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There's a long history of classroom education producing significantly worse outcomes. "Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to the educational phenomenon that the av

There's a long history of classroom education producing significantly worse outcomes. "Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to the educational phenomenon that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students educated in a classroom environment." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult.

klyrs 2y ago
Is it a cargo cult or a scaling issue? Because for every article I've read about a try-hard parent succeeding in this, I've met a handful of people who are emphatically not educating their children and also calling it unschooling. Scale up schooling, it's median quality droops a little. Scale up unschooling, and the median quality will continue to fall with every subsequent generation.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult. Policy inertia is always a factor in adopting techniques that appear better in limited testing, but we also do it this way because 1:1 instruction with mastery learning techniques is more than 30 times as expensive as 30:1 instruction with classroom techniques, and because education sits as #2 behind healthcare (ahead of things like debt service defense, and non-healthcare entitlement spending) in overall public spending in the US, and if it was multiplied 30 fold it would be over 150% of GDP, which is...problematic. It's never been controversial that being educated by an expert personal dedicated tutor is better than classroom learning, but it just doesn't work at scale. Unfortunately, the success at the challenge laid out in the article you reference of finding group learning techniques that achieve the same benefits, in practice, has been less than successful. (And, no, unschooling/homeschooling isn't a general solution here.)
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  I responded to another similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 Considering how much more effective tutoring is, we do it this way not because it's the best way to provide free child care (it isn't and doesn't even cover a whole work day). It's not the most effective way to educate students. Nor is it even the most cost effective way to teach students. I'm left with the belief that it's either a cargo cult or a program designed to make a servile, uncreative population.
llamaimperative 2y ago
You really think the only -- or even the primary -- reason we're not providing 1-to-1 dedicated tutoring to students is because a cargo cult thinks that 30-to-1 ratios are better? No, we keep doing it this way because the public refuses to actually engage the real challenges of actually educating a nation. Comments like this one being excellent cases in point.
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  Because of how much more effective one on one tutoring is, it needs significantly less effort in total hours even maintaining a 30-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." [1] Unless you have some strong evidence to argue why "sit down and lecture" is the most cost effective way to educate a population, I will retain my belief that it is a cargo cult at best. [1] https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Can you describe in more detail how you achieve 50 contact-hours cost-effectively when students outnumber teachers 30 or 40 to 1? Can you also substantiate the claim that 50 contact-hours is sufficient for students to become "self-teachers" and that they actually do that?
    - JackMorgan 2y ago
      For the first claim, 50 hours at 40 students would be 2000 hours. One year to complete the prerequisites for self teaching for those 40 students. Instead of 12 years full time lecturing, so that's 1/12th the cost. I have volunteered at a school that allows students to become self-teachers and it is very effective. They follow the Sudbury model, and students entirely teach themselves everything from reading to mathematics. They graduate from college at higher rates than traditional school students, make more, and have very high levels of self reported happiness. It's a really cool model, I wish it was more common. The school I helped at had no teachers, only 3 adults for 120 young people. They could all come and go throughout the day as long as they signed in and out. It's been up and running for decades, so it's not just a flash in the pan. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school

klyrs 2y ago

Is it a cargo cult or a scaling issue? Because for every article I've read about a try-hard parent succeeding in this, I've met a handful of people who are emphatically not educating their children and also calling it unschooling. Scale up schooling, it's median quality droops a little. Scale up unschooling, and the median quality will continue to fall with every subsequent generation.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult. Policy inertia is always a factor in adopting techniques that appear better in limited testing, but we also do it this way because 1:1 instruction with mastery learning techniques is more than 30 times as expensive as 30:1 instruction with classroom techniques, and because education sits as #2 behind healthcare (ahead of things like debt service defense, and non-healthcare entitlement spending) in overall public spending in the US, and if it was multiplied 30 fold it would be over 150% of GDP, which is...problematic. It's never been controversial that being educated by an expert personal dedicated tutor is better than classroom learning, but it just doesn't work at scale. Unfortunately, the success at the challenge laid out in the article you reference of finding group learning techniques that achieve the same benefits, in practice, has been less than successful. (And, no, unschooling/homeschooling isn't a general solution here.)

JackMorgan 2y ago
I responded to another similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 Considering how much more effective tutoring is, we do it this way not because it's the best way to provide free child care (it isn't and doesn't even cover a whole work day). It's not the most effective way to educate students. Nor is it even the most cost effective way to teach students. I'm left with the belief that it's either a cargo cult or a program designed to make a servile, uncreative population.

llamaimperative 2y ago

You really think the only -- or even the primary -- reason we're not providing 1-to-1 dedicated tutoring to students is because a cargo cult thinks that 30-to-1 ratios are better? No, we keep doing it this way because the public refuses to actually engage the real challenges of actually educating a nation. Comments like this one being excellent cases in point.

JackMorgan 2y ago
Because of how much more effective one on one tutoring is, it needs significantly less effort in total hours even maintaining a 30-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." [1] Unless you have some strong evidence to argue why "sit down and lecture" is the most cost effective way to educate a population, I will retain my belief that it is a cargo cult at best. [1] https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Can you describe in more detail how you achieve 50 contact-hours cost-effectively when students outnumber teachers 30 or 40 to 1? Can you also substantiate the claim that 50 contact-hours is sufficient for students to become "self-teachers" and that they actually do that?
  - JackMorgan 2y ago
    For the first claim, 50 hours at 40 students would be 2000 hours. One year to complete the prerequisites for self teaching for those 40 students. Instead of 12 years full time lecturing, so that's 1/12th the cost. I have volunteered at a school that allows students to become self-teachers and it is very effective. They follow the Sudbury model, and students entirely teach themselves everything from reading to mathematics. They graduate from college at higher rates than traditional school students, make more, and have very high levels of self reported happiness. It's a really cool model, I wish it was more common. The school I helped at had no teachers, only 3 adults for 120 young people. They could all come and go throughout the day as long as they signed in and out. It's been up and running for decades, so it's not just a flash in the pan. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school