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I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level.

by donatj 2y ago

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. Now in order to keep schools paying for our services, every kid is banded into a range based on their grade. They are scored/graded based on their grade level rather than their growth. It's such a crying shame.

cptaj 2y ago
This has also been my experience. Curriculum standards really put a stop to any radical changes in the way we structure the learning process. I guess that IS the point of standards, but we really should be experimenting more on the fringes.
Fin_Code 2y ago
Customized skill based education should be the future.
- jerf 2y ago
  The problem is that it should be the present. Oh, I've been an engineer for a while and I know the system can't turn on a dime, it would take some time. However, we should be seeing visible progress towards this goal, and frankly, if anything, the system continues to be moving in the other direction, lowering bars to try to get everyone into the exact same level long after it should be clear that lowering the bar still isn't even achieving that goal, even as it destroys everything around it in the process. The system isn't even trying to customize skill-based education, beyond a bit of clearly-ineffectual lip service.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
    Large bureaucracy wants people to be as fungible as possible, so that systems can be designed that interact with fungible units instead of complex, multifaceted individuals.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      I reject this kind of thinking. To be clear, most engineers at FAANG would describe their own companies as a "large bureaucracy", yet, the engineers at these places are highly skilled, "complex, multifaceted individuals". Their hiring strategy has demonstrated this time and time again on HN discussions. It is insanely hard to get hired into these places. There must be at least 10 qualified candidates for each role. And, weirdly, I would say that almost all of the most highly skilled software engineers that I have known in my career are also the most dynamic. By definition, that makes them fungible because they can learn new skills so quickly.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Computerization barely helps with "customized skill-based education" outside of parts of certain topics (some areas of math, notably, are very well-suited to it). Detailed feedback from humans is vital in many topics and for learning many skills, and, as they say, that doesn't scale. We can do it, but it means spending a lot more on teachers, so we aren't going to. We may eventually get a half-assed version involving LLMs or whatever nonsense, but that will be brought in mainly as a way to get by with fewer teachers (they're cost-diseasing into something we can't afford any more, it seems) not to increase educational quality. My expected outcome for all of this is that the gap between rich and poor students will grow, as only rich students will continue to have decent student:teacher ratios (their ratios already tend to be a ton better than public school kids). Paid tutoring will become common somewhat farther down-market than it currently is, as more people choose to pay extra just to cover what their tax money used to, but no longer does.
graemep 2y ago
> It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. That is bad. I have to say no teacher I had a problem when I learned things ahead of time. Some less good teachers were not actually encouraging, but they certainly did not think it was a problem. That said, IMO the school system does not cope well with kids who are not going at the average speed. This is one reason i home educated my kids. We need to change how schools work to take advantage of ed tech (and a lot of other opportunities - you can learn at your own pace from books, like I did)
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tombert 2y ago
A bit tangential but related. I dropped out of college in 2012 and was one of the very lucky few who managed to find software engineering work almost immediately [1]. I had a bit of a complex about not having a degree, and a few times I tried going back only to drop out again because I would get bored; by the time I had gone back, I already knew enough stuff to be qualified as an engineer, and as such I didn't feel like I was getting a lot out of school and I would paradoxically do pretty poorly because I was half-assing everything. It wasn't until I found out about WGU in 2021 where I actually decided to finish my degree, primarily because WGU lets me work at my pace. Since I already knew a lot about computer science, I was able to speed through the classes that would have been very boring to me, and I finished my degree really quickly as a result. I don't feel like my education is appreciably worse than people who did things in a traditional brick and mortar school, but I'm not 100% sure if I'm a test for this. It made me realize that, at least for people like me, EdTech can be extremely powerful stuff. School can be a lot more engaging when it's personalized, instead of the frustrating "one size fits all" of traditional lecturing. [1] I say "lucky" because I think it was exactly that: luck. Yeah I learned this stuff on my own for fun but finding an employer who was willing to hire someone without credentials was never guaranteed and I feel extremely fortunate to have accidentally timed my dropout about perfectly. EDIT: For those confused, WGU means "Western Governors University" in this case.
- jspiral 2y ago
  WGU was a customer when I was at Learning Objects, they always impressed me visionary and outcome oriented. glad to hear a positive anecdote more than 10 years later.
  - quacksilver 2y ago
    I'm sad WGU is only for US citizens. I hear lots of good things about it but can't join in.
    - jackbravo 2y ago
      Yes, I'm wondering if there are alternatives outside the US to get a full undergraduate or master's degree online at your own pace.
bitcurious 2y ago
> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. Can you give examples? Are we talking evolution or addition?
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  My guess is that the kids were learning ahead of the rest of the class and it made the teacher's life harder to keep track of where each kid is, or had to field questions outside of her expertise since often elementary school teachers only know enough to teach elementary school
  - AdamN 2y ago
    Yeah - this is on OP if that is the case. No teacher wants that and it's annoying for the ahead kids and the behind kids. Better to give them something tangential to keep them engaged but still gate on moving ahead with the mainline curriculum.
    - oytis 2y ago
      To be fair - maybe that's what the product mentioned should have been doing? You can focus on general problem-solving ability by giving talented kids hard problems with the amount of knowledge adequate for their level rather giving them more an more material and making the whole learning process less manageable.
      - shortrounddev2 2y ago
        "general problem solving ability" isn't a real thing. Proficiency in solving, for example, math problems, does not confer the ability to draw conclusions based on evidence in history class. If you require a kid who's already mastered fractions to simply do harder and harder fractions rather than allowing them to continue onward, they will become bored and distracted, and ultimately burned out or resentful of the education system
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
This has been the case for a long time. I was one of those kids who usually "got it" the first time I saw it, and then remembered it. So lectures usually moved much too slowly for me. In an effort to not be bored, I would usually sit quietly and read ahead in my textbook. Some teachers were cool with this, but most of them would yell at me for not paying attention, and a couple specifically called me out for reading ahead on the basis that I thought I was too good for the class.
michaelrpeskin 2y ago
That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.
- mettamage 2y ago
  I find that an uncharitable take of equity. You can also make someone like that grow stronger so that they have more to contribute to society. “Strongest shoulders carrying the heaviest burden” and all that (it’s a Dutch saying about the Dutch tax system).
- Afton 2y ago
  To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enrichment to kids like mine who are able to learn quickly and are ready for more advanced learning opportunities, only to discover that it is haphazard, often in name only, and there isn't time or interest in providing more. But it's not because of some drive for 'equity'. I've talked with teachers (as friends, not in a school setting). They're doing what they can with the resources they have.
  - AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
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  - boomchinolo78 2y ago
    I mean there are alternative models. Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore famously opposed the "helping the bottom kids at expense of the top ones". Is it really the right thing?
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    As one of those frustrated top kids, it taught me a well-earned contempt for my neurotypical peers. Frustration at spending the resources on them when it didn't seem to move the needle.
chongli 2y ago
This is because education is more about gatekeeping and politics than trying to maximize human capital development. We all ostensibly want it to be about human capital but our attitudes and behaviour towards education at the political level show otherwise. The gatekeeping element seems to have developed in tandem with / response to the signalling hypothesis [1]. Simply put, if kids are trying to do the minimum necessary to get by, we raise the bar on the minimum standard until we're satisfied. Teachers (K-12 at least) respond with grade inflation, adding lots of noise to the signal, and we in turn respond with standardized testing in an attempt to clean up the noise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education
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lolinder 2y ago
