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How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

93 points by 0cool 13y ago

hobs 13y ago
Children want to learn, and if you dont beat out their love of learning by forcing them into a box that hardly anyone fits in, their inherent need to understand the world comes out. Its almost... logical.
- phorese 13y ago
  Relevant Carl Sagan: "Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?page=3 http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?pa...)
  - mathattack 13y ago
    True. But it is VERY hard to encourage the enthusiasm of a 4 year old who asks "Why?" 600 times a day. :-)
    - phorese 13y ago
      Well, according to the article you just have to build a computer into the wall and let him/her work it all out on their own ;)
    - embwbam 13y ago
      That's what YouTube and Netflix documentaries are for. My kids love them and they give you a break from coming up with all the answers. :)
      - Moto7451 13y ago
        Don't forget PBS. Lacking cable growing up I pretty much watched nothing but PBS and a few Saturday morning cartoons. I think that worked out pretty well :).
        mathattack 13y ago
        We pitched the TV figuring it would remove our temptation to be lazy and disengaged. We generally reserve computer time for supporting foreign language acquisition. (I feel like I'm rapidly turning into one of THOSE parents)
    - ihsw 13y ago
      Asking "Why?" 400 times a day is enthusiasm. The problem is getting them to be self-sufficient and find answers by themselves.
      - mathattack 13y ago
        It's tough when they're 4. They can read a little, but too young for Google. And I'm afraid of some of the unfiltered answers. :-)
      - Afton 13y ago
        Nope. It's play-acting. They are learning the question/answer role. You can tell this by the simple fact that a rampaging 3 year old is not listening to the answers. Don't get me wrong, I'm in the unschooling/homeschooling camp, but this isn't evidence of enthusiasm. :)
        mathattack 13y ago
        Do they listen to anything other than accidental F bombs?
    - aortega 13y ago
      I always wondered how old Pinocchio was. In that Disney movie he exhibited this behaviour, so now I know he was the human equivalent of between 4 and 5 years old.
  - truthteller 13y ago
    there is a huge difference between having a sense of curiosity about the world and studying science seriously. people love to watch documentaries about the natural world, yet very few attempt to teach themselves mathematics or physics.
- ht_th 13y ago
  I am a fervent proponent for modern constructionistic learning environments, but affecting change in the current system is almost impossible. Some teachers are enthusiastic and willing to spend their own time to develop and implement these modern* ideas about learning, but in the end, one way or another, they have to conform to the traditional educational system. If it isn't for management that presses for better test results, parents that want good grades, children that cannot take to the new way (for whatever reason) it is the seemingly incommensurability of these ideas with the traditional norm for education that leads to a watering down of the ideas and a feeling of hopelessness about it all. What many don't understand is the enormous difference between the learning of the one child (your child) and the education of a nation. Try institutionalizing these "almost logical" ideas about learning for nation-wide implementation for a reasonable price and see what happens. I think it is possible to implement these ideas, but that means that we as a nation have to make hard choices. At the moment, we choose to fund education for all and learning for all be damned. *: Every couple of decades these ideas or similar ideas seem to be reïnvented by a new generation ...
  - jackmaney 13y ago
    "...affecting change in the current system is almost impossible." As the kids say, nowadays: This. Any major change in education will take a cultural shift. And cultural shifts are generally very, very slow to form.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    > but affecting change in the current system is almost impossible Sorry to be a pedant, but that should be "effecting change". "Affecting change" would be pretending that some change had occurred. I'm sure it was just a typo, but it's one that trips people up so much, I figured it would be better corrected.
zwischenzug 13y ago
This is not new, Chomsky was educated the same way.
noonespecial 13y ago
“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” ― Stanley Kubrick
- mjn 13y ago
  That's been a popular view among progressive education reformers as well. It's the basis of Montessori schools, for example. I went to one up through Kindergarten and liked it, finding regular 1st grade utterly dull in comparison. But I don't have a good guess as to whether it would've been a better overall schooling (I still found plenty of time to learn things on my own). I've also long liked this Seymour Papert quote vaguely along those lines: http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html However in parallel to these kinds of views being popular among education reformers, it's also been popular to mock them as idealistic hippie views of education. And a different category of education reformer has had almost 180º opposite ideas, based around standardized, repeatable, scientifically measurable education (the basis of NCLB, MOOCs, etc.).
