8 ms·

That's the future of education, we need to get rid of this centuries-old model where students are passively learning. Schools are acting as the gateway to knowl

That's the future of education, we need to get rid of this centuries-old model where students are passively learning. Schools are acting as the gateway to knowledge like in the old days when you had to travel to libraries and amphitheater to listen to lectures because that was the only way to access knowledge! In the meantime, the Internet came up and anyone can access an infinite amount of information and knowledge. Workers need to be able to learn by themselves, be able to retrain and retool. Any good Software Engineer is already doing this, constantly learning new stuff to stay on top of their game, that will be true for any type of worker.

75j 10y ago
Agreed! I'd like to see a wide variety of ever-improving open source curricula, and students given minimal structure in their day -- maybe two hours max of formal lecture in core subjects, three hours for socializing / lunch / exercise / play, and most importantly three plus hours of self-directed learning time. Teachers would act more as supervisors and check in frequently to give feedback and gauge their student's progress. Unfortunately American schools are moving in the opposite direction, with massive emphasis on teacher evaluations, discipline, standardized testing, and about 20 minutes daily of highly supervised and sanitized recess (source: twelve years attending public schools and one year more recently working in one).
- soufron 10y ago
  Are you ready to pay for the teachers to be the interdisciplinary supervisors that you talk about?
  - 75j 10y ago
    Sure, and I'd love to pay teachers better too! But why does what I'm envisioning even necessitate an increased number of teachers? The teachers should tend toward being generalists, and part of the school's hiring process would be to attain a mixture of teachers whose skills cover the greatest breadth of subjects possible, but otherwise I don't see any major obstacles to implementing this sort of system. It would be simpler than the convoluted mess that exists now.
    - japhyr 10y ago
      I don't think the parent was meaning you need more teachers. I think they were saying you need really strong teachers across the board to make this model work well. You need teachers who know their subject areas really well, and also how their subject areas fit in with other subject areas. You need teachers who understand people and communication really well. You need teachers who can make sure their subject area is not being lost or minimized in a context. There are good models for this kind of education, and they require more of the adults involved in the process.
      - 75j 10y ago
        I agree completely. I did reread GP's post later and notice he probably didn't imply what I thought he did. There are few things more vital than education, and that will pay back to society at a higher rate, so by all means spend a ton on teachers and schools (there's a pretty obvious candidate for reallocation of funds in US discretionary spending). But, I think the approach to education that I glossed over earlier affords its own distinct cost-cutting opportunities, for instance the textbook mafias being rendered obsolete by digitized, open-source equivalents. And teachers will have some of their time freed up too by letting problem kids like me find my own educational pursuits, because I did that naturally as a kid. I also intensely hated sitting in desk 7 hours a day, frequently reprimanded for caving to my compulsion to talk to all the other kids around me. And then there are the many American kids with serious problems at home, who would've benefited moreso from just talking more casually with a teacher and watching Youtube videos all day, rather than pushing them into a classroom. Watch behavioral problems in general improve if you have kids exercising and socializing more, freeing up more time for teachers to work in small groups or individually. And you really don't need experts for anything below 10-12 year old kids.
- sylvainkalache 10y ago
  three plus hours of self-directed learning time Totally agree, a key here is that student should learn how to learn. There is all the knowledge that you need online, but the truth is that today there is too much information, something wrong, something not accurate. Students need to be able to find, analyze, sort, learn and apply the information they find. By reading the Internet or speaking with their peers or mentors (teachers). As you said, teachers should be here to guide students, not to bring them a piece of knowledge they need to memorize and then spit out a few days later during the exam.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "a key here is that student should learn how to learn." Education is 50% daycare. 80% of students are not really motivated at all, they are doing it because they have to. 'Self direction' is exceedingly rare in youngsters. 99% of educational problems would be resolved if students showed up, paid attention and 'wanted to learn'. Motivation, attention and discipline are problematic. Most teachers and courses are pretty good today.
    - hkt 10y ago