The incredibly frustrating thing about this is that this is always done in the name of "equity", but the result is that the system perpetuates the inequities that already exist. Because the public schools force kids into grade bands and don't allow children who are ahead to learn at their level, wealthy parents (and only wealthy parents) figure out ways to supplement or move their kids into schools that are appropriate for their level. Only wealthy parents can afford to do that, while everyone else is stuck with whatever their local school offers or doesn't offer. This perpetuates generational inequalities in ways that the public school system is supposed to solve, all in the name of "leaving no child behind".
- gosub100 2y ago
  Plus it can't be denied that the system incentives holding smart kids back because they boost the metrics: GPA, standardized tests, graduation rates.
- s3r3nity 2y ago
  +1. Folks pushing for equity haven't read (or too young to have read) "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, and it shows. Instead of handicapping those who are ahead, we should intervene with those who are falling behind. Instead of enforcing equal outcomes, instead prioritize offering equal opportunity for every student to get the highest quality of education.
  - mrandish 2y ago
    "Bergeron" is one of those rare things that's just presciently ahead of it's time it's almost spooky (kind of like "1984").
  - Spivak 2y ago
    You're literally describing equity. The more interesting question what option will you choose when you're told that individual interventions as you describe are so expensive as to be infeasible. I don't think it's an issue of a person's politics, Republicans tried the exact same thing with No Child Left Behind. Is the more important thing the individual rising to their highest potential, or is the more important thing the system where economic factors have created a cycle where only children of middle-class or better families are given the environment to rise and those kids run with the flywheel and become the middle-class parents. I was literally never not going to be successful, I think I'm reasonably intelligent but that by far wasn't the biggest factor. My parents made damn sure I was on the gifted track, always got A's, and was set up to get into an in-demand major at a prestigious university. Was I actually that special or was I just the chosen one, in that I was chosen? You can only be like "that's not true of everyone <anecdote>" but the exceptions fall away in the aggregate where your success is frighteningly well predicted by your zip code.
Parfait__ 2y ago
I think it's weird that you're not telling us what "things they shouldn't be" are. There are plenty of things I think kids shouldn't be learning.
- devin 2y ago
  I doubt they were talking about any kind of "adult" content. The situation they're referring to is more like "your second grader should be focused on multiplication, not long division."
  - red_admiral 2y ago
    Never underestimate how upset people can get when a kid does longhand addition the old way (write numbers under each other, carry the ones) rather than some more "holistic" way.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    I'm not sure why the commenter is being downvoted. I too can make a drama, literally capitalizing one of the worst words ever invented, "actually," about a vague antagonist, and rile people up, letting their imaginations fill in whatever boogieman they feel wronged them in school. What specifically is the situation? I don't want to speculate.
- miningape 2y ago
  It's an edtech platform for kids - forgive me but I somewhat doubt there's porn on there
  - Parfait__ 2y ago
    not sure why porn is assumed how the hell is that educational content? maybe there's religious things on there, any number of things parents would want a say on
boomchinolo78 2y ago
>straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" What do you think is behind the threats? Do the teachers fear being replaced or is it coming from a different set of people?
mettamage 2y ago
I skipped out complete uni classes and followed an analogue online. Maurice Herlihy had its concurrency and multithreading classes online for a while. I passed my c&m course with it, we also used his book
Alex3917 2y ago
> the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. OK but we've known this since, when, the 60s? Look at all the academic research on the adoption (or lack thereof) of programmed instruction, programmed learning, etc. If we didn't already know this before the "EdTech Revolution" then of course the industry would get a pass, but the fact that we already knew what would happen and why is what makes it a scam.
brightball 2y ago
This is why I hear stories every year at my kids school about home school kids enrolling, then being place in math classes 1-2 years ahead of the max possible for somebody who had been in the school system to start with.
jt2190 2y ago
> The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. This is only truly possible if we trust educators enough to allow them to use a different approach with a child. The system we have has leaned heavily toward “trust nothing”. Parents and teachers all want the best for their students but at the same time we demand that everyone stick to the prescribed curriculum lest something unapproved should enter a classroom. This is how you get “McDonalds” results: Consistent and maybe somewhat average overall.
unsupp0rted 2y ago
I've never seen a teacher that was comfortably capable with even 50% of whatever EdTech they're handed. How are they supposed to maximize the use of it? I remember having to painfully sit through multi-hour presentations in which they'd explain how to use a hamburger menu to find the app settings, and half the participants furiously scribbled down notes so they wouldn't get lost later when they needed to find the settings without guidance, on their home computer. This was only a decade ago and I doubt it's much better now. People who go into teaching aren't exactly the best & brightest most of the time. And the results speak for themselves.
- luqtas 2y ago
  as a counter-point, not a teacher nor related to but i heard around 400 hours of pedagogy podcasts, be it the science of it, small-talk about teaching & sometimes edtech software that seriously, most of the time just sounded as apps coming from the next guy trying to be the next silicon money maker by offering what Google Docs offers but in a fancy app or in the most complex cases, what Matrix/Discord offers for free or what Emacs org-mode could accomplish without diving far from the basics it provides. there was good apps & often these were backed/based by novel & evidence based ways of teaching
  - handfuloflight 2y ago
    > there was good apps & often these were backed/based by novel & evidence based ways of teaching What are the good apps? In what direction do you think educational software should go?
    - luqtas 2y ago
      you can start with these podcasts for inspiration, not exactly in this order; "Emerging Research in Educational Psychology" "The Evidence Based Education Podcast" "Psychology in the Classroom" "The Edtech Podcast" "The Cult of Pedagogy" i never liked school and actually what made avoid it as much as possible (to the point i proposed to my parents to work as a minor apprentice in the construction field because my plans were to quit school) was a 8° grade math teacher saying after my question about why that formula came to be, something like "you need a university degree at least to understand this"; so a neat direction i would like to see education taking is slowing down the amount of stuff we throw at students throat... maybe emotional intelligence/awareness, cooperative behavior (like knowing how to give someone a good feedback) & tech literacy! would be so cool if more people had the basic knowledge of getting some Arduino/ESP32 libraries at Github and hooking up into a board for small things, like a paddle Atari controller or just a cute LED thing as adornment/gift for a loved one (which i think to do that, lots of concepts can be taught); as well critical thinking so we don't have people lured to modern bullshit, like "buying this new fancy iPhone meanwhile i don't even understand what a shutter or aperture control serves, nor i use apps fancier than iMessage and Instagram" etc.
kranke155 2y ago
Montessori worked on this problem, and did a fairly good job, but somehow it's still under the radar that we could revolutionise our educational system according an already proven model.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Montessori is more of a brand. People definitely perceive it to be the way you are describing, but really, if there were something old and certain, it would be widely used. On the flip side, there are lots of pedagogical practices that are proven, and this article is trying to show you how they are probably being disrupted by cell phones.
  - kranke155 2y ago
    A brand? You have a lot of successful people coming out of those schools.
  - pokerface_86 2y ago
    ?? i went to a montessori school and i learned how to read and write poetry, cursive, tie my shoes, use scissors, all 4 mathematical operations, how to read novels, hell, i used to read our encyclopedia for fun, did a project on the bernoulli principal, and more, all before 2nd grade. no one i have ever met had an identical experience
    - kranke155 2y ago
      The comment is really weird.
      - pokerface_86 2y ago
        it was more to illustrate the point that montessori isn’t just a brand, it’s a whole different way of teaching and learning
        2y ago
davidee 2y ago
I hear you. We built a product specifically for student-centric work where educators could assess student progress (think Hattie's Visible Learning and similar lines of thinking) and compare student growth against their own previous work. We encouraged educators to quickly tailor the tasks to individual student needs. Educators (and pedagogues) loved it. But we couldn't gain traction with the buyer persona: Administrators asking "what's in it for me?" Data on improved outcomes wouldn't be immediate, so it was a no buy. This was exacerbated by Google and Microsoft giving away their office productivity suites repackaged as classroom tools to ensure future market capture. Because you totally want your 8-year-old becoming a Word or Docs or Excel expert right? So yeah, we have a reality where students don't have really great EdTech—they have tech that's masquerading as EdTech, picking up all the low-hanging fruit and leaving the hard problems of education unsolved (or unexplored). The company is in the process of folding, and I'm hoping to re-release the software as true open source sometime in the future once all the legal / corporate shutdown stuff is finished.
