5 ms·

I wonder why more secondary teachers don't use these sorts of examples? Any teachers out there that can give insight?

jerf 11y ago
The central bureaucracy has so overdetermined education that there is no longer any room for deviation. If it's not in the curriculum, there's no time for it, because there isn't hardly even any time to cover what is in the overdetermined curriculum. If you support innovation in education anymore, your first goal now is to get the central bureaucracy out of it. Until that happens, nothing else can change.
- criley2 11y ago
  Removing the central bureaucracy is a double edged sword. For every classroom you free to innovate, you also free a teacher to pan science, attack evolution, teach bible and religion in science class, etc. Many of us grew up in school districts prior to the Bush and Obama centralization regimes and quite literally were taught that Evolution is a Satanic lie by public (non-private non-religious) schools.
  - jerf 11y ago
    Innovation is a double-edged sword in general. Doesn't mean we should stop. Besides, are we not discussing exactly a situation in which the central bureaucracy has overspecified an inferior education? Nothing about "panning science, attacking evolution, teaching the bible and religion" has anything to do with whether or not there is a central organization; one stray election and you'll get all those things coming out of the central organization too. The very topic of this discussion is that an inferior education technique is being mandated right now. The casual default presumption that the centrally-mandated education is perfect is already falsified by the evidence.
    - WaxProlix 11y ago
      So are you saying we could fix the mandate and that would be good, or that specifying a minimum basic to which all teaching should be done is wrong in general? Or some third thing?
  - billbrown 11y ago
    The trouble is that—as my teacher wife likes to say—once the door closes you can teach whatever you want, however you want. She says that in a positive way to dismiss some of the ridiculous expectations of the bureaucracy but I've seen plenty of teachers do troublesome things because of that.
ebbv 11y ago
My first reaction is to agree wit you, but then I thought about it and how do we know they don't? Sure the common wisdom is "teachers suck" and "our education system is out of date" but I haven't been in an elementary school math class in 25 years, let alone a majority of them to really have an informed opinion about this. If it really is a problem, an obvious solution is to just supply prepared materials that are based on this to the schools, and that will do a lot to make it available, if indeed it does work as well or better than the current materials.
- wiremine 11y ago
  Good point. I wasn't suggesting teachers suck. In my experience, though, this approach is more accessible, but it isn't widely used. I'm not a trained educator, so I'm wondering if there we don't see more of this sort of teaching in the classroom.
coldtea 11y ago
Even if they did, students don't care for most things, intelligently explained or not. That's a first problem to overcome.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  According to...? A lot of people love learning new things. It's the mode of learning them that is offputting to so many.
  - akavi 11y ago
    Have you spent any time teaching unmotivated students? Yes, ideally, every student would be motivated to learn for its own sake, but for an individual say, 8th grade, teacher to get a class of kids to that point is an enormous task. And yes, perhaps the entire education system should be revamped so that kids never lose motivation, but how to do that is hardly a solved problem. Which means "Here's the deeper principles that motivate this problem" is going to have a huge uphill battle against "just tell us how to do the problems that are going to be on the test", or worse, "this has no relevancy to my life, so I'm going to tune out this entire class".
    - ethanbond 11y ago
      I'm really curious why it is that students seem to just inherently care about test scores. Surely they were born with such passion for seeing "A" over "B" over "C," and so on. If they were taught to care about deeper principles from day one, I guarantee they would care about deeper principles by year 8.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        That would take a society that also cares about deeper principles, starting with parents etc., and not just "getting into university" and "getting a good job" (and that's when it's not just "make shitloads of money").
    - typon 11y ago
kalid 11y ago
Good question. I see the site as a complement to existing lesson plans. Some teachers have taken the material and presented it in their own style, which I absolutely love: Article: http://betterexplained.com/static/articles/a-quick-intuition-for-parametric-equations/ http://betterexplained.com/static/articles/a-quick-intuition... Video a teacher made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYs6ppuMSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYs6ppuMSk I don't know anything about educational policy, classroom management, etc. I want to provide the best ingredients I can and let teachers make the best meal they can.