      If self direction is rare in youngsters that is because it is not fostered by their experiences. That's to say, the system needs to cultivate it. I don't know about America, but in the UK teaching as a career path depends on who is in charge politically. The conservatives like to act as if anyone can teach, and value "life experience" over subject knowledge or the development of teaching as a craft in its own right. Labour tend to lean more towards the latter conception, albeit in a bounded and traditionalist way. As the father of a new baby, I am not looking forward to picking schools in the years to come. The root cause of that is that the criteria for success are so poor: encyclopaedic knowledge of grammar is valued over ability to understand and effect change in the world. Facts mean more than projects, procedures are more valuable than their application. It is nuts.
    - BuckRogers 10y ago
      Education is not even close to 50% daycare. That's how most people, including teachers see it though and that's why they fail. My wife is a public pre-K teacher and it's zero daycare in her class. She runs them like soldiers and they love it. They learn a lot and are way ahead, especially considering they're low income which for some reason seems to often correlate with uncaring families that she has to hound to get to work with their kids at home. Every class she's put out misses her class. She's taught kindergarten and 2nd grade the same way. The "education is 50% daycare" idea is, and I hate to say this but it's true, a white person's viewpoint of education.
- rimantas 10y ago
  > and most importantly three plus hours of self-directed > learning time I guess you have never worked in education.
  - 75j 10y ago
    I said already that I've worked for a year in a school! I worked full-time as a reading tutor in an elementary school, and taught summer school. I've also taught abroad, classrooms with 30+ students. I taught tennis to groups of teenagers for like 6 summers!
  - edblarney 10y ago
    Agreed. Kids are not very good at 'self direction'. It takes a lot to get them enthused.
    - zedadex 10y ago
      I'm only now realizing my interest in some things I could have spent more time learning when younger, yet even if I knew then what I do now, I still think it wouldn't've been something I spent 'my time' doing - not a lot of it, anyway. (Conversely, there are things I was interested in then that I have the resources to learn far mor effectively now, that I absolutely would've loved to have been tinkering with sooner.) It's absolutely highly interest-driven, and while the information can sometimes be neatly standardized and labelled, that interest can't be. It can be cultivated, but figuring out how best to do that takes tweaking and experimentation. As such I'll keep an eye out for Finland's progress on this and look forward to seeing what their findings are.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        "I'm only now realizing my interest in some things I could have spent more time learning when younger" Same here. When you're young, nothing has consequence - so I don't think you can put together A + B = some outcome that matters! Also - I think that every time you learn something, you get a new 'lego block' that you can use. When you're young, you don't have many blocks, so you can't do much. But as you get older, you have so many blocks (+ money to spend) and you can do so many more things ... it's kind of incentive to learn. The ability to see a larger project through I think would be a great thing to learn. I wish that in school - some projects were worked on that took months to complete, and that the kids had to be involved in the planning. I think that would start teaching kids about 'time horizons' and how complex things get done over time.
- hkt 10y ago
  I support this kind of thing too. Independent learning is hugely important. I think kids are deterred from independent learning by stultifying practices in the classroom that make them feel that learning has to be bounded and dull. It doesn't have to be that way. Edit: also,schools are vital places for socialising but most teachers insist on silence and attention. I think a better approach would be to allow socialising in a supervised environment, such that a teacher or some other role can suggest not being unkind etc, and in doing so foster constructive social skills. We often forget that social skills can be good or bad: furtive or open. Schools should encourage the right skills.
edblarney 10y ago
"we need to get rid of this centuries-old model where students are passively learning" Some things work. Of all the experiments that have been tried, none seem to really do better. Hint: The Finns themselves take a very boring and classical approach. They start late, they have highly paid teachers etc. etc.. They were never 'progressive' they were more 'antiquated' than anything - just focusing on the basics and doing it well. I'm really weary about this change, it should be tested before anything. Some things require a structured approach in terms of thinking.
- sylvainkalache 10y ago
  Alternative education is getting great results. I personally funded an alternative to college to train software engineers(Holberton School). We have no formal teachers, no lecture, students learn by practicing and collaborating with peers. We started 9 months ago but already got students at NASA, Dropbox, Docker and Apple. Look at Andela as well, accelerated training, then teams of "students" are integrated into companies and they learn while working. Finally, coding bootcamps have also their share of success stories. There is honestly A LOT of broken, unless you are studying in an Ivy League, I really think the education far from what the current & next generation needs.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    Coding bootcamps and training people for specific skills is something quite different from general education for children.