deanCommie 2y ago
This sounds like the promise vs. reality of Agile software development too :(
johndhi 2y ago
can you give an example of someone being upset and what the thing they'd learned that they "shouldn't?" as a parent I find it confusing that I'd consider getting upset if my kid was learning 6th grade history as a 3rd grader (or 2nd grade art as a 3rd grader). what actual examples are there? the only examples of parents being upset about learning I'm aware of lately is, like, critical theory and marxism
- red_admiral 2y ago
  Sex education? Not in the sense of the kids watching porn, but learning about contraception and STIs and that kind of thing.
  - johndhi 2y ago
    fair enough but is that really the reason edtech has failed?
    - red_admiral 2y ago
      IMO, EdTech has failed because it's BS. I'd sooner buy GameStop stock than the next EdTech-in-schools startup. (EdX, Khan etc. are playing in a different market, and doing ok.) But sex ed and the like is definitely something that gets parents upset, as is the general concept of "they're teaching my child things they're not telling me about", whether that's critical theory, sex ed, evolution, or anything with the word gender in it.
- snowfarthing 2y ago
  This is a problem that has been around for years, perhaps decades. One memorable example comes from "To Kill a Mockingbird", where the teacher complained about the main character Scout having learned to read before her 1st grade -- when Atticus had nothing to do with it, because she learned how to read on her own at the age of 4. Others have given their own experiences in this thread -- some teachers are encouraging, others get frustrated.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
> I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level... and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" A charitable way to read what you are saying is, "kids are not sufficiently challenged in school." But you are railing against an antagonist that is kind of vague. What, specifically, are you talking about?
dathinab 2y ago
> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. are you US based? so of the Nordic countries have implementing thins similar to what you describe as their normal form of education
tokinonagare 2y ago
I worked in EdTech research, it's a shitshow. Indeed the focus is on institutional learning while the power of tech is to empower people outside formal education. The amount of wishful thinking is unbelievable, protocols are often very weak, hard problem aren't addressed and focus is on what is easy to measure. There is so much potential, but it's vastly underexploited.
WillAdams 2y ago
The best school which I ever attended rigorously divided academic and social classes --- academic classes (reading/English/math/science) were attended at one's ability level, while social classes (homeroom, phys. ed., social studies) were attended at one's grade level. There was a 4 year cap up through the 8th grade (so I was a 4th grader attending 8th grade English, math and science classes), and after that, the cap was lifted and students could begin taking college courses in 8th grade --- some of the teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and if need be, arrangements were made for students to travel to the college, or professors from there to travel to the school. It was not uncommon for students to graduate from high school and simultaneously be awarded a 4 year college degree. Apparently, the Mississippi State Supreme Court declared the system illegal because it conferred an unseemly advantage on the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no equivalent compensation for students who were not.
- boomchinolo78 2y ago
  This is terribly sad! Almost satire
- walterbell 2y ago
  Amazing! Any articles on that school?
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Not that I've been able to find --- it would have been the school local to Columbus AFB in the late 1960s to mid 70s. The State Supreme Court stuff is my hazy recollection of letters my parents received from other folks who were still living there when the school system was changed.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      Looks like other cases were ongoing even in 2002, https://www.cleveland19.com/story/1045614/ohio-supreme-court-rules-school-funding-system-unconstitutional/ https://www.cleveland19.com/story/1045614/ohio-supreme-court...
dfabulich 2y ago
"Holding kids back" is not the reason EdTech fails at scale. The problem is that people who succeed in tech are able to effectively educate themselves, alone, without a dedicated human teacher supervising them or a group of student peers. (You need this skill to succeed in tech, learning new APIs/languages from written materials and online videos.) The techies who build/fund EdTech wrongly assume that everyone could do this if only they had access to the learning materials, or if the tech vaguely simulated a teacher (an interactive textbook). But for most students, fitting in with peers and earning the respect of their teacher is the only reason they're bothering to learn at all. (For kids especially, adult career prospects feel so remote that it scarcely seems worth the trouble, whereas earning respect right now is a very, very concrete problem!) Banding kids into grades is the only thing making most kids succeed. I guess that is a "crying shame," but it's a tragedy, not a policy failure.
- ndiddy 2y ago
  You're absolutely right, even in this thread there's a ton of "I was able to teach myself, so clearly everyone would be geniuses if only the system didn't hold them back" posts. It's the same thing that led to a lot of the problems with the OLPC project (check out the book "The Charisma Machine" if you're interested in that subject).
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    It’s sickening to read over and over again. It Jide’s reinforced my belief that tech folks are some of the most ignorant on social problems
- miningape 2y ago
  > everyone could do this if only they had access to the learning materials, or if the tech vaguely simulated a teacher Everyone could do it if they were taught to teach themselves, it's funny we've almost come full circle back to the original intention of public education and universities. I believe (almost) everyone can teach themselves something provided they have the material to learn from (videos, books, teachers, etc.). This is because if people can't truly be taught to teach themselves there's no larger point in schooling unless you have only exceptional teachers throughout. Mediocre and bad teachers, which are far more common, make it so students end up having to teach parts of the material to themselves (which unfortunately leads to a tonne of rote memorisation) - this to me is where the true benefit of public education and standardised testing is, not the information retained. The point of school was never fill our heads with facts we will never use in the workforce - most blue collar work is learnt on the job (or can be taught in short time), and white collar work is (generally*) done by those who learnt to teach themselves (as proved by them earning something like a college degree in spite of the bad and mediocre teachers). * I say generally because there are white collar jobs that don't require it. And there are rote-memorisers who have such good memory they can make it into these positions, generally though upon hitting the workforce they stagnate, leave, or learn to learn (ever had an incompetent middle manager who only knew how to follow procedure?)
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Man, No Child Left Behind left a larger mental scar than I ever imagined. "learning they shouldn't be"? I never would have gotten fast tracked in math, and by extension gotten into a decent engineering school, if that's how my teachers thought. Then university wonders why kids are less prepared.
ozim 2y ago
Another instance where technical solution is not the solution for people problem. We can make all bells and whistles but if people won’t use it there is nothing more that can be done unfortunately.
jdprgm 2y ago
I've always thought it would be interesting to have a education system that focused primarily on the best outcome for the brightest students and focused the vast majority of resources on the top 5% or so. I wonder if the total impact made (gdp, research contributions, etc) by a cohort of students this way would be higher vs spending resources to slightly bring up the average on a large number of students that never make much of themselves.
- williamcotton 2y ago
  There are concrete objectives for educating a voting public in a democracy that would be entirely unserved by this proposal.
  - miningape 2y ago
    They're not any harder to manipulate once educated
    - snowfarthing 2y ago
      I have seen the cynical observation, made more than once over the years, that an uneducated population is easier to manipulate, and thus it's only natural for government-run schools to get worse over time.
smeej 2y ago
They're not just banded into a range based on their grade. They're banded into a grade based on their age, even though "being within a year of the same age as somebody" becomes essentially meaningless as soon as you're out of school.
- human_person 2y ago
  Yes but that’s because you (mostly) stop physically growing once you are out of school. Banded within a year is meaningless for adults, a 25 yr old isn’t that different than a 30 year old but a 5 year old and a 10 year old are distinctly different. They are at different points in their development physically, emotionally and mentally. They socialize differently and have different needs. I’m not saying they can’t interact but there is some value in keeping children together by developmental stage and developmental stage is fairly age specific.
  - smeej 2y ago
