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Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own ter

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addressed, but the system has to serve all types, including children who's parents are unable to provide alternative structures and insights and 'hacks' to get by. That didn't add much (I wasn't trying), but these threads always seem to turn into an echo chamber of "I got by without doing any homework!" because, let's face it, here we are. What is the 98% solution, I wonder, versus the 2% version? Of all that I've seen, it starts with better, smarter, well-paid, un-stressed, empathetic teachers. Students too afraid to think? Too pinned down to discover how best to learn for themselves? I just want to give all these poor kids a hug and tell them how smart they really are--it makes me so sad.

guimarin 11y ago
I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts. If you can learn on your own, and have the capacity to recognize when the assumptions underpinning the status-quo are no longer correct, you can consistently remain wealthy relative to everyone else. True rich families understand this and teach it implicitly/explicitly to their children. Who end up being the fertile ground on which 'good teachers' have a multiplicative effect. This does not work for the poor as they lack the necessary base skills and knowledge to benefit from good teaching. Poor people still break through because circumstance often teaches people, like everyone who came from nothing on this message board, how to learn on their own without help or assistance from others. Advocating more assistance from others is not the solution. And for the same reason that sending $1T in aid to Africa has had mixed results. Knowledge cannot be taught it must be learned.
- NiftyFifty 11y ago
  Knowledge cannot be taught it must be inferred.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Exactly. Knowledge and insight is what you get when you take the facts you've been taught (or learned yourself) and internalize them. Schools nowadays focus too much on the first at the cost of the second, because former is easily testable and the latter takes time.
    - mhuffman 11y ago
      One of the goals of Common Core was to fix that situation ... but then, you know, teaching to the test kind of defeated it.
      - analog31 11y ago
        Interestingly enough, when the schools in my locale started talking about Common Core, I decided to look it up. I found that one or more states had published complete curriculum guides written around CC, and since I like math, I looked through the math curricula. My impression is that the CC curriculum (neglecting variations that I haven't seen) is so ostentatiously mainstream, that I can't fathom how it became controversial, except that people mistakenly associate it with standardized testing.
- guimarin 11y ago
  And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. That is the future of education. Games for children that teach them how to learn, that they then use to set their own educational path. With teachers, schools, mentors, and advisors helping along the way.
  - tonydiv 11y ago
retbull 11y ago
Maybe don't tell them that they are smart. Tell them that it is OK to work on something and be bad at it. They need to learn to fail and try again not learn that they are smart. This doesn't mean giving them homework or not giving them homework but encouraging them however we can to actually use that creativity we know they have to learn how to learn on their own terms.
jy2947 11y ago
+1 I think the problem is not homework - it is there is no other reliable and affordable "better" alternative to homework or standard test. We can all argue that homework is taking away the time kids can otherwise spend on exercising, socializing, innovating etc, but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones I might be in a minority here, but I have an issue with that sentiment. Because before phones, it was "playing video games". Before that, it was "watching TV". Before that, it was probably "wasting time outside" or "chit-chatting with friends". There's always something else that's "wasting time", even if that "wasting" is infinitely more useful than the activity deemed as "not wasteful". I'm from the "watching TV" to "playing video games" transition generation and I must say that I owe more to both of them than to most time spent in school. > there is no other reliable and affordable "better" alternative to homework or standard test I agree with that though. Standarized tests and homeworks seem to me to be an artifact of an increasingly complex society. Some of that complexity may go away though, if we advance far enough to get rid of the job market entirely (UBI, automation, etc.) - it's competition that requires standarized grades so that people can be compared with each other.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    I'm from the "watching TV" to "playing video games" transition generation and I must say that I owe more to both of them than to most time spent in school. Me too. I spent a lot of time watching educational TV programming when I was a kid. I remember the day I made the sad realization that I had seen every episode of Mr. Wizard's world and there would be nothing new to learn from the show. I think that there is too much emphasis on standardized testing but I do think that some testing is necessary. I think it's important to have some way to measure if teachers are imparting any knowledge on their students or if they're engendering a love of learning. My favorite teachers(with some of whom, I remain in contact) are the ones who inspired me to learn more about the subject matter than was taught in the class.