    - sylvainkalache 10y ago
      That is true :) I was just illustrating an example of alternative education that works. As you said none are working. One for children: altschool is doing very well. Khan academy is also a hit.
    - ajdlinux 10y ago
      Among other things, getting into a coding bootcamp tends to be both a selective and a self-selecting process. Many of the people who go into coding bootcamps would do acceptably in conventional educational settings too. School education is a bit different.
aaron695 10y ago
People have for at least 100+ years had access to "an infinite amount of information and knowledge" No one has finished reading a whole library. This sort of attitude is the problem. Trinkets like giving students things don't help. Students need to do work to get ahead. The best way 'so far' is boring repetition.
- je42 10y ago
  no. repetition should be a result of the child wanting to be better. if commanded to repeat the child will approach the subject to learn with minimalism. if child is influenced to like the subject and repeatition is a result of a drive to get better; it will not minimise the effort but maximise instead.
- belorn 10y ago
  Repetition work for some problems but not others, and you need to repeat the correct activity. For example, repeating facts rarely help problem solving, while training at unique problem solving do help to be better at problem solving. We also need to be careful, as one of the best way to burn people out is to do repeated activity on something they already mastered and feel impowered and hopeless by being forced to repeat them over and over again.
- hkt 10y ago
  There is an element of tech company led social engineering going on here: everyone and their dog want to be able to sell their kit as educational if they can. So we get told about the wonders of the internet constantly and schools end up buying iPads instead of books. Your point about libraries stands admirably in light of this. Using different ways to find out information is a skill in itself. That said, nobody is disputing the need to work, only the manner in which that work is carried out.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  "The best way 'so far' is boring repetition." Some students. Teach the kid to read through repetition, then let them read what interests them. Teach basic math trough repetition. Then get them counting change. Hell, I would mind teaching kids basic money management in order to teach math. Move on to icremental steps until they get up to algebra. I remember struggling for years memeorizing multiplication tables; to this day I don't know why. I went through route memorization with my classmates, and we all except Lisa Freeburg hated school. (I look back, and what she liked was being singled out by techers as the "Best student". I hated grammer, and high school. I remember, in middle school, we had a math teacher who would let us bring our bikes to class to work on. We needed to learn about gear ratios, and concepts like Torque; while we repaired, maintained our bikes. Mr. Neff was a avid bike rider, and one of the best teachers I had. It was only until I went to college that I found school somewhat interesting. I do remember making up everything I missed in high school in two semesters at a community college. I was different, but the course material was more organized. If I could do it over, I would have gotten a GED, and right into a community college as soon as I could. Plus, I didn't like high school on any level.
Pica_soO 10y ago
The problem with education is, its self referential, as in you might not know at the start why you learn and you might be able to evaluate the goal of the whole endeavor only after you are halfway through it. From the Napoleon hill of history, looking at it and assuming those down there in the trenches below the powder smoke can see the same whole picture of a worthwhile sacrifice of time - might be a big assumption based upon only your own accumulated post-experience knowledge. A kid might not have a Feynman as father that encourages it to explore the world. Forcing this kid through mathematics, giving it the chance to later discover- hey you can program games with this or control drones- and live a different live then your dad who sits drinking in front of the TV all day - that is what the old teaching method provides. It sucks for those who educate there kids to have a expedition and curiosity mindset, but its hugely beneficial to those parts of society who do not understand the real benefits of education.
- mbrock 10y ago
  But only a few students will actually be motivated enough by classroom math to learn enough to later program games or drones. Most students develop an allergic reaction to anything that even reminds them of the horrors of school math.
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    You are right- which is why maybe a dual approach would be optimal- if you don't show intrinsic interest, you are self-condemned to the passive classic approach. If you allow yourself to get involved (there must be of course those offerings, in some fun alternative).. i guess, it should be allowed for those involved in project schooling to train and recruit those stuck in passive schooling. This project system has a vulnerability though, it breeds specialists. So a teacher should encourage projects tackling different subjects and demand that everyone contribute to a project with calculus for example.
- arithma 10y ago
  Probably better if kids learned math by directly controlling drones or programming games.