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    While a radical departure from the old school methods, Montessori is not intrinsically "progressive". It is built on the idea that there is a clear curriculum with the very big difference being children are primarily responsible for choosing from that menu of options, trusted that their own interests are an adequate guide. Someone who definitely falls outside the progressive reformers would be John Holt, yet he passionately argues along similar lines as what Kubrick is saying here. Holt: "... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it." By modern definitions, Holt is not even exactly "homeschooling". More accurately, he advocates what would be called "Unschooling" -- the idea that home life observing adults is a more than powerful enough motivator for young children to acquire basic skills.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Aaawww nuts. Yes, education could be vastly improved, but you know what, my sons school is vastly improved over what I had. Since 1913 when IQ tests started being nationally or internationally graded, the IQ median has been kept at 100. But without that smoothing the median level of 1913 would be 77 or so today, and the median today would be in the 130s We have got smarter, or perhaps we have had mental tools passed onto us through education and social norms. ref: err... a Ted talk recently released....
- maxmcd 13y ago
  Yes, and isn't that change usually attributed to types of IQ test questions becoming outdated and part of popular knowledge? Attributing any change in IQ tests to a more intelligent population seems dubious at best. Any chance you have a link to that ted talk? Also, my ability to communicate instantaneously is absurdly better than what my parents had, doesn't mean we should stop striving to improve improve improve, especially in an area as important as education.
- polymatter 13y ago
  for interest sake, its called the Flynn effect [1]. Lots of reasons have been given for it, of which better schooling is just one. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Here is your reference, the talk by James R. Flynn on TED (spoken in March 2013, published on TED in September 2013) "James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'." http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.html http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h... The research by James R. Flynn on changes in IQ raw score levels over time in many different countries has been described by intelligence researcher N. J. Mackintosh like this: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." (IQ and Human Intelligence 1998, p. 104) In general, Flynn is a very respected researcher on human intelligence. Here is what the late Arthur Jensen said about Flynn back in the 1980s: "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Modgil, Sohan & Modgil, Celia (Eds.) (1987) Arthur Jensen: Concensus and Controversy New York: Falmer. Here's what Charles Murray says in his back cover blurb for Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?: "This book is a gold mine of pointers to interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses are in his debt." Flynn has earned the respect and praise of any honest researcher who takes time to read the scholarly literature on human intelligence. Robert Sternberg, Ian Deary, Stephen Pinker, Stephen Ceci, Sir Michael Rutter, and plenty of other eminent psychologists recommend Flynn's research.
rst 13y ago
Interesting how the public school "reform" movement in the US cuts hard against this sort of experimentation --- in particular, by mandating curricula, and evaluating students and schools by performance on cookie-cutter tests that make no room for individual interests or variation.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Not really. That is not intrinsic to the reform movement. That is the educational system responding to political pressure. The reformers have to play the game by the rules as they exist in the moment. If the standardized cookie cutter test results become the coin of the realm, then every kind change will be justified by test results, whether the proponents think that is a useful idea or not.
vinceguidry 13y ago
There have always been techniques and methods available to vastly improve the outcomes of students. The problem is that education is a very political subject and the winds shift as quickly as the politicians do. Education is a favorite pet issue of every wanna-be FDR and for whatever reason, they can't just let teachers do their jobs. They have to tell them what they can and can't teach, what targets they have to meet, create arbitrary and senseless metrics of merit. So forgive me if I'm unimpressed with this so-called solution to education. Would it be better than what we have now? Sure it will, virtually anything would be that reduces the amount of oversight in the system. Could you sell it to the public? Not a snowball's chance in hell. It wouldn't last a year.
tokenadult 13y ago
The article reports, without references, "So in 2011—when Paloma entered his class—Juárez Correa decided to start experimenting. He began reading books and searching for ideas online. Soon he stumbled on a video describing the work of Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in the UK. In the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, Mitra conducted experiments in which he gave children in India access to computers. Without any instruction, they were able to teach themselves a surprising variety of things, from DNA replication to English." Where are the publications about this? How much peer review have they had? We have discussed Mitra's work here on HN before. What is the latest news about follow-up on his studies? I would be delighted to hear about new and more effective methods of helping young learners learn (I am a teacher of young learners) and I am especially interested in following up on the research to make sure that it is accurate. http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php (Above link is an example of my following up on educational research claims. I do this continually.) AFTER EDIT: I find by Google Scholar search that most of Mitra's publications on education research are reposted on his own Hole-in-the-Wall website. http://hole-in-the-wall.com/ http://hole-in-the-wall.com/
