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Lots of interesting elements in your comment. > Even with more resources, as long as we're going to insist on mainstreaming students with behavioral problems o

Lots of interesting elements in your comment. > Even with more resources, as long as we're going to insist on mainstreaming students with behavioral problems or who just don't care about the educational process, outcomes for the other students in the rooms are going to be affected. The insistence on equality at all levels and all things is a problem. I know there are people reading this comment thinking "this guy is a bigot". If you are that person, please stop, calm down and think. Everyone understands that there are people who will never been competitive swimmers, basketball players or good dancers. While I am not terrible at sports, I could not become one of those three, no matter what I do. One of my kids will never be an artists. Just not interested, at all. Another cannot think about anything else. Why is it that we want to shove everyone into the same mold when it comes to intellectual capacity, IQ, etc.? Should I force one of my kids into art class and the other into engineering? No. That would be insane. We don't all have to be engineers. It would be a really sad planet if that were the case. It is not bigoted to suggest we need to allow kids to excel at what really drives them. Expose them to a range of topics, of course. Don't torture them by forcing them into a mold. Should a kid who is an artist not graduate high school if they don't pass algebra, physics and calculus? Why? I love this Ted talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY The whole thing is interesting, however the story that starts about 15 minutes in speaks loudly to this matter of treating all kids as if they were clones of some made-up model of humanity. I won't spoil it for those who might not have seen it. Watch this and think about what we are doing to our kids in school. > who just don't care about the educational process I don't know enough about this. I wish I understood it better. My uninformed thinking is that we damage both groups of kids by forcing them together. One of my kids had to ask to be moved to a desk at the front of the class because the kids in the back were not interested in the class at all and made it impossible to pay attention and learn. The uninterested group should not be discarded. They need a different focus and help. If their families can't support them, perhaps better programs can. I revert back to this idea that not everyone in K-12 is, or should be, college-bound. That's an unnecessary model that might just be causing more damage than good. Of course, this has policy implications that transcend schools. There has to be opportunity outside of college-centric careers for that large percentage of non-college-bound students to be able to access middle-class living. This perspective, if accurate, results in many tentacles affecting wider policy and politics. In other words, it isn't just about schools and the policies that control them. > Education can not fix equity issues: lack of parental support is a powerful disadvantage that we cannot expect a classroom teacher to overcome Maybe I am being naïve. My thinking is, if, a big "if", we could "fix" --whatever that might mean-- the system for one generation, maybe two, the parental problem might self-regulate over time. Sadly, there are kids who are in a really bad environment. Can we address that as a society? Equal outcomes are a fantasy. That does not mean we don't try. I would gladly devote half or more of our war-machine budget towards a better educational system and better outcomes. For that to happen humanity needs to change. None of these things are simple. Easy to throw around grandiose ideas. Hard to make them happen. Also, very easy to throw your hands up and give up when nobody seems to care (as I have done locally). > I've been thinking about teaching a Verilog + microprocessor design class in our high school. I've done tons of work with FPGA's. They are great. My fear, when it comes with using them as a teaching tool at that level, is that the student could suffer from exactly the same problem they have when they learn Python as their first language: Everything is magic. I could be wrong. Perhaps it is because of the fact that I came up wiring raw gates together on breadboards that I feel getting down to that baseline has greater value than instantiating an entire circuit with half a dozen lines of code. Here's a thought I had for yet another attempt to help our local schools with STEM. There are so many well executed resources out there that one could create a hybrid program based on using them under supervision. My example of this is having my own kids take the MITx 6.00.1 and 6.00.2 courses on edX under my guidance and supervision. This was a lot of work, yet, a lot easier than coming-up with a full curriculum and coursework from scratch. I could see taking this kind of an approach with HS kids to teach a CS class or two. They would get to boast about earning CS certificates from MIT, which I would hope would me motivating enough.

