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Articles titled 'Why schools are failing ...' annoy me intensely. They're almost always written by a parent with a struggling or gifted child who has almost no

Articles titled 'Why schools are failing ...' annoy me intensely. They're almost always written by a parent with a struggling or gifted child who has almost no actual experience of the education system, other than that they attended a school twenty years ago. Modern education is run with a 'one shoe fits all' approach. We try to cater for boys, girls, those with learning difficulties, those that are gifted, those from impoverished households, those that are affluent, and in general every sector of society that are dumped in our classrooms. I stand in front of 30 different students, 5 times a day and try my best to educate them all to the best of my ability, and do you know what? Sometimes I don't succeed. It pains me, but some kids slip through the cracks and don't get the education they deserve. I try my best, but there are practicalities that need to be considered. If you want an education system that caters for all students, regardless of academic ability and socio-economic background then you need to realise that this does not come cheaply. Stick me in a classroom with 10 students instead of 30 and I'll have more time to spend with each one, be better able to take into account their personal education needs, be able to tailor my lessons to individuals rather than focusing on what will suit the majority. Also realise that you'll need to employ three times as many teachers and that the your taxes will need to be substantially increased. On some level, our modern education system (and previous education systems) fails everyone, to a lesser or greater degree, and few students leave school having reached their full potential. If society wants this to change then the answer is to stop treating schools as a free baby-sitting service, allowing both parents to go out to work and contribute to a nation's GDP, and start treating schools as an investment in a nation's future.

