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As a former member of a board of education in a major city, I learned a few things: 1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for educatio

• rwmj 13y ago
  1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for education. Everyone is different (duh) Why is that? All able-bodied humans have brains, mouths, eyes, arms etc all of which work in much the same way. If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. For people who have specific disabilities, we should make adjustments, but I don't understand why a single way of teaching would not work for most people. Leaving aside whether schools are the best way of teaching.
  • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. Then why do the rich buy custom-tailored clothes?
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      Because they can pay the substantial premium involved. Collectively, our interest in having as many people as possible moderately well-educated rather than just having a few who are outstandingly well-educated imposes constraints.
      • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        our interest in having as many people as possible moderately well-educated rather than just having a few who are outstandingly well-educated I am compelled to note that our existing socioeconomic, and thus educational, systems operate pretty much the other way around: the revealed judgment of capitalism is that it's better to have a small elite of outstandingly well-educated rich people who can confidently exploit the mob of mostly ignorant masses.
        • penrod 13y ago
          Why do you think that an educational system run by central government and funded by taxes represents the revealed judgement of capitalism?
          • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
            Two reasons: 1) Because the same effect and the same processes are displayed at the post-secondary level where capitalist forces operate more strongly than social-democratic ones. 2) Because the capitalists control the government, at this point, so government action is a good indicator of what the capitalist class thinks is best.
  • RougeFemme 13y ago
    And there will be many people for whom those clothes don't really fit (feel, appearance, etc.). A lot of people will simply make do. But many other will alter the clothing or switch to tailor-made clothing. . .or a different pattern with a different range of sizes.
  • GuiA 13y ago
    This is a misleading and irrelevant comparison. Yes, the vast majority of the population has 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. that allow enable clothes manufacturers to follow the same template. But this definitely does not imply that this conclusion is extensible to education. Have you ever worked in a software development company? You've probably noticed that some of your coworkers work better by being isolated and solving things on their own. Others prefer teaming up with a more experienced developer to guide their work. Some need a very detailed spec upfront, while others are fine filling in the holes as they go along. Would you force the guy who thrives while doing pair programming to work on his own? Sure, he might get some work done, but he won't be as happy nor as productive as he is pair programming. And the kicker is that those things change throughout people's careers. Education is exactly the same. You can force everyone in the same mold, but all it will lead to is people performing sub optimally and becoming frustrated. Should education ignore that? --- It's even worth it to take a step back and ask ourselves what the goal of school education should be. The average parent or teacher will probably answer that it is to develop the child's skills and knowledge in a way that will enable him to attend a good college, to secure a good job, and to live their life comfortably. The more we advance in society, the more we realize that this definition was perhaps sufficient 50 years ago (when it was very common and accepted to stop your studies after high school), but it is becoming less and less so. As our society starts to be comfortable with notions such as minimum basic income, that many jobs can and should be automated, that there will inevitably be more able-minded able-bodied adults than there are jobs available in the future and so on, we need to revisit what the purpose of education from ages ~3-18 should be. Things we probably want education "of the future" to be about: - creating citizens that have the means and the tools to instruct themselves and understand the world and society around them - enabling the children and teenagers to build & live a fulfilling and constructive adult life (we might have to accept at some point that some people are fine playing the saxophone 10 hours a day, while some are fine programming 10 hours a day - one is not necessarily better than the other) - building the skills to relate to your peers and help them to work towards the previous 2 points. Having worked in educational settings (think boarding school style, with everyday life mixed with instruction) where teenagers would be in regular contact with younger children (for example helping them during programming workshops etc.), I've noticed how much good it does to everyone involved. The younger kids love having someone just a tiny bit older than they are helping them out, and a lot of teenagers appreciate being handed some responsibilities. The current school system is very much a one way street (teachers teach and enforce rules, students sit down and listen), and it's far from ideal.
  • penrod 13y ago
    There may indeed be a Platonic ideal of the one-size-fits-all school, but does not mean it is discoverable by central planners, especially central planners subject to the political incentives of the education establishment. So even though "Everyone is different" may be a canard, it may still be the case that the only practical way to improve schools is through a distributed process of trial and error on a diverse set of teaching methods.
  • wmeredith 13y ago
    Holy hell, if you think people brains all work in the same way, you live in a different world than mine.
  • Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    For people who have specific disabilities, we should make adjustments, but I don't understand why a single way of teaching would not work for most people. Most Africans have an IQ in the 80s, barely above mentally retarded. Most of them can barely be trained to even go through the motions of algebra, let alone use it to solve problems in new situations. "College material" kids need to graduate high school with a mastery of algebra so they can learn calculus, which they will be expected to use unbidden to solve novel problems they encounter in other areas. It seems unlikely to me that the vocational training of the dull can be combined with the education of the near-genius. It is like trying to teach carpentry and structural engineering at the same time. Kids also have a gigantic range of self control. About 1 in 20 are profoundly delayed, being an average of 3 years behind "normal" in planning and self control. (This is called ADHD to pathologize it, but nothing that common can possibly be a true disorder.) So a typical freshman high school classroom will have pne student who can barely keep their shit together well enough to glue macaroni to construction paper. And will have one student, usually a girl, who operates on a fully adult level. And then there are the variations in memory. One student learns the entire course in 20 hours, while another has to grind out practice for 150 hours. There is simply no way for a single process to handle the range of human variation well. Even the body is like this. My ideal bicycle could permanently cripple another normal person of the same height. Ditto for shoes.
    • jacalata 13y ago
      uh, do you care to give a citation for that 'most africans' claim? Are you talking about people living in Africa, or about African-Americans?
    • aperrien 13y ago
      > Most Africans have an IQ in the 80s, barely above mentally retarded. Most of them can barely be trained to even go through the motions of algebra, let alone use it to solve problems in new situations. What evidence do you have for this claim?
    • batemanesque 13y ago
      are you fucking serious?
  • aestra 13y ago
    >If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. Oh wow, you must have a common body shape/type. That range of sizes is actually kinda large, and there is "specialty" size ranges, for example, plus size, petite, big and tall. Bras especially have a giant range of sizes, and I still know woman who have to get custom made bras, and these are woman with natural breasts. I personally don't fit into off the shelf clothing, period. I've never seen a pair of pants that fit me, I just make due with what is closest, and I've gotten used to constantly adjusting my pants, it is second nature to me.
• Nelkins 13y ago
  Can you elaborate on some of your personal experiences in teachers' unions stifling innovation? I don't know too much about this topic, and the few friends of mine who are "in the know" are teachers. Not exactly the best place to get an unbiased opinion.
  • jstalin 13y ago
    I can't really give a concise treatment of the issue on here, but suffice it to say that the leadership of the teachers' unions are very, very change adverse. They are first and foremost a union and trade organization that exists to protect jobs and the status quo. Anything that threatens that status quo is usually immediately dismissed. For instance, the idea that teachers should be evaluated based on student outcomes is like kryptonite to union leadership. Another issue I noticed was a strange aversion to letting anyone other than state-certified teachers do any teaching. The most striking example I came across was a brochure I picked up while waiting for my obligatory teachers' union candidate interview when I was running for office. I flipped through the brochure on teaching your child to read. The brochure explicitly stated that parents should not correct their child's improper spelling or pronunciation because that would somehow stifle learning or take away from the "professional's" ability to "properly" impart knowledge to the child. It was stunning. And weird. And that's why the issue of teachers' unions is complex and at time perplexing.
    • VLM 13y ago
      I have two teachers in the family. The primary observation is their management is intensely toxic. So "changing the rules" is primarily oriented around, well, basically screwing over management's enemies using some new rules. It has nothing to do with punishing the "bad" teachers and everything to do with punishing the ones who don't kiss up or are in certain protected or unprotected demographic groups. Student outcomes is ridiculous because given a reasonably small class size all you're doing is grading the randomness of the kid distribution aka you'll be rewarding / punishing teachers based on which specific kids they get that year. Sometimes a good year, sometimes bad. Statistically its far more valid to grade folks at a higher level aka a larger sample size, so obviously this should be implemented to grade district leaders and principals first... LOL that will never happen because it'll only exist as a weapon. Making it an even worse weapon, most of the people doing the coaching are the ones in charge of assigning kids to teachers. So you can't fire a teacher for being a black woman, even if you hate black women. But if coincidentally you hate black women and are in charge of assigning kids and the 24 year old single hottie white woman just happens to "randomly" get all the angelic gifted and talented wonderkids, and the uppity black woman happens to have assigned to her all the village morons and wannabe gang members, well I guess the black woman's numbers are going to suck. And thats how, if you hate black women, you legally fire black woman teachers. There's a thin veneer of BS about accountability as a marketing technique to deploy the weapon, but its all about another weapon for toxic management. Your reading example is ridiculous as I recently completed the same age range with my kids. The argument is that English as a language is completely screwed up with innumerable exceptions. So when the teacher is trying to teach basic phonic sound #17 or whatever, its not helping matters if you confuse the kid with peculiar exception 34 B subsection W item 6. I understand there are perfectly phonetic languages where what you see is what you get. And there are languages situations where you just have to memorize Kanji. But at least in theory you can teach English to most kids successfully by gradually piling on first basic rules and later weird rules and finally shoveling exceptions on. Frankly I learned how to read English from pure raw memorization and lots of reading. That's not how kids are taught today. There seems to be little point in blaming teachers or unions for the decision of middle managers in the admin building who selected a particular curriculum. You can homeschool kids using this curriculum you're making fun of if you want, it's a policy decision that has nothing to do with licensing the front line workers or their union or frankly even their immediate supervisors...
