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That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale without an absu

That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale without an absurd investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make. If you can raise the general standard of education at the same cost by going digital, that's still positive sum, no?

Simulacra 9y ago
Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? To that end does technology make education better, cheaper, or easier? I am probably old fashioned at 36 but I'm with Cliff Stoll on this issue: Let's get technology out of the classroom.
- pc86 9y ago
  I'll quote the part of the GP that I think you're ignoring: > it can't scale without an...investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make Without making any judgment on what is proper or appropriate education funding, tax policy, or anything political like that, the GP is right. Getting tech out of the classroom 1) is not a 100% positive thing; 2) costs more than society, to date, has been willing to spend. > Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? It's not a binary proposition and pretending it is is dishonest. I want to see the median increase. I want to do it cost-effectively. If the choice is raising the median 5 points by utilizing technology for a marginal change in overall cost, or raising the median 20 points by quintupling education funding, one is possible and one is not.
rhizome 9y ago
Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible, plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale. All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that doesn't come at a great cost to them. Hence scale. A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more smaller players can compete on the market.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making more dormfart-website CEOs?
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      1. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. 2. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any crowd. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. See also my agriculture example. I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. Thing is, I don't buy that truism. IMO technology is sometimes the best way to solve a people problem, because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and ego. > I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton. Why not? Just like modern agriculture makes a farmer more productive per unit of land, we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and teach them better.
- aetherson 9y ago
  Because... you want to educate all the children, not just some of them? I mean, call me an out-of-touch plutocrat.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    That's only a problem when society decides teachers aren't worth much more than minimum wage. What's plutocracy's solution for that?
    - 1812Overture 9y ago
      Average total pay and benefits for a full time teacher at LAUSD is $98k and it's still a disaster.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        I can't find a number that approaches $98K, what's your citation? LAUSD's own numbers for 2016-17 indicate a maximum of $88K, and that's with a doctorate and maximum seniority. http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/280/Salary%20Tables/Salary%2016-17/T%20Table%20Annual.pdf http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Dom...
        1812Overture 9y ago
        I downloaded the 2016 LAUSD dataset from transparentcalifornia.com and filtered by full time employees with the job title "Teacher". Including the benefits is key, the pension costs are gigantic. *Edit: Actually it was 2015 data. Also note that less than 1/3 of LAUSD's employees are teachers.
        rhizome 9y ago
        I guess I'm unclear on your point, then.
        9y ago
- opportune 9y ago
  What? Education needs to scale because everybody needs education. Highly personalized education requires decreasing the number of students assigned to each teacher, which in turn would require a huge increase in education spending (and also short-medium term labor shortages in the field). Rich people who spend $100k/year on their children's education are doing the best they can for their children, but unfortunately it is not even nearly feasible for everyone to be educated that way. Also, it's about cost effectiveness, not just cost. The more parts of education that are scaled, the more money can be spent on other programs that can enrich kids' lives, which we currently don't have the money for in some cases (e.g. music programs, special ed, special programs for the gifted, actual educational research).
- careersuicide 9y ago
  > why does "scale" matter in education? Maybe because, specifically in the U.S., there are 73.6 million [0] children aged 0-17. 45.7 million (or 50.4 million [1]) of which are school age. If that isn't a problem of scale I have absolutely no clue what is. You can't give every single one of them the kind of attention and resources a super rich kid gets. It's just not feasible. We as a country made the decision a long time ago that every child deserves an education. I'm sure there's a few libertarians out there who'd disagree. But, I don't think that's a controversial opinion these days. I'd go as far as saying that the opposite opinion, that not every child deserves an education, is borderline taboo. It's not something I would ever suggest in polite company unless I'm intentionally trying to make people think I'm a huge jerk. Given that we want all children to be educated, that there are limited resources to do so, and the number of school age children is enormous we have no choice but to think of education as a problem of scale. Currently we spend $620 billion a year on public education [2]. That number is sure to increase, but never to the point where every kid has all of the hands on teaching that would be preferred. This means system-wide improvements are likely going to have to come from somewhere else; namely better methods of teaching which can be applied nearly across the board. Is this the optimal situation? No. But, when you consider that the natural state of things is no education at all, perhaps we shouldn't reflexively sneer at attempts to make an imperfect system marginally better for everyone in the long run. 0: https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp 1: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 2: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
  - rhizome 9y ago
    My favorite part of these arguments is when "resources are limited" is mentioned in passing and without irony or comment. It's just taken for granted.

