguely (superficially?), to ideas that do have merit and are being successfully implemented in some US medical schools... (Emphasis on vague/superficial)... At the risk of enlarging the conversation beyond its intended scope, I'm thinking along lines of pedagogy that address some of these ideas:

http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/publications/EA.Piaget...

A move that I'd like to see but that this particular project only tips its hat to.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#38

Post by nathanappere »

juliendorra wrote: post #15
LAMike wrote: post #4

15 hours a day? On fake problems? Why not teach them basic skills on the frontend and backend and let them work on projects for 15 hours a day?

From what I gather the 42 team has a really poor view of anything web-dev related. They have this idea of creating "hardcore devs", because supposedly they are better and if you can code hardcore you can code anything. (An idea that obviously lead to entire categories of failures, because not two systems are alike, and developing necessitate many skills, including communicating, writing, leading) Note that this is wh…

Epitech Alumni here (42 is basically the same thing but free). The idea is rather that if you start from low level programming it is not difficult to go up, and you can pretty much do anything after that. I do think that starting from C/C++ & having a good understanding of how any interpreted language work makes you a better web developer. Not that it guarantees it / is absolutely necessary, but it gives you a broader understanding, and that's what the founding team from 42 believes too.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#39

Post by nathanappere »

yodsanklai wrote: post #22

I'm very skeptical about this. The idea is that computer science isn't properly taught in French old fashioned universities and "grandes ecoles". As a result, some students fail while they would succeed with a more pragmatic, project-based education. It sounds like a good idea. After all, we all know stories of bright people or great hackers that felt academic education wasn't for them and followed a different, succe…

Epitech Alumni here (42 is basically the same thing but free).

1. Studied in CSULB / UCB, you really don't do enough of them. More theory than practise when you should probably seek theory when you're confronted to a problem that needs it.

2. You really don't need to know about automata theory, linear algebra or whatever to be a good developer. Brings me back to what I said in 1.

3. Actually the paper doesn't depicts the reality clearly: you have a lot of teacher assistant always available to help you, it's just that they are not allowed to gives you the answer, only to help you search in the right direction. When you encounter something tricky where finding documentation on the internet becomes an issue then you can talk about it with them. The system works quite well in Epitech. I have been a C & C++ assistant there and the level amongst the assistants is really good, and you could never hire the same number of qualified teachers (if you could find them). Having people that worked on the same project themselves quite recently (like 1 or 2 years ago) makes it that you will always find someone who knows what he is talking about.

To teach CS this is really the best system I have seen so far, and it teach you to never get stuck, never trust blindly what someone says, and always go find the answers by yourself.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#40

Post by nathanappere »

DanBC wrote: post #7
LAMike wrote: post #4

15 hours a day? On fake problems? Why not teach them basic skills on the frontend and backend and let them work on projects for 15 hours a day?

I'm guessing French unions don't want unpaid students doing real work because they want the real work to be done by employed people.

Well I guess that when you have a good story it is a shame to let facts get in the way.

French unions have no say in the curriculum of a private school (and it would make absolutely no sense, lot of fantams about french unions there I think!).

Private school can teach pretty much what they want. If they want they diploma recognised by the government then they must comply to some policies of the ministry of education, but it is up to them.

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