pinaceae 13y ago
let's have some dissenting opinion here. not all kids are equal. not all kids want to learn. in each and every discussion over this topic people bring up quotes by very smart people, like kubrick, sagan, etc. on how organised learning is not needed, a young mind wants to learn, grows like a flower, all by itself, even better without the shackles of structured education. i call bullshit. this is biased through the people stating these arguments. if you're a genius or borderline genious then of course the standardized school system is not for you. if you're smarter and faster than your teachers the whole thing can't work. but the vast majority of kids is not like that. yes, some people are plain dumb. nothing to do, not a bad thing, pure nature. might be great at something, sports, fine manual labor, but simply not good with high mental tasks. some kids don't like reading, it's too hard and does not bring any value to them, nothing sticks, no mental images are formed. just letters stuck together. this romantic view of humans is the root of a lot of failed social experiments. from open school systems (montessori, waldorf,...) to the new humans that communism wanted to create. the modern school system is built to provide a base level of education, targeted for the medium range intellect. learn basic skills, through repetition - tried and tested method, from sports to art to education. reading, writing, counting, calculating. if you're one of those kids that taught yourself how to read at age 4, well, guess what, your experience in school will be subpar. but just don't go around and push for school reform to have schools fitted for your style of self learning. the vast majority is not like you.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  Have you tried doing nothing over a long time? I'm not a smart person, and it felt bad. At first its feels great, Sitting down at couch, playing video games, eating and drinking what you want. Few weeks pass, and you became bored and un-stimulated. You start to crave novelty, and curiosity. You pick up a book, you watch educational videos and so forth. Except its self directed. You become addicted, to some activities because your doing it for internal values, not external pressures. This is how I mastered subjects. This is also the point when a teacher becomes truly useful, because they will working with you to feed YOUR curiosity rather than following a set standard. Most people do this.
- writtles 13y ago
  Also, socioeconomic status is key here. i.e. If no one in your life values education then incentive to learn is greatly diminished no matter how intelligent you are.
riggins 13y ago
I always find it a little sad to reflect on education because I think we can unleash a generation of geniuses. I don't think it even takes a radical teaching method. I think it takes a radical reordering of priorities. Instead of glorifying athletes and closet organizers famous for making sex tapes ... we need to glorify education, hard work, and resourcefulness. And parents need to reinforce the message by rewarding/encouraging those traits.
- teach 13y ago
  Changing public education in America will be hard. But changing the culture would be even harder.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Glorify hard work? Madness. We don't need these protestant values in the coming post-scarcity economy. We should glorify efficiency, curiousity, self-sufficiency and internal state of tranquil happiness.
ihsw 13y ago
The real question is -- can we do this on a mass scale that the general populace can benefit from? The problem with getting kids to learn is public education, namely where one-size-fits-all is sacrosanct.
GrinningFool 13y ago
And who, in the role of mentor or teacher, has not discovered this to be an obvious truth? The difference between "here is what you do to solve this" and "here is the problem and (possibly) some areas that it might be worth focusing on". Someone given the latter wil come away with knowledge. Someone given the former will come away with a set of steps to follow. That aside, this long-winded series of human-interest anecdotes reminds me of why I stopped reading Wired. The whole thing could have been written in 1/3rd the space.
truthteller 13y ago
"One SIMPLE TRICK to radically change educational outcomes!!" it's amazing that people still actively publicize idiotic self promoters and charlatans like Mitra.
evunveot 13y ago
