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

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#551

Post by tshaddox » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 4:46 AM UTC

FloorEgg wrote: post #548

tshaddox wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry if I was uncharitable. That certainly was not my intention. The only usage of "coerce" I'm aware of is in direct opposition to "persuade" or "inspire," and I'm not aware of any serious debate about whether children should be persuaded/inspired/encouraged to learn things.

> I'm not aware of any serious debate about whether children should be persuaded/inspired/encouraged to learn things. Kind of an odd thing to say given decades of pedagogy research in this debate exactly. Maybe you are just entirely uninformed about this topic? E.g. self-directed education, self-determination theory, zone of proximal development, cognitive load theory... Are you saying that you don't think educators…

I have only a surface level awareness of those topics. I would be very surprised if there are notable proponents of the idea that parents/adults should never attempt to encourage children to learn things.

I’ve seen some stuff bordering on this idea from the self-directed education folks, but even the most radical proponents I’ve seen are saying stuff like “try to leave interesting materials about topic X around the house, rather than always asking your child if they want to learn about topic X.” And even that is more about which methods to use to inspire a child to learn.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#552

Post by bentley » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 5:20 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #291

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those kids are lacking socially. It's not 100% by any means. The thing is that if you are home schooling your kids, you have to be intentional about socializing them in a way that you simply don't have to if you have them in a formal school setting. Obviously, some parents are going to fail at that but not all will.

Not 100% is claimed often, but I have personally never seen an exception. Maybe some exist but I don't know of any

Do you make a point of interrogating all the “normal” people you know about their pre‐adult educational history?

You’d be surprised how many people you’ve met who were homeschooled but never happened to bring it up in casual conversation.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#553

Post by somenameforme » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 6:12 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #550

somenameforme wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say because the US was, by far, the most dominant economic power in the world in decades past, and now we're losing that role, or already have depending on how you measure things. But the nature of going from #1 to #1 (or #2 as it may be) means you have no real basis for comparison how things might have been. But what I'd observe is that by many metrics the US hasn't really made major progress since our…

While China's improvements are amazing, don't be fooled, overall China is still behind. They have more people and so totals can look good, but the common person has much improvement left before they beat the US. Ultimately, I think your argument comes down to, when you're on top, it is very hard to improve much more, while, when you're starting at the bottom, you can improve a lot very quickly and easily. Indeed, Chi…

Behind by what metric? PPP their economy is already much larger, their educational outcomes are much better, they're doing wild stuff in bleeding edge domains like robotics, built/launched their own space station super rapidly, and so on. Pretty much the only domain they're clearly behind in is rocket technology owing to SpaceX, and back here stateside you have plenty of people that hope the company somehow fails because they don't agree with the political opinions of its founder.

And the numbers we're citing aren't just from China, but from third party organizations. In any case, the arguments don't come to debating numbers - the change is obvious and visible. It's not like they're claiming new record low unemployment while seemingly large numbers of people somehow people struggle to find jobs.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#554

Post by win311fwg » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #537

beej71 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something has gone horribly wrong with primary sources of education and lived experience if someone reaches the university level before being prepared for the world I think the GP's idea is that university is part of getting prepared for the world. And for many students, university is the final culmination of their preparation.

Yes, this is what I meant University is both academic in the sense that it is about research for the respective field(s), but it is also in a very real sense the last educational institution for many students who end up outside of academia. I am not saying that academic rigor needs to be replaced with a self-help group, what I say is that we can look for win-win-situations that help both in an academic sense and are…

> but my base assumption is that there are fields and topics everybody has gaps in and this is normal.

Absolutely. Which is why we've built a society where helping others close those gaps is natural and considered to be part of a life-long process. Again, it is great that you are playing your part, but you'd be doing the same if you were standing beside someone on an assembly line. It is not clear what the significance of university is, unless you are simply biased by it being central to much of your experience?

> it is more free than school education. [...] If someone has gaps they should get the feeling that they know what to work on and not hit a brick wall and shatter.

Which is why youth life doesn't end at school. In fact, school is supposed to be just a small part of that existence. We encourage them to do things like babysit young children, get jobs, etc. where hitting a wall and shattering is plain unacceptable and even catastrophic. This forces them to quickly get up to speed on how to learn and feeling like they can learn when things get real.

It is inevitable that someone will end up living a completely sheltered life and miss out on those fundamentals, but compelling them to first un-shelter themselves is what university entrance requirements are for. If you are regularly seeing students both sheltered and accepted into university, our fundamental assumptions about university have broken down and we need to step back. You working hard to offer a bandaid is noble, but not a good solution.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#555

Post by annzabelle » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #463

annzabelle wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was lucky to attend a liberal arts college with a large and extremely pedagogy focused mathematics department, and all of my math classes there were like this. Engaging lectures, if I listened and wrote down everything on the board I would be able to get a B on the exams, even if I skimped on practice. Made it all the way to measure theory this way. They included in class group practice integrated with the lectures…

I'm having a hard time believing this. I've had one really good math teacher, his lecture prep was thorough, and the way he presented the material was very understandable, but without doing the problem sets, and some pre-exam review, I would not have been able to remember everything weeks later on an exam.

