4 ms·

This is a lot of patronizing hair tearing over what amounts to a pretty banal HN greatest hit: “intelligent” people don’t really need school, and everyone else

This is a lot of patronizing hair tearing over what amounts to a pretty banal HN greatest hit: “intelligent” people don’t really need school, and everyone else can get fucked.

atleastoptimal 4y ago
Yeah, he seems to be making it a matter of "well the smart people, the ones who really matter, don't need education, so all the sub 99th percentile students don't really matter because the smart ones aren't benefitting" So teaching kids to read, understand logical inference, showing them different parts of the world and how to look at it, doesn't matter because the wonderful gifted kids would have happened upon those insights anyway? It seems pretty reductive to assume the point of education is just to foster a small cadre of geniuses. Does every other non-gifted kid not deserve to be helped by education because they couldn't have educated themselves?
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  Thanks for both points, I’ll think about them. However, you basically just confirmed what I argued: it’s impossible to criticize educational methods. Just because education ”can” be useful, that doesn’t mean it ”is” useful. I wish every person in the world could have access to transformative education, but the truth of the matter is that almost no teacher out there can actually do that; most are just very well-intended witch doctors. And since the subject is impossible to criticize (and the ”research” area is mired with politics and virtual signalling), it’s probably going to stay that way. So, calling me elitist is all good, but I’m pretty sure I’m doing more than most other people by being as rational as I can and not promising to cure an ailment for which I have no remedy.
  - atleastoptimal 4y ago
    Your comment only seemed to be about the current uselessness of education as a value-add for smart kids. You never mentioned the benefit it offered to average or less intelligent kids. Do you believe that their needs aren't being addressed either? > you basically just confirmed what I argued: it’s impossible to criticize educational methods. Not sure how my comment confirmed that. All I pointed out is the fact that your gripe with education seemed mostly focused on the failure to help smart kids, ignoring whether or not if helping other kids could be evidence for or against the effectiveness of the education system in the western world. With regards to that I have a question for you. Is the percentage of kids in any age cohort you consider "smart" a product of their educational environment, or is the proportion of smart kids to normal kids the same no matter what methods, within the realm of methods readily available to educators nowadays, we use?
    - low_tech_love 4y ago
      > your gripe with education seemed mostly focused on the failure to help smart kids Not at all, I definitely did not express myself correctly. I really have no worries that the smart kids will mostly thrive, no matter what educational methods they are subjected to. Sure, some systems will work against them, but that is unavoidable. My gripe is, first of all, with the fact that it is impossible to criticize education and, as a consequence, it is impossible to improve it. Nobody really knows whether one or another type/method works better than any other, and yet many people pretend to know, and pretend to have scientific knowledge about it. But because teaching is such an emotional subject, any teaching seems to be good teaching, and as such, we'll never really know which one works or not. Given that, I don't really feel the obligation to use one method or the other, and I also don't feel like the success or failure of a student is my success or my fault. Don't get me wrong, I do my absolute best to do a good job. I believe in teaching by example, I believe in connecting theory to practice, I believe in reaching out to eventual special needs of specific students, etc. However, I also believe (and make it very clear to my students) that their success is still 95% based on their own hard work and motivation, and only 5% based on whatever it is that I offer them. I simply don't know whether my teaching is good or not; I'll never know. As such, it is irresponsible of me to try to convince them (like some kind of religious leader or a witch doctor) that by following my "methods" they will thrive, and if they haven't, it's because they didn't follow me close enough. Sure, some will pass the exams with straight A's. Some students are very good in overfitting to the institutional assessments, and will build a kind of fake safety and comfort with their results. Does that mean they will do well out there? I have no idea. Others will fail my exams miserably. Some students are bored by structured, predictable goals and need more complex challenges; others are in the wrong area; others simply don't want to study. Does that mean they won't do well out there? I have no idea. As such, I think that the only honest thing to do is this: offer them everything you can, but make it clear to them that they'll only learn as much they work to learn. The school will give them more space and time to make errors and learn from them, in a less traumatic way than the real world. But if they don't use that, i.e. if they don't actually work hard to learn and experiment and fail and try again, there is nothing I can do to make that better. Sorry. I'm only human, and I don't pretend to have a solution to this problem just to try to justify my existence as a teacher. As for your question: I believe there is definitely an effect, but it could be good or bad. Some teaching will give motivation for students to develop their abilities; others will kill their creativity. My point is exactly that: we don't know, and never will. We're just witch doctors trying every possible plant to treat a disease. Randomly, some will actually work, some will not, and some will make it worse. But since we cannot check it objectively, we'll never know which is which.
  - smogcutter 4y ago
    “Your profession is valueless, and you kinky think otherwise because you have an irrational emotional connection to it” is not the incisive, conversation-provoking criticism you seem the think it is.