    As the kid who stood 4-6 inches taller than the next tallest kid in my class until I stopped getting taller when I was 5'8" and 11 years old, I'm acutely aware that kids physically grow at entirely different rates even during school. (I'm a woman, so this is still above average height, but I'm nowhere close to as awkwardly tall as I was in a room full of 11yos.) Look at any classroom and you'll see a wide variety of physical development. I'm just saying age is an arbitrary indicator for every category I can think of, and most situations would benefit from using a more relevant metric. In situations where size matters the most, let the huge 10yo play with the 11 or 12yos and the tiny one be with the 8 or 9yos. When I was 11, for safety reasons my karate instructor had me start training with the adult women who were closer to my size. In situations where intellectual ability is the relevant factor, you might have even a broader reach. If my parents hadn't refused, my kindergarten principal wanted to have me in 3rd grade by the end of my first year and doing two a year after that. Sitting through 13 full years of classroom instruction instead of 5 or 6 was miserable. Somebody you share interests with might happily overlook the fact that you're a couple years younger and still want to be friends. It's at least more likely than that someone will overlook the fact that you have absolutely nothing in common because, hey, you were born within a couple months of each other!
lifeisstillgood 2y ago
I love the idea of individual pacing of kids educational journies - if you do have the syllabus and software to take every kid individually through school, is it impossible for us to fund the school for five years - and after years of every kid walking out with top grades there might just be some social proof It seems like it is possible - probably enough people on this thread could make that investment
narrator 2y ago
I think the Lysenkoism of our age is all people are equally intelligent and equally good at all things, thus one size fits all education is an ideological imperative. There are too many unacceptable facts that lead to conclusions that contradict this ideology in the kind of approach you're talking about. If all children do not perform roughly the same, ideologues will not think that people have naturally different talents and abilities, but instead think there are implied violations of laws protecting against discrimination in education. That being said, I'm sure homeschoolers and people not indoctrinated, even those with lesser abilities, will really appreciate this approach.
aaron695 2y ago
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andrei_says_ 2y ago
Can you expand on threats re kids learning what they shouldn’t be? What are some scenarios for these to occur?
ashoeafoot 2y ago
What i also observed was that gamification of learning is violently opposed .The protestant work ethics demand that children suffer jaded while learning, the intrinsic motivation of games be damned. Then the dull overpriced app looses against the tiktok experience and a surprised pikachu face appears. Cant have minecraft with chemistry crafting cause the fun "has no place in school"
somethingsome 2y ago
I'm just very curious as I'm passionate about teaching, how do you evaluate 'their level'? I my experience, I can give material that is way out of their comfort zone, but it's my job to make it interesting enough and make enough bridges so that everyone can learn the material well, no matter the starting point. (note: university level, but I also teached numerous times for schools)
somethingsome 2y ago
Personally I have bad experience with edTech because when a student is young, he is not disciplined enough to do hard things alone or even just annoying things, and studying can be both. So when they have an app with for example a qcm in front of them, the first times they try to do well, then they learn that if they randomely click buttons, at some point the app validate the answer, even if they didn't read the questions/answers. So you get a group of young people that after school, just spend 10min randomely clicking on a app without any purpose, and after that they can go play. I've got students that were from a private school, everyone was doing that, and their level was extremely bad.
- snowfarthing 2y ago
  There is value in asking the question "when should an individual start studying anyway?" I don't have a link at hand for a discussion of studies comparing no pre-school to "play" pre-school" to "rigorous" pre-school -- and the studies find that the children who go through the rigorous pre-school -- usually 5.5 hours of instruction -- are ahead of their peers in the first grade, even out by third grade, and then fall behind. The study that followed kids into adulthood found that they had a higher rate of criminal activity. I cannot help but think that we shouldn't be forcing kids to learn if they don't want to learn -- and rather than try to force every kid to be "grade level", we should go back to 1-room schoolhouses (for elementary levels, at least) and teach each student at their own pace.
  - somethingsome 2y ago
    To give more details on the story about my students.. At 14-15 years old, they were unable to perform subtraction correctly with single digit numbers. All of which because they uniquely used tablets and qcm for all their work. This was a general issue with their capacity of concentration, memorization, and overall learning. They were able to understand a simple concept, for example symmetries of objects, after a lot of work, but forget about it the following day. I helped them through some years. They are doing better now.. But they didn't catch up what they should be able to do as functioning adults. If you don't teach to a child to study, he will never do it, studying is not fun per se, if it's not motivated, the random probability that one does it alone is extremely small, and even then. You fail him for not providing him a good education. Now I hear you, you are talking about preschool and, clearly I think that prematurely forcing them to study has no purpose, they should start studying when they are ready to it, but we do not have a way to know when it is. I'm on the camp of making study as fun as possible, not by creating random games around the work, but instead by providing lot of context and unexpected examples that motivate the creation of the theory. In this way, I think education can start pretty soon. I like to have my student study because they are intrigued instead of having them study because they 'need to'. Which is counterproductive no matter the age.
bane 2y ago
> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. That problem is that parents who want to expose their children to more knowledge and better education have no voice -- of any kind. A small group of parents objecting to something violating their niche belief will absolutely nullify the voices of any number of parents thinking otherwise. There needs to be greater ability on the part of educational organizations to be able to parse the unencumbered learners from these minority case.
sirspacey 2y ago
The future promise of real education was crushed by the relentless political fiction that actually runs education. So brutal. Thanks for doing what you can.
bsder 2y ago
Everybody is voting to improve "average" because that's what affects your house price. The best way to move an "average" is to improve the big mass slightly below average. The worst off and best off are too small to affect the average--so nobody cares about them. QED.
- deleted 2y ago
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jalapenos 2y ago
Yes the problem isn't so much ed-tech, which by the way we all use everytime we Google or ChatGPT how to do something. The problem is that ed-tech is being shoehorned into an existing dysfunctional system. It's trying to help the education system do more of what it was already doing, just with computers. The underlying problem is that the structure of the education system is absolutely stupid and shit. We've just been so used to that for so long that we don't notice it anymore. If schooling was good, ed-tech would be a big enabler of that, helping students learn at their own pace, guiding their coursework in the right direction, linking it to career paths, all kinds of things. But currently ed-tech is just enabling and feeding more of the same slop, just digital instead of paper. That's the problem.
cloudsec9 2y ago
I understand your frustration, but how does the software manage students that are behind versus students that are way ahead? Like I'd imagine this would be deeper learning for a kid that's ahead, where they can really deep-dive a topic and maybe do some more advanced concepts. But I can understand it from the teacher's perspective too; They have 30 kids, no extra budget and few resources. They have 20 or so average kids, and a handful of stragglers and a handful of people out in front, and are trying to meet ALL of their needs. Any of those three groups could use up all the time on a specific topic, so you end up stealing some time from one to deal with the others. If there are good monitoring from EdTech software it can help, but lots of teachers are not super techie so things have to be approachable. It's definitely a space with more nuance and certainly more potential.
snowfarthing 2y ago
This is the very question that crossed my mind when I saw this headline (albeit at a different site): was this a failure of EdTech, or was it a failure of our highly structured and inflexible school system? This is an issue that started to bother me while in high school, or perhaps even in junior high, and have realized over the years that people learn at different rates, that what should matter is knowledge and mastery and not grades, and that a failure in a class or several shouldn't be permanently incorporated into a "GPA" that also doesn't really capture the true essence of someone's knowledge and mastery. In the past year, I have been learning a lot about autism and ADHD -- in no small part because I have come to realize I have both -- and I cannot help but come to the conclusion that regardless of why an individual student is different -- whether it be autism, ADHD, life-event-driven depression (eg from a death in the family or a divorce), or high or low or late-blooming intelligence, or even mere boredom that needs to be overcome by the "right spark" -- the school system as currently instituted can handle none of this -- and what's worse, any student who cannot conform to this, even if temporarily, is permanently considered flawed somehow.