Unsurprisingly, the headline's "new" teaching method isn't particularly new (as the timeline sidebar in the article itself makes somewhat apparent). For example, the Sudbury Valley School [1] has been around since 1968 and is even more "radical". No grades, no curriculum, no classes, no separation by age. The governance of the school is democratic, with all decisions -- including those regarding budget and staff -- decided by a body called the School Meeting which is composed of the staff and the students together, with one vote per person. The Sudbury School of Atlanta has an interesting blog post [2] describing how the students can naturally pick up basic skills through participating in the management of the school, in this case by choosing and acquiring a school pet. This Wired article is more about the undirected aspect, but the compelling thing to me about adding the democratic element (the oldest running example is the Summerhill School [3], established in 1921) is that the decisions being made affect the student, so the student has a motive to participate and learns as a by-product. Thus there's a hope that children in general could benefit, not only those children who are particularly "self-directed learners". Additionally, the things they're learning (reading, writing and arithmetic, but also teamwork, negotiation and leadership) are directly beneficial in society -- because the school itself is a microcosm of society. It may not be a model that produces "geniuses", but it does seem like a good model for producing adults/citizens. (I have no personal experience with alternative schooling.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School [2] http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-assignment-learn-math-reading.html http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-a... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School
- Ologn 13y ago
  You're right that there is nothing new about almost all of these ideas. John Dewey covered a lot of this in his 1902 book "The Child and the Curriculum".
  - niccl 13y ago
    So what if it's not absolutely new? It's new to the people in their specific context and _appears_ to be producing results, again, in that specific context. Very little of what we do is new, but still has merit when applied in a novel way or a novel context.
thehme 13y ago
This article tells an amazing and inspiring story. I love the burro tale and how it illustrates the positive attitude of these kids who really want to learn. I hope that everyone donates to http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movement/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movem... Teachers like Sergio Juárez Correa are an example of what teachers should be doing, specially in rich countries like the US.
fexl 13y ago
"The exterior of his schools will be mostly glass, so outsiders can peer in." That reminds me of one of the technical schools I saw in downtown Lima, Peru. It had a huge number of large glass windows on the front, and as I walked along the main street, I could peer in and see row after row of tables, each with several large Apple monitors, each with a student or two in front of it. It was massive. I'd really like to go in there next time I visit and find out more about their techniques. (Incidentally, several blocks away there was a high school named "The Albert Einstein Institute". :)
Charos 13y ago
Freedom in learning is so, so important. This case study illuminates that pretty well. It's a great look into an example of allowing children to truly learn at their own pace, with gentle guidance regarding subject areas and provided with the resources they need to discover new knowledge. The story is heartwarming and a great read, and a useful comparison to the modern American style of education. As others have pointed out, there is no magic bullet. This method would work incredibly well for 90% of subjects taught in elementary school. However, for non-English language learning, additional guidance would be needed - the teachers could nudge them towards Duolingo, various online multilingual dictionaries, etc. I do believe that this system could be used as the core of a new teaching paradigm, but it is not solely sufficient for a complete learning experience to the standards that we have come to expect in America. For developing countries (which, sadly, Mexico bears much resemblance to), this could be an incredible tool. An internet-connected computer and guidance from involved teachers can easily produce students who are ready to help lift their countries out of economic malaise. In this way, I believe the internet can serve as the Great Equalizer many of us hoped it would someday become. If this method used alone is capable of producing students 70% as capable (by some nonexistent perfect metric) as those in first-world nations, that would still be an enormous leap forward for developing nations. I think these guys are really on to something in this regard. I find it interesting that as our civilizations mature, we find ourselves oscillating back away from the industrialized American education system paradigms and towards a more holistic, broadly-focused educational strategy using qualitative methods rather than quantitative objectives. Students are not a homogeneous population, and historically we have tried to deal with this issue by ignoring it and cramming them all into the same mold, with minor variations. It makes me glad to see that we are starting to consider that we should instead allow for this variance by designing systems with broader definitions and qualitative goals, to allow the students to grow in the directions they are best suited or disposed to.
lninyo 13y ago
I don't have time for reading 8 pages of garbage to get half a paragraph worth of real content out. TL;DR
smellf 13y ago
> in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers. This has as much to do with schools hiring "staffers" and "instructional assistants" as a cost-cutting measure as it does with top-heavy public school bureaucracy. It's akin to the "associate/adjunct professor" fiasco in a college environment.

