4 ms·

Education is broken, and not "impulse-fixable", ie it will require years of collective concerted effort to affect change, if it is ever fixed at all. "A dad wh

Education is broken, and not "impulse-fixable", ie it will require years of collective concerted effort to affect change, if it is ever fixed at all. "A dad who knows ____ and can teach it" is, on the other hand, a practically-attainable real-world solution.

HolyHaddock 9y ago
> a practically-attainable real-world solution. I can't be understanding this correctly. Please expand, I fear otherwise this is going to be at the back of my mind all day.
- michaelt 9y ago
  If you are a parent with a school-aged child, and you want to fix a deficiency you perceive in calculus education, it's easier to get strong at calculus and teach your child yourself than it is to reform the education establishment.
  - HolyHaddock 9y ago
    Thank you for the clarification.
jononor 9y ago
Is it? Seems like pure luck, not like we choose our parents?
sreaching 9y ago
he would have learned it regardless of his dad teaching him - because he is smart. education can't do much to change the population distribution of intelligence.
- eckza 9y ago
  I don't know about that. "Being smart" isn't a big enough hammer, sometimes. I'm "smart". I taught myself how to program, and now I'm an architect-level developer that's respected by everyone I've ever worked with. But I'm also a college dropout. I had a terrible education ("Christian" "school" with no qualified teachers) and my parents were no scholars themselves; and I gave up on college because I couldn't get a CS degree without making it through Calc 1, which I didn't even get to until my second year of college because my whole first year (and the summer prior!) was spent in remedial math. I worked every night in the math lab with the smartest tutor I've ever met. I stayed up until 2a every night trying to get my Calc 1 homework done. But it wasn't enough. I didn't have a strong enough foundation to pull it off. It was too little, too late. Years later, I think I'd do much better, as learning how to develop enterprise-grade data warehousing and ETL solutions has taught me /how/ to learn. But at the time, I had no good "tools" to use - I just knew how to memorize, memorize, memorize. And it just wasn't enough. If my stupid, fucking, batshit insane religious-maniac parents had just let me go to a public high school - like I begged them to - all of this could have, and would have, been avoided.
- dmitriid 9y ago
  "Smart" often has nothing to do with actual IQ (if it can be measured), but with opportunities and possibilities.

HolyHaddock 9y ago

> a practically-attainable real-world solution. I can't be understanding this correctly. Please expand, I fear otherwise this is going to be at the back of my mind all day.

michaelt 9y ago
If you are a parent with a school-aged child, and you want to fix a deficiency you perceive in calculus education, it's easier to get strong at calculus and teach your child yourself than it is to reform the education establishment.
- HolyHaddock 9y ago
  Thank you for the clarification.

jononor 9y ago

Is it? Seems like pure luck, not like we choose our parents?

sreaching 9y ago

he would have learned it regardless of his dad teaching him - because he is smart. education can't do much to change the population distribution of intelligence.

eckza 9y ago
I don't know about that. "Being smart" isn't a big enough hammer, sometimes. I'm "smart". I taught myself how to program, and now I'm an architect-level developer that's respected by everyone I've ever worked with. But I'm also a college dropout. I had a terrible education ("Christian" "school" with no qualified teachers) and my parents were no scholars themselves; and I gave up on college because I couldn't get a CS degree without making it through Calc 1, which I didn't even get to until my second year of college because my whole first year (and the summer prior!) was spent in remedial math. I worked every night in the math lab with the smartest tutor I've ever met. I stayed up until 2a every night trying to get my Calc 1 homework done. But it wasn't enough. I didn't have a strong enough foundation to pull it off. It was too little, too late. Years later, I think I'd do much better, as learning how to develop enterprise-grade data warehousing and ETL solutions has taught me /how/ to learn. But at the time, I had no good "tools" to use - I just knew how to memorize, memorize, memorize. And it just wasn't enough. If my stupid, fucking, batshit insane religious-maniac parents had just let me go to a public high school - like I begged them to - all of this could have, and would have, been avoided.
dmitriid 9y ago
"Smart" often has nothing to do with actual IQ (if it can be measured), but with opportunities and possibilities.