stevenmays 12y ago
The point of the article was how compulsory education is failing boys specifically. What is your assessment of that as an educator?
- MarcScott 12y ago
  She is not talking about how compulsory education is failing boys, but about how it is failing her boy. She talks about 'Little House on the Prairie' as if she expects all boys to be provided lessons on splitting logs and herding cattle. This is not an education that would suit all boys, just hers. In my experience, boys are doing fine at school. They tend to underachieve in their early years, where they are less inclined to study in comparison to girls. As they progress through school and get to specialise, they tend to do better.
  - squidfood 12y ago
    If there's a specific demographic whose needs are not met, then teaching methods for that demographic should be examined. We've gone through it for girls, gifted, the challenged, etc. Why shouldn't there be similar issues for boys? How many anecdotes do you want? My son? My friends' sons? The dramatic lack (and cutting back) of physical activity at schools is a systemic issue that impacts many.
    - pgeorgi 12y ago
      Too add an anecdote: I always thought (as a boy) that the 2 hours of compulsory and graded physical activity per week were 2 hours too many.
  - stevenmays 12y ago
    She used her child as an anecdote for all boys. Do you think that the current childhood education strategy is what is resulting in 1/3 higher college success rate of women? What do you think would be necessary to get that ratio a more gender neutral 50/50?
    - MarcScott 12y ago
      Probably the same sort of strategies that would narrow the pay gap between males and females and make post-college salaries more gender neutral. Using your child as an anecdote makes it just that - an anecdote. I teach male students who are forced to engage in 2 hours of Physical Education every week, and have to endure failure after failure in the subject. As I said in my initial comment, if we want boys, or any group, to succeed we need to be tailoring our lessons to those students. Resources are finite however, and this is the real issue.
      - mreiland 12y ago
        post-college salaries are w/i 5% of each other when controlled for variables such as education, experience, and profession.
      - 12y ago
copsarebastards 12y ago
> If you want an education system that caters for all students, regardless of academic ability and socio-economic background then you need to realise that this does not come cheaply. Personally, I'd love to see more of my nations GDP devoted to educating my kids rather than devoting that money to getting my kids killed in foreign wars after their 18th birthday.
- pm90 12y ago
  I wonder what would happen if the next presidential candidate had that as his/her mission: "I will invest more money in educating our children better".
  - wernercd 12y ago
    The same thing that happened when our last one had a mission: "Hope and Change" What happened? We've lost hope and nothing has changed.
    - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
      "Hope and Change" isn't a mission statement. It's a slogan, and completely different than saying "I will invest more money in educating our children better".
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        I see your point. "I will invest more money in educating our children better" is not a vague as "Hope and Change", but it is still quite vague.
  - hrktb 12y ago
    I have a hard time framing it differently, but how relevant is a politician's mission stated in any shape or form? I'd think whatever statement is done, it first needs support from groups with actual economic or social power. What we can wonder about is, why does our most influencial groups in our society value school education so low that it won't be set as a nationwide mission statement ?
jqm 12y ago
I hear you. But I still think kids from an early age need the experience of doing something "useful and important" rather than just practice exercises that bore both them and the instructors. This is what hooks a lot of kids into actually learning, and is rarely done in US educational system.
- MarcScott 12y ago
  You're posting on HN, so I'll assume you know how to code. Forgive me if I'm wrong. When you're learning a new language or framework, do you instantly do something 'useful and important'? More likely you do something that you could easily accomplish with your old tools, in order to learn the new ones. This is the nature of learning. I teach CS and Science. Writing a script that calculates the first 1000 primes is not 'useful or important', but it is educationally valuable. Getting kids to balance chemical equations is no 'useful or important' but it is an important skill if they want to become chemists. 'useful and important' means different things to different people. I have never needed to speak a word of Latin in my life, so the hours I spent learning the language were pointless. The hours I spent practising solving quadratic equations however, were very useful to me, but not so much for my wife who is an English teacher.
  - jqm 12y ago
    Yes, I know how to program. To answer your question, I learned enough to be able to do a few small things (Agree... schooling it is at this point) it opened my eyes as to what could be done, and I took off doing some projects. Soon enough, I started finding the holes in my knowledge, and started filling them in. I have been at this for years, and expect to be doing it indefinitely. There may be a point education begins, I'm not sure there should be a point at which it ends.... I have had to go back and systematically study some things (as one would in school)... but it means so much more when it is for purpose, and the information is retained. And I'm selective. Time is not an infinite resource. I practice lazy loading. I have long since stopped trying to cram my head full of irrelevant facts or skills that don't make the world any better. If there is a framework or language I think offers some advantages, I learn it if I feel cost vs. benefit is there. Otherwise I take brief measure and make a mental note of existence in case I need it later. I have learned a lot like this and don't generally get lost in the weeds... I believe that this is how _real_ education occurs. Or rather, that this is the method by which knowledge becomes more than theory and a living skill that allows one to produce something. Not knocking classroom education. Some is certainly needed. But I thought this article was spot on.
bostonpete 12y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to write this off as the isolated concerns of a single parent. None of what you said addresses the authors claim that boys are statistically falling behind girls in every academic measure. There are more substantive sources that have made similar claims, for example this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided/dp/0684849577 http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided/dp/0684...
- MarcScott 12y ago
  What I said specifically addresses the issue, but not just for boys, but for every group within a classroom. The girls in my classroom work harder than the boys. I know this to be true from observation. Maybe boys just like to slack off a little more. Maybe boys don't like competing with girls. Maybe boys are less inclined to seek approval from their teachers. The fact is however, if I had fewer students to teach, I could focus more energy on those boys. I've also tutored students on a one-to-one basis, and in such situation I see no difference between boys and girls.
  - gress 12y ago
    Sounds like when you teach a class, you are doing so in a way that suits girls better than it suits boys. It also sounds as though you don't understand why. As you say, smaller classes would probably help, however what would also help is to actually try to understand why your teaching methods are less suited to boys than to girls.
  - bostonpete 12y ago
    To me, your comments seem to reinforce the article's point -- namely that the structure of typical modern classrooms does not help boys succeed as much as girls. The only other way to read your comment is that boys are just inherently less capable/motivated than girls, which seems just as objectionable to me as historical attitudes which dismissed women or minorities as less capable and/or motivated. I don't think the only possibility here is 1-to-1 education for boys. Many believe that there are other ways of structuring the learning environment and school schedule (e.g. more gross motor breaks) in a way that would help draw out the strengths of boys. In the end, I wonder if this won't steer us more towards separating the genders for at least part of the school day. This would be politically challenging in many public school systems though, in particular because of the historical abuses of "separate but equal" systems.
karmacondon 12y ago
If society wants this to change then the answer is to stop treating schools as a free baby-sitting service, allowing both parents to go out to work and contribute to a nation's GDP, and start treating schools as an investment in a nation's future. I think society is getting exactly what it wants: free baby-sitting service. I imagine that most teachers chose their profession because they want to educate, inspire and shape young minds. But it seems like the primary expectation is that they keep children safe and occupied during the work day. It seems reasonable that smaller class sizes would allow teachers to connect with more students, but that would involve structural and logistical changes beyond just hiring more teachers. It would be very expensive, but entirely possible for most countries to do. There is a perception that the primary purpose of school is 'education', but people vote with their dollars and effective teaching seems to lose out to baby sitting every time. This might be because the function of managing children is more beneficial to society than rigorously educating them is. Allowing both parents to work may contribute more to a nation's GDP than giving as many children as possible a very thorough education. I don't know of any studies on this topic in particular, in part because it seems to be a bit taboo to question the value of a traditional education. But it's entirely possible that we should be spending less money on primary and secondary school education and more money on things that will make life easier for parents. It certainly doesn't seem likely that this will ever be seriously considered, but the question of what it means to "fail" our children is one that we should keep bringing up.
MetaCosm 12y ago
What annoys me is when it is treated as a money issue. The US spends more per student than any other country, and among the most as a % of GDP (7.3%) well above the average of industrialized countries of 6.3% -- there are countries that spend more (Denmark, 8%) but not in absolute terms, only as a % of GDP. We spend upwards of $15,000+ per student per year and still can't get the job done. This pervasive myth that it is a "not enough money in the system" does a great disservice to everyone involved and means we never discuss the REAL issue. There is tons of money, but the systematic problems are immune to money -- we could double spending and it wouldn't fix the issues. Parents don't care, teachers are protected by a powerful union so they don't care... student are treated as "must move" assets, standardized testing is held up as the be all, end all of measuring progress. Instead of continuing to throw money down a blackhole that seems to not generate better outcomes, maybe it is time to rethink our approach... or admit that schools are tiny people prisons and useful filters and have very little to do with educating children, and more to do with segmenting and ranking them (which is useful, but can be done far more cheaply).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
facepalm 12y ago
Uh I think this isn't about you - it's about the problem of (some) boys in school. It's presumably not your fault that they have to endure a "one shoe fits all" approach, but neither is it their fault.
washill 12y ago
Did pretty bad in HS, which I graduated a few years ago. Mandatory work is the worst way to introduce fields of knowledge. In this way learning conflicts with school's prime directive watch the kids. At scale that means keeping a person occupied for 12 years, means worksheets. Leaving school I had associated learning with a loss of agency, which might have lasted if I hadn't the time to follow personal projects and interests. Assuming the school day couldn't be shortened a more progressive education system would maximize ability to self direct study, while using funds on the modern components, facilities, and experts that would best enable students to participate in study relevant to the world stage.