93 points by 0cool 13y ago

hobs 13y ago

Children want to learn, and if you dont beat out their love of learning by forcing them into a box that hardly anyone fits in, their inherent need to understand the world comes out. Its almost... logical.

phorese 13y ago
Relevant Carl Sagan: "Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?page=3 http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?pa...)
- mathattack 13y ago
  True. But it is VERY hard to encourage the enthusiasm of a 4 year old who asks "Why?" 600 times a day. :-)
  - phorese 13y ago
    Well, according to the article you just have to build a computer into the wall and let him/her work it all out on their own ;)
  - embwbam 13y ago
    That's what YouTube and Netflix documentaries are for. My kids love them and they give you a break from coming up with all the answers. :)
    - Moto7451 13y ago
      Don't forget PBS. Lacking cable growing up I pretty much watched nothing but PBS and a few Saturday morning cartoons. I think that worked out pretty well :).
      - mathattack 13y ago
        We pitched the TV figuring it would remove our temptation to be lazy and disengaged. We generally reserve computer time for supporting foreign language acquisition. (I feel like I'm rapidly turning into one of THOSE parents)
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Asking "Why?" 400 times a day is enthusiasm. The problem is getting them to be self-sufficient and find answers by themselves.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      It's tough when they're 4. They can read a little, but too young for Google. And I'm afraid of some of the unfiltered answers. :-)
    - Afton 13y ago
      Nope. It's play-acting. They are learning the question/answer role. You can tell this by the simple fact that a rampaging 3 year old is not listening to the answers. Don't get me wrong, I'm in the unschooling/homeschooling camp, but this isn't evidence of enthusiasm. :)
      - mathattack 13y ago
        Do they listen to anything other than accidental F bombs?
  - aortega 13y ago
    I always wondered how old Pinocchio was. In that Disney movie he exhibited this behaviour, so now I know he was the human equivalent of between 4 and 5 years old.
- truthteller 13y ago
  there is a huge difference between having a sense of curiosity about the world and studying science seriously. people love to watch documentaries about the natural world, yet very few attempt to teach themselves mathematics or physics.
ht_th 13y ago
I am a fervent proponent for modern constructionistic learning environments, but affecting change in the current system is almost impossible. Some teachers are enthusiastic and willing to spend their own time to develop and implement these modern* ideas about learning, but in the end, one way or another, they have to conform to the traditional educational system. If it isn't for management that presses for better test results, parents that want good grades, children that cannot take to the new way (for whatever reason) it is the seemingly incommensurability of these ideas with the traditional norm for education that leads to a watering down of the ideas and a feeling of hopelessness about it all. What many don't understand is the enormous difference between the learning of the one child (your child) and the education of a nation. Try institutionalizing these "almost logical" ideas about learning for nation-wide implementation for a reasonable price and see what happens. I think it is possible to implement these ideas, but that means that we as a nation have to make hard choices. At the moment, we choose to fund education for all and learning for all be damned. *: Every couple of decades these ideas or similar ideas seem to be reïnvented by a new generation ...
- jackmaney 13y ago
  "...affecting change in the current system is almost impossible." As the kids say, nowadays: This. Any major change in education will take a cultural shift. And cultural shifts are generally very, very slow to form.
- phaemon 13y ago
  > but affecting change in the current system is almost impossible Sorry to be a pedant, but that should be "effecting change". "Affecting change" would be pretending that some change had occurred. I'm sure it was just a typo, but it's one that trips people up so much, I figured it would be better corrected.

zwischenzug 13y ago

This is not new, Chomsky was educated the same way.

