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Any visionary attempting to restructure traditional learning should read this, and I say that with no ounce of malice or sarcasm - its a nice hazard map, and it

Any visionary attempting to restructure traditional learning should read this, and I say that with no ounce of malice or sarcasm - its a nice hazard map, and it at least one constructive change that should be enacted: 1. Grades should be a continuum (percentage), not bins (A, B, C,..). "When you are forced to discretize into a small number of bins, injustice is inevitable." Report cards have no rational reason for not being an aggregate of numbers rather than low resolution numbers (letters). The crux of the justification given for enacting these policies students hate is that students need motivation; their human nature, even given a clear end goal, is not enough for most of them to learn at the required pace without intermediate and forced goals. Of course this leads into the problem of carefully interpreting assignments to do as little work as possible, and lowering the quality of all student's experience to make assignments painfully clear. All this leads so naturally back into the temptation to loosen standards of the class. If students are going to lazily and disingenuously complete assignments, they will not learn, and it should reflect on their exam grades - but making every student perform the same problems every time will waste half the students time if your assignments are catered to the slowest learners - the fastest learners will feel completely patronized and waste the most time. Don't punish your best students. The real solution is breaking up classes. One class as a monolithic, multi-month, atomic unit causes problems. Each intermediate exam should serve to split the class into many smaller classes, which can be failed and retaken modularily. In fact, students should decide when they want to take that modular class's exam, and can stay in or attempt to test out at their discretion. Now all of the sudden the relationship between doing assignments and performing on these intermediary tests is tangible, and need not be forced through forced assignments and over-specified instructions. Students can still be required complete a final exam encapsulating all material from each modular class (longer re-test periods could be applied if need be), and if they performed poorly students would have the option to retake those modular sections to build up a more robust understanding. This has other benefits as well: pre-requisites can be much smaller, and more specific pursuits of knowledge can have constructed an express course of just the strictly necessary modular courses from each full course. Students wanting complete understandings can always go back and pick up where they left off.

smogcutter 5y ago
> Any visionary attempting to restructure traditional learning should read this, and I say that with no ounce of malice or sarcasm... On the contrary. Part of TFA’s point is that, like many other fields, outsiders usually have a much poorer idea than they think of the hows and whys of teaching. Until you’re actually in front of a classroom it’s not obvious why seemingly sensible ideas are often ineffective or unworkable (see also: any HN thread about k-12). Reading a blog post, rubbing some brain cells on it, and then making pronouncements is exactly the kind of thing TFA warns against. Any visionary attempting to restructure learning should teach.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  > On the contrary. Part of TFA’s point is that, like many other fields, outsiders usually have a much poorer idea than they think of the hows and whys of teaching. So you're saying those attempting to restructure the classroom should not take into account this blog post? You seemed to fail to recognize the value of this blog post, or sharing knowledge in general: you give others an express pass to knowledge that you have gained through first hand experience. That is the meat of the article: common pitfalls new teachers trying new ideas fall into - if your goal is to change education you must experiment, and if you are going to experiment, this blog post is invaluable. Forever more an experimenter attempting a classroom restructuring who read this post now has artificial first hand experience to draw from - to state that anyone attempting to do such a thing should ignore this piece and generate first hand experience is asking them now to retread mapped territory. Unless your prescription is that people shouldn't experiment - a notion which warrants no respect.
  - smogcutter 5y ago
    > So you're saying those attempting to restructure the classroom should not take into account this blog post? You seemed to fail to recognize the value of this blog post, or sharing knowledge in general... Oh come on, this isn’t Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it’s a blog post of “things I didn’t understand until my first year on the job”. TFA is a great post! It’s particularly interesting to laymen, and maybe rookie post-secondary faculty who have been taught a lot about their subject and very little (if anything) about how to teach. But none of it’s novel for anyone who’s been on the other side of the desk. Talking about education practice in public forums is hard because everyone has a stake, and everyone thinks their experience as a student or parent plus a little common sense makes them an expert. Again, see literally any HN thread about education. TFA does a great job of reminding laymen that often those Chesterton fences are there for a reason. But sorry, I don’t think it’s a rejection of the idea of “sharing knowledge in general” to say that “visionaries attempting to restructure education” probably shouldn’t be laymen. So, okay, “on the contrary” in my OP was a little strong. Not that anyone shouldn’t read it. But just because something is new to you doesn’t actually make it new.

smogcutter 5y ago

> Any visionary attempting to restructure traditional learning should read this, and I say that with no ounce of malice or sarcasm... On the contrary. Part of TFA’s point is that, like many other fields, outsiders usually have a much poorer idea than they think of the hows and whys of teaching. Until you’re actually in front of a classroom it’s not obvious why seemingly sensible ideas are often ineffective or unworkable (see also: any HN thread about k-12). Reading a blog post, rubbing some brain cells on it, and then making pronouncements is exactly the kind of thing TFA warns against. Any visionary attempting to restructure learning should teach.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
> On the contrary. Part of TFA’s point is that, like many other fields, outsiders usually have a much poorer idea than they think of the hows and whys of teaching. So you're saying those attempting to restructure the classroom should not take into account this blog post? You seemed to fail to recognize the value of this blog post, or sharing knowledge in general: you give others an express pass to knowledge that you have gained through first hand experience. That is the meat of the article: common pitfalls new teachers trying new ideas fall into - if your goal is to change education you must experiment, and if you are going to experiment, this blog post is invaluable. Forever more an experimenter attempting a classroom restructuring who read this post now has artificial first hand experience to draw from - to state that anyone attempting to do such a thing should ignore this piece and generate first hand experience is asking them now to retread mapped territory. Unless your prescription is that people shouldn't experiment - a notion which warrants no respect.
- smogcutter 5y ago
  > So you're saying those attempting to restructure the classroom should not take into account this blog post? You seemed to fail to recognize the value of this blog post, or sharing knowledge in general... Oh come on, this isn’t Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it’s a blog post of “things I didn’t understand until my first year on the job”. TFA is a great post! It’s particularly interesting to laymen, and maybe rookie post-secondary faculty who have been taught a lot about their subject and very little (if anything) about how to teach. But none of it’s novel for anyone who’s been on the other side of the desk. Talking about education practice in public forums is hard because everyone has a stake, and everyone thinks their experience as a student or parent plus a little common sense makes them an expert. Again, see literally any HN thread about education. TFA does a great job of reminding laymen that often those Chesterton fences are there for a reason. But sorry, I don’t think it’s a rejection of the idea of “sharing knowledge in general” to say that “visionaries attempting to restructure education” probably shouldn’t be laymen. So, okay, “on the contrary” in my OP was a little strong. Not that anyone shouldn’t read it. But just because something is new to you doesn’t actually make it new.