stevenmays 12y ago

The point of the article was how compulsory education is failing boys specifically. What is your assessment of that as an educator?

MarcScott 12y ago
She is not talking about how compulsory education is failing boys, but about how it is failing her boy. She talks about 'Little House on the Prairie' as if she expects all boys to be provided lessons on splitting logs and herding cattle. This is not an education that would suit all boys, just hers. In my experience, boys are doing fine at school. They tend to underachieve in their early years, where they are less inclined to study in comparison to girls. As they progress through school and get to specialise, they tend to do better.
- squidfood 12y ago
  If there's a specific demographic whose needs are not met, then teaching methods for that demographic should be examined. We've gone through it for girls, gifted, the challenged, etc. Why shouldn't there be similar issues for boys? How many anecdotes do you want? My son? My friends' sons? The dramatic lack (and cutting back) of physical activity at schools is a systemic issue that impacts many.
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    Too add an anecdote: I always thought (as a boy) that the 2 hours of compulsory and graded physical activity per week were 2 hours too many.
- stevenmays 12y ago
  She used her child as an anecdote for all boys. Do you think that the current childhood education strategy is what is resulting in 1/3 higher college success rate of women? What do you think would be necessary to get that ratio a more gender neutral 50/50?
  - MarcScott 12y ago
    Probably the same sort of strategies that would narrow the pay gap between males and females and make post-college salaries more gender neutral. Using your child as an anecdote makes it just that - an anecdote. I teach male students who are forced to engage in 2 hours of Physical Education every week, and have to endure failure after failure in the subject. As I said in my initial comment, if we want boys, or any group, to succeed we need to be tailoring our lessons to those students. Resources are finite however, and this is the real issue.
    - mreiland 12y ago
      post-college salaries are w/i 5% of each other when controlled for variables such as education, experience, and profession.
    - 12y ago