noonespecial 13y ago

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” ― Stanley Kubrick

mjn 13y ago
That's been a popular view among progressive education reformers as well. It's the basis of Montessori schools, for example. I went to one up through Kindergarten and liked it, finding regular 1st grade utterly dull in comparison. But I don't have a good guess as to whether it would've been a better overall schooling (I still found plenty of time to learn things on my own). I've also long liked this Seymour Papert quote vaguely along those lines: http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html However in parallel to these kinds of views being popular among education reformers, it's also been popular to mock them as idealistic hippie views of education. And a different category of education reformer has had almost 180º opposite ideas, based around standardized, repeatable, scientifically measurable education (the basis of NCLB, MOOCs, etc.).
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  While a radical departure from the old school methods, Montessori is not intrinsically "progressive". It is built on the idea that there is a clear curriculum with the very big difference being children are primarily responsible for choosing from that menu of options, trusted that their own interests are an adequate guide. Someone who definitely falls outside the progressive reformers would be John Holt, yet he passionately argues along similar lines as what Kubrick is saying here. Holt: "... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it." By modern definitions, Holt is not even exactly "homeschooling". More accurately, he advocates what would be called "Unschooling" -- the idea that home life observing adults is a more than powerful enough motivator for young children to acquire basic skills.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Aaawww nuts. Yes, education could be vastly improved, but you know what, my sons school is vastly improved over what I had. Since 1913 when IQ tests started being nationally or internationally graded, the IQ median has been kept at 100. But without that smoothing the median level of 1913 would be 77 or so today, and the median today would be in the 130s We have got smarter, or perhaps we have had mental tools passed onto us through education and social norms. ref: err... a Ted talk recently released....

maxmcd 13y ago
Yes, and isn't that change usually attributed to types of IQ test questions becoming outdated and part of popular knowledge? Attributing any change in IQ tests to a more intelligent population seems dubious at best. Any chance you have a link to that ted talk? Also, my ability to communicate instantaneously is absurdly better than what my parents had, doesn't mean we should stop striving to improve improve improve, especially in an area as important as education.
polymatter 13y ago
for interest sake, its called the Flynn effect [1]. Lots of reasons have been given for it, of which better schooling is just one. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
tokenadult 13y ago
Here is your reference, the talk by James R. Flynn on TED (spoken in March 2013, published on TED in September 2013) "James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'." http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.html http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h... The research by James R. Flynn on changes in IQ raw score levels over time in many different countries has been described by intelligence researcher N. J. Mackintosh like this: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." (IQ and Human Intelligence 1998, p. 104) In general, Flynn is a very respected researcher on human intelligence. Here is what the late Arthur Jensen said about Flynn back in the 1980s: "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Modgil, Sohan & Modgil, Celia (Eds.) (1987) Arthur Jensen: Concensus and Controversy New York: Falmer. Here's what Charles Murray says in his back cover blurb for Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?: "This book is a gold mine of pointers to interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses are in his debt." Flynn has earned the respect and praise of any honest researcher who takes time to read the scholarly literature on human intelligence. Robert Sternberg, Ian Deary, Stephen Pinker, Stephen Ceci, Sir Michael Rutter, and plenty of other eminent psychologists recommend Flynn's research.

rst 13y ago

Interesting how the public school "reform" movement in the US cuts hard against this sort of experimentation --- in particular, by mandating curricula, and evaluating students and schools by performance on cookie-cutter tests that make no room for individual interests or variation.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
Not really. That is not intrinsic to the reform movement. That is the educational system responding to political pressure. The reformers have to play the game by the rules as they exist in the moment. If the standardized cookie cutter test results become the coin of the realm, then every kind change will be justified by test results, whether the proponents think that is a useful idea or not.

vinceguidry 13y ago

There have always been techniques and methods available to vastly improve the outcomes of students. The problem is that education is a very political subject and the winds shift as quickly as the politicians do. Education is a favorite pet issue of every wanna-be FDR and for whatever reason, they can't just let teachers do their jobs. They have to tell them what they can and can't teach, what targets they have to meet, create arbitrary and senseless metrics of merit. So forgive me if I'm unimpressed with this so-called solution to education. Would it be better than what we have now? Sure it will, virtually anything would be that reduces the amount of oversight in the system. Could you sell it to the public? Not a snowball's chance in hell. It wouldn't last a year.

