6 ms·

The persistence and the dedication needed in skateboarding—that's what we need to be teaching. No one says to a toddler, 'You have ten weeks to walk, and if you

by imurray 16y ago

The persistence and the dedication needed in skateboarding—that's what we need to be teaching. No one says to a toddler, 'You have ten weeks to walk, and if you can't, you get an F and you're not allowed to try to walk anymore.' It's absurd, right? But the same thing is true with math and science education. If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it. Reminded me of the essay "Everyone Should Get an A": http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/exams.html http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/exams.ht...

arethuza 16y ago
Anyone watching a child learn will appreciate that the skill-level/time graph is not a straight line - this is particularly noticeable in sports where coaches appear to be far more aware of this fact that most teachers of academic subjects. An example that pretty much stunned me happened with our son - he's now 11 and has been skiing since he was 3 and was pretty good, about what you would expect for the amount of time he has been doing it. However, last year he went from being pretty good to completely awesome (much better than me - to my horror/delight) - practically a step change in his skill level. This got me thinking a lot about academic performance - I have my own history of "step changes" in performance (particularly in maths), but everyone - particularly teachers, seem to view skill progression as a simple linear progression when in reality things are an awful lot more complex than that.
- terra_t 16y ago
  From a systemantic perspective, the "purpose of a system is what it does" not what it says it does. A large number of people are chasing a small (and decreasing) number of good opportunities so a major function of education is to weed people out and make them blame their failures on themselves, not to maximize the development of human talent. We have a "meritocracy" that occasionally allows an exceptionally talented person to rise, generally allows the mediocre to inherit the status of their parents, and sometimes puts the kibosh on non-housebroken children of the elite. Athletic coaching tends to be a lot more honest. Few of us expect to be judged on how we do in PE classes and extracurricular sports, we do it for fun, and hopefully give it our best. Good coaches work in that spirit. Now, if you're one of the lucky people who'll go far in sports, performance is open ended (the top score isn't 100%) and, unlike schoolwork, you need unique training to develop your potential.
  - roc 16y ago
    > "if you're one of the lucky people who'll go far in sports, performance is open ended (the top score isn't 100%) and, unlike schoolwork, you need unique training to develop your potential." And that's how everything should be. Because that's true of learning in any other context. Sports, Music, Art, Mechanics, Science ... learning is learning and it's all open-ended. The only limits are self-imposed. And that's why our educational system is assembly-line garbage.
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    > A large number of people are chasing a small (and decreasing) number of good opportunities The number of good opportunities is dramatically increasing all over the world... every breakthrough we make opens like five new potential avenues for breakthroughs. Every generation thinks the sky is falling because old industries are being obsoleted or automated - subsistence farmers, shoemakers, textiles, horse buggy whip makers, horse breeders, typewriter makers and typists, telegraph operators. Paper mills, traditional publishing, traditional media/television, and music are all happening now. Old industries go by the wayside or become automated. But that's exactly where opportunity and progress comes from - here's tons more opportunity now than ever before. I can't think of any past era I'd rather live - I can see infinitely more opportunity today than at any point in history.
    - terra_t 16y ago
      There's some truth in that (creative destruction and all) but we've also seen an incredible concentration of wealth from about 1980 onward. Much of this has gone to people working in just a few industries, such as finance and law. What we've seen is an expansion of the bottom and the top and a "hollowing out" at the middle. The system of private retirement accounts based on 401K and IRA accounts has largely failed. The largest asset that many in the baby boom generation will have in their retirement will be their Medicare benefits. The ultimate interpretation of the financial crisis is that the financial sector is currently unable to match capital with places where it can be invested properly. The power that this sector has over government and the culture of impunity surrounds it makes it possible that this situation will stretch on for another 10 to 30 years. Sure, failing industries in the recession are going to create a few opportunities for people to do amazing things in the next 10 years or so, but look for rapid advances in A.I. to essentially wipe out white collar work within 20 years.
- brlewis 16y ago
  Most teachers are put in a situation where metaphorically they have 10 weeks to teach 30 toddlers to walk. They may be painfully aware that learning isn't a straight line, but the system limits what they can do about it. Montessori is different. Kids stay in a mixed-age classroom for 2 or 3 years, and have a system conducive to self-paced learning. If you can get to Beverly, MA tonight there's an open house that will amaze you: http://www.stoneridgecms.org/ http://www.stoneridgecms.org/
