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> outperforms classrooms by 2 sigma ...by what metrics? Anyway, who cares? Why do kids need an education, let alone one that has sigmas, in a world where tal

> outperforms classrooms by 2 sigma ...by what metrics? Anyway, who cares? Why do kids need an education, let alone one that has sigmas, in a world where talking machines can outperform them in every area? What are people for? (That's a Wendell Berry essay, also I'm asking.) I maintain that the robots should do the work so that people can e.g. teach their own kids. Education should be more than a means to secure a position in the economic/social order. (An order that seems poised for some sort of upheaval.)

mlyle 3y ago
> ...by what metrics? The Wikipedia article is linked right there. > in a world where talking machines can outperform them in every area? Seems unlikely for awhile, except perhaps as a self-fulfilling prophecy. > I maintain that the robots should do the work It sure would be nice if robots could like, unclog toilets and clean, instead of usurping creative work. > so that people can e.g. teach their own kids Some people are really well equipped for this, in knowledge, temperament, and ability. Others, ehh..
- carapace 3y ago
  > The Wikipedia article is linked right there. Yeah, thanks. It says "a knowledge test"...? Anyway, this Bloom is clearly a crank: > Mastery learning is an educational philosophy first proposed by Bloom in 1968[8] based on the premise that students must achieve a level of mastery (e.g., 90% on a knowledge test) in prerequisite knowledge before moving forward to learn subsequent information on a topic. That's not how brains work. No wonder the educational system is so pathetic, eh? I recall when "points" were introduced in school, and even as a kid I could recognize that this was a serious degradation of educational philosophy and technique. >> in a world where talking machines can outperform them in every area? > Seems unlikely for awhile It's already happening. Jobs are evaporating. Opportunities for gainful employment are withering under the glare of the LLMs as we speak. I just checked Craigslist and there are no jobs for me there anymore. > It sure would be nice if robots could like, unclog toilets and clean, instead of usurping creative work. Yeah, that's my whole point here: "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay." People talking about robot judges and robot teachers, etc., are putting the cart before the horse. I remember when Sony made that dancing robot and I was like, "Damn it, I like to dance! Make a robot that does the #$@% dishes!" >> so that people can e.g. teach their own kids > Some people are really well equipped for this, in knowledge, temperament, and ability. Others, ehh.. "It takes a village...", eh? The "unit" of human is not the individual, or even the nuclear family or extended family. It's the village/neighborhood. Teaching kids to be adults is not exactly the hardest thing to do? We managed it for about a million years before we ever even lived in towns.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    > Yeah, thanks. It says "a knowledge test"...? It's been reproduced on large numbers of measures of performance-- e.g. on performance on a mathematics test at the end. > That's not how brains work. There's a lot of evidence for mastery-based instruction-- which attempts to keep students working on topics they have not quite mastered-- instead of methods that advance students to material that depends upon earlier material that they've not demonstrated mastery of. It seems perhaps you're quibbling with the threshold-aspect as implemented? It's kind of annoying when people dismiss an idea without taking time to fully engage with and understand it. I expect more from my middle school students, let alone someone I'm taking time to discuss things with on HN. There's a pretty big problem in classroom style education, where students fall behind once and become accustomed to being confused. It's very, very difficult to claw back onto the line of high performance once this happens to you. There's another problem, too, in that even if you have tiered classes there's quite a lot of variation within a class and quite a lot of variation even with the high performing students on how quickly they grasp each idea. Mastery methods attempt to modulate pacing for each student for optimal outcomes. The difficult thing with mastery based methods in a normal classroom is it's difficult to keep giving meaningful lessons and coaching when you have students before you at 5 different levels of mastery and thus different places in the curriculum. It's still better than blindly advancing everyone based on where the 40th percentile of the classroom overall is performing. But the hope is LLMs can pitch in and help here and provide a little bit of differentiation and individualization. > We managed it for about a million years before we ever even lived in towns. We have much higher expectations now than we did a million years ago. We weren't trying to get a relatively big fraction of the populace to understand calculus, write eloquently, and reason deeply in the social sciences.
    - carapace 3y ago
      > It's kind of annoying when people dismiss an idea without taking time to fully engage with and understand it. I expect more from my middle school students, let alone someone I'm taking time to discuss things with on HN. I fully agree, and I wish you'd do your part. What are people for?

