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Loved your post, but as an aside, this stood out to me: >It was the first class I'd ever had where I actually really needed to study I wish we had a way of ch

Loved your post, but as an aside, this stood out to me: >It was the first class I'd ever had where I actually really needed to study I wish we had a way of challenging every smart kid with proper material. When I got to university and suddenly had to try, it was quite a shock to my system. I could, in theory, have used the first 18 years of my life much more productively.

Enginerrrd 4y ago
OMG, yes. The real tragedy there is that how to handle being challenged is a super important skill. And many of our best and brightest don't get to practice it all until it's too late. You can't learn a skill without practice. That's just not how it works. It makes no sense to me at all that children from all different backgrounds and abilities go through an identical curriculum at an identical rate. Like, have the people that set that up never met humans and human children before? My sister has the luxury of home-schooling her kids. And so they all have workbooks they can go through at their own individualized pace. As a result, one of them, my 6 year old nephew is now at about a 7th or 8th grade level in mathematics. He just loves doing math. Can you imagine how long that kid would have had to wait to actually be challenged in math if he went through the public school system? ...And they're actively trying to get rid of advanced study paths for such kids.
- bombcar 4y ago
  We lost something in the path from homeschooling to one-room schoolhouse to the massive school factories we have today - which was pacing the students. Now we try to group everyone by age. It's much easier when there's only a small group of kids - but who's to say the massive schools shouldn't be close to large groups of one-room schoolhouses instead of the age-segregated blocks we have now? Done correctly this helps all kids, except those who just happen to be perfectly aligned with their age.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Individualization is hard to do at scale, and expensive.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      We need something like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. I’m sure you can hire a couple of thousand professors and experts and map out a huge interactive curriculum tree. This can’t replace school - you still need socialization, disciple, adult supervision, sport, etc. But academically this would beat my high school experience six-love.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I think part of the discussion will be realizing you do NOT need teachers who are expert in the subject to teach; you need teachers who are good at teaching - especially at the elementary/high school levels. And part of that may be having the same teacher or group of teachers throughout the student's career, and with authority and flexibility to modify the curriculum as needed. But we'd also have to admit that some students are going to do better than others, and the outcomes may not be all equal and at the same time.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Very true but allowing and encouraging students to skip grades isn’t.
- 2143 4y ago
  Isn't this what mastery learning[1] advocates? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning
aidenn0 4y ago
Aside from varying paces at which children learn, temperament makes a big difference too. I remember in elementary school, there was a subject I didn't like. Finally in 5th grade, I decided to try a different approach for one grading period. I did not participate in that subject. As in, when the teacher said to get out the materials, I instead got out a novel and read it. I turned in no work and did no homework. When my report card came out, I was astonished to find I had a D (the lowest passing grade). My lesson for that quarter: it is impossible to fail at school (this lesson proved to generalize all the way through high school). At this point, I stopped putting any effort at school into something I didn't find personally gratifying. Most of my fellow cohort of "smart kids" were mystified by this; they would go through an existential crisis in the very rare event that they got a B+. Pretty much any of the straight-A students could have had almost-straight-As with 10% of the effort they put in to ensure they would never get a B+. When I finally reached college, it became possible to fail, but still not particularly easy. I would skip evening exams to save myself the trouble of having to reschedule my weekly D&D session. I only studied when failing an exam would put me in danger of being kicked out of school (this happened maybe two or three times). I graduated with a C average. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is other than to say that some kids will study no matter the difficulty of the material while other kids will not.
- stocknoob 4y ago
  You did a n=1 study to show GPA is a proxy for conscientiousness. https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc4333/FiveFactor_GPA_JPSP.pdf https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc4333/FiveF...
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    I'm not entirely convinced it's a very good proxy (at least for the hard sciences). Certainly in my physics classes, raw-intellect trumped conscientiousness; using tidiness as a proxy for conscientiousness and "holds an advanced degree from a distinguished university" as a proxy for GPA, a walk-through of the professors offices in that same department would also dispute that. I think GPA is closer to a proxy for (A + g) * (B + conscientiousness) with values A and B varying from school to school and department to department (as well as the threshold for "perfect" varying). I had 3 roommates with higher conscientiousness than me flunk out, so YMMV. [edit] While we are talking personality traits, I think a high GPA is probably also a proxy for neuroticism; certainly many of the straight-A students exhibited these traits (as does the child of mine who gets the best grades). FWIW I score low in both conscientiousness and neuroticism on a Big Five test. [edit] changed from "not convinced this is true" to "not convinced it's a very good proxy"
lazide 4y ago
The difficulty of course, and the reason that doesn’t happen often, is it requires deep knowledge of a subject by the teacher and a keen and interested mind. Hard material with someone who doesn’t understand it or isn’t interested in it just burns students out, or doesn’t go anywhere. There aren’t a lot of people capable and interested in doing it for every subject, and even fewer interested in doing it for the amounts typically paid in school. It is unfortunate.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Luckily with the internet we can have great teachers achieve scale for the first time ever. This isn’t a solved problem yet but at least a tantalizing possibility.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Eh, I doubt it. It usually requires interaction and understanding of the student. But for the few that can self direct, it is a boon!
    - FredPret 4y ago
      There is lots of overlap between self-directed learners and ones that are held back by age-group education
      - lazide 4y ago
        For sure, I was one of them. I’m pretty sure we’re in the minority though, based on following life experience. 1%? Less?
barry-cotter 4y ago
> I wish we had a way of challenging every smart kid with proper material. We do. It’s called acceleration. It’s not used because no one cares. The school system is not set up for learning. If it was students who were proficient at grade level could learn the material of the next grade up or two levels up. https://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/ND_v1.pdf https://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/ND_v1....