Confusion 16y ago
If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it. The usual complaint against the school system is the inverse: stuff is set at such a pace that even the worst students will learn it. They can't have it both ways.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Sure you can, it's been done, it's not rocket science. The problem with today's school system in America (and likely elsewhere throughout the industrialized world) is that it's very much aimed at teaching the wrong people the wrong things in the wrong way (and that's when teaching doesn't take a back seat to day-care). The main goal is for everyone to memorize as much of a broad swath of "material" as possible, it's very much a teaching-to-the-test least-effort system. It's not geared toward maximizing each individual student's learning. Nor is it geared toward teaching competency and fully mastering basic yet key skills. Nor is it geared toward teaching useful skills that are key building blocks in the workplace, as a member of society, and as a functioning citizen of a democratic republic. The steps necessary to improve this situation are fairly straightforward. As a start, reduce class sizes and hire better teachers, which is possible without increasing per-student expenditures provided the bloat in non-teaching staff and unnecessary expenditures is cut back (per-student spending has more than doubled in the last 3 decades, adjusted for inflation, the money has not gone to improving education, it has been frittered away). End the farce of overstuffed curricula. There is a monomania about covering as much material as possible, so long as students can retain enough to pass a test, but students don't retain much of the material and when the fundamentals are neglected they miss out on that too. Take the basics back to basics, emphasize the fundamentals (reading, writing, mathematics, fundamental science), learning them, knowing them, mastering them. Continue to refresh and test students on those fundamentals throughout their entire K-12 educations. And provide enough funding to allow gifted students to work at a faster pace, either within existing classes or in classes of their own. I could go on, but that's a good start. Unfortunately, the biggest impediments aren't knowing how to improve, it's all of the interests and bureaucracy protecting the status quo.
  - 16y ago
Jabbles 16y ago
That's a very interesting essay, but I don't think it squares with the view that the ability to do maths is extremely difficult to teach. Sure, you can teach proof techniques and do example questions, but the actual ability to see ahead and know what to do depends heavily on their natural ability, or, as some researchers claim, on their exposure to maths in the first few years of their life. I think it may work for other subjects, but not maths.
jemfinch 16y ago
"If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it." Pardon my elitism, but only the absolutely best students need to learn trigonometry or calculus. I'd much rather high schools offer useful classes like personal finance or civics or creative writing than make average, uninterested students take a trig or calc class that they will have absolutely no use for later in life.
- Jach 16y ago
  Since when is education about only learning the things that a student, in their current ignorance, project they'll need far into the future? Trig and calculus are trivial, learn them. (I'd argue that a solid understanding in both would make personal finance a lot better a subject too.) In any case, my high school offered all of those classes, with personal finance being required and trig being taught along the way in several required math courses.
  - jemfinch 16y ago
    Since when is high school education? High school is preparation for the real world: it has replaced the old apprenticeships and parental involvement that served as life preparation for centuries. High school fails in this purpose when it wastes time teaching trigonometry and calculus to those who have no need for it. The majority of people do not graduate college; of the ones that do graduate college, many will never use trigonometry or calculus in their occupations or personal pursuits. It makes no more sense to teach every high school student trigonometry and calculus than it makes to teach every high school student how to retread tires or operate a band saw.
    - jacobolus 16y ago
      I think it makes a great deal of sense to teach every student how to operate a band saw. And also how to dance, and how to read poetry, and how to draw with perspective, and how to use a potter’s wheel, and how to solve Newtonian mechanics problems, and how to build simple electrical circuits, how some basic cooking chemistry works, and how double-entry bookkeeping works, and some basic music theory, and how to operate a non-linear video editor, and on and on. Not every student necessarily needs to learn every thing, but schools should have the resources to teach many things to every student. If kids are going to spend half of their time for 13 years (!) in school, I sure hope they’re learning all sorts of useful things. Drilling them on geography or historical dates or the content of 19th century “classic” novels, &c., certainly isn’t the only important thing in the world.

