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I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear, yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and learning a

I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear, yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and learning are secondary in the business of education. True, meaningful educational impact happens when you can deliver authentic instruction -- instruction that creates a really tight feedback loop between the learner, the instructor, and the subject. We have tried with technology to mimick that at scale. Khan Academy and online quizzes is not a new idea; B.F. Skinner had a device doing this since at least the 60s. It works to stuff CEOs' pockets with money, feed the ever-larger administrative behemoth that schools are becoming, etc. Results, not so much. There is no greater evidence than the fact that schools are probably the only sector which has literally gotten less efficient over the past decades; we literally spend more money per pupil for worse outcomes. The incentives in public education are absolutely abysmal, and we've seemingly done everything in the book to strip the voice of students and families in this sector. As schools, our feedback loop between our own quality is practically nonexistent. No wonder we don't do right by these kids. Lots of money to be made selling software, though.

needsoul 9y ago
Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you, something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.

needsoul 9y ago

Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you, something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.