by donatj 2y ago

cptaj 2y ago

This has also been my experience. Curriculum standards really put a stop to any radical changes in the way we structure the learning process. I guess that IS the point of standards, but we really should be experimenting more on the fringes.

Fin_Code 2y ago

Customized skill based education should be the future.

jerf 2y ago
The problem is that it should be the present. Oh, I've been an engineer for a while and I know the system can't turn on a dime, it would take some time. However, we should be seeing visible progress towards this goal, and frankly, if anything, the system continues to be moving in the other direction, lowering bars to try to get everyone into the exact same level long after it should be clear that lowering the bar still isn't even achieving that goal, even as it destroys everything around it in the process. The system isn't even trying to customize skill-based education, beyond a bit of clearly-ineffectual lip service.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Large bureaucracy wants people to be as fungible as possible, so that systems can be designed that interact with fungible units instead of complex, multifaceted individuals.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I reject this kind of thinking. To be clear, most engineers at FAANG would describe their own companies as a "large bureaucracy", yet, the engineers at these places are highly skilled, "complex, multifaceted individuals". Their hiring strategy has demonstrated this time and time again on HN discussions. It is insanely hard to get hired into these places. There must be at least 10 qualified candidates for each role. And, weirdly, I would say that almost all of the most highly skilled software engineers that I have known in my career are also the most dynamic. By definition, that makes them fungible because they can learn new skills so quickly.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Computerization barely helps with "customized skill-based education" outside of parts of certain topics (some areas of math, notably, are very well-suited to it). Detailed feedback from humans is vital in many topics and for learning many skills, and, as they say, that doesn't scale. We can do it, but it means spending a lot more on teachers, so we aren't going to. We may eventually get a half-assed version involving LLMs or whatever nonsense, but that will be brought in mainly as a way to get by with fewer teachers (they're cost-diseasing into something we can't afford any more, it seems) not to increase educational quality. My expected outcome for all of this is that the gap between rich and poor students will grow, as only rich students will continue to have decent student:teacher ratios (their ratios already tend to be a ton better than public school kids). Paid tutoring will become common somewhat farther down-market than it currently is, as more people choose to pay extra just to cover what their tax money used to, but no longer does.

graemep 2y ago

> It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. That is bad. I have to say no teacher I had a problem when I learned things ahead of time. Some less good teachers were not actually encouraging, but they certainly did not think it was a problem. That said, IMO the school system does not cope well with kids who are not going at the average speed. This is one reason i home educated my kids. We need to change how schools work to take advantage of ed tech (and a lot of other opportunities - you can learn at your own pace from books, like I did)

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tombert 2y ago

A bit tangential but related. I dropped out of college in 2012 and was one of the very lucky few who managed to find software engineering work almost immediately [1]. I had a bit of a complex about not having a degree, and a few times I tried going back only to drop out again because I would get bored; by the time I had gone back, I already knew enough stuff to be qualified as an engineer, and as such I didn't feel like I was getting a lot out of school and I would paradoxically do pretty poorly because I was half-assing everything. It wasn't until I found out about WGU in 2021 where I actually decided to finish my degree, primarily because WGU lets me work at my pace. Since I already knew a lot about computer science, I was able to speed through the classes that would have been very boring to me, and I finished my degree really quickly as a result. I don't feel like my education is appreciably worse than people who did things in a traditional brick and mortar school, but I'm not 100% sure if I'm a test for this. It made me realize that, at least for people like me, EdTech can be extremely powerful stuff. School can be a lot more engaging when it's personalized, instead of the frustrating "one size fits all" of traditional lecturing. [1] I say "lucky" because I think it was exactly that: luck. Yeah I learned this stuff on my own for fun but finding an employer who was willing to hire someone without credentials was never guaranteed and I feel extremely fortunate to have accidentally timed my dropout about perfectly. EDIT: For those confused, WGU means "Western Governors University" in this case.

jspiral 2y ago
WGU was a customer when I was at Learning Objects, they always impressed me visionary and outcome oriented. glad to hear a positive anecdote more than 10 years later.
- quacksilver 2y ago
  I'm sad WGU is only for US citizens. I hear lots of good things about it but can't join in.
  - jackbravo 2y ago
    Yes, I'm wondering if there are alternatives outside the US to get a full undergraduate or master's degree online at your own pace.

bitcurious 2y ago

shortrounddev2 2y ago
My guess is that the kids were learning ahead of the rest of the class and it made the teacher's life harder to keep track of where each kid is, or had to field questions outside of her expertise since often elementary school teachers only know enough to teach elementary school
- AdamN 2y ago
  Yeah - this is on OP if that is the case. No teacher wants that and it's annoying for the ahead kids and the behind kids. Better to give them something tangential to keep them engaged but still gate on moving ahead with the mainline curriculum.
  - oytis 2y ago
    To be fair - maybe that's what the product mentioned should have been doing? You can focus on general problem-solving ability by giving talented kids hard problems with the amount of knowledge adequate for their level rather giving them more an more material and making the whole learning process less manageable.
    - shortrounddev2 2y ago
      "general problem solving ability" isn't a real thing. Proficiency in solving, for example, math problems, does not confer the ability to draw conclusions based on evidence in history class. If you require a kid who's already mastered fractions to simply do harder and harder fractions rather than allowing them to continue onward, they will become bored and distracted, and ultimately burned out or resentful of the education system

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

This has been the case for a long time. I was one of those kids who usually "got it" the first time I saw it, and then remembered it. So lectures usually moved much too slowly for me. In an effort to not be bored, I would usually sit quietly and read ahead in my textbook. Some teachers were cool with this, but most of them would yell at me for not paying attention, and a couple specifically called me out for reading ahead on the basis that I thought I was too good for the class.

michaelrpeskin 2y ago

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

mettamage 2y ago
I find that an uncharitable take of equity. You can also make someone like that grow stronger so that they have more to contribute to society. “Strongest shoulders carrying the heaviest burden” and all that (it’s a Dutch saying about the Dutch tax system).
Afton 2y ago
To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enrichment to kids like mine who are able to learn quickly and are ready for more advanced learning opportunities, only to discover that it is haphazard, often in name only, and there isn't time or interest in providing more. But it's not because of some drive for 'equity'. I've talked with teachers (as friends, not in a school setting). They're doing what they can with the resources they have.
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
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- boomchinolo78 2y ago
  I mean there are alternative models. Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore famously opposed the "helping the bottom kids at expense of the top ones". Is it really the right thing?
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  As one of those frustrated top kids, it taught me a well-earned contempt for my neurotypical peers. Frustration at spending the resources on them when it didn't seem to move the needle.

chongli 2y ago

This is because education is more about gatekeeping and politics than trying to maximize human capital development. We all ostensibly want it to be about human capital but our attitudes and behaviour towards education at the political level show otherwise. The gatekeeping element seems to have developed in tandem with / response to the signalling hypothesis [1]. Simply put, if kids are trying to do the minimum necessary to get by, we raise the bar on the minimum standard until we're satisfied. Teachers (K-12 at least) respond with grade inflation, adding lots of noise to the signal, and we in turn respond with standardized testing in an attempt to clean up the noise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education

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lolinder 2y ago

The incredibly frustrating thing about this is that this is always done in the name of "equity", but the result is that the system perpetuates the inequities that already exist. Because the public schools force kids into grade bands and don't allow children who are ahead to learn at their level, wealthy parents (and only wealthy parents) figure out ways to supplement or move their kids into schools that are appropriate for their level. Only wealthy parents can afford to do that, while everyone else is stuck with whatever their local school offers or doesn't offer. This perpetuates generational inequalities in ways that the public school system is supposed to solve, all in the name of "leaving no child behind".

