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Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It will

Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It will not work. Education is inherently time wasted by way of learning, and as a species, Humans are far too diverse for the grand dreams of utopian schooling. I mean, sure Utopian Schooling is possible but it's incredibly intrusive, Homogenized, and reductive - all of which projects like this try to pretend aren't fundamentally necessary. Do I have a better plan? I do. Research backed. Want a hint? Every child should have Music Instruction two times per week for at least one hour per session. That would do more than any stupid spreadsheet or Board Room review. I know, because Research backs it up. Not this..."venture" of sorts.

alphonsegaston 9y ago
The fact that we have proven, effective models for schooling in European countries that we explicitly ignore already demonstrates this. Same thing as with healthcare. But it's not hubris. Silicon Valley Utopianism is just a sales pitch for people to insert themselves as privatizers and middle-men using technology.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  yep, absolutely!
p1esk 9y ago
You forgot a link to your Research.
beambot 9y ago
Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!
- throwawaymaroon 9y ago
  Yes, screw them. Wealth is not power, intellect, or capable and basically has an inverse relationship with competence. The arrogance of the wealthy and their defenders is astounding and will lead to the burning of civilization if we don't knock them into line.
- scrumper 9y ago
  > Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? No, this is not right and the attitude dripping off your post isn't very constructive either. These individuals have disproportionate leverage as a result of their wealth and available time. The likelihood is that they are going to make a bit of a mess with this leverage (you even say it yourself - "overall vector...off slightly"). So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield. A group of misguided parents in a PTA might might end up getting, say, Intelligent Design onto the science curriculum in their district; an opinionated billionaire could do rather more harm than that to very much larger numbers of students. As for volunteering, many people do exactly that (and how do you know 6stringmerc doesn't?) by standing for school board elections, chairing the PTA, campaigning locally, giving talks in schools, and so on. The key point is that these are _local_ actions with local fallout. Conducting experiments at scale based on the idiosyncratic preferences of individuals who happen to have got lucky in business is a terrible, terrible thing to do to a city full of children. I mean look at the proposals! They're classic examples of turning problems into nails when you're holding a hammer. Neflix recommendation algorithms to select lessons! Why? What the hell happened to pedagogy? Frankly, where's the humility? If Reed Hastings had got himself a masters in education and spent a few years teaching, even part time, there'd at least be some practical experience in the problem domain to guide his transformative efforts; otherwise it looks like dilettantism.
  - rndmize 9y ago
    > So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield. I have a hard time seeing how anything they decide to do to change schooling is going to make it worse than it is. Our current education system is largely still in a factory style, where students are all taught the same material, run on the same idiotic schedule, are taught aimed at tests, and generally have any genuine interest in learn crushed out of them by the second grade. Classes teach generic material and completely fail to demonstrate useful applications. Useful things like critical thought, philosophy, personal finance, cooking, computing systems/programming - not taught. Students learn to focus on rote memorization and local application of principles - see the articles the problems of getting students to solve conceptual physics problems vs. mathematical ones - and then proceed to forget most of the material as soon as there's no test on the horizon. And we've known how to do better for a long time. Montessori's analysis of children and how they learn, her experimentation with the classroom and materials - this sort of thing is a hundred years old at this point, but we don't apply it widely. Instead we largely have the same old ineffective crap that we pass for "teaching". There's a reason Khan Academy became a thing. We already know that schools do a bad job of preparing students for the current economic landscape. There's no reason to look at this and say "but some of these things might not work! Think of the children!" The children will be fine (or at a minimum, no worse off). We've already seen this where school districts have blown millions of dollars on new tech, to no useful effect. Zuckerberg threw a hundred million at some school district on the east coast, to zero benefit. But stuff like that isn't going to make things any worse. And on the flip side, they won't get better without action like this and without experimentation. Better education is, imo, the best way to put this country on a strong footing for the coming decades. The government isn't going to do it. The private market isn't going to do it at scale. The average PTA isn't going to do it, and really, what the hell do most parents know about education, other than what they experienced? Committees and groups are the kind of thing that get bogged down in details, have no clear direction, and take forever to decide anything. At least a random billionaire can have the money and direction to get things done, even if not all of their ideas pan out. One last thing - I feel these days schools are much less important than in the past, in so far as learning. The internet provides tremendous access to information; sites like Khan and other education material has improved over traditional textbooks by leaps and bounds; Stack Overflow and similar provide places to ask questions and find answers/explanations to specific problems or concepts; and so on. Fifty years ago, if a billionaire decided to bulldoze some schools and leave a bunch of children with no place to learn, that would have been a dire problem. Today, it's much less of an issue.
SirLJ 9y ago
+1 for the great comment
jonbarker 9y ago
http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/documents/WhiteSchwoch_etal_JNeuro2013.pdf http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/documents/WhiteSchwoc...
- joegosse 9y ago
  Reading the research, it was based on an observational study of 42 adults across three segments of musical training: None, Little (1-3 years), and Moderate (4-14) and found that "A greater amount of music training early in life was associated with the most efficient auditory function decades after training stopped." I wouldn't draw any conclusions from this.

alphonsegaston 9y ago

The fact that we have proven, effective models for schooling in European countries that we explicitly ignore already demonstrates this. Same thing as with healthcare. But it's not hubris. Silicon Valley Utopianism is just a sales pitch for people to insert themselves as privatizers and middle-men using technology.