75j 10y ago

Agreed! I'd like to see a wide variety of ever-improving open source curricula, and students given minimal structure in their day -- maybe two hours max of formal lecture in core subjects, three hours for socializing / lunch / exercise / play, and most importantly three plus hours of self-directed learning time. Teachers would act more as supervisors and check in frequently to give feedback and gauge their student's progress. Unfortunately American schools are moving in the opposite direction, with massive emphasis on teacher evaluations, discipline, standardized testing, and about 20 minutes daily of highly supervised and sanitized recess (source: twelve years attending public schools and one year more recently working in one).

soufron 10y ago
Are you ready to pay for the teachers to be the interdisciplinary supervisors that you talk about?
- 75j 10y ago
  Sure, and I'd love to pay teachers better too! But why does what I'm envisioning even necessitate an increased number of teachers? The teachers should tend toward being generalists, and part of the school's hiring process would be to attain a mixture of teachers whose skills cover the greatest breadth of subjects possible, but otherwise I don't see any major obstacles to implementing this sort of system. It would be simpler than the convoluted mess that exists now.
  - japhyr 10y ago
    I don't think the parent was meaning you need more teachers. I think they were saying you need really strong teachers across the board to make this model work well. You need teachers who know their subject areas really well, and also how their subject areas fit in with other subject areas. You need teachers who understand people and communication really well. You need teachers who can make sure their subject area is not being lost or minimized in a context. There are good models for this kind of education, and they require more of the adults involved in the process.
    - 75j 10y ago
      I agree completely. I did reread GP's post later and notice he probably didn't imply what I thought he did. There are few things more vital than education, and that will pay back to society at a higher rate, so by all means spend a ton on teachers and schools (there's a pretty obvious candidate for reallocation of funds in US discretionary spending). But, I think the approach to education that I glossed over earlier affords its own distinct cost-cutting opportunities, for instance the textbook mafias being rendered obsolete by digitized, open-source equivalents. And teachers will have some of their time freed up too by letting problem kids like me find my own educational pursuits, because I did that naturally as a kid. I also intensely hated sitting in desk 7 hours a day, frequently reprimanded for caving to my compulsion to talk to all the other kids around me. And then there are the many American kids with serious problems at home, who would've benefited moreso from just talking more casually with a teacher and watching Youtube videos all day, rather than pushing them into a classroom. Watch behavioral problems in general improve if you have kids exercising and socializing more, freeing up more time for teachers to work in small groups or individually. And you really don't need experts for anything below 10-12 year old kids.
sylvainkalache 10y ago
three plus hours of self-directed learning time Totally agree, a key here is that student should learn how to learn. There is all the knowledge that you need online, but the truth is that today there is too much information, something wrong, something not accurate. Students need to be able to find, analyze, sort, learn and apply the information they find. By reading the Internet or speaking with their peers or mentors (teachers). As you said, teachers should be here to guide students, not to bring them a piece of knowledge they need to memorize and then spit out a few days later during the exam.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "a key here is that student should learn how to learn." Education is 50% daycare. 80% of students are not really motivated at all, they are doing it because they have to. 'Self direction' is exceedingly rare in youngsters. 99% of educational problems would be resolved if students showed up, paid attention and 'wanted to learn'. Motivation, attention and discipline are problematic. Most teachers and courses are pretty good today.
  - hkt 10y ago
    If self direction is rare in youngsters that is because it is not fostered by their experiences. That's to say, the system needs to cultivate it. I don't know about America, but in the UK teaching as a career path depends on who is in charge politically. The conservatives like to act as if anyone can teach, and value "life experience" over subject knowledge or the development of teaching as a craft in its own right. Labour tend to lean more towards the latter conception, albeit in a bounded and traditionalist way. As the father of a new baby, I am not looking forward to picking schools in the years to come. The root cause of that is that the criteria for success are so poor: encyclopaedic knowledge of grammar is valued over ability to understand and effect change in the world. Facts mean more than projects, procedures are more valuable than their application. It is nuts.
  - BuckRogers 10y ago
    Education is not even close to 50% daycare. That's how most people, including teachers see it though and that's why they fail. My wife is a public pre-K teacher and it's zero daycare in her class. She runs them like soldiers and they love it. They learn a lot and are way ahead, especially considering they're low income which for some reason seems to often correlate with uncaring families that she has to hound to get to work with their kids at home. Every class she's put out misses her class. She's taught kindergarten and 2nd grade the same way. The "education is 50% daycare" idea is, and I hate to say this but it's true, a white person's viewpoint of education.
rimantas 10y ago
> and most importantly three plus hours of self-directed > learning time I guess you have never worked in education.
- 75j 10y ago
  I said already that I've worked for a year in a school! I worked full-time as a reading tutor in an elementary school, and taught summer school. I've also taught abroad, classrooms with 30+ students. I taught tennis to groups of teenagers for like 6 summers!
- edblarney 10y ago
  Agreed. Kids are not very good at 'self direction'. It takes a lot to get them enthused.
  - zedadex 10y ago
    I'm only now realizing my interest in some things I could have spent more time learning when younger, yet even if I knew then what I do now, I still think it wouldn't've been something I spent 'my time' doing - not a lot of it, anyway. (Conversely, there are things I was interested in then that I have the resources to learn far mor effectively now, that I absolutely would've loved to have been tinkering with sooner.) It's absolutely highly interest-driven, and while the information can sometimes be neatly standardized and labelled, that interest can't be. It can be cultivated, but figuring out how best to do that takes tweaking and experimentation. As such I'll keep an eye out for Finland's progress on this and look forward to seeing what their findings are.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      "I'm only now realizing my interest in some things I could have spent more time learning when younger" Same here. When you're young, nothing has consequence - so I don't think you can put together A + B = some outcome that matters! Also - I think that every time you learn something, you get a new 'lego block' that you can use. When you're young, you don't have many blocks, so you can't do much. But as you get older, you have so many blocks (+ money to spend) and you can do so many more things ... it's kind of incentive to learn. The ability to see a larger project through I think would be a great thing to learn. I wish that in school - some projects were worked on that took months to complete, and that the kids had to be involved in the planning. I think that would start teaching kids about 'time horizons' and how complex things get done over time.
hkt 10y ago
I support this kind of thing too. Independent learning is hugely important. I think kids are deterred from independent learning by stultifying practices in the classroom that make them feel that learning has to be bounded and dull. It doesn't have to be that way. Edit: also,schools are vital places for socialising but most teachers insist on silence and attention. I think a better approach would be to allow socialising in a supervised environment, such that a teacher or some other role can suggest not being unkind etc, and in doing so foster constructive social skills. We often forget that social skills can be good or bad: furtive or open. Schools should encourage the right skills.

