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This seems like a bit of a strawman. I don’t know Jo Boaler but I have never encountered the idea that students could rediscover everything from scratch. It’s c

This seems like a bit of a strawman. I don’t know Jo Boaler but I have never encountered the idea that students could rediscover everything from scratch. It’s clearly a dumb idea. A much more common position is that self-paced exploration — but using the latest textbooks and also a variety of teaching styles — could interest students much more than “no child left behind” style common curricula which constrain both the teacher and the student. Personally I think the current system is terrible for below- and above-average students, and perhaps passable for average students.

zozbot234 4y ago
"NCLB" curricula focus on the basics for a reason - we're failing to teach those basic skills. Maybe we need a system that's not so terrible for the "average" below-students (as opposed to those who expressly get skilled teaching attention as 'special-needs' cases).
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  What are those “basic skills”?
  - season2episode3 4y ago
    I'd venture a guess that they're talking about the "three R's": reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      AFAIK NCLB is concerned with far more stuff than those three R’s. And anyway one should wonder just how much tinkering with school system can push you forward, at some point you should realize that education is not only dependent on the school environment.
- lupire 4y ago
  We are failing to teach those basic skills not because of bad schools, but because of bad home environments (food, safety, etc)
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Or maybe it's both? There's research showing that students can do a lot better when they're randomly assigned to a higher-quality school.
  - theptip 4y ago
    You’re making this statement with way more confidence than the data supports. Both are significant.
- theptip 4y ago
  There’s definitely a “Seeing Like A State” point on legibility here. NCLB tries to make the performance of disparate state/county education systems more legible to the federal government, so that it can apply carrots and sticks to “improve” (for some definition of the word) performance. By simplifying the problem to performance at this curriculum, you gain the ability to measure, but also corrupt the thing you are trying to measure, by forcing schools to teach to the test instead of teaching better (where there are direct tradeoffs between the two). I think NCLB fails to recognize that education is something which benefits from local expertise, which means you need to fund teachers/schools and get out of the way, rather than try to standardize it. I recognize this is very hard politically.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
Good luck in a classroom of 30 kids of wildly varying abilities and interests doing "self paced exploration". Maybe 1/100 kids would actually choose to learn any traditional school subject. Structured learning is required for the other 99/100 to learn important and valuable parts of human knowledge that they wouldn't pursue otherwise.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  Schools used to be designed exactly this way, with kids of varying ages/abilities all in the same room learning and teaching each other. It's actually quite successful and more aligned with how we are wired to learn (tribal/community style). The Prussian model we use currently was not designed to create more educated people, it was designed to most efficiently create factory workers. That's an important factor to keep in mind. I would argue the school model is working, it's just not doing what you think it's doing. Any discussion of "improving" schools that doesn't completely overturn the Prussian model is just grifting for more funding. You can get some of the benefits of this environment today if you are willing to pay a premium for Montessori style private schooling. My daughter loved it and was WAY ahead of everyone else, including the "honors" kids, when she transitioned to a regular public school.
  - TaupeRanger 4y ago
    Sure...when you pay for good schools with small class sizes you get better education. The point is that this doesn't work for 99% of children who are going to be in classes of 25-35 kids, and I wouldn't count the child of a smart HN reader as representative of the average "Montessori" kid.
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      My daughter's Montessori school had similar class sizes, 25-30. The kids were loosely grouped by age with ~4 years range in the same room. She was not uniquely successful, though I will acknowledge any private school will tend to be self-selected. And you still missed that we had multi-age schoolhouses for generations that were successful. If you want to argue for smaller classroom sizes, I'm on board, but you won't get a single vote from me for school funding until you're ready to completely upend the Prussian model. It converted our public schools into literal prisons for children and is a scourge on this Earth.
mikotodomo 4y ago
Queue midwit meme.

zozbot234 4y ago

"NCLB" curricula focus on the basics for a reason - we're failing to teach those basic skills. Maybe we need a system that's not so terrible for the "average" below-students (as opposed to those who expressly get skilled teaching attention as 'special-needs' cases).

LudwigNagasena 4y ago
What are those “basic skills”?
- season2episode3 4y ago
  I'd venture a guess that they're talking about the "three R's": reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    AFAIK NCLB is concerned with far more stuff than those three R’s. And anyway one should wonder just how much tinkering with school system can push you forward, at some point you should realize that education is not only dependent on the school environment.
lupire 4y ago
We are failing to teach those basic skills not because of bad schools, but because of bad home environments (food, safety, etc)
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Or maybe it's both? There's research showing that students can do a lot better when they're randomly assigned to a higher-quality school.
- theptip 4y ago
  You’re making this statement with way more confidence than the data supports. Both are significant.
theptip 4y ago
There’s definitely a “Seeing Like A State” point on legibility here. NCLB tries to make the performance of disparate state/county education systems more legible to the federal government, so that it can apply carrots and sticks to “improve” (for some definition of the word) performance. By simplifying the problem to performance at this curriculum, you gain the ability to measure, but also corrupt the thing you are trying to measure, by forcing schools to teach to the test instead of teaching better (where there are direct tradeoffs between the two). I think NCLB fails to recognize that education is something which benefits from local expertise, which means you need to fund teachers/schools and get out of the way, rather than try to standardize it. I recognize this is very hard politically.

TaupeRanger 4y ago

Good luck in a classroom of 30 kids of wildly varying abilities and interests doing "self paced exploration". Maybe 1/100 kids would actually choose to learn any traditional school subject. Structured learning is required for the other 99/100 to learn important and valuable parts of human knowledge that they wouldn't pursue otherwise.

Consultant32452 4y ago
Schools used to be designed exactly this way, with kids of varying ages/abilities all in the same room learning and teaching each other. It's actually quite successful and more aligned with how we are wired to learn (tribal/community style). The Prussian model we use currently was not designed to create more educated people, it was designed to most efficiently create factory workers. That's an important factor to keep in mind. I would argue the school model is working, it's just not doing what you think it's doing. Any discussion of "improving" schools that doesn't completely overturn the Prussian model is just grifting for more funding. You can get some of the benefits of this environment today if you are willing to pay a premium for Montessori style private schooling. My daughter loved it and was WAY ahead of everyone else, including the "honors" kids, when she transitioned to a regular public school.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  Sure...when you pay for good schools with small class sizes you get better education. The point is that this doesn't work for 99% of children who are going to be in classes of 25-35 kids, and I wouldn't count the child of a smart HN reader as representative of the average "Montessori" kid.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    My daughter's Montessori school had similar class sizes, 25-30. The kids were loosely grouped by age with ~4 years range in the same room. She was not uniquely successful, though I will acknowledge any private school will tend to be self-selected. And you still missed that we had multi-age schoolhouses for generations that were successful. If you want to argue for smaller classroom sizes, I'm on board, but you won't get a single vote from me for school funding until you're ready to completely upend the Prussian model. It converted our public schools into literal prisons for children and is a scourge on this Earth.

mikotodomo 4y ago

Queue midwit meme.