by imurray 16y ago

arethuza 16y ago

Anyone watching a child learn will appreciate that the skill-level/time graph is not a straight line - this is particularly noticeable in sports where coaches appear to be far more aware of this fact that most teachers of academic subjects. An example that pretty much stunned me happened with our son - he's now 11 and has been skiing since he was 3 and was pretty good, about what you would expect for the amount of time he has been doing it. However, last year he went from being pretty good to completely awesome (much better than me - to my horror/delight) - practically a step change in his skill level. This got me thinking a lot about academic performance - I have my own history of "step changes" in performance (particularly in maths), but everyone - particularly teachers, seem to view skill progression as a simple linear progression when in reality things are an awful lot more complex than that.

terra_t 16y ago
From a systemantic perspective, the "purpose of a system is what it does" not what it says it does. A large number of people are chasing a small (and decreasing) number of good opportunities so a major function of education is to weed people out and make them blame their failures on themselves, not to maximize the development of human talent. We have a "meritocracy" that occasionally allows an exceptionally talented person to rise, generally allows the mediocre to inherit the status of their parents, and sometimes puts the kibosh on non-housebroken children of the elite. Athletic coaching tends to be a lot more honest. Few of us expect to be judged on how we do in PE classes and extracurricular sports, we do it for fun, and hopefully give it our best. Good coaches work in that spirit. Now, if you're one of the lucky people who'll go far in sports, performance is open ended (the top score isn't 100%) and, unlike schoolwork, you need unique training to develop your potential.
- roc 16y ago
  > "if you're one of the lucky people who'll go far in sports, performance is open ended (the top score isn't 100%) and, unlike schoolwork, you need unique training to develop your potential." And that's how everything should be. Because that's true of learning in any other context. Sports, Music, Art, Mechanics, Science ... learning is learning and it's all open-ended. The only limits are self-imposed. And that's why our educational system is assembly-line garbage.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > A large number of people are chasing a small (and decreasing) number of good opportunities The number of good opportunities is dramatically increasing all over the world... every breakthrough we make opens like five new potential avenues for breakthroughs. Every generation thinks the sky is falling because old industries are being obsoleted or automated - subsistence farmers, shoemakers, textiles, horse buggy whip makers, horse breeders, typewriter makers and typists, telegraph operators. Paper mills, traditional publishing, traditional media/television, and music are all happening now. Old industries go by the wayside or become automated. But that's exactly where opportunity and progress comes from - here's tons more opportunity now than ever before. I can't think of any past era I'd rather live - I can see infinitely more opportunity today than at any point in history.
  - terra_t 16y ago
    There's some truth in that (creative destruction and all) but we've also seen an incredible concentration of wealth from about 1980 onward. Much of this has gone to people working in just a few industries, such as finance and law. What we've seen is an expansion of the bottom and the top and a "hollowing out" at the middle. The system of private retirement accounts based on 401K and IRA accounts has largely failed. The largest asset that many in the baby boom generation will have in their retirement will be their Medicare benefits. The ultimate interpretation of the financial crisis is that the financial sector is currently unable to match capital with places where it can be invested properly. The power that this sector has over government and the culture of impunity surrounds it makes it possible that this situation will stretch on for another 10 to 30 years. Sure, failing industries in the recession are going to create a few opportunities for people to do amazing things in the next 10 years or so, but look for rapid advances in A.I. to essentially wipe out white collar work within 20 years.
brlewis 16y ago
Most teachers are put in a situation where metaphorically they have 10 weeks to teach 30 toddlers to walk. They may be painfully aware that learning isn't a straight line, but the system limits what they can do about it. Montessori is different. Kids stay in a mixed-age classroom for 2 or 3 years, and have a system conducive to self-paced learning. If you can get to Beverly, MA tonight there's an open house that will amaze you: http://www.stoneridgecms.org/ http://www.stoneridgecms.org/