edblarney 10y ago

"we need to get rid of this centuries-old model where students are passively learning" Some things work. Of all the experiments that have been tried, none seem to really do better. Hint: The Finns themselves take a very boring and classical approach. They start late, they have highly paid teachers etc. etc.. They were never 'progressive' they were more 'antiquated' than anything - just focusing on the basics and doing it well. I'm really weary about this change, it should be tested before anything. Some things require a structured approach in terms of thinking.

sylvainkalache 10y ago
Alternative education is getting great results. I personally funded an alternative to college to train software engineers(Holberton School). We have no formal teachers, no lecture, students learn by practicing and collaborating with peers. We started 9 months ago but already got students at NASA, Dropbox, Docker and Apple. Look at Andela as well, accelerated training, then teams of "students" are integrated into companies and they learn while working. Finally, coding bootcamps have also their share of success stories. There is honestly A LOT of broken, unless you are studying in an Ivy League, I really think the education far from what the current & next generation needs.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Coding bootcamps and training people for specific skills is something quite different from general education for children.
  - sylvainkalache 10y ago
    That is true :) I was just illustrating an example of alternative education that works. As you said none are working. One for children: altschool is doing very well. Khan academy is also a hit.
  - ajdlinux 10y ago
    Among other things, getting into a coding bootcamp tends to be both a selective and a self-selecting process. Many of the people who go into coding bootcamps would do acceptably in conventional educational settings too. School education is a bit different.