mlyle 3y ago

> ...by what metrics? The Wikipedia article is linked right there. > in a world where talking machines can outperform them in every area? Seems unlikely for awhile, except perhaps as a self-fulfilling prophecy. > I maintain that the robots should do the work It sure would be nice if robots could like, unclog toilets and clean, instead of usurping creative work. > so that people can e.g. teach their own kids Some people are really well equipped for this, in knowledge, temperament, and ability. Others, ehh..

carapace 3y ago
> The Wikipedia article is linked right there. Yeah, thanks. It says "a knowledge test"...? Anyway, this Bloom is clearly a crank: > Mastery learning is an educational philosophy first proposed by Bloom in 1968[8] based on the premise that students must achieve a level of mastery (e.g., 90% on a knowledge test) in prerequisite knowledge before moving forward to learn subsequent information on a topic. That's not how brains work. No wonder the educational system is so pathetic, eh? I recall when "points" were introduced in school, and even as a kid I could recognize that this was a serious degradation of educational philosophy and technique. >> in a world where talking machines can outperform them in every area? > Seems unlikely for awhile It's already happening. Jobs are evaporating. Opportunities for gainful employment are withering under the glare of the LLMs as we speak. I just checked Craigslist and there are no jobs for me there anymore. > It sure would be nice if robots could like, unclog toilets and clean, instead of usurping creative work. Yeah, that's my whole point here: "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay." People talking about robot judges and robot teachers, etc., are putting the cart before the horse. I remember when Sony made that dancing robot and I was like, "Damn it, I like to dance! Make a robot that does the #$@% dishes!" >> so that people can e.g. teach their own kids > Some people are really well equipped for this, in knowledge, temperament, and ability. Others, ehh.. "It takes a village...", eh? The "unit" of human is not the individual, or even the nuclear family or extended family. It's the village/neighborhood. Teaching kids to be adults is not exactly the hardest thing to do? We managed it for about a million years before we ever even lived in towns.
- mlyle 3y ago
  > Yeah, thanks. It says "a knowledge test"...? It's been reproduced on large numbers of measures of performance-- e.g. on performance on a mathematics test at the end. > That's not how brains work. There's a lot of evidence for mastery-based instruction-- which attempts to keep students working on topics they have not quite mastered-- instead of methods that advance students to material that depends upon earlier material that they've not demonstrated mastery of. It seems perhaps you're quibbling with the threshold-aspect as implemented? It's kind of annoying when people dismiss an idea without taking time to fully engage with and understand it. I expect more from my middle school students, let alone someone I'm taking time to discuss things with on HN. There's a pretty big problem in classroom style education, where students fall behind once and become accustomed to being confused. It's very, very difficult to claw back onto the line of high performance once this happens to you. There's another problem, too, in that even if you have tiered classes there's quite a lot of variation within a class and quite a lot of variation even with the high performing students on how quickly they grasp each idea. Mastery methods attempt to modulate pacing for each student for optimal outcomes. The difficult thing with mastery based methods in a normal classroom is it's difficult to keep giving meaningful lessons and coaching when you have students before you at 5 different levels of mastery and thus different places in the curriculum. It's still better than blindly advancing everyone based on where the 40th percentile of the classroom overall is performing. But the hope is LLMs can pitch in and help here and provide a little bit of differentiation and individualization. > We managed it for about a million years before we ever even lived in towns. We have much higher expectations now than we did a million years ago. We weren't trying to get a relatively big fraction of the populace to understand calculus, write eloquently, and reason deeply in the social sciences.
  - carapace 3y ago
    > It's kind of annoying when people dismiss an idea without taking time to fully engage with and understand it. I expect more from my middle school students, let alone someone I'm taking time to discuss things with on HN. I fully agree, and I wish you'd do your part. What are people for?