bnj 11y ago
It seems to me that the complexity of the issues facing our education system is often drowned out. Everyone went to high school, so they feel comfortable looking back on their experiences and inferring out from there. I'm a high school teacher in NYC- the largest school district in the country, and the complexity of this system is utterly shocking. I agree with what you said about most parents not having the tools to effectively advocate for their child's education, and I think it's true that the teacher is in the best place to have real impacts on students educational outcomes. I have to stop there- was teaching all day, lost track of what I wanted to button with.
pippy 11y ago
And to compound this pressure standardized testing is putting teachers under the thumb. There's an obscene amount of paperwork required and it takes the focus away from students. In today's environment standardized testing is a step back, in the 1950 it would have made sense. A better approach would be to emulate the Finnish curriculum which is ridiculously fluid. And it works, they're currently one of the highest achieving nations. To be frank I suspect the standardized testing methodology was employed as a part of a conservative agenda to ensure private schools have an advantage. It seems to have spread globally under conservative governments in suspicious circumstances. In New Zealand it's called 'National Standards', and was introduced at the same time charter schools started receiving government funding.
- guimarin 11y ago
  A conspiracy seems overly suspicious. It's more likely that the people putting in place standardized testing believe that data should drive compensation and results. They don't seem to be understanding the implication of such a garbage in garbage out policy though. In private schools there is also standardization and testing, and the data is often good HS and thereby good colleges.
plaguuuuuu 11y ago
Is the "skip school and become an entrepreneur" meme chiefly an American idea? Everyone I know from China be like "get the best marks in the entire region and become an entrepreneur"
- svachalek 11y ago
  Probably. It seems to me that in China and some of the nearby countries, there is a belief that doing well in school will practically guarantee success in life, an idea that most Americans would find laughable. I don't know if it's actually a lot more complicated to get ahead here than it is there, but certainly there's a lot more awareness here that life is not so simple.
  - a-nikolaev 11y ago
    I did not go to a US school myself, but many of my friends who did are saying that studying diligently and doing well in class negatively affects your reputation.. and if you are doing any nerdy extracurricular work or go to a STEM camp, you are just doomed.. ) And then these people go to college, and cannot do simple multiplication.. I think this is not how it should be..
  - shostack 11y ago
    I wonder how much of that belief stems from cultural institutions where top positions at the best companies use good schools and good grades as primary hiring criteria. In the US, that is still very much the case at a lot of companies outside of hiring developers in the tech industry. Can't say I entirely blame them as much as I dislike the practice. When someone lacks experience because they are entry-level, that is pretty much the next best indicator you have as to some level of intelligence and drive to succeed.
wodenokoto 11y ago
> That didn't add much For what it's worth, I think it did.
mehrdada 11y ago
I've heard this argument many times since I was a kid and I was "fighting" the educational system I was in and later on, and I think this is red herring. Any change in the educational system that seems to target it for the "top" students is pushed back with "this only works for the motivated and we need to take care of the 98% too". However, it's not at all clear that the status quo is effectively optimized to maximize the benefit for the bottom 98% either. Neither it looks like they are designed by wise, well-intentioned, experts. For the most part, educational systems around the world seem to have been an evolution through design by committee mostly directed by political motives. Since almost everything tried has been quite ineffective at moving the needle for the bottom 98% in any meaningful way, this serves as a good political excuse for not radically moving things around. Perhaps educational systems should be designed for the top 2% and the other 98% would adapt as time goes by, instead of being crippled with that excuse? (not saying this is true, but it is worth thinking about)
pavement 11y ago
better, smarter, well-paid, un-stressed, empathetic teachers Totally, but a teacher in charge of usually 30 children, for probably 8 hours a day, still isn't going work miracles. Divide your attention across thirty energetic people in 8 hours. You'll still feel spread thin. When elementary school gives way to high school, this ratio of time per teacher, per student becomes even more distributed. Possibly up to 8 classes of 30 students per teacher, each class lasting an maybe an hour. If you were to parcel out direct attention, such that each teacher spent an equal amount of time with each student, across the entire day, every student would get 2 minutes from each of their 8 teachers, in such a scenario. Maybe that's a 2 minute chess game, or 2 minutes in the confessional. Obviously lectures don't actually work that way, but you see the point I'm driving at. Parents with 4 kids feel stressed out by their own kids. 4 kids is a large family. Teachers probably feel the least stressed when there are no kids, or perhaps when only their well-behaved favorite students are present.

