I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#221

Post by atoav » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:26 AM UTC

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 am teaching for at the university level for 6 years now, with 5 courses per year.

The one most important goal many beginning (or bad) educators miss is making students care before going all explainy. My subjects are very practical (Media technology, Electronics) and I have repeatedly seen students who understand a theoretical explaination and then fail utterly to apply what was explained in a practical situation. Coincidentally the latter makes most of them care instantly.

The solution in my case was to weave the theory together with something practical tangible. If everybody knows what they are working towards, and you weave in small practical tasks where it has to be applied that knowledge serves a purpose and students are much, much more willing to understand.

When you then go all meta and details after they understood what it is for and how it is used that worked much better than front loading the a struct stuff.

So (1) the dumb explainations that avoid them hurting themselves or breaking things, geared towards "this is what we need in 5 minutes", (2) applying the dumb thing to a practical solution, (3) theory how does it actually work, (4) another practical thing, this time armed with knowledge, watching out for details that we now notice because of knowing the theory.

Students soak that up like sponges. But teaching is hard, especially if the knowledge levels of the students in a group are disparate or you have students that aren't actually fit to receive education for mental reasons in that moment.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#222

Post by h317 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:34 AM UTC

teiferer wrote: post #218

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…

> teach someone who really isn't interested in learning. This is key. If you are interested in a subject, the learning will come more or less automatically. Different ways of teaching still have substantial impact on how efficiently you learn, but you automatically gravitate towards the more efficient methods since you want to learn this out of interest in the subject. Without interest, this is an uphill battle. And…

I think the challenge that teachers have is that being “interested “ in something is a skill in itself. I never played a clarinet when I was a kid, maybe I would have like it, but never did that. If we assume that being interested is a function of household income/structure/ happiness than things get even worse.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#223

Post by cyberax » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:37 AM UTC

freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

Here's the thing. Learning is hard. There's no going around it. You'll need to grind through practice problems, write essays, memorize facts, etc.

And you need to do that. It trains your brain. If you simply rely on calculators, LLMs, and Google Search, then you likely can forget about doing advanced science.

It doesn't mean that you have to _master_ everything. Far from it. But you need to apply real effort to various subjects to train yourself.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#224

Post by cyberax » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

bwhiting2356 wrote: post #45

freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

It's hard to convince kids why they should learn advanced abstract math, beyond what is necessary to calculate the tip on a restaurant bill. The number of high school students who will use advanced math beyond high school is very small, but those that do will have high impact, which is both in society's interest and their own interest as high earners. The kids that study and apply themselves, I don't think it's so mu…

Here's my take: school math past the basic arithmetic will be useless in life for the majority of people. Any non-trivial school-level-related math question can be easily solved within 10-20 seconds by a Google search.

That's also why all the examples of math's usefulness become ridiculous stories like: "imagine yourself getting stuck on an uninhabited island and having to calculate the triple integral to find the volume of a barrel of water".

No. The real use of school-level math/physics/chemistry/language is in laying the _foundation_ and training the brain.

And it doesn't really matter what exactly you want to use for mental training. Every structured activity is fine, as long as it engages the brain.

Even pointless tasks like memorizing scriptures help. There are studies that show that religious students who spent a lot of time on rote memorization, and later switch to other disciplines, in the end do quite well with their studies.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#225

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#226

Post by viccis » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

freeopinion wrote: post #10

IMO, the best questions around revolutionizing school should address whether children should be coerced into learning something. It seems obvious to me that the answer should be yes. So the follow ups should be figuring out how to move a student from an unwilling participant to a willing participant. I think about three strata of students. The stubbornly unwilling, the coaxable, and the eager. It is pretty easy to de…

The answer is, as it's always been, aggressive tracking. Easier said than done because most school administrators and education policymakers base a lot of their self worth out of being "good people" and being liked by everyone. Having to give up on some kids is unthinkable to them. Simply giving up on all of the kids in a way that decouples the outcomes from their direct actions is much preferable and lets them sleep easy.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#227

Post by doctorpangloss » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

roncesvalles wrote: post #206

doctorpangloss wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just assume that they've never actually taught anyone anything I care about teaching my students leadership, because all real problems are political. What exactly is the "test" for this? To me, revolutionizing school looks beyond "problem solving," because the parents and students who are excited about the thing they call "problem solving" - it's invoked in the article, it's talked about by many of the other comm…

>because all real problems are political I don't think that's true at all. A lot of problems are purely technical. Once someone figures out the technical part, you realize the politically savvy people waiting on the sidelines for a solution were always a dime a dozen.