aaron695 10y ago

People have for at least 100+ years had access to "an infinite amount of information and knowledge" No one has finished reading a whole library. This sort of attitude is the problem. Trinkets like giving students things don't help. Students need to do work to get ahead. The best way 'so far' is boring repetition.

je42 10y ago
no. repetition should be a result of the child wanting to be better. if commanded to repeat the child will approach the subject to learn with minimalism. if child is influenced to like the subject and repeatition is a result of a drive to get better; it will not minimise the effort but maximise instead.
belorn 10y ago
Repetition work for some problems but not others, and you need to repeat the correct activity. For example, repeating facts rarely help problem solving, while training at unique problem solving do help to be better at problem solving. We also need to be careful, as one of the best way to burn people out is to do repeated activity on something they already mastered and feel impowered and hopeless by being forced to repeat them over and over again.
hkt 10y ago
There is an element of tech company led social engineering going on here: everyone and their dog want to be able to sell their kit as educational if they can. So we get told about the wonders of the internet constantly and schools end up buying iPads instead of books. Your point about libraries stands admirably in light of this. Using different ways to find out information is a skill in itself. That said, nobody is disputing the need to work, only the manner in which that work is carried out.
icantdrive55 10y ago
"The best way 'so far' is boring repetition." Some students. Teach the kid to read through repetition, then let them read what interests them. Teach basic math trough repetition. Then get them counting change. Hell, I would mind teaching kids basic money management in order to teach math. Move on to icremental steps until they get up to algebra. I remember struggling for years memeorizing multiplication tables; to this day I don't know why. I went through route memorization with my classmates, and we all except Lisa Freeburg hated school. (I look back, and what she liked was being singled out by techers as the "Best student". I hated grammer, and high school. I remember, in middle school, we had a math teacher who would let us bring our bikes to class to work on. We needed to learn about gear ratios, and concepts like Torque; while we repaired, maintained our bikes. Mr. Neff was a avid bike rider, and one of the best teachers I had. It was only until I went to college that I found school somewhat interesting. I do remember making up everything I missed in high school in two semesters at a community college. I was different, but the course material was more organized. If I could do it over, I would have gotten a GED, and right into a community college as soon as I could. Plus, I didn't like high school on any level.

Pica_soO 10y ago

The problem with education is, its self referential, as in you might not know at the start why you learn and you might be able to evaluate the goal of the whole endeavor only after you are halfway through it. From the Napoleon hill of history, looking at it and assuming those down there in the trenches below the powder smoke can see the same whole picture of a worthwhile sacrifice of time - might be a big assumption based upon only your own accumulated post-experience knowledge. A kid might not have a Feynman as father that encourages it to explore the world. Forcing this kid through mathematics, giving it the chance to later discover- hey you can program games with this or control drones- and live a different live then your dad who sits drinking in front of the TV all day - that is what the old teaching method provides. It sucks for those who educate there kids to have a expedition and curiosity mindset, but its hugely beneficial to those parts of society who do not understand the real benefits of education.

mbrock 10y ago
But only a few students will actually be motivated enough by classroom math to learn enough to later program games or drones. Most students develop an allergic reaction to anything that even reminds them of the horrors of school math.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  You are right- which is why maybe a dual approach would be optimal- if you don't show intrinsic interest, you are self-condemned to the passive classic approach. If you allow yourself to get involved (there must be of course those offerings, in some fun alternative).. i guess, it should be allowed for those involved in project schooling to train and recruit those stuck in passive schooling. This project system has a vulnerability though, it breeds specialists. So a teacher should encourage projects tackling different subjects and demand that everyone contribute to a project with calculus for example.
arithma 10y ago
Probably better if kids learned math by directly controlling drones or programming games.