guimarin 11y ago

I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts. If you can learn on your own, and have the capacity to recognize when the assumptions underpinning the status-quo are no longer correct, you can consistently remain wealthy relative to everyone else. True rich families understand this and teach it implicitly/explicitly to their children. Who end up being the fertile ground on which 'good teachers' have a multiplicative effect. This does not work for the poor as they lack the necessary base skills and knowledge to benefit from good teaching. Poor people still break through because circumstance often teaches people, like everyone who came from nothing on this message board, how to learn on their own without help or assistance from others. Advocating more assistance from others is not the solution. And for the same reason that sending $1T in aid to Africa has had mixed results. Knowledge cannot be taught it must be learned.

NiftyFifty 11y ago
Knowledge cannot be taught it must be inferred.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Exactly. Knowledge and insight is what you get when you take the facts you've been taught (or learned yourself) and internalize them. Schools nowadays focus too much on the first at the cost of the second, because former is easily testable and the latter takes time.
  - mhuffman 11y ago
    One of the goals of Common Core was to fix that situation ... but then, you know, teaching to the test kind of defeated it.
    - analog31 11y ago
      Interestingly enough, when the schools in my locale started talking about Common Core, I decided to look it up. I found that one or more states had published complete curriculum guides written around CC, and since I like math, I looked through the math curricula. My impression is that the CC curriculum (neglecting variations that I haven't seen) is so ostentatiously mainstream, that I can't fathom how it became controversial, except that people mistakenly associate it with standardized testing.
guimarin 11y ago
And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. That is the future of education. Games for children that teach them how to learn, that they then use to set their own educational path. With teachers, schools, mentors, and advisors helping along the way.
- tonydiv 11y ago

retbull 11y ago

Maybe don't tell them that they are smart. Tell them that it is OK to work on something and be bad at it. They need to learn to fail and try again not learn that they are smart. This doesn't mean giving them homework or not giving them homework but encouraging them however we can to actually use that creativity we know they have to learn how to learn on their own terms.

jy2947 11y ago

+1 I think the problem is not homework - it is there is no other reliable and affordable "better" alternative to homework or standard test. We can all argue that homework is taking away the time kids can otherwise spend on exercising, socializing, innovating etc, but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones I might be in a minority here, but I have an issue with that sentiment. Because before phones, it was "playing video games". Before that, it was "watching TV". Before that, it was probably "wasting time outside" or "chit-chatting with friends". There's always something else that's "wasting time", even if that "wasting" is infinitely more useful than the activity deemed as "not wasteful". I'm from the "watching TV" to "playing video games" transition generation and I must say that I owe more to both of them than to most time spent in school. > there is no other reliable and affordable "better" alternative to homework or standard test I agree with that though. Standarized tests and homeworks seem to me to be an artifact of an increasingly complex society. Some of that complexity may go away though, if we advance far enough to get rid of the job market entirely (UBI, automation, etc.) - it's competition that requires standarized grades so that people can be compared with each other.
- LordKano 11y ago
  I'm from the "watching TV" to "playing video games" transition generation and I must say that I owe more to both of them than to most time spent in school. Me too. I spent a lot of time watching educational TV programming when I was a kid. I remember the day I made the sad realization that I had seen every episode of Mr. Wizard's world and there would be nothing new to learn from the show. I think that there is too much emphasis on standardized testing but I do think that some testing is necessary. I think it's important to have some way to measure if teachers are imparting any knowledge on their students or if they're engendering a love of learning. My favorite teachers(with some of whom, I remain in contact) are the ones who inspired me to learn more about the subject matter than was taught in the class.

bnj 11y ago

It seems to me that the complexity of the issues facing our education system is often drowned out. Everyone went to high school, so they feel comfortable looking back on their experiences and inferring out from there. I'm a high school teacher in NYC- the largest school district in the country, and the complexity of this system is utterly shocking. I agree with what you said about most parents not having the tools to effectively advocate for their child's education, and I think it's true that the teacher is in the best place to have real impacts on students educational outcomes. I have to stop there- was teaching all day, lost track of what I wanted to button with.