copsarebastards 12y ago

> If you want an education system that caters for all students, regardless of academic ability and socio-economic background then you need to realise that this does not come cheaply. Personally, I'd love to see more of my nations GDP devoted to educating my kids rather than devoting that money to getting my kids killed in foreign wars after their 18th birthday.

pm90 12y ago
I wonder what would happen if the next presidential candidate had that as his/her mission: "I will invest more money in educating our children better".
- wernercd 12y ago
  The same thing that happened when our last one had a mission: "Hope and Change" What happened? We've lost hope and nothing has changed.
  - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
    "Hope and Change" isn't a mission statement. It's a slogan, and completely different than saying "I will invest more money in educating our children better".
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      I see your point. "I will invest more money in educating our children better" is not a vague as "Hope and Change", but it is still quite vague.
- hrktb 12y ago
  I have a hard time framing it differently, but how relevant is a politician's mission stated in any shape or form? I'd think whatever statement is done, it first needs support from groups with actual economic or social power. What we can wonder about is, why does our most influencial groups in our society value school education so low that it won't be set as a nationwide mission statement ?

jqm 12y ago

I hear you. But I still think kids from an early age need the experience of doing something "useful and important" rather than just practice exercises that bore both them and the instructors. This is what hooks a lot of kids into actually learning, and is rarely done in US educational system.

MarcScott 12y ago
You're posting on HN, so I'll assume you know how to code. Forgive me if I'm wrong. When you're learning a new language or framework, do you instantly do something 'useful and important'? More likely you do something that you could easily accomplish with your old tools, in order to learn the new ones. This is the nature of learning. I teach CS and Science. Writing a script that calculates the first 1000 primes is not 'useful or important', but it is educationally valuable. Getting kids to balance chemical equations is no 'useful or important' but it is an important skill if they want to become chemists. 'useful and important' means different things to different people. I have never needed to speak a word of Latin in my life, so the hours I spent learning the language were pointless. The hours I spent practising solving quadratic equations however, were very useful to me, but not so much for my wife who is an English teacher.
- jqm 12y ago
  Yes, I know how to program. To answer your question, I learned enough to be able to do a few small things (Agree... schooling it is at this point) it opened my eyes as to what could be done, and I took off doing some projects. Soon enough, I started finding the holes in my knowledge, and started filling them in. I have been at this for years, and expect to be doing it indefinitely. There may be a point education begins, I'm not sure there should be a point at which it ends.... I have had to go back and systematically study some things (as one would in school)... but it means so much more when it is for purpose, and the information is retained. And I'm selective. Time is not an infinite resource. I practice lazy loading. I have long since stopped trying to cram my head full of irrelevant facts or skills that don't make the world any better. If there is a framework or language I think offers some advantages, I learn it if I feel cost vs. benefit is there. Otherwise I take brief measure and make a mental note of existence in case I need it later. I have learned a lot like this and don't generally get lost in the weeds... I believe that this is how _real_ education occurs. Or rather, that this is the method by which knowledge becomes more than theory and a living skill that allows one to produce something. Not knocking classroom education. Some is certainly needed. But I thought this article was spot on.

bostonpete 12y ago

I wouldn't be so quick to write this off as the isolated concerns of a single parent. None of what you said addresses the authors claim that boys are statistically falling behind girls in every academic measure. There are more substantive sources that have made similar claims, for example this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided/dp/0684849577 http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided/dp/0684...