• mathattack 13y ago
  You have a great background to weigh in here. Can I ask a few more questions? On point #2 - why is that? Because of standardization? Lack of accountability? Overall what is your opinion of the charter school movement?
  • jstalin 13y ago
    Yes, standardization, one size fits all, the belief that central planners can determine what's best for everyone. My opinion is that all school administration should occur at the school level. Teachers, principals, and parents are best equipped to know what each kid needs. At the central administration level, accountability is nonexistent and the larger a school district gets, the harder it is to provide dynamic and responsive education. I'm a fan of the charter school movement mostly in the sense that it radically decentralizes education and that most charter schools are non-union. I've visited traditional public schools and charter schools and the sense of community, engagement, and accountability is palpable at the charter schools. At the traditional public schools, the sense was one of defeatism and calcification. Now keep in mind that my experience was in a large urban area, so your mileage will vary.
    • mathattack 13y ago
      I'm in a large urban area too. One where 85% of the kids in the school on my block failed the state math and english exams. (50% got the lowest score possible) The prison model isn't working for them.
• fancyketchup 13y ago
  Actually, I believe that your point #4 is wrong. Teachers are underpaid, and the fact that most kids don't really learn anything is the inevitable result. Allow me to explain. For all the rhetoric about the need for teacher accountability, school principals and district superintendents already have the power to fire teachers. Yes, it's true: Primary and secondary school-teachers do have a form a tenure, but it's not the same kind of tenure that university professors have. In primary and secondary education, tenure simply means that there is a more formalized process for firing a teacher. More hoops to jump through, if you will. But, principals can jump through them if they really want to. The logical question to ask is, so why don't they? They don't fire the bad ones because, simply put, they need butts in seats. Or, rather, feet in shoes in front of the blackboard. If you have 4 teachers for 100 students in 3rd grade, firing one and increasing the average class size to 33 students isn't a tenable option. As a result, the principal must hire a new teacher to replace the one he just fired, and therein lies the rub. There simply aren't good teachers on the market at the prices that school districts are willing to pay. That qualifier at the end of the sentence is important, so read it again. Many of my cohort from grad school were fantastic teaching assistants in the classroom (many were bad, too, but we'll save that discussion for another time). That's not to say that they would automatically make good primary school teachers, but if I had kids, I would wish that those excellent TAs were in the classroom. I'll bet that many people on HN know similarly talented people from their time in university, who were natural leaders and mentors. Unfortunately, very few (read: none) of those people who are good at teaching are employed as teachers. Why not? It has nothing to do with teacher's unions or certification requirements or institutional bureaucracy or barriers to innovation, and everything to do with the labor market. Namely, a good engineer or scientist with a masters or doctorate can out-earn a teacher by a factor of at least two. Then there's the fact that an engineer employed as an engineer isn't required to restrict his use of paid vacation days to just a few weeks each year (a couple high-school teachers with whom I'm still in contact tell me that they've never been able to take their kids on vacation for spring break because their spring break didn't line up with their kid's spring break). So, I think the solution is easy: Pay teachers a salary that is competitive with other high-skilled professions, and you'll get good teachers.
  • burntsushi 13y ago
• mtdewcmu 13y ago
  I've come to be skeptical of what everyone believes and no one questions, that schools are failing kids. So much hand-wringing has gone into this issue for so long, so many things have been tried and failed; the simplest explanation to me is that the problem simply lies elsewhere. We can try to force-feed kids more and better education, but we can't guarantee them the kind of jobs they want after they graduate. I suspect the problem is economic, but regardless of precisely where it lies, I don't think it can be fixed through changes to education. It's like pushing a rope. A lot of people are in agreement that the problem begins and ends with teachers, but this sounds suspiciously like scapegoating.
  • icelancer 13y ago
    >I've come to be skeptical of what everyone believes and no one questions, that schools are failing kids. Amen. Schools are failing SOME kids, there is no doubt about that. But the question I have - which is controversial, to say the least - is this: Do we really CARE that it's failing some kids?
    • Roboprog 13y ago
      OK, that I'll buy. Do we have to make everybody go all the way through THE PROCESS, or should some rightly just skip a chunk of it?
      • icelancer 13y ago
        I'm on your side, I think. Some should skip a big chunk of it. EDIT: My first comment to you is mostly in agreeance with you. I think it's inarguable that school fails SOME kids, because no compulsory system is perfect. But I took your statement of "are schools really failing kids" to mean "are schools really failing the majority or even all kids" or something similar (are schools failing the most important kids for some value of "important", etc). That doesn't seem to make it more clear, but hell, I'm trying to vigorously agree with you.
        • mtdewcmu 13y ago