I definitely did some problem sets and review if I struggled with a topic, but the lectures+in class review was enough for most topics. I do pick up math very easily - a lot of my peers needed more practice than I did.

I will note that this was the B's get degrees approach. If I had been aiming for graduate school, I would've needed to put in significantly more time to get A's and get picked for/complete undergraduate research projects.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#556

Post by throwaway2037 » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #466

peterfirefly wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

closer to 12 than to 15.

Leaving school after 8th grade used to be pretty common. Many jobs were available for someone with an 8th grade education, or you'd start an apprenticeship.

If we are talking about the US, most (all?) states have a separate type of high school for people who plan to pursue the trades. You don't need to leave school.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#557

Post by atoav » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

win311fwg wrote: post #554

atoav wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is what I meant University is both academic in the sense that it is about research for the respective field(s), but it is also in a very real sense the last educational institution for many students who end up outside of academia. I am not saying that academic rigor needs to be replaced with a self-help group, what I say is that we can look for win-win-situations that help both in an academic sense and are…

> but my base assumption is that there are fields and topics everybody has gaps in and this is normal. Absolutely. Which is why we've built a society where helping others close those gaps is natural and considered to be part of a life-long process. Again, it is great that you are playing your part, but you'd be doing the same if you were standing beside someone on an assembly line. It is not clear what the significan…

I guess in my case it has to do with the aspect that I am teaching Media Technology and Electronics in an Art university. The students studying here are the 5% that made it through the selection process, but math and physics aren't typically a big part of that.

Meaning it is kind of like teaching a language in a engineering school: sure it is needed, but you can't just go all hardline on your requirements if you teach that class, otherwise you're going to lose everybody, because someone who studied engineering may have done so precisely with the background that they were bad with languages during school.

Same here. Art students are generally not the abstract maths type (although there are exceptions). My goal is to teach them at least that maths can be a very good tool in their belt if they want to know how things will work out before put into reality.

I still try to demand a lot of the students and they will certainly leave better educated than they entered. I just have to do it more in a boil-the-frog-way, presenting math as a way that allows us to avoid having to do unnecessary work or spend unnecessary money. This works pretty well.

I could of course also do it like my predecessor and just do a lecture on the physics of light, writing down equations nobody will understand and then have 90% fail and curse at my existence. But I don't really see the point of why I would want to do that in terms of the outcome.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#558

Post by win311fwg » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #557

win311fwg wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but my base assumption is that there are fields and topics everybody has gaps in and this is normal. Absolutely. Which is why we've built a society where helping others close those gaps is natural and considered to be part of a life-long process. Again, it is great that you are playing your part, but you'd be doing the same if you were standing beside someone on an assembly line. It is not clear what the significan…

I guess in my case it has to do with the aspect that I am teaching Media Technology and Electronics in an Art university. The students studying here are the 5% that made it through the selection process, but math and physics aren't typically a big part of that. Meaning it is kind of like teaching a language in a engineering school: sure it is needed, but you can't just go all hardline on your requirements if you teac…

That is what I am getting at: Your circumstantial situation of working in a university is not the driver of your actions. If you were working on the assembly line at a factory and noticed those standing beside you lacked some kind of knowledge, you would equally work with them to fill in their gaps. That is the person who you are. The reality is that education happens everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps what you are trying to get at is that those who identify as students in a university are generally already open to learning? It is unlikely they would be there otherwise. Whereas of the people on the assembly line, only some will accept you trying to teach them something. Fair to say that the reality is also that not everyone wants to learn.

Re: I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling

#559

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

rustcleaner wrote: post #322

SubmarineClub wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It turns out that when you level the playing field, girls do better than boys. Why is it that when boys/men where outperforming and out-earning women, people were willing to move heaven and earth to correct this terrible injustice, but now when outcomes have reversed (for years at this point) it's considered acceptable to say "Welp, that's just how it goes. Boys just aren't good enough." Hmmm...almost like, it's no…

Structural misandry. I'm telling you the Zoomer/Alpha boys have taken notice and are checking out of the system. Chickens coming home to roost in a few more decades as the West goes longhouse and gets economically pounded by the East. I was an early bird in MGTOW, but now it's common knowledge and operating strategy for most young men. Boys don't owe society squat, and now they know it!

OK Incel.