Enginerrrd 4y ago

OMG, yes. The real tragedy there is that how to handle being challenged is a super important skill. And many of our best and brightest don't get to practice it all until it's too late. You can't learn a skill without practice. That's just not how it works. It makes no sense to me at all that children from all different backgrounds and abilities go through an identical curriculum at an identical rate. Like, have the people that set that up never met humans and human children before? My sister has the luxury of home-schooling her kids. And so they all have workbooks they can go through at their own individualized pace. As a result, one of them, my 6 year old nephew is now at about a 7th or 8th grade level in mathematics. He just loves doing math. Can you imagine how long that kid would have had to wait to actually be challenged in math if he went through the public school system? ...And they're actively trying to get rid of advanced study paths for such kids.

bombcar 4y ago
We lost something in the path from homeschooling to one-room schoolhouse to the massive school factories we have today - which was pacing the students. Now we try to group everyone by age. It's much easier when there's only a small group of kids - but who's to say the massive schools shouldn't be close to large groups of one-room schoolhouses instead of the age-segregated blocks we have now? Done correctly this helps all kids, except those who just happen to be perfectly aligned with their age.
- lazide 4y ago
  Individualization is hard to do at scale, and expensive.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    We need something like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. I’m sure you can hire a couple of thousand professors and experts and map out a huge interactive curriculum tree. This can’t replace school - you still need socialization, disciple, adult supervision, sport, etc. But academically this would beat my high school experience six-love.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I think part of the discussion will be realizing you do NOT need teachers who are expert in the subject to teach; you need teachers who are good at teaching - especially at the elementary/high school levels. And part of that may be having the same teacher or group of teachers throughout the student's career, and with authority and flexibility to modify the curriculum as needed. But we'd also have to admit that some students are going to do better than others, and the outcomes may not be all equal and at the same time.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Very true but allowing and encouraging students to skip grades isn’t.
2143 4y ago
Isn't this what mastery learning[1] advocates? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning

aidenn0 4y ago

Aside from varying paces at which children learn, temperament makes a big difference too. I remember in elementary school, there was a subject I didn't like. Finally in 5th grade, I decided to try a different approach for one grading period. I did not participate in that subject. As in, when the teacher said to get out the materials, I instead got out a novel and read it. I turned in no work and did no homework. When my report card came out, I was astonished to find I had a D (the lowest passing grade). My lesson for that quarter: it is impossible to fail at school (this lesson proved to generalize all the way through high school). At this point, I stopped putting any effort at school into something I didn't find personally gratifying. Most of my fellow cohort of "smart kids" were mystified by this; they would go through an existential crisis in the very rare event that they got a B+. Pretty much any of the straight-A students could have had almost-straight-As with 10% of the effort they put in to ensure they would never get a B+. When I finally reached college, it became possible to fail, but still not particularly easy. I would skip evening exams to save myself the trouble of having to reschedule my weekly D&D session. I only studied when failing an exam would put me in danger of being kicked out of school (this happened maybe two or three times). I graduated with a C average. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is other than to say that some kids will study no matter the difficulty of the material while other kids will not.

stocknoob 4y ago
You did a n=1 study to show GPA is a proxy for conscientiousness. https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc4333/FiveFactor_GPA_JPSP.pdf https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc4333/FiveF...
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I'm not entirely convinced it's a very good proxy (at least for the hard sciences). Certainly in my physics classes, raw-intellect trumped conscientiousness; using tidiness as a proxy for conscientiousness and "holds an advanced degree from a distinguished university" as a proxy for GPA, a walk-through of the professors offices in that same department would also dispute that. I think GPA is closer to a proxy for (A + g) * (B + conscientiousness) with values A and B varying from school to school and department to department (as well as the threshold for "perfect" varying). I had 3 roommates with higher conscientiousness than me flunk out, so YMMV. [edit] While we are talking personality traits, I think a high GPA is probably also a proxy for neuroticism; certainly many of the straight-A students exhibited these traits (as does the child of mine who gets the best grades). FWIW I score low in both conscientiousness and neuroticism on a Big Five test. [edit] changed from "not convinced this is true" to "not convinced it's a very good proxy"

lazide 4y ago

The difficulty of course, and the reason that doesn’t happen often, is it requires deep knowledge of a subject by the teacher and a keen and interested mind. Hard material with someone who doesn’t understand it or isn’t interested in it just burns students out, or doesn’t go anywhere. There aren’t a lot of people capable and interested in doing it for every subject, and even fewer interested in doing it for the amounts typically paid in school. It is unfortunate.

FredPret 4y ago
Luckily with the internet we can have great teachers achieve scale for the first time ever. This isn’t a solved problem yet but at least a tantalizing possibility.
- lazide 4y ago
  Eh, I doubt it. It usually requires interaction and understanding of the student. But for the few that can self direct, it is a boon!
  - FredPret 4y ago
    There is lots of overlap between self-directed learners and ones that are held back by age-group education
    - lazide 4y ago
      For sure, I was one of them. I’m pretty sure we’re in the minority though, based on following life experience. 1%? Less?

barry-cotter 4y ago

> I wish we had a way of challenging every smart kid with proper material. We do. It’s called acceleration. It’s not used because no one cares. The school system is not set up for learning. If it was students who were proficient at grade level could learn the material of the next grade up or two levels up. https://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/ND_v1.pdf https://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/ND_v1....