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Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

files.eric.ed.gov

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Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#21

Post by gausswho »

gyulai wrote: post #19
gausswho wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if up to an individual, what do you think they would choose for their education if there were no mandates agreed upon by their government. DraftKings is a gambling titan that could offer a very profitable option.

I do not at all think that, if government wasn't in the business of setting those standards, the standards would turn out lower. Reputation would follow the institutions, and graduating from an institution that set lows standards wouldn't have any signalling power to prospective employers, so students wouldn't want to enroll there. What you actually see in countries that have both a private and public education syste…

Well put. I recognize your argument, but ultimately don't share your faith that private certification bodies will do a better job than a government body such as the Department of Education (as long as such an organization is not intentionally devolved with unmeriting stooges). I may switch opinion depending on if we are speaking about schools/universities vs. jobs/trades. But it isn't one or the other. An institution can have a reputation as well as have standards to meet determined by a government department, and I would likely advocate that a hybrid approach is better than one or the other.

Measuring up a student/candidate who was home schooled or self-taught works for some schools/vocations more than others. Having certification/accreditation of some sort streamlines the selection process. Whether such quality is best defined by the market-driven private certifiers or the government will depend on what type of education we're talking about, and even then will be muddied by one's belief in the efficacy of free markets vs democratic governance, which is a whole other can 'o worms.

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#22

Post by [deleted] »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #20
abdellah123 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant the needs of the education should guide "political" decisions. A simple example is that the education budget (percentage) should be in two digits!!

Iirc , the stats show the more school budget the worse education. If you put "free" money into something the parasites will gather. Systems exist to extend themselves, not yo provide the service for which they were created (systemantics).

[deleted]

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#23

Post by hooverd »

eru wrote: post #3
abdellah123 wrote: post #2

This is a marvelous piece of analysis of the "current" traditional educational landscape. Seems like things only got worse over 40 years ... Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. And such a deep change in perspective and "economics" is just not conceivable within the realms…

> Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. Isn't the problem that we are mixing education and politics in the first place? We should probably separate education and the state just as much as we separate church and state. (The touch of politics seldom enhances the quality of an…

Could you define politics here? I don't see how you could separate "politics" from education other than by just not teaching history or anything that touches on social issues.

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#24

Post by throwaway71271 »

gausswho wrote: post #18
eru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't understand the second sentence. Yes, I agree that public education has substantial costs. Both direct costs to the victims and societal externalities. Disassembling the monster would hopefully stop some of them.

So if up to an individual, what do you think they would choose for their education if there were no mandates agreed upon by their government. DraftKings is a gambling titan that could offer a very profitable option.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/56fzWyOxhJg (super short argument)

Milton Friedman had some free market arguments for the school system.

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#26

Post by trane_project »

My implementation of mastery learning (along with other related ideas): https://github.com/trane-project/trane/

It bothered me enough that there was not something like this already available, when the idea seemed so simple, that I ended up doing it myself. The user experience is not very polished yet, but I managed to turn the courses in here https://improviseforreal.com/learning-materials into courses for this software that can teach you ear training and to improvise on any instrument in all keys, all modes, and most common chord progression. Currently, I am doing it for piano, but I've only reached about 15% of the total jam tracks so far. Obviously, I am not distributing the tracks myself.

I am pretty sure the main issue is that there's no one funding implementing these ideas. We've known about mastery learning, spaced repetition, interleaving, etc. for decades, but it's not all been put together into a coherent system. Something like https://mathacademy.com/ is similar, but it's not open sourced and cannot be used to create your own materials. No need for LLMs or anything fancier to be involved when there's so much low-hanging fruit that's not been implemented yet. The core of my software is just a depth-first search over a graph, lol.

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#28

Post by cglee »

I'm embarrassed to say that even after spending nearly a decade operating a mastery-based software engineering school, I've only just heard about this paper now. And having read it just now, I'm feeling better than ever about mastery-based education.

Here's our take on mastery if anyone is interested: https://medium.com/launch-school/mastery-based-learning-2095...

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#29

Post by mnemonicsloth »

abdellah123 wrote: post #5
eru wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. Isn't the problem that we are mixing education and politics in the first place? We should probably separate education and the state just as much as we separate church and state. (The touch of politics seldom enhances the quality of an…

I meant the needs of the education should guide "political" decisions. A simple example is that the education budget (percentage) should be in two digits!!

You're misinformed here.

The biggest per-student spender on education in the developed world is the US:

> In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars).

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

And everybody knows that US outcomes in primary and secondary education are not great. (Actually they're considerably better than many realize, but not as good as, say, Finland, which spends much less). So budgets aren't everything.

And yet, at both the top and in the broad middle, US universities have some of the best outcomes in the world. So big budgets can still be good.

Human brains are complicated. Big groups of them are more so. Transferring output of some brains to other brains in big groups is not at all straightforward.

It's no wonder people would rather swap platitudes about bigger budgets.

Re: Learning For Mastery (1968) [pdf]

#30

Post by tolciho »

abdellah123 wrote: post #5
eru wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. Isn't the problem that we are mixing education and politics in the first place? We should probably separate education and the state just as much as we separate church and state. (The touch of politics seldom enhances the quality of an…

I meant the needs of the education should guide "political" decisions. A simple example is that the education budget (percentage) should be in two digits!!

On the assumption that the modern education system teaches "confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that one cannot hide" (John Taylor Gatto) how would increasing the education budget help educate?
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