SirLJ 9y ago
yep, absolutely!

p1esk 9y ago

You forgot a link to your Research.

beambot 9y ago

Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!

throwawaymaroon 9y ago
Yes, screw them. Wealth is not power, intellect, or capable and basically has an inverse relationship with competence. The arrogance of the wealthy and their defenders is astounding and will lead to the burning of civilization if we don't knock them into line.
scrumper 9y ago
> Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? No, this is not right and the attitude dripping off your post isn't very constructive either. These individuals have disproportionate leverage as a result of their wealth and available time. The likelihood is that they are going to make a bit of a mess with this leverage (you even say it yourself - "overall vector...off slightly"). So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield. A group of misguided parents in a PTA might might end up getting, say, Intelligent Design onto the science curriculum in their district; an opinionated billionaire could do rather more harm than that to very much larger numbers of students. As for volunteering, many people do exactly that (and how do you know 6stringmerc doesn't?) by standing for school board elections, chairing the PTA, campaigning locally, giving talks in schools, and so on. The key point is that these are _local_ actions with local fallout. Conducting experiments at scale based on the idiosyncratic preferences of individuals who happen to have got lucky in business is a terrible, terrible thing to do to a city full of children. I mean look at the proposals! They're classic examples of turning problems into nails when you're holding a hammer. Neflix recommendation algorithms to select lessons! Why? What the hell happened to pedagogy? Frankly, where's the humility? If Reed Hastings had got himself a masters in education and spent a few years teaching, even part time, there'd at least be some practical experience in the problem domain to guide his transformative efforts; otherwise it looks like dilettantism.
- rndmize 9y ago
  > So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield. I have a hard time seeing how anything they decide to do to change schooling is going to make it worse than it is. Our current education system is largely still in a factory style, where students are all taught the same material, run on the same idiotic schedule, are taught aimed at tests, and generally have any genuine interest in learn crushed out of them by the second grade. Classes teach generic material and completely fail to demonstrate useful applications. Useful things like critical thought, philosophy, personal finance, cooking, computing systems/programming - not taught. Students learn to focus on rote memorization and local application of principles - see the articles the problems of getting students to solve conceptual physics problems vs. mathematical ones - and then proceed to forget most of the material as soon as there's no test on the horizon. And we've known how to do better for a long time. Montessori's analysis of children and how they learn, her experimentation with the classroom and materials - this sort of thing is a hundred years old at this point, but we don't apply it widely. Instead we largely have the same old ineffective crap that we pass for "teaching". There's a reason Khan Academy became a thing. We already know that schools do a bad job of preparing students for the current economic landscape. There's no reason to look at this and say "but some of these things might not work! Think of the children!" The children will be fine (or at a minimum, no worse off). We've already seen this where school districts have blown millions of dollars on new tech, to no useful effect. Zuckerberg threw a hundred million at some school district on the east coast, to zero benefit. But stuff like that isn't going to make things any worse. And on the flip side, they won't get better without action like this and without experimentation. Better education is, imo, the best way to put this country on a strong footing for the coming decades. The government isn't going to do it. The private market isn't going to do it at scale. The average PTA isn't going to do it, and really, what the hell do most parents know about education, other than what they experienced? Committees and groups are the kind of thing that get bogged down in details, have no clear direction, and take forever to decide anything. At least a random billionaire can have the money and direction to get things done, even if not all of their ideas pan out. One last thing - I feel these days schools are much less important than in the past, in so far as learning. The internet provides tremendous access to information; sites like Khan and other education material has improved over traditional textbooks by leaps and bounds; Stack Overflow and similar provide places to ask questions and find answers/explanations to specific problems or concepts; and so on. Fifty years ago, if a billionaire decided to bulldoze some schools and leave a bunch of children with no place to learn, that would have been a dire problem. Today, it's much less of an issue.

SirLJ 9y ago

+1 for the great comment

jonbarker 9y ago

http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/documents/WhiteSchwoch_etal_JNeuro2013.pdf http://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu/documents/WhiteSchwoc...

joegosse 9y ago
Reading the research, it was based on an observational study of 42 adults across three segments of musical training: None, Little (1-3 years), and Moderate (4-14) and found that "A greater amount of music training early in life was associated with the most efficient auditory function decades after training stopped." I wouldn't draw any conclusions from this.