Confusion 16y ago

If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it. The usual complaint against the school system is the inverse: stuff is set at such a pace that even the worst students will learn it. They can't have it both ways.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Sure you can, it's been done, it's not rocket science. The problem with today's school system in America (and likely elsewhere throughout the industrialized world) is that it's very much aimed at teaching the wrong people the wrong things in the wrong way (and that's when teaching doesn't take a back seat to day-care). The main goal is for everyone to memorize as much of a broad swath of "material" as possible, it's very much a teaching-to-the-test least-effort system. It's not geared toward maximizing each individual student's learning. Nor is it geared toward teaching competency and fully mastering basic yet key skills. Nor is it geared toward teaching useful skills that are key building blocks in the workplace, as a member of society, and as a functioning citizen of a democratic republic. The steps necessary to improve this situation are fairly straightforward. As a start, reduce class sizes and hire better teachers, which is possible without increasing per-student expenditures provided the bloat in non-teaching staff and unnecessary expenditures is cut back (per-student spending has more than doubled in the last 3 decades, adjusted for inflation, the money has not gone to improving education, it has been frittered away). End the farce of overstuffed curricula. There is a monomania about covering as much material as possible, so long as students can retain enough to pass a test, but students don't retain much of the material and when the fundamentals are neglected they miss out on that too. Take the basics back to basics, emphasize the fundamentals (reading, writing, mathematics, fundamental science), learning them, knowing them, mastering them. Continue to refresh and test students on those fundamentals throughout their entire K-12 educations. And provide enough funding to allow gifted students to work at a faster pace, either within existing classes or in classes of their own. I could go on, but that's a good start. Unfortunately, the biggest impediments aren't knowing how to improve, it's all of the interests and bureaucracy protecting the status quo.
- 16y ago

Jabbles 16y ago

That's a very interesting essay, but I don't think it squares with the view that the ability to do maths is extremely difficult to teach. Sure, you can teach proof techniques and do example questions, but the actual ability to see ahead and know what to do depends heavily on their natural ability, or, as some researchers claim, on their exposure to maths in the first few years of their life. I think it may work for other subjects, but not maths.

jemfinch 16y ago

"If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it." Pardon my elitism, but only the absolutely best students need to learn trigonometry or calculus. I'd much rather high schools offer useful classes like personal finance or civics or creative writing than make average, uninterested students take a trig or calc class that they will have absolutely no use for later in life.

Jach 16y ago
Since when is education about only learning the things that a student, in their current ignorance, project they'll need far into the future? Trig and calculus are trivial, learn them. (I'd argue that a solid understanding in both would make personal finance a lot better a subject too.) In any case, my high school offered all of those classes, with personal finance being required and trig being taught along the way in several required math courses.
- jemfinch 16y ago
  Since when is high school education? High school is preparation for the real world: it has replaced the old apprenticeships and parental involvement that served as life preparation for centuries. High school fails in this purpose when it wastes time teaching trigonometry and calculus to those who have no need for it. The majority of people do not graduate college; of the ones that do graduate college, many will never use trigonometry or calculus in their occupations or personal pursuits. It makes no more sense to teach every high school student trigonometry and calculus than it makes to teach every high school student how to retread tires or operate a band saw.
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    I think it makes a great deal of sense to teach every student how to operate a band saw. And also how to dance, and how to read poetry, and how to draw with perspective, and how to use a potter’s wheel, and how to solve Newtonian mechanics problems, and how to build simple electrical circuits, how some basic cooking chemistry works, and how double-entry bookkeeping works, and some basic music theory, and how to operate a non-linear video editor, and on and on. Not every student necessarily needs to learn every thing, but schools should have the resources to teach many things to every student. If kids are going to spend half of their time for 13 years (!) in school, I sure hope they’re learning all sorts of useful things. Drilling them on geography or historical dates or the content of 19th century “classic” novels, &c., certainly isn’t the only important thing in the world.