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As a person who finds immeasurable delight in programming, I am immediately wary of this idea. My impression is that this HS's curriculum would be narrower than

As a person who finds immeasurable delight in programming, I am immediately wary of this idea. My impression is that this HS's curriculum would be narrower than usual, to accommodate a deep focus on SEG. If that is the case, I feel this is a disservice to young humans: we ought to be exposing them to as broad a range of human thought as possible, and not narrowly focusing on a passion. The idea (as I understand it) seems to be a recipe for producing narrow humans.

blueprint 15y ago
If they learn to engineer software, surely they'll know how to access Wikipedia.
- jilebedev 15y ago
  Education not only teaches facts, but efficiently exposes a person to unknown unknowns. I'd argue that a student-teacher conversation is more efficient at exposing a student to an unknown unknown, than Wikipedia would be.
  - blueprint 15y ago
    Could you share one or two unknown unknowns to which you were exposed in school?
- LargeWu 15y ago
  Learning how to accumulate facts is a completely different problem than learning how to think about ideas. I think teaching children how to think about things is far more important than focusing on specific skills at that age, even if they are useful skills.
  - blueprint 15y ago
    How can one confirm the benefit that thinking has had in one's life? From my point of view, it's more important to know both the principle and the problems (questions) that determine the results that exist in the world, rather than learning how to think about how to solve problems. It's my experience that I have to think when there's an important fact that I haven't realized.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    I don't agree with this dichotomy. Thinking and doing are two activities that inform and reinforce each other - "book learning" and "on the job training" are best when combined in an individual. Sometimes the best ideas don't come to you until you've worked and struggled with the existing tools and materials to appreciate the difference between practice and theory.
chernevik 15y ago
Absolutely. This is the first thing Joel has ever done that gives me pause. Any kid with the cognitive horsepower to code well has the chops for Shakespeare and Lincoln. I don't care if they aren't interested, if they knew what they needed to learn and how to learn it they wouldn't need a school. This will very likely be a +1 over the status quo for 400 to 500 kids, at least over a 4 to 10 year period. But I expect that success will have more to do with the quality of the leadership than the soundness of the model -- which means this won't scale past the supply of Zamanskys and Spolskys. And I'm afraid the characterization of the various symptoms skates around the deeper and touchier problems. (Some kids, in _school_ are struggling b/c their English isn't there yet, so let's focus them on subjects they can excel at anyway? Umm . . . ) That is understandable, it's a constructive effort, no point in picking fights and many people seem to believe those problems are beyond the reach of policy in any case. It seems Joel doesn't even agree with me about all of those. But the larger system ain't going anywhere until we tackle those issues. The larger problem is that we can't even discuss any of that without the whole thing turning into a food fight. I admire the generosity here, I sympathize with the urgency to do _something_. But I really worry that efforts like this will divert a lot of valuable concern into sideroads without much potential for the larger system.

blueprint 15y ago

If they learn to engineer software, surely they'll know how to access Wikipedia.

jilebedev 15y ago
Education not only teaches facts, but efficiently exposes a person to unknown unknowns. I'd argue that a student-teacher conversation is more efficient at exposing a student to an unknown unknown, than Wikipedia would be.
- blueprint 15y ago
  Could you share one or two unknown unknowns to which you were exposed in school?
LargeWu 15y ago
Learning how to accumulate facts is a completely different problem than learning how to think about ideas. I think teaching children how to think about things is far more important than focusing on specific skills at that age, even if they are useful skills.
- blueprint 15y ago
  How can one confirm the benefit that thinking has had in one's life? From my point of view, it's more important to know both the principle and the problems (questions) that determine the results that exist in the world, rather than learning how to think about how to solve problems. It's my experience that I have to think when there's an important fact that I haven't realized.
- r00fus 15y ago
  I don't agree with this dichotomy. Thinking and doing are two activities that inform and reinforce each other - "book learning" and "on the job training" are best when combined in an individual. Sometimes the best ideas don't come to you until you've worked and struggled with the existing tools and materials to appreciate the difference between practice and theory.

chernevik 15y ago

Absolutely. This is the first thing Joel has ever done that gives me pause. Any kid with the cognitive horsepower to code well has the chops for Shakespeare and Lincoln. I don't care if they aren't interested, if they knew what they needed to learn and how to learn it they wouldn't need a school. This will very likely be a +1 over the status quo for 400 to 500 kids, at least over a 4 to 10 year period. But I expect that success will have more to do with the quality of the leadership than the soundness of the model -- which means this won't scale past the supply of Zamanskys and Spolskys. And I'm afraid the characterization of the various symptoms skates around the deeper and touchier problems. (Some kids, in _school_ are struggling b/c their English isn't there yet, so let's focus them on subjects they can excel at anyway? Umm . . . ) That is understandable, it's a constructive effort, no point in picking fights and many people seem to believe those problems are beyond the reach of policy in any case. It seems Joel doesn't even agree with me about all of those. But the larger system ain't going anywhere until we tackle those issues. The larger problem is that we can't even discuss any of that without the whole thing turning into a food fight. I admire the generosity here, I sympathize with the urgency to do _something_. But I really worry that efforts like this will divert a lot of valuable concern into sideroads without much potential for the larger system.