gosub100 2y ago
Plus it can't be denied that the system incentives holding smart kids back because they boost the metrics: GPA, standardized tests, graduation rates.
s3r3nity 2y ago
+1. Folks pushing for equity haven't read (or too young to have read) "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, and it shows. Instead of handicapping those who are ahead, we should intervene with those who are falling behind. Instead of enforcing equal outcomes, instead prioritize offering equal opportunity for every student to get the highest quality of education.
- mrandish 2y ago
  "Bergeron" is one of those rare things that's just presciently ahead of it's time it's almost spooky (kind of like "1984").
- Spivak 2y ago
  You're literally describing equity. The more interesting question what option will you choose when you're told that individual interventions as you describe are so expensive as to be infeasible. I don't think it's an issue of a person's politics, Republicans tried the exact same thing with No Child Left Behind. Is the more important thing the individual rising to their highest potential, or is the more important thing the system where economic factors have created a cycle where only children of middle-class or better families are given the environment to rise and those kids run with the flywheel and become the middle-class parents. I was literally never not going to be successful, I think I'm reasonably intelligent but that by far wasn't the biggest factor. My parents made damn sure I was on the gifted track, always got A's, and was set up to get into an in-demand major at a prestigious university. Was I actually that special or was I just the chosen one, in that I was chosen? You can only be like "that's not true of everyone <anecdote>" but the exceptions fall away in the aggregate where your success is frighteningly well predicted by your zip code.

Parfait__ 2y ago

I think it's weird that you're not telling us what "things they shouldn't be" are. There are plenty of things I think kids shouldn't be learning.

devin 2y ago
I doubt they were talking about any kind of "adult" content. The situation they're referring to is more like "your second grader should be focused on multiplication, not long division."
- red_admiral 2y ago
  Never underestimate how upset people can get when a kid does longhand addition the old way (write numbers under each other, carry the ones) rather than some more "holistic" way.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  I'm not sure why the commenter is being downvoted. I too can make a drama, literally capitalizing one of the worst words ever invented, "actually," about a vague antagonist, and rile people up, letting their imaginations fill in whatever boogieman they feel wronged them in school. What specifically is the situation? I don't want to speculate.
miningape 2y ago
It's an edtech platform for kids - forgive me but I somewhat doubt there's porn on there
- Parfait__ 2y ago
  not sure why porn is assumed how the hell is that educational content? maybe there's religious things on there, any number of things parents would want a say on

boomchinolo78 2y ago

>straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" What do you think is behind the threats? Do the teachers fear being replaced or is it coming from a different set of people?

mettamage 2y ago

I skipped out complete uni classes and followed an analogue online. Maurice Herlihy had its concurrency and multithreading classes online for a while. I passed my c&m course with it, we also used his book

Alex3917 2y ago

> the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. OK but we've known this since, when, the 60s? Look at all the academic research on the adoption (or lack thereof) of programmed instruction, programmed learning, etc. If we didn't already know this before the "EdTech Revolution" then of course the industry would get a pass, but the fact that we already knew what would happen and why is what makes it a scam.

brightball 2y ago

This is why I hear stories every year at my kids school about home school kids enrolling, then being place in math classes 1-2 years ahead of the max possible for somebody who had been in the school system to start with.

jt2190 2y ago

> The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. This is only truly possible if we trust educators enough to allow them to use a different approach with a child. The system we have has leaned heavily toward “trust nothing”. Parents and teachers all want the best for their students but at the same time we demand that everyone stick to the prescribed curriculum lest something unapproved should enter a classroom. This is how you get “McDonalds” results: Consistent and maybe somewhat average overall.

unsupp0rted 2y ago

I've never seen a teacher that was comfortably capable with even 50% of whatever EdTech they're handed. How are they supposed to maximize the use of it? I remember having to painfully sit through multi-hour presentations in which they'd explain how to use a hamburger menu to find the app settings, and half the participants furiously scribbled down notes so they wouldn't get lost later when they needed to find the settings without guidance, on their home computer. This was only a decade ago and I doubt it's much better now. People who go into teaching aren't exactly the best & brightest most of the time. And the results speak for themselves.

luqtas 2y ago
as a counter-point, not a teacher nor related to but i heard around 400 hours of pedagogy podcasts, be it the science of it, small-talk about teaching & sometimes edtech software that seriously, most of the time just sounded as apps coming from the next guy trying to be the next silicon money maker by offering what Google Docs offers but in a fancy app or in the most complex cases, what Matrix/Discord offers for free or what Emacs org-mode could accomplish without diving far from the basics it provides. there was good apps & often these were backed/based by novel & evidence based ways of teaching
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  > there was good apps & often these were backed/based by novel & evidence based ways of teaching What are the good apps? In what direction do you think educational software should go?
  - luqtas 2y ago
    you can start with these podcasts for inspiration, not exactly in this order; "Emerging Research in Educational Psychology" "The Evidence Based Education Podcast" "Psychology in the Classroom" "The Edtech Podcast" "The Cult of Pedagogy" i never liked school and actually what made avoid it as much as possible (to the point i proposed to my parents to work as a minor apprentice in the construction field because my plans were to quit school) was a 8° grade math teacher saying after my question about why that formula came to be, something like "you need a university degree at least to understand this"; so a neat direction i would like to see education taking is slowing down the amount of stuff we throw at students throat... maybe emotional intelligence/awareness, cooperative behavior (like knowing how to give someone a good feedback) & tech literacy! would be so cool if more people had the basic knowledge of getting some Arduino/ESP32 libraries at Github and hooking up into a board for small things, like a paddle Atari controller or just a cute LED thing as adornment/gift for a loved one (which i think to do that, lots of concepts can be taught); as well critical thinking so we don't have people lured to modern bullshit, like "buying this new fancy iPhone meanwhile i don't even understand what a shutter or aperture control serves, nor i use apps fancier than iMessage and Instagram" etc.

kranke155 2y ago

Montessori worked on this problem, and did a fairly good job, but somehow it's still under the radar that we could revolutionise our educational system according an already proven model.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
Montessori is more of a brand. People definitely perceive it to be the way you are describing, but really, if there were something old and certain, it would be widely used. On the flip side, there are lots of pedagogical practices that are proven, and this article is trying to show you how they are probably being disrupted by cell phones.
- kranke155 2y ago
  A brand? You have a lot of successful people coming out of those schools.
- pokerface_86 2y ago
  ?? i went to a montessori school and i learned how to read and write poetry, cursive, tie my shoes, use scissors, all 4 mathematical operations, how to read novels, hell, i used to read our encyclopedia for fun, did a project on the bernoulli principal, and more, all before 2nd grade. no one i have ever met had an identical experience
  - kranke155 2y ago
    The comment is really weird.
    - pokerface_86 2y ago
      it was more to illustrate the point that montessori isn’t just a brand, it’s a whole different way of teaching and learning
      - 2y ago

davidee 2y ago

I hear you. We built a product specifically for student-centric work where educators could assess student progress (think Hattie's Visible Learning and similar lines of thinking) and compare student growth against their own previous work. We encouraged educators to quickly tailor the tasks to individual student needs. Educators (and pedagogues) loved it. But we couldn't gain traction with the buyer persona: Administrators asking "what's in it for me?" Data on improved outcomes wouldn't be immediate, so it was a no buy. This was exacerbated by Google and Microsoft giving away their office productivity suites repackaged as classroom tools to ensure future market capture. Because you totally want your 8-year-old becoming a Word or Docs or Excel expert right? So yeah, we have a reality where students don't have really great EdTech—they have tech that's masquerading as EdTech, picking up all the low-hanging fruit and leaving the hard problems of education unsolved (or unexplored). The company is in the process of folding, and I'm hoping to re-release the software as true open source sometime in the future once all the legal / corporate shutdown stuff is finished.