tokenadult 13y ago

The article reports, without references, "So in 2011—when Paloma entered his class—Juárez Correa decided to start experimenting. He began reading books and searching for ideas online. Soon he stumbled on a video describing the work of Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in the UK. In the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, Mitra conducted experiments in which he gave children in India access to computers. Without any instruction, they were able to teach themselves a surprising variety of things, from DNA replication to English." Where are the publications about this? How much peer review have they had? We have discussed Mitra's work here on HN before. What is the latest news about follow-up on his studies? I would be delighted to hear about new and more effective methods of helping young learners learn (I am a teacher of young learners) and I am especially interested in following up on the research to make sure that it is accurate. http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php (Above link is an example of my following up on educational research claims. I do this continually.) AFTER EDIT: I find by Google Scholar search that most of Mitra's publications on education research are reposted on his own Hole-in-the-Wall website. http://hole-in-the-wall.com/ http://hole-in-the-wall.com/

pinaceae 13y ago

let's have some dissenting opinion here. not all kids are equal. not all kids want to learn. in each and every discussion over this topic people bring up quotes by very smart people, like kubrick, sagan, etc. on how organised learning is not needed, a young mind wants to learn, grows like a flower, all by itself, even better without the shackles of structured education. i call bullshit. this is biased through the people stating these arguments. if you're a genius or borderline genious then of course the standardized school system is not for you. if you're smarter and faster than your teachers the whole thing can't work. but the vast majority of kids is not like that. yes, some people are plain dumb. nothing to do, not a bad thing, pure nature. might be great at something, sports, fine manual labor, but simply not good with high mental tasks. some kids don't like reading, it's too hard and does not bring any value to them, nothing sticks, no mental images are formed. just letters stuck together. this romantic view of humans is the root of a lot of failed social experiments. from open school systems (montessori, waldorf,...) to the new humans that communism wanted to create. the modern school system is built to provide a base level of education, targeted for the medium range intellect. learn basic skills, through repetition - tried and tested method, from sports to art to education. reading, writing, counting, calculating. if you're one of those kids that taught yourself how to read at age 4, well, guess what, your experience in school will be subpar. but just don't go around and push for school reform to have schools fitted for your style of self learning. the vast majority is not like you.

UK-AL 13y ago
Have you tried doing nothing over a long time? I'm not a smart person, and it felt bad. At first its feels great, Sitting down at couch, playing video games, eating and drinking what you want. Few weeks pass, and you became bored and un-stimulated. You start to crave novelty, and curiosity. You pick up a book, you watch educational videos and so forth. Except its self directed. You become addicted, to some activities because your doing it for internal values, not external pressures. This is how I mastered subjects. This is also the point when a teacher becomes truly useful, because they will working with you to feed YOUR curiosity rather than following a set standard. Most people do this.
writtles 13y ago
Also, socioeconomic status is key here. i.e. If no one in your life values education then incentive to learn is greatly diminished no matter how intelligent you are.

riggins 13y ago

I always find it a little sad to reflect on education because I think we can unleash a generation of geniuses. I don't think it even takes a radical teaching method. I think it takes a radical reordering of priorities. Instead of glorifying athletes and closet organizers famous for making sex tapes ... we need to glorify education, hard work, and resourcefulness. And parents need to reinforce the message by rewarding/encouraging those traits.

teach 13y ago
Changing public education in America will be hard. But changing the culture would be even harder.
vdaniuk 13y ago
Glorify hard work? Madness. We don't need these protestant values in the coming post-scarcity economy. We should glorify efficiency, curiousity, self-sufficiency and internal state of tranquil happiness.

ihsw 13y ago

The real question is -- can we do this on a mass scale that the general populace can benefit from? The problem with getting kids to learn is public education, namely where one-size-fits-all is sacrosanct.

GrinningFool 13y ago

And who, in the role of mentor or teacher, has not discovered this to be an obvious truth? The difference between "here is what you do to solve this" and "here is the problem and (possibly) some areas that it might be worth focusing on". Someone given the latter wil come away with knowledge. Someone given the former will come away with a set of steps to follow. That aside, this long-winded series of human-interest anecdotes reminds me of why I stopped reading Wired. The whole thing could have been written in 1/3rd the space.

truthteller 13y ago

"One SIMPLE TRICK to radically change educational outcomes!!" it's amazing that people still actively publicize idiotic self promoters and charlatans like Mitra.