This is a lot of patronizing hair tearing over what amounts to a pretty banal HN greatest hit: “intelligent” people don’t really need school, and everyone else can get fucked.

atleastoptimal 4y ago

Yeah, he seems to be making it a matter of "well the smart people, the ones who really matter, don't need education, so all the sub 99th percentile students don't really matter because the smart ones aren't benefitting" So teaching kids to read, understand logical inference, showing them different parts of the world and how to look at it, doesn't matter because the wonderful gifted kids would have happened upon those insights anyway? It seems pretty reductive to assume the point of education is just to foster a small cadre of geniuses. Does every other non-gifted kid not deserve to be helped by education because they couldn't have educated themselves?

low_tech_love 4y ago
Thanks for both points, I’ll think about them. However, you basically just confirmed what I argued: it’s impossible to criticize educational methods. Just because education ”can” be useful, that doesn’t mean it ”is” useful. I wish every person in the world could have access to transformative education, but the truth of the matter is that almost no teacher out there can actually do that; most are just very well-intended witch doctors. And since the subject is impossible to criticize (and the ”research” area is mired with politics and virtual signalling), it’s probably going to stay that way. So, calling me elitist is all good, but I’m pretty sure I’m doing more than most other people by being as rational as I can and not promising to cure an ailment for which I have no remedy.
- atleastoptimal 4y ago
  Your comment only seemed to be about the current uselessness of education as a value-add for smart kids. You never mentioned the benefit it offered to average or less intelligent kids. Do you believe that their needs aren't being addressed either? > you basically just confirmed what I argued: it’s impossible to criticize educational methods. Not sure how my comment confirmed that. All I pointed out is the fact that your gripe with education seemed mostly focused on the failure to help smart kids, ignoring whether or not if helping other kids could be evidence for or against the effectiveness of the education system in the western world. With regards to that I have a question for you. Is the percentage of kids in any age cohort you consider "smart" a product of their educational environment, or is the proportion of smart kids to normal kids the same no matter what methods, within the realm of methods readily available to educators nowadays, we use?
  - low_tech_love 4y ago
    > your gripe with education seemed mostly focused on the failure to help smart kids Not at all, I definitely did not express myself correctly. I really have no worries that the smart kids will mostly thrive, no matter what educational methods they are subjected to. Sure, some systems will work against them, but that is unavoidable. My gripe is, first of all, with the fact that it is impossible to criticize education and, as a consequence, it is impossible to improve it. Nobody really knows whether one or another type/method works better than any other, and yet many people pretend to know, and pretend to have scientific knowledge about it. But because teaching is such an emotional subject, any teaching seems to be good teaching, and as such, we'll never really know which one works or not. Given that, I don't really feel the obligation to use one method or the other, and I also don't feel like the success or failure of a student is my success or my fault. Don't get me wrong, I do my absolute best to do a good job. I believe in teaching by example, I believe in connecting theory to practice, I believe in reaching out to eventual special needs of specific students, etc. However, I also believe (and make it very clear to my students) that their success is still 95% based on their own hard work and motivation, and only 5% based on whatever it is that I offer them. I simply don't know whether my teaching is good or not; I'll never know. As such, it is irresponsible of me to try to convince them (like some kind of religious leader or a witch doctor) that by following my "methods" they will thrive, and if they haven't, it's because they didn't follow me close enough. Sure, some will pass the exams with straight A's. Some students are very good in overfitting to the institutional assessments, and will build a kind of fake safety and comfort with their results. Does that mean they will do well out there? I have no idea. Others will fail my exams miserably. Some students are bored by structured, predictable goals and need more complex challenges; others are in the wrong area; others simply don't want to study. Does that mean they won't do well out there? I have no idea. As such, I think that the only honest thing to do is this: offer them everything you can, but make it clear to them that they'll only learn as much they work to learn. The school will give them more space and time to make errors and learn from them, in a less traumatic way than the real world. But if they don't use that, i.e. if they don't actually work hard to learn and experiment and fail and try again, there is nothing I can do to make that better. Sorry. I'm only human, and I don't pretend to have a solution to this problem just to try to justify my existence as a teacher. As for your question: I believe there is definitely an effect, but it could be good or bad. Some teaching will give motivation for students to develop their abilities; others will kill their creativity. My point is exactly that: we don't know, and never will. We're just witch doctors trying every possible plant to treat a disease. Randomly, some will actually work, some will not, and some will make it worse. But since we cannot check it objectively, we'll never know which is which.
- smogcutter 4y ago
  “Your profession is valueless, and you kinky think otherwise because you have an irrational emotional connection to it” is not the incisive, conversation-provoking criticism you seem the think it is.