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There's nothing fundamentally wrong with education. I think the three current problems are 1) education is expensive, 2) people are too poor, and 3) people of a
by kiba 14y ago
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with education. I think the three current problems are 1) education is expensive, 2) people are too poor, and 3) people of average or below average intelligence probably aren't served very well by the high school curriculum.
Yes, it is, and it have nothing to do with our funding. The way we teach is extraordinary inefficient and outdated.
For example, spaced repetition is a learning technique that takes advantage of the spacing effect phenomenon that is present in all humans. You know why your teachers told you to study everyday instead of cramming? Well, cramming doesn't help you retain information in the long run! Computers can be used to track every answers and problem, what our weakness are, and to schedule when to review, allowing us to take spaced repetition to its logical conclusion. The computer can generate problems on demand, give out recorded lectures by the very best teacher, and so on.
Spacing effects also implies summer vacation is harmful to knowledge acquisition process unless we continuously practice. When we finish high school and college, decays begin to set in because we stop practicing. The result is that countless generation learned mathematics, history, language art, literature, only to forget upon exiting formal education.
That's why khanacademy is so powerful. They really do leverage computers to generate problems, explain stuff, track your every mistakes, and schedule practices problem using spaced repetition. Right now, long run khanacademy users like me knows more and is the most refreshed on mathematics than the vast majority of high school students and working adults. We practice math problems everyday, thus ensuring that we never forget and be prepared to build a new knowledge as soon as Khan Academy adds new exercises or revise old one.
That's in contrast to going to a very inefficient traditional institutions and receiving a "great education" and then immediately forgetting most of what you're taught. That's a very inefficient way to learn.
- logn 14y agoI don't think high schools exist so that you remember things. They're to teach you how to learn.
- kiba 14y agoI don't think high schools exist so that you remember things. They're to teach you how to learn. What part of learning that doesn't involves remembering and building a foundation on what you have learned? What if you forgot your basic when you have to do more advanced stuff. That is part of the process of "learning".
- MisterBastahrd 14y agoThis is part of the reason that I loved the Saxon method for teaching mathematics when I was in school. Your nightly problem sets would almost always contain questions which referred to earlier chapters, forcing you to re-use the information you learned instead of just focusing on the current problems. It was a lot of homework, but well worth it.
- EnderMB 14y ago> Yes, it is, and it have nothing to do with our funding. The way we teach is extraordinary inefficient and outdated. I don't disagree, but do you have anything to back this up? I ask because my girlfriend is a teacher, and teaching is a lot harder than most people seem to believe.
- kiba 14y agoI don't disagree, but do you have anything to back this up? Like what? Numbers and studies? Khan Academy said that they have very promising results in which students perform significantly better on standardized tests. That being said, I already wrote in my post how we can improve efficiency and effectiveness by leveraging computers for all they're worth. I think this is sufficient to show how dated the teaching is done in schools, if not exactly proves how inefficient our school teach. I think it's quite obvious that it's better to watch a recorded lecture than to see the teacher perform the same lecture years after year. I ask because my girlfriend is a teacher, and teaching is a lot harder than most people seem to believe. All I am advocating is giving the teachers and students better tools based on cognitive science that we discovered a long time ago. Making sure students get the practice they need on summer vacations and scheduling practice problems to reduce unnecessary studying isn't rocket science.
- EnderMB 14y agoBut if it's so easy, why has nothing changed after all this time? It's apparently not rocket science, yet all these intelligent people are going into teaching and the same methods are still used. Teachers continue to spend long hours after school planning lessons and aside from module websites made using Google's site builder tools and interactive whiteboards there is little difference in the UK. Originally, I thought it was a money problem, but some schools have a ridiculous budget and are happy to spend them on the same old stuff. Why is no one investing in these things that will apparently improve education?
- DanBC 14y agoPeople think they are right. They will ignore evidence that they are wrong, and over-emphasise the evidence that shows they are right. The debate becomes politicised. The debate splits along lines of unions vs others; politicians vs teachers; parents vs others; etc. Proper double blind research is hard to conduct on students for a number of reasons, and so we don't bother with effective research. See, for example, the length of time that it's taken to get synthetic phonics over analytic phonics recognised as better for teaching children to read.