Simulacra 9y ago

Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? To that end does technology make education better, cheaper, or easier? I am probably old fashioned at 36 but I'm with Cliff Stoll on this issue: Let's get technology out of the classroom.

pc86 9y ago
I'll quote the part of the GP that I think you're ignoring: > it can't scale without an...investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make Without making any judgment on what is proper or appropriate education funding, tax policy, or anything political like that, the GP is right. Getting tech out of the classroom 1) is not a 100% positive thing; 2) costs more than society, to date, has been willing to spend. > Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? It's not a binary proposition and pretending it is is dishonest. I want to see the median increase. I want to do it cost-effectively. If the choice is raising the median 5 points by utilizing technology for a marginal change in overall cost, or raising the median 20 points by quintupling education funding, one is possible and one is not.

rhizome 9y ago

Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible, plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale. All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that doesn't come at a great cost to them. Hence scale. A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more smaller players can compete on the market.
- rhizome 9y ago
  How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making more dormfart-website CEOs?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    1. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. 2. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any crowd. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. See also my agriculture example. I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. Thing is, I don't buy that truism. IMO technology is sometimes the best way to solve a people problem, because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and ego. > I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton. Why not? Just like modern agriculture makes a farmer more productive per unit of land, we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and teach them better.
aetherson 9y ago
Because... you want to educate all the children, not just some of them? I mean, call me an out-of-touch plutocrat.
- rhizome 9y ago
  That's only a problem when society decides teachers aren't worth much more than minimum wage. What's plutocracy's solution for that?
  - 1812Overture 9y ago
    Average total pay and benefits for a full time teacher at LAUSD is $98k and it's still a disaster.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      I can't find a number that approaches $98K, what's your citation? LAUSD's own numbers for 2016-17 indicate a maximum of $88K, and that's with a doctorate and maximum seniority. http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/280/Salary%20Tables/Salary%2016-17/T%20Table%20Annual.pdf http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Dom...
      - 1812Overture 9y ago
        I downloaded the 2016 LAUSD dataset from transparentcalifornia.com and filtered by full time employees with the job title "Teacher". Including the benefits is key, the pension costs are gigantic. *Edit: Actually it was 2015 data. Also note that less than 1/3 of LAUSD's employees are teachers.
        rhizome 9y ago
        I guess I'm unclear on your point, then.
        9y ago
opportune 9y ago
What? Education needs to scale because everybody needs education. Highly personalized education requires decreasing the number of students assigned to each teacher, which in turn would require a huge increase in education spending (and also short-medium term labor shortages in the field). Rich people who spend $100k/year on their children's education are doing the best they can for their children, but unfortunately it is not even nearly feasible for everyone to be educated that way. Also, it's about cost effectiveness, not just cost. The more parts of education that are scaled, the more money can be spent on other programs that can enrich kids' lives, which we currently don't have the money for in some cases (e.g. music programs, special ed, special programs for the gifted, actual educational research).
careersuicide 9y ago
> why does "scale" matter in education? Maybe because, specifically in the U.S., there are 73.6 million [0] children aged 0-17. 45.7 million (or 50.4 million [1]) of which are school age. If that isn't a problem of scale I have absolutely no clue what is. You can't give every single one of them the kind of attention and resources a super rich kid gets. It's just not feasible. We as a country made the decision a long time ago that every child deserves an education. I'm sure there's a few libertarians out there who'd disagree. But, I don't think that's a controversial opinion these days. I'd go as far as saying that the opposite opinion, that not every child deserves an education, is borderline taboo. It's not something I would ever suggest in polite company unless I'm intentionally trying to make people think I'm a huge jerk. Given that we want all children to be educated, that there are limited resources to do so, and the number of school age children is enormous we have no choice but to think of education as a problem of scale. Currently we spend $620 billion a year on public education [2]. That number is sure to increase, but never to the point where every kid has all of the hands on teaching that would be preferred. This means system-wide improvements are likely going to have to come from somewhere else; namely better methods of teaching which can be applied nearly across the board. Is this the optimal situation? No. But, when you consider that the natural state of things is no education at all, perhaps we shouldn't reflexively sneer at attempts to make an imperfect system marginally better for everyone in the long run. 0: https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp 1: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 2: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
- rhizome 9y ago
  My favorite part of these arguments is when "resources are limited" is mentioned in passing and without irony or comment. It's just taken for granted.