MarcScott 12y ago
What I said specifically addresses the issue, but not just for boys, but for every group within a classroom. The girls in my classroom work harder than the boys. I know this to be true from observation. Maybe boys just like to slack off a little more. Maybe boys don't like competing with girls. Maybe boys are less inclined to seek approval from their teachers. The fact is however, if I had fewer students to teach, I could focus more energy on those boys. I've also tutored students on a one-to-one basis, and in such situation I see no difference between boys and girls.
- gress 12y ago
  Sounds like when you teach a class, you are doing so in a way that suits girls better than it suits boys. It also sounds as though you don't understand why. As you say, smaller classes would probably help, however what would also help is to actually try to understand why your teaching methods are less suited to boys than to girls.
- bostonpete 12y ago
  To me, your comments seem to reinforce the article's point -- namely that the structure of typical modern classrooms does not help boys succeed as much as girls. The only other way to read your comment is that boys are just inherently less capable/motivated than girls, which seems just as objectionable to me as historical attitudes which dismissed women or minorities as less capable and/or motivated. I don't think the only possibility here is 1-to-1 education for boys. Many believe that there are other ways of structuring the learning environment and school schedule (e.g. more gross motor breaks) in a way that would help draw out the strengths of boys. In the end, I wonder if this won't steer us more towards separating the genders for at least part of the school day. This would be politically challenging in many public school systems though, in particular because of the historical abuses of "separate but equal" systems.

karmacondon 12y ago

If society wants this to change then the answer is to stop treating schools as a free baby-sitting service, allowing both parents to go out to work and contribute to a nation's GDP, and start treating schools as an investment in a nation's future. I think society is getting exactly what it wants: free baby-sitting service. I imagine that most teachers chose their profession because they want to educate, inspire and shape young minds. But it seems like the primary expectation is that they keep children safe and occupied during the work day. It seems reasonable that smaller class sizes would allow teachers to connect with more students, but that would involve structural and logistical changes beyond just hiring more teachers. It would be very expensive, but entirely possible for most countries to do. There is a perception that the primary purpose of school is 'education', but people vote with their dollars and effective teaching seems to lose out to baby sitting every time. This might be because the function of managing children is more beneficial to society than rigorously educating them is. Allowing both parents to work may contribute more to a nation's GDP than giving as many children as possible a very thorough education. I don't know of any studies on this topic in particular, in part because it seems to be a bit taboo to question the value of a traditional education. But it's entirely possible that we should be spending less money on primary and secondary school education and more money on things that will make life easier for parents. It certainly doesn't seem likely that this will ever be seriously considered, but the question of what it means to "fail" our children is one that we should keep bringing up.

MetaCosm 12y ago

What annoys me is when it is treated as a money issue. The US spends more per student than any other country, and among the most as a % of GDP (7.3%) well above the average of industrialized countries of 6.3% -- there are countries that spend more (Denmark, 8%) but not in absolute terms, only as a % of GDP. We spend upwards of $15,000+ per student per year and still can't get the job done. This pervasive myth that it is a "not enough money in the system" does a great disservice to everyone involved and means we never discuss the REAL issue. There is tons of money, but the systematic problems are immune to money -- we could double spending and it wouldn't fix the issues. Parents don't care, teachers are protected by a powerful union so they don't care... student are treated as "must move" assets, standardized testing is held up as the be all, end all of measuring progress. Instead of continuing to throw money down a blackhole that seems to not generate better outcomes, maybe it is time to rethink our approach... or admit that schools are tiny people prisons and useful filters and have very little to do with educating children, and more to do with segmenting and ranking them (which is useful, but can be done far more cheaply).

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

facepalm 12y ago

Uh I think this isn't about you - it's about the problem of (some) boys in school. It's presumably not your fault that they have to endure a "one shoe fits all" approach, but neither is it their fault.

washill 12y ago

Did pretty bad in HS, which I graduated a few years ago. Mandatory work is the worst way to introduce fields of knowledge. In this way learning conflicts with school's prime directive watch the kids. At scale that means keeping a person occupied for 12 years, means worksheets. Leaving school I had associated learning with a loss of agency, which might have lasted if I hadn't the time to follow personal projects and interests. Assuming the school day couldn't be shortened a more progressive education system would maximize ability to self direct study, while using funds on the modern components, facilities, and experts that would best enable students to participate in study relevant to the world stage.