evunveot 13y ago

Unsurprisingly, the headline's "new" teaching method isn't particularly new (as the timeline sidebar in the article itself makes somewhat apparent). For example, the Sudbury Valley School [1] has been around since 1968 and is even more "radical". No grades, no curriculum, no classes, no separation by age. The governance of the school is democratic, with all decisions -- including those regarding budget and staff -- decided by a body called the School Meeting which is composed of the staff and the students together, with one vote per person. The Sudbury School of Atlanta has an interesting blog post [2] describing how the students can naturally pick up basic skills through participating in the management of the school, in this case by choosing and acquiring a school pet. This Wired article is more about the undirected aspect, but the compelling thing to me about adding the democratic element (the oldest running example is the Summerhill School [3], established in 1921) is that the decisions being made affect the student, so the student has a motive to participate and learns as a by-product. Thus there's a hope that children in general could benefit, not only those children who are particularly "self-directed learners". Additionally, the things they're learning (reading, writing and arithmetic, but also teamwork, negotiation and leadership) are directly beneficial in society -- because the school itself is a microcosm of society. It may not be a model that produces "geniuses", but it does seem like a good model for producing adults/citizens. (I have no personal experience with alternative schooling.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School [2] http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-assignment-learn-math-reading.html http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-a... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School

Ologn 13y ago
You're right that there is nothing new about almost all of these ideas. John Dewey covered a lot of this in his 1902 book "The Child and the Curriculum".
- niccl 13y ago
  So what if it's not absolutely new? It's new to the people in their specific context and _appears_ to be producing results, again, in that specific context. Very little of what we do is new, but still has merit when applied in a novel way or a novel context.

thehme 13y ago

This article tells an amazing and inspiring story. I love the burro tale and how it illustrates the positive attitude of these kids who really want to learn. I hope that everyone donates to http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movement/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movem... Teachers like Sergio Juárez Correa are an example of what teachers should be doing, specially in rich countries like the US.

fexl 13y ago

"The exterior of his schools will be mostly glass, so outsiders can peer in." That reminds me of one of the technical schools I saw in downtown Lima, Peru. It had a huge number of large glass windows on the front, and as I walked along the main street, I could peer in and see row after row of tables, each with several large Apple monitors, each with a student or two in front of it. It was massive. I'd really like to go in there next time I visit and find out more about their techniques. (Incidentally, several blocks away there was a high school named "The Albert Einstein Institute". :)

Charos 13y ago

Freedom in learning is so, so important. This case study illuminates that pretty well. It's a great look into an example of allowing children to truly learn at their own pace, with gentle guidance regarding subject areas and provided with the resources they need to discover new knowledge. The story is heartwarming and a great read, and a useful comparison to the modern American style of education. As others have pointed out, there is no magic bullet. This method would work incredibly well for 90% of subjects taught in elementary school. However, for non-English language learning, additional guidance would be needed - the teachers could nudge them towards Duolingo, various online multilingual dictionaries, etc. I do believe that this system could be used as the core of a new teaching paradigm, but it is not solely sufficient for a complete learning experience to the standards that we have come to expect in America. For developing countries (which, sadly, Mexico bears much resemblance to), this could be an incredible tool. An internet-connected computer and guidance from involved teachers can easily produce students who are ready to help lift their countries out of economic malaise. In this way, I believe the internet can serve as the Great Equalizer many of us hoped it would someday become. If this method used alone is capable of producing students 70% as capable (by some nonexistent perfect metric) as those in first-world nations, that would still be an enormous leap forward for developing nations. I think these guys are really on to something in this regard. I find it interesting that as our civilizations mature, we find ourselves oscillating back away from the industrialized American education system paradigms and towards a more holistic, broadly-focused educational strategy using qualitative methods rather than quantitative objectives. Students are not a homogeneous population, and historically we have tried to deal with this issue by ignoring it and cramming them all into the same mold, with minor variations. It makes me glad to see that we are starting to consider that we should instead allow for this variance by designing systems with broader definitions and qualitative goals, to allow the students to grow in the directions they are best suited or disposed to.

lninyo 13y ago

I don't have time for reading 8 pages of garbage to get half a paragraph worth of real content out. TL;DR

smellf 13y ago

> in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers. This has as much to do with schools hiring "staffers" and "instructional assistants" as a cost-cutting measure as it does with top-heavy public school bureaucracy. It's akin to the "associate/adjunct professor" fiasco in a college environment.