pippy 11y ago

And to compound this pressure standardized testing is putting teachers under the thumb. There's an obscene amount of paperwork required and it takes the focus away from students. In today's environment standardized testing is a step back, in the 1950 it would have made sense. A better approach would be to emulate the Finnish curriculum which is ridiculously fluid. And it works, they're currently one of the highest achieving nations. To be frank I suspect the standardized testing methodology was employed as a part of a conservative agenda to ensure private schools have an advantage. It seems to have spread globally under conservative governments in suspicious circumstances. In New Zealand it's called 'National Standards', and was introduced at the same time charter schools started receiving government funding.

guimarin 11y ago
A conspiracy seems overly suspicious. It's more likely that the people putting in place standardized testing believe that data should drive compensation and results. They don't seem to be understanding the implication of such a garbage in garbage out policy though. In private schools there is also standardization and testing, and the data is often good HS and thereby good colleges.

plaguuuuuu 11y ago

Is the "skip school and become an entrepreneur" meme chiefly an American idea? Everyone I know from China be like "get the best marks in the entire region and become an entrepreneur"

svachalek 11y ago
Probably. It seems to me that in China and some of the nearby countries, there is a belief that doing well in school will practically guarantee success in life, an idea that most Americans would find laughable. I don't know if it's actually a lot more complicated to get ahead here than it is there, but certainly there's a lot more awareness here that life is not so simple.
- a-nikolaev 11y ago
  I did not go to a US school myself, but many of my friends who did are saying that studying diligently and doing well in class negatively affects your reputation.. and if you are doing any nerdy extracurricular work or go to a STEM camp, you are just doomed.. ) And then these people go to college, and cannot do simple multiplication.. I think this is not how it should be..
- shostack 11y ago
  I wonder how much of that belief stems from cultural institutions where top positions at the best companies use good schools and good grades as primary hiring criteria. In the US, that is still very much the case at a lot of companies outside of hiring developers in the tech industry. Can't say I entirely blame them as much as I dislike the practice. When someone lacks experience because they are entry-level, that is pretty much the next best indicator you have as to some level of intelligence and drive to succeed.

wodenokoto 11y ago

> That didn't add much For what it's worth, I think it did.

mehrdada 11y ago

I've heard this argument many times since I was a kid and I was "fighting" the educational system I was in and later on, and I think this is red herring. Any change in the educational system that seems to target it for the "top" students is pushed back with "this only works for the motivated and we need to take care of the 98% too". However, it's not at all clear that the status quo is effectively optimized to maximize the benefit for the bottom 98% either. Neither it looks like they are designed by wise, well-intentioned, experts. For the most part, educational systems around the world seem to have been an evolution through design by committee mostly directed by political motives. Since almost everything tried has been quite ineffective at moving the needle for the bottom 98% in any meaningful way, this serves as a good political excuse for not radically moving things around. Perhaps educational systems should be designed for the top 2% and the other 98% would adapt as time goes by, instead of being crippled with that excuse? (not saying this is true, but it is worth thinking about)

pavement 11y ago

better, smarter, well-paid, un-stressed, empathetic teachers Totally, but a teacher in charge of usually 30 children, for probably 8 hours a day, still isn't going work miracles. Divide your attention across thirty energetic people in 8 hours. You'll still feel spread thin. When elementary school gives way to high school, this ratio of time per teacher, per student becomes even more distributed. Possibly up to 8 classes of 30 students per teacher, each class lasting an maybe an hour. If you were to parcel out direct attention, such that each teacher spent an equal amount of time with each student, across the entire day, every student would get 2 minutes from each of their 8 teachers, in such a scenario. Maybe that's a 2 minute chess game, or 2 minutes in the confessional. Obviously lectures don't actually work that way, but you see the point I'm driving at. Parents with 4 kids feel stressed out by their own kids. 4 kids is a large family. Teachers probably feel the least stressed when there are no kids, or perhaps when only their well-behaved favorite students are present.