mlyle 4y ago
> Should a kid who is an artist not graduate high school if they don't pass algebra, physics and calculus? No US school system requires proficiency in Calc to graduate. Here in California, graduation requirements are 3 years of math. The low track in public schools around me is "Integrated Math I" to "Integrated Math III" which perhaps slightly goes beyond Geometry-- a pretty decent path for votech (building some intuition for triangles and solving equations is going to serve you well in a whole lot of trades). If you can't cut it in integrated math, you can graduate taking the "Math Skills" class which is even more practical/vocational-oriented. Similarly, Physics CP (tracked beneath Physics 1 or Physics 2) is not very rigorous. Indeed, the top class my local public high schools offer is AP Physics 2, which doesn't even require any calculus and is all Algebra-based. I don't think the graduation requirements are too high, in general. And I think there's a decent votech path available through many high schools interwoven with the supports community colleges provide. The problem is it's stigmatized and everyone expects to go to college. (And, honestly, US comparative advantage is predicated upon sending a whole lot of kids to college... though we need to do better at getting people into practical majors and control college costs). My local public high schools do offer "CTE" tracks in food/hospitality, agricultural business, basic IT, vet tech, multimedia production, woodworking, and construction. Before there was automotive and trades, but that's now been centralized to the adult school and the community colleges (a bit of a heavy lift for high schools to do well). > The uninterested group should not be discarded. They need a different focus and help. They need smaller ratios and easier, more engaging material. I can handle 24 students and present very high level material. Because I have a student population that is very much "easy mode". I can even be excessively hands off at times like your kids' robotics teacher-- sit back and see what the room does (after establishing a bit of culture and common goals in the room in prior classes). In other contexts, I've worked with 6-7 students who were not invested or interested. It is really hard to build that investment if it isn't there. > My thinking is, if, a big "if", we could "fix" --whatever that might mean-- the system for one generation, maybe two, the parental problem might self-regulate over time. Sadly, there are kids who are in a really bad environment. Can we address that as a society? Maybe as a society, but probably not in mainline education. You want things like Big Brothers Big Sisters (which has the highest quality of research in support of their program that I've seen from any nonprofit, based on a study controlled between students-on-the-waitlist and students-allowed-to-skip-the-waitlist). You want social work. You want coaching. Teachers can be subsidiary members of such a team: another set of eyes and hands supporting whatever the big plan is. BBBS is able to make a radical difference in the likelihood of students attending class, avoiding violence, avoiding drugs, etc, in just several months. > I've done tons of work with FPGA's. They are great. My fear, when it comes with using them as a teaching tool at that level, is that the student could suffer from exactly the same problem they have when they learn Python as their first language: Everything is magic. There's always magic. There's a lot of circular dependencies in knowledge and you need to spiral. When I started with gates, there was "well, wait, what are transistors?" When I started with transistors, there was "how does anyone build something useful from this and how do they work?" I haven't tried starting from semiconductor physics, but I don't picture it going perfectly, either ;). Few students in middle/high school are going to be able to grasp (and it's arguably not a great use of their time to force them to specialize enough to do so) the whole relations between semiconductors, circuit analysis, gates, combinatorial logic, boolean algebra/synthesis, sequential logic, the software/hardware interface, compilers, etc. The normal approach is to try and handwave through all of it. I teach classes where I give a really deep window into one part of it and handwave around other parts (and maybe if they take another of my classes they get a really deep window into another part and slightly different handwavy explanations of the other parts). > My example of this is having my own kids take the MITx 6.00.1 and 6.00.2 courses on edX under my guidance and supervision. This works well with a few highly driven kids, but mostly hasn't been successful for me. Even in my academic environment, flipping with lessons from OCW, etc, gets pretty low engagement. Having a passionate, motivated presenter in the room with a social connection seems to be essential. (Also, as much as I hated groupwork as a kid... think-pair-share and groupwork is a superpower for retention and overall class esprit de corps. Many kids hate explaining stuff to fellow students, but it makes everyone so much better. Few of these outside resources are set up to really allow you to do that well). The best thing I've been able to do with outside presenters / material is to use them in a "adversarial" mode in the classroom. Superstar presenters like Jacob Clifford, Richard Rusczyk, or Walter Lewin are great, but students are inclined to tune out from multimedia... OTOH, if everyone is sitting on the edge of their seat trying to figure out if Mr. Lyle is going to go on a rant about what "Mr. Richard" is saying this time, then they pay attention. ;)