deanCommie 2y ago

This sounds like the promise vs. reality of Agile software development too :(

johndhi 2y ago

can you give an example of someone being upset and what the thing they'd learned that they "shouldn't?" as a parent I find it confusing that I'd consider getting upset if my kid was learning 6th grade history as a 3rd grader (or 2nd grade art as a 3rd grader). what actual examples are there? the only examples of parents being upset about learning I'm aware of lately is, like, critical theory and marxism

red_admiral 2y ago
Sex education? Not in the sense of the kids watching porn, but learning about contraception and STIs and that kind of thing.
- johndhi 2y ago
  fair enough but is that really the reason edtech has failed?
  - red_admiral 2y ago
    IMO, EdTech has failed because it's BS. I'd sooner buy GameStop stock than the next EdTech-in-schools startup. (EdX, Khan etc. are playing in a different market, and doing ok.) But sex ed and the like is definitely something that gets parents upset, as is the general concept of "they're teaching my child things they're not telling me about", whether that's critical theory, sex ed, evolution, or anything with the word gender in it.
snowfarthing 2y ago
This is a problem that has been around for years, perhaps decades. One memorable example comes from "To Kill a Mockingbird", where the teacher complained about the main character Scout having learned to read before her 1st grade -- when Atticus had nothing to do with it, because she learned how to read on her own at the age of 4. Others have given their own experiences in this thread -- some teachers are encouraging, others get frustrated.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

> I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level... and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" A charitable way to read what you are saying is, "kids are not sufficiently challenged in school." But you are railing against an antagonist that is kind of vague. What, specifically, are you talking about?

dathinab 2y ago

tokinonagare 2y ago

I worked in EdTech research, it's a shitshow. Indeed the focus is on institutional learning while the power of tech is to empower people outside formal education. The amount of wishful thinking is unbelievable, protocols are often very weak, hard problem aren't addressed and focus is on what is easy to measure. There is so much potential, but it's vastly underexploited.

WillAdams 2y ago

The best school which I ever attended rigorously divided academic and social classes --- academic classes (reading/English/math/science) were attended at one's ability level, while social classes (homeroom, phys. ed., social studies) were attended at one's grade level. There was a 4 year cap up through the 8th grade (so I was a 4th grader attending 8th grade English, math and science classes), and after that, the cap was lifted and students could begin taking college courses in 8th grade --- some of the teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and if need be, arrangements were made for students to travel to the college, or professors from there to travel to the school. It was not uncommon for students to graduate from high school and simultaneously be awarded a 4 year college degree. Apparently, the Mississippi State Supreme Court declared the system illegal because it conferred an unseemly advantage on the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no equivalent compensation for students who were not.

boomchinolo78 2y ago
This is terribly sad! Almost satire
walterbell 2y ago
Amazing! Any articles on that school?
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Not that I've been able to find --- it would have been the school local to Columbus AFB in the late 1960s to mid 70s. The State Supreme Court stuff is my hazy recollection of letters my parents received from other folks who were still living there when the school system was changed.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Looks like other cases were ongoing even in 2002, https://www.cleveland19.com/story/1045614/ohio-supreme-court-rules-school-funding-system-unconstitutional/ https://www.cleveland19.com/story/1045614/ohio-supreme-court...

dfabulich 2y ago

"Holding kids back" is not the reason EdTech fails at scale. The problem is that people who succeed in tech are able to effectively educate themselves, alone, without a dedicated human teacher supervising them or a group of student peers. (You need this skill to succeed in tech, learning new APIs/languages from written materials and online videos.) The techies who build/fund EdTech wrongly assume that everyone could do this if only they had access to the learning materials, or if the tech vaguely simulated a teacher (an interactive textbook). But for most students, fitting in with peers and earning the respect of their teacher is the only reason they're bothering to learn at all. (For kids especially, adult career prospects feel so remote that it scarcely seems worth the trouble, whereas earning respect right now is a very, very concrete problem!) Banding kids into grades is the only thing making most kids succeed. I guess that is a "crying shame," but it's a tragedy, not a policy failure.

ndiddy 2y ago
You're absolutely right, even in this thread there's a ton of "I was able to teach myself, so clearly everyone would be geniuses if only the system didn't hold them back" posts. It's the same thing that led to a lot of the problems with the OLPC project (check out the book "The Charisma Machine" if you're interested in that subject).
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  It’s sickening to read over and over again. It Jide’s reinforced my belief that tech folks are some of the most ignorant on social problems
miningape 2y ago
> everyone could do this if only they had access to the learning materials, or if the tech vaguely simulated a teacher Everyone could do it if they were taught to teach themselves, it's funny we've almost come full circle back to the original intention of public education and universities. I believe (almost) everyone can teach themselves something provided they have the material to learn from (videos, books, teachers, etc.). This is because if people can't truly be taught to teach themselves there's no larger point in schooling unless you have only exceptional teachers throughout. Mediocre and bad teachers, which are far more common, make it so students end up having to teach parts of the material to themselves (which unfortunately leads to a tonne of rote memorisation) - this to me is where the true benefit of public education and standardised testing is, not the information retained. The point of school was never fill our heads with facts we will never use in the workforce - most blue collar work is learnt on the job (or can be taught in short time), and white collar work is (generally*) done by those who learnt to teach themselves (as proved by them earning something like a college degree in spite of the bad and mediocre teachers). * I say generally because there are white collar jobs that don't require it. And there are rote-memorisers who have such good memory they can make it into these positions, generally though upon hitting the workforce they stagnate, leave, or learn to learn (ever had an incompetent middle manager who only knew how to follow procedure?)

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Man, No Child Left Behind left a larger mental scar than I ever imagined. "learning they shouldn't be"? I never would have gotten fast tracked in math, and by extension gotten into a decent engineering school, if that's how my teachers thought. Then university wonders why kids are less prepared.

ozim 2y ago

Another instance where technical solution is not the solution for people problem. We can make all bells and whistles but if people won’t use it there is nothing more that can be done unfortunately.

jdprgm 2y ago

I've always thought it would be interesting to have a education system that focused primarily on the best outcome for the brightest students and focused the vast majority of resources on the top 5% or so. I wonder if the total impact made (gdp, research contributions, etc) by a cohort of students this way would be higher vs spending resources to slightly bring up the average on a large number of students that never make much of themselves.

williamcotton 2y ago
There are concrete objectives for educating a voting public in a democracy that would be entirely unserved by this proposal.
- miningape 2y ago
  They're not any harder to manipulate once educated
  - snowfarthing 2y ago
    I have seen the cynical observation, made more than once over the years, that an uneducated population is easier to manipulate, and thus it's only natural for government-run schools to get worse over time.

smeej 2y ago

They're not just banded into a range based on their grade. They're banded into a grade based on their age, even though "being within a year of the same age as somebody" becomes essentially meaningless as soon as you're out of school.

