The life of a private tutor (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#61

Post by dweekly » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

p_j_w wrote: post #50

dweekly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…

>Throwing thirty teenagers in a room at 8am and having a tenured adult speak at them for 45 minutes on a subject is not a recipe for success The problem here is that getting enough money to hire more teachers per student is like pulling teeth. The problem that we as a society are solving isn't "how can we achieve the best overall educational outcome?" It's "how can we avoid a disastrously uneducated population with a…

Right - but part of the difficulty and expense in hiring teachers is that we've segmented it off as an expert population with high barriers to entry. If everyone who learned was also expected to teach, you scale the teaching population with the learner population. You can actually see the dynamics of this play out with flight training, since you get your CFI at ~300hrs total flight experience but nobody will hire you with less than ~1,000hrs, so you have this massive pool of certified teachers with 300 - 1,000hrs of experience available to teach as a consequence of the design of the system.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#62

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #46

dang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how bad another comment is or you feel it is. It only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Right. I should've thought about that comment for a moment longer.

Appreciated!

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#63

Post by TchoBeer » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

phantom_oracle wrote: post #47

I picked this up from my time watching those British period pieces, so this might be an assumption based on a fictional telling of the past, but hasn't this concept of being a private teacher/tutor been around for hundreds of years? As these shows always showed the aristocracy, the aspiring hero/heroin had their private teachers "guiding them to greatness". I also found it cynical that instead of aspiring to get a Ph…

I appreciate how this comment respects the fact that your knowledge is spotty and possibly fictionalized. I'm always scared to ask questions or make assumptions based on things I half know from narratives and period pieces etc. Something I can learn from.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#64

Post by narrator » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

dweekly wrote: post #38

dataphyte wrote: post #25

Bloom's 2-Sigma Problem: students getting one-on-one instruction perform 2 standard deviations better than those learning from ordinary instruction methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…

The biggest problem with public instructions is bullying and everything being targeted at minimum competence. Some 12 year old prodigy graduated college and high school at the same time because the pandemic and remote learning letting him zoom ahead at a ridiculous pace.[1]

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/27/us/12-year-old-graduating-hig...

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#65

Post by distrill » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #31

This seems to be another element of the "overproduction of elites" theory by Peter Turchin that was discussed here a few days ago. In a world where the upper middle and upper class has grown to all time high numbers, there is ever more adepts for prestigious titles and prestigious jobs. But the Oxfords and Harvards of the world do not multiply themselves, and they have no incentive to . If the product that they sell…

Prestigious universities get a lot of negative attention for precisely this, at least in some circles. MBAs used to be a no brainer, but the return on their investment has plummeted and much of the value that is retained by the few that retain it is tied up in the exclusivity of the brand.

I think (hope) we're also starting to see a reaction to this. For example google is offering free education and at least claiming to consider their graduates as equal to university graduates.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#66

Post by bcrosby95 » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #54

adverbly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need people to teach as part of how they learn. I've got a principle I came up with called LTD: Learn, Teach, Do. The idea is to prioritize activities where I can be doing all three at the same time. An example would be pair programming with a junior on a new problem where I don't know how to solve every part of the problem. "Learn on the job together with a team, and share learnings as you go" is basically the…

teaching is a very effective method of learning. in one community that i am part of it is emphasized that most of the benefits of teaching go to the teacher. as for a school model, montessori groups children in age-groups spanning 3 years, and older children there routinely teach the younger ones.

Montessori schools are so weird. I'm convinced they're mostly buzzwords to get rich parents to send their kids there - at least around here. I know a couple of teachers and all of them say that the Montessori schools around us don't actually follow most of the philosophies of Montessori.

In our area they seem to be for over-achievers. Want your 4 year old to learn to read, write, and do math? Send them to a Montessori. At least, that's the reason all the parents I know send them there.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#67

Post by analog31 » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

adverbly wrote: post #44

dweekly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…

> we need people to teach as part of how they learn. I've got a principle I came up with called LTD: Learn, Teach, Do. The idea is to prioritize activities where I can be doing all three at the same time. An example would be pair programming with a junior on a new problem where I don't know how to solve every part of the problem. "Learn on the job together with a team, and share learnings as you go" is basically the…

This is actually a principle of training medics: Learn one, do one, teach one.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#68

Post by bryondowd » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

p_j_w wrote: post #50

dweekly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…

>Throwing thirty teenagers in a room at 8am and having a tenured adult speak at them for 45 minutes on a subject is not a recipe for success The problem here is that getting enough money to hire more teachers per student is like pulling teeth. The problem that we as a society are solving isn't "how can we achieve the best overall educational outcome?" It's "how can we avoid a disastrously uneducated population with a…

I wonder if you could get some positive results by using students as tutors. Imagine if a certain number of hours per week, you paired up students in grade X with students in grade X-1, to have the older students help the younger ones to learn the material they leaned the previous year. This would also help cement that knowledge in the older group. Then you also have time where the students in grade X are tutored by students in grade X+1, through the same process. During this time, the teachers' jobs would be to provide support.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#69

Post by em-bee » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #66

em-bee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

teaching is a very effective method of learning. in one community that i am part of it is emphasized that most of the benefits of teaching go to the teacher. as for a school model, montessori groups children in age-groups spanning 3 years, and older children there routinely teach the younger ones.

Montessori schools are so weird. I'm convinced they're mostly buzzwords to get rich parents to send their kids there - at least around here. I know a couple of teachers and all of them say that the Montessori schools around us don't actually follow most of the philosophies of Montessori. In our area they seem to be for over-achievers. Want your 4 year old to learn to read, write, and do math? Send them to a Montessor…

the problem is that the name "montessori" is not protected, and schools take advantage of that.

so you have to look closely if the teachers are actually trained and certified by one of the training schools that actually provide proper montessori training, and whether the classrooms have the proper environment.

Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)

#70

Post by tsss » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

phantom_oracle wrote: post #47

I picked this up from my time watching those British period pieces, so this might be an assumption based on a fictional telling of the past, but hasn't this concept of being a private teacher/tutor been around for hundreds of years? As these shows always showed the aristocracy, the aspiring hero/heroin had their private teachers "guiding them to greatness". I also found it cynical that instead of aspiring to get a Ph…

Earn more than a FAANG PhD? In the article they wrote about salaries of around 70£/h and that's not good at all. The average freelance programmer in Germany already makes 90€/h. Sure there are some tutors who make 250/h but those are people who are already in the upper echelons of society and have access to top clients.