mlyle 4y ago

> Should a kid who is an artist not graduate high school if they don't pass algebra, physics and calculus? No US school system requires proficiency in Calc to graduate. Here in California, graduation requirements are 3 years of math. The low track in public schools around me is "Integrated Math I" to "Integrated Math III" which perhaps slightly goes beyond Geometry-- a pretty decent path for votech (building some intuition for triangles and solving equations is going to serve you well in a whole lot of trades). If you can't cut it in integrated math, you can graduate taking the "Math Skills" class which is even more practical/vocational-oriented. Similarly, Physics CP (tracked beneath Physics 1 or Physics 2) is not very rigorous. Indeed, the top class my local public high schools offer is AP Physics 2, which doesn't even require any calculus and is all Algebra-based. I don't think the graduation requirements are too high, in general. And I think there's a decent votech path available through many high schools interwoven with the supports community colleges provide. The problem is it's stigmatized and everyone expects to go to college. (And, honestly, US comparative advantage is predicated upon sending a whole lot of kids to college... though we need to do better at getting people into practical majors and control college costs). My local public high schools do offer "CTE" tracks in food/hospitality, agricultural business, basic IT, vet tech, multimedia production, woodworking, and construction. Before there was automotive and trades, but that's now been centralized to the adult school and the community colleges (a bit of a heavy lift for high schools to do well). > The uninterested group should not be discarded. They need a different focus and help. They need smaller ratios and easier, more engaging material. I can handle 24 students and present very high level material. Because I have a student population that is very much "easy mode". I can even be excessively hands off at times like your kids' robotics teacher-- sit back and see what the room does (after establishing a bit of culture and common goals in the room in prior classes). In other contexts, I've worked with 6-7 students who were not invested or interested. It is really hard to build that investment if it isn't there. > My thinking is, if, a big "if", we could "fix" --whatever that might mean-- the system for one generation, maybe two, the parental problem might self-regulate over time. Sadly, there are kids who are in a really bad environment. Can we address that as a society? Maybe as a society, but probably not in mainline education. You want things like Big Brothers Big Sisters (which has the highest quality of research in support of their program that I've seen from any nonprofit, based on a study controlled between students-on-the-waitlist and students-allowed-to-skip-the-waitlist). You want social work. You want coaching. Teachers can be subsidiary members of such a team: another set of eyes and hands supporting whatever the big plan is. BBBS is able to make a radical difference in the likelihood of students attending class, avoiding violence, avoiding drugs, etc, in just several months. > I've done tons of work with FPGA's. They are great. My fear, when it comes with using them as a teaching tool at that level, is that the student could suffer from exactly the same problem they have when they learn Python as their first language: Everything is magic. There's always magic. There's a lot of circular dependencies in knowledge and you need to spiral. When I started with gates, there was "well, wait, what are transistors?" When I started with transistors, there was "how does anyone build something useful from this and how do they work?" I haven't tried starting from semiconductor physics, but I don't picture it going perfectly, either ;). Few students in middle/high school are going to be able to grasp (and it's arguably not a great use of their time to force them to specialize enough to do so) the whole relations between semiconductors, circuit analysis, gates, combinatorial logic, boolean algebra/synthesis, sequential logic, the software/hardware interface, compilers, etc. The normal approach is to try and handwave through all of it. I teach classes where I give a really deep window into one part of it and handwave around other parts (and maybe if they take another of my classes they get a really deep window into another part and slightly different handwavy explanations of the other parts). > My example of this is having my own kids take the MITx 6.00.1 and 6.00.2 courses on edX under my guidance and supervision. This works well with a few highly driven kids, but mostly hasn't been successful for me. Even in my academic environment, flipping with lessons from OCW, etc, gets pretty low engagement. Having a passionate, motivated presenter in the room with a social connection seems to be essential. (Also, as much as I hated groupwork as a kid... think-pair-share and groupwork is a superpower for retention and overall class esprit de corps. Many kids hate explaining stuff to fellow students, but it makes everyone so much better. Few of these outside resources are set up to really allow you to do that well). The best thing I've been able to do with outside presenters / material is to use them in a "adversarial" mode in the classroom. Superstar presenters like Jacob Clifford, Richard Rusczyk, or Walter Lewin are great, but students are inclined to tune out from multimedia... OTOH, if everyone is sitting on the edge of their seat trying to figure out if Mr. Lyle is going to go on a rant about what "Mr. Richard" is saying this time, then they pay attention. ;)