human_person 2y ago
Yes but that’s because you (mostly) stop physically growing once you are out of school. Banded within a year is meaningless for adults, a 25 yr old isn’t that different than a 30 year old but a 5 year old and a 10 year old are distinctly different. They are at different points in their development physically, emotionally and mentally. They socialize differently and have different needs. I’m not saying they can’t interact but there is some value in keeping children together by developmental stage and developmental stage is fairly age specific.
- smeej 2y ago
  As the kid who stood 4-6 inches taller than the next tallest kid in my class until I stopped getting taller when I was 5'8" and 11 years old, I'm acutely aware that kids physically grow at entirely different rates even during school. (I'm a woman, so this is still above average height, but I'm nowhere close to as awkwardly tall as I was in a room full of 11yos.) Look at any classroom and you'll see a wide variety of physical development. I'm just saying age is an arbitrary indicator for every category I can think of, and most situations would benefit from using a more relevant metric. In situations where size matters the most, let the huge 10yo play with the 11 or 12yos and the tiny one be with the 8 or 9yos. When I was 11, for safety reasons my karate instructor had me start training with the adult women who were closer to my size. In situations where intellectual ability is the relevant factor, you might have even a broader reach. If my parents hadn't refused, my kindergarten principal wanted to have me in 3rd grade by the end of my first year and doing two a year after that. Sitting through 13 full years of classroom instruction instead of 5 or 6 was miserable. Somebody you share interests with might happily overlook the fact that you're a couple years younger and still want to be friends. It's at least more likely than that someone will overlook the fact that you have absolutely nothing in common because, hey, you were born within a couple months of each other!

lifeisstillgood 2y ago

I love the idea of individual pacing of kids educational journies - if you do have the syllabus and software to take every kid individually through school, is it impossible for us to fund the school for five years - and after years of every kid walking out with top grades there might just be some social proof It seems like it is possible - probably enough people on this thread could make that investment

narrator 2y ago

I think the Lysenkoism of our age is all people are equally intelligent and equally good at all things, thus one size fits all education is an ideological imperative. There are too many unacceptable facts that lead to conclusions that contradict this ideology in the kind of approach you're talking about. If all children do not perform roughly the same, ideologues will not think that people have naturally different talents and abilities, but instead think there are implied violations of laws protecting against discrimination in education. That being said, I'm sure homeschoolers and people not indoctrinated, even those with lesser abilities, will really appreciate this approach.

aaron695 2y ago

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andrei_says_ 2y ago

Can you expand on threats re kids learning what they shouldn’t be? What are some scenarios for these to occur?

ashoeafoot 2y ago

What i also observed was that gamification of learning is violently opposed .The protestant work ethics demand that children suffer jaded while learning, the intrinsic motivation of games be damned. Then the dull overpriced app looses against the tiktok experience and a surprised pikachu face appears. Cant have minecraft with chemistry crafting cause the fun "has no place in school"

somethingsome 2y ago

I'm just very curious as I'm passionate about teaching, how do you evaluate 'their level'? I my experience, I can give material that is way out of their comfort zone, but it's my job to make it interesting enough and make enough bridges so that everyone can learn the material well, no matter the starting point. (note: university level, but I also teached numerous times for schools)

somethingsome 2y ago

Personally I have bad experience with edTech because when a student is young, he is not disciplined enough to do hard things alone or even just annoying things, and studying can be both. So when they have an app with for example a qcm in front of them, the first times they try to do well, then they learn that if they randomely click buttons, at some point the app validate the answer, even if they didn't read the questions/answers. So you get a group of young people that after school, just spend 10min randomely clicking on a app without any purpose, and after that they can go play. I've got students that were from a private school, everyone was doing that, and their level was extremely bad.

snowfarthing 2y ago
There is value in asking the question "when should an individual start studying anyway?" I don't have a link at hand for a discussion of studies comparing no pre-school to "play" pre-school" to "rigorous" pre-school -- and the studies find that the children who go through the rigorous pre-school -- usually 5.5 hours of instruction -- are ahead of their peers in the first grade, even out by third grade, and then fall behind. The study that followed kids into adulthood found that they had a higher rate of criminal activity. I cannot help but think that we shouldn't be forcing kids to learn if they don't want to learn -- and rather than try to force every kid to be "grade level", we should go back to 1-room schoolhouses (for elementary levels, at least) and teach each student at their own pace.
- somethingsome 2y ago
  To give more details on the story about my students.. At 14-15 years old, they were unable to perform subtraction correctly with single digit numbers. All of which because they uniquely used tablets and qcm for all their work. This was a general issue with their capacity of concentration, memorization, and overall learning. They were able to understand a simple concept, for example symmetries of objects, after a lot of work, but forget about it the following day. I helped them through some years. They are doing better now.. But they didn't catch up what they should be able to do as functioning adults. If you don't teach to a child to study, he will never do it, studying is not fun per se, if it's not motivated, the random probability that one does it alone is extremely small, and even then. You fail him for not providing him a good education. Now I hear you, you are talking about preschool and, clearly I think that prematurely forcing them to study has no purpose, they should start studying when they are ready to it, but we do not have a way to know when it is. I'm on the camp of making study as fun as possible, not by creating random games around the work, but instead by providing lot of context and unexpected examples that motivate the creation of the theory. In this way, I think education can start pretty soon. I like to have my student study because they are intrigued instead of having them study because they 'need to'. Which is counterproductive no matter the age.

bane 2y ago

> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. That problem is that parents who want to expose their children to more knowledge and better education have no voice -- of any kind. A small group of parents objecting to something violating their niche belief will absolutely nullify the voices of any number of parents thinking otherwise. There needs to be greater ability on the part of educational organizations to be able to parse the unencumbered learners from these minority case.

sirspacey 2y ago

The future promise of real education was crushed by the relentless political fiction that actually runs education. So brutal. Thanks for doing what you can.

bsder 2y ago

Everybody is voting to improve "average" because that's what affects your house price. The best way to move an "average" is to improve the big mass slightly below average. The worst off and best off are too small to affect the average--so nobody cares about them. QED.

deleted 2y ago
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jalapenos 2y ago

Yes the problem isn't so much ed-tech, which by the way we all use everytime we Google or ChatGPT how to do something. The problem is that ed-tech is being shoehorned into an existing dysfunctional system. It's trying to help the education system do more of what it was already doing, just with computers. The underlying problem is that the structure of the education system is absolutely stupid and shit. We've just been so used to that for so long that we don't notice it anymore. If schooling was good, ed-tech would be a big enabler of that, helping students learn at their own pace, guiding their coursework in the right direction, linking it to career paths, all kinds of things. But currently ed-tech is just enabling and feeding more of the same slop, just digital instead of paper. That's the problem.

cloudsec9 2y ago

I understand your frustration, but how does the software manage students that are behind versus students that are way ahead? Like I'd imagine this would be deeper learning for a kid that's ahead, where they can really deep-dive a topic and maybe do some more advanced concepts. But I can understand it from the teacher's perspective too; They have 30 kids, no extra budget and few resources. They have 20 or so average kids, and a handful of stragglers and a handful of people out in front, and are trying to meet ALL of their needs. Any of those three groups could use up all the time on a specific topic, so you end up stealing some time from one to deal with the others. If there are good monitoring from EdTech software it can help, but lots of teachers are not super techie so things have to be approachable. It's definitely a space with more nuance and certainly more potential.

snowfarthing 2y ago

This is the very question that crossed my mind when I saw this headline (albeit at a different site): was this a failure of EdTech, or was it a failure of our highly structured and inflexible school system? This is an issue that started to bother me while in high school, or perhaps even in junior high, and have realized over the years that people learn at different rates, that what should matter is knowledge and mastery and not grades, and that a failure in a class or several shouldn't be permanently incorporated into a "GPA" that also doesn't really capture the true essence of someone's knowledge and mastery. In the past year, I have been learning a lot about autism and ADHD -- in no small part because I have come to realize I have both -- and I cannot help but come to the conclusion that regardless of why an individual student is different -- whether it be autism, ADHD, life-event-driven depression (eg from a death in the family or a divorce), or high or low or late-blooming intelligence, or even mere boredom that needs to be overcome by the "right spark" -- the school system as currently instituted can handle none of this -- and what's worse, any student who cannot conform to this, even if temporarily, is permanently considered flawed somehow.