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Aristocratic tutoring doesn't work, because it isn't scalable. But a new "aristocratic" tutoring system powered by Chat-GPT o3 or Claude Opus just might. Also

Aristocratic tutoring doesn't work, because it isn't scalable. But a new "aristocratic" tutoring system powered by Chat-GPT o3 or Claude Opus just might. Also, it turns out that ability grouping has very bad structural incentives if you aren't exceedingly careful about how it's done. The typical outcome is that the best teachers teach the best students, and the worst teachers teach the worst students - because those are the students no one else wants to be stuck with. Which then leaves struggling students with no real hope of catching up and sets them up for even worse failure.

bell-cot 2y ago
> ...tutoring doesn't work, because it isn't scalable... If you somehow RIF'ed 95% of the administrators, consultants, experts, ideologues, lobbyists, professional activists, etc. - most of whom earn more than any mere teacher - then there just might be enough money to try tutoring. My grandmother spent her teaching career as the sole teacher in a small town's one-room schoolhouse. She had 1st through 8th graders. And (with respect to her schoolhouse and students) the only other school district employee was the District Superintendent. Grandma's teaching qualifications amounted to a year or two at a little Normal School - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school#Midwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school#Midwest Every year, one of grandma's "alumni" was the valedictorian at the local(-ish) high school.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  While you have a point wrt. 'tutoring' as part of ordinary instruction, that's not what "aristocratic tutoring" means. That's specifically about getting one-to-one instruction full-time from a handful of very highly educated tutors (PhD-equivalent or so in their subject matter would've been typical, back when this sort of tutoring was common.)
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    True. But if the goal was general education - vs. showing off membership in the 0.01% - would the outcomes from "tutors mostly have community college degrees, and each kid only gets an hour or two of one-on-one each day" be more than good enough?

bell-cot 2y ago

> ...tutoring doesn't work, because it isn't scalable... If you somehow RIF'ed 95% of the administrators, consultants, experts, ideologues, lobbyists, professional activists, etc. - most of whom earn more than any mere teacher - then there just might be enough money to try tutoring. My grandmother spent her teaching career as the sole teacher in a small town's one-room schoolhouse. She had 1st through 8th graders. And (with respect to her schoolhouse and students) the only other school district employee was the District Superintendent. Grandma's teaching qualifications amounted to a year or two at a little Normal School - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school#Midwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school#Midwest Every year, one of grandma's "alumni" was the valedictorian at the local(-ish) high school.

zozbot234 2y ago
While you have a point wrt. 'tutoring' as part of ordinary instruction, that's not what "aristocratic tutoring" means. That's specifically about getting one-to-one instruction full-time from a handful of very highly educated tutors (PhD-equivalent or so in their subject matter would've been typical, back when this sort of tutoring was common.)
- bell-cot 2y ago
  True. But if the goal was general education - vs. showing off membership in the 0.01% - would the outcomes from "tutors mostly have community college degrees, and each kid only gets an hour or two of one-on-one each day" be more than good enough?