jerf 11y ago

The central bureaucracy has so overdetermined education that there is no longer any room for deviation. If it's not in the curriculum, there's no time for it, because there isn't hardly even any time to cover what is in the overdetermined curriculum. If you support innovation in education anymore, your first goal now is to get the central bureaucracy out of it. Until that happens, nothing else can change.

criley2 11y ago
Removing the central bureaucracy is a double edged sword. For every classroom you free to innovate, you also free a teacher to pan science, attack evolution, teach bible and religion in science class, etc. Many of us grew up in school districts prior to the Bush and Obama centralization regimes and quite literally were taught that Evolution is a Satanic lie by public (non-private non-religious) schools.
- jerf 11y ago
  Innovation is a double-edged sword in general. Doesn't mean we should stop. Besides, are we not discussing exactly a situation in which the central bureaucracy has overspecified an inferior education? Nothing about "panning science, attacking evolution, teaching the bible and religion" has anything to do with whether or not there is a central organization; one stray election and you'll get all those things coming out of the central organization too. The very topic of this discussion is that an inferior education technique is being mandated right now. The casual default presumption that the centrally-mandated education is perfect is already falsified by the evidence.
  - WaxProlix 11y ago
    So are you saying we could fix the mandate and that would be good, or that specifying a minimum basic to which all teaching should be done is wrong in general? Or some third thing?
- billbrown 11y ago
  The trouble is that—as my teacher wife likes to say—once the door closes you can teach whatever you want, however you want. She says that in a positive way to dismiss some of the ridiculous expectations of the bureaucracy but I've seen plenty of teachers do troublesome things because of that.

ebbv 11y ago

My first reaction is to agree wit you, but then I thought about it and how do we know they don't? Sure the common wisdom is "teachers suck" and "our education system is out of date" but I haven't been in an elementary school math class in 25 years, let alone a majority of them to really have an informed opinion about this. If it really is a problem, an obvious solution is to just supply prepared materials that are based on this to the schools, and that will do a lot to make it available, if indeed it does work as well or better than the current materials.

wiremine 11y ago
Good point. I wasn't suggesting teachers suck. In my experience, though, this approach is more accessible, but it isn't widely used. I'm not a trained educator, so I'm wondering if there we don't see more of this sort of teaching in the classroom.

coldtea 11y ago

Even if they did, students don't care for most things, intelligently explained or not. That's a first problem to overcome.

ethanbond 11y ago
According to...? A lot of people love learning new things. It's the mode of learning them that is offputting to so many.
- akavi 11y ago
  Have you spent any time teaching unmotivated students? Yes, ideally, every student would be motivated to learn for its own sake, but for an individual say, 8th grade, teacher to get a class of kids to that point is an enormous task. And yes, perhaps the entire education system should be revamped so that kids never lose motivation, but how to do that is hardly a solved problem. Which means "Here's the deeper principles that motivate this problem" is going to have a huge uphill battle against "just tell us how to do the problems that are going to be on the test", or worse, "this has no relevancy to my life, so I'm going to tune out this entire class".
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    I'm really curious why it is that students seem to just inherently care about test scores. Surely they were born with such passion for seeing "A" over "B" over "C," and so on. If they were taught to care about deeper principles from day one, I guarantee they would care about deeper principles by year 8.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      That would take a society that also cares about deeper principles, starting with parents etc., and not just "getting into university" and "getting a good job" (and that's when it's not just "make shitloads of money").
  - typon 11y ago

kalid 11y ago

Good question. I see the site as a complement to existing lesson plans. Some teachers have taken the material and presented it in their own style, which I absolutely love: Article: http://betterexplained.com/static/articles/a-quick-intuition-for-parametric-equations/ http://betterexplained.com/static/articles/a-quick-intuition... Video a teacher made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYs6ppuMSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYs6ppuMSk I don't know anything about educational policy, classroom management, etc. I want to provide the best ingredients I can and let teachers make the best meal they can.