at every level, we face political problems that "STEM" provides bad or wrong answers to.

here's a simple one: what is the right answer for how to use a road? more parking? more bike lanes? exclusive use for busses? we do not bid on roadway land, there is no market solution to this. you can come up with a lot of metrics for efficiencies and optimize for them, but which metrics matter? journey times? environmental impact? there are real disputes about waymos, it isn't enough to invent autonomous vehicles, there must be leadership on adopting technology. these are all political issues. okay, and you probably spend 30m to an hour on roadways every day of your life, you can't say, this isn't a real problem.

the greatest irony is it is exactly the families with this fairly myopic "all problem solving is math problem sets" point of view who disengage from political life, and despite their fixation on cultural hegemony, they have disproportionately little representation in politics. to be real, the reason parents care about math is because money. which should tell you everything you really need to know about its power to "solve problems."

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#228

Post by ChaitanyaSai » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

Schooling has been trying for ever to institutionalize and standardize learning without really understanding what learning is. In that absence, we've focused on learning proxies, which are tests. And tests resulted in a focus on mechanics. Meaning was and is an intangible so it got leached out. Everything school does starts at the wrong end of meaning > motiviation > mechanics > measurement.

It is possible to fix school. It needs understanding learning, and also being willing to revisit learning design at every level. How to bring meaning in?

Without meaning you could have all your fancy chromebooks and chatbots but you won't move the needle (as we are seeing)

We are actually trying to change schooling (but with a tiny experiment, knowing that scaling does not happen without changes and cultural context)

https://blog.comini.in/p/schooling-has-a-meaning-crisis-para...

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#229

Post by conductr » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

h317 wrote: post #222

teiferer wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teach someone who really isn't interested in learning. This is key. If you are interested in a subject, the learning will come more or less automatically. Different ways of teaching still have substantial impact on how efficiently you learn, but you automatically gravitate towards the more efficient methods since you want to learn this out of interest in the subject. Without interest, this is an uphill battle. And…

I think the challenge that teachers have is that being “interested “ in something is a skill in itself. I never played a clarinet when I was a kid, maybe I would have like it, but never did that. If we assume that being interested is a function of household income/structure/ happiness than things get even worse.

We shouldn’t force interest. But have high expectations across the board and just realize disinteresting topics will just take more effort and or be more time. It’s virtually impossible to make every subject interesting for every student.

The interest, at least through high school, should come from disciplinary action. And not from the school, from parents. Bad grades should result in punishment. It’s should be the parent’s job to find what motivates their kid to perform under those circumstances. Being grounded, withholding allowance, reducing screen time, whatever your child responds to. The entire issue is rooted in a parenting problem. The education system wants a silver bullet solution that can ignore that but it is pretty constant.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#230

Post by atoav » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 7:02 AM UTC

teiferer wrote: post #218

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…

> teach someone who really isn't interested in learning. This is key. If you are interested in a subject, the learning will come more or less automatically. Different ways of teaching still have substantial impact on how efficiently you learn, but you automatically gravitate towards the more efficient methods since you want to learn this out of interest in the subject. Without interest, this is an uphill battle. And…

Yes, but as an university level educator I have to stress that the vast majority of students suck at understanding what they will need to know to be good at the juicy bits that interested them in the first place. Our task isn't just to teach them what they are interested in. Our task (among others) is to prepare them for a life after university in their profession(s) while giving them the practical skill of learning new subjects themselves. For example: Nearly nobody wants to do the math stuff, but nearly everybody will profit from knowing it after the fact (at least in the field I am in). Education is more than knowledge, but if we talk about knowledge it is the systematic accumulation of interlinked ideas and concepts that after a few years turn someone who had no idea into someone who can excell in their field. Nobody who likes to work on cars likes doing taxes, but nearly everybody who lives off working on cars will need to know how to do them. So the question will be, can a society afford to teach people only the fun bits?

I personally think I would fail my students on a personal level if I let them go through my education and have them ill-prepared for the world that faces them outside. I have worked as a freelancer in the field I am teaching for years so I know very well what I wish someone would have thought me. You can sell a lot of dry stuff by tying it to a practical application that makes them see the use more clearly. That works pretty well and student like it. Real education should feel like gaining a superpower. That means practical applications are crucial, you should basically build the theory around solving actual problems and not the other way around. Pure theorizing should also have its place for those who like it of course.

But I would advice a little bit of caution to hold too strong thoughts about teaching if you have never done so for at least some period yourself. It is much harder and exhausting to do in practise than most people think it is. Especially with big group sizes some things we wish were possible are not necessarily so.