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.
Ah, but how can you possibly know whether the average person is innately stupid and incurious or whether school makes them that way?
Anyone who spends time with small children knows that before they reach school age, they are all absurdly curious about the world, and they absorb information like a sponge. I suppose you think it's just a coincidence that they lose that curiosity right around the time they start being stuffed into classrooms.
Writers like John Taylor Gatto have written hundreds of pages going through historical and psychological research to show that "genius is as common as dirt."
Your contrary opinion is actually one of the most insidious false lessons we learn in school, and it's a very useful form a social control. "See, most people are too stupid to manage themselves, you'd better let us elites make all the hard decisions for you."
And even if I grant your premise, it still doesn't support maintaining the schools we have, because they demonstrably don't work at conveying a "base level of education". They're elaborate kabuki, where everybody pretends the work matters and everybody knows it doesn't, and the average student retains almost nothing.
> I suppose you think it's just a coincidence that they lose that curiosity right around the time they start being stuffed into classrooms.
I mean come on. Yeah, little kids are curious, but do you really think that curiosity will translate to the amount of sustained concentration it takes to learn a complex subject like algebra.
I'm currently taking a computer science class and any time I don't feel like studying but do it anyway, I make a mental note that I would not have done that work if it weren't for the class. And it's one good reason why formal education beats autodidacticism, at least for me.
It can happen. Lots of little kids and teenagers sustain effort to play video games.
There is something to be said about being able to sustain effort over long periods of time (months, years) to master something, whose training includes things that are not pleasant. However, this is not something that formal education does very well. Ultimately, the person learning is the one who has to concentrate. Sticks and carrots do not necessarily goad someone into concentrating.
1. I dispute your assertion that children 'lose that curiosity right around the time they start being stuffed into classrooms' - I don't think most people lose their curiosity. I think some people who chafe against rules and conformity may, but I don't see most people being in that category.
2. I also find being able to focus on subjects that are not innately interesting is a useful skill, as are conforming to simple rules. There can be other reasons for following rules than oppressive social control. Maybe preschool teachers have to show up on time so the children in their care can be supervised appropriately, or drivers have to stay in their lanes to avoid accidents.
3. 'because they demonstrably don't work at conveying a "base level of education"' - 99% of people in the USA are literate. I don't know of comparable data, but nearly everybody can preform arithmetic too.
Actually, the recorded literacy rate is 86% in the USA[0].
The only number I can find for numeracy is this study [1], and depending on whether 'level 1' is considered numerate, it seems to show that between 5% and 20% of the US population is innumerate.
In the Article:
"The previous year, 45 percent had essentially failed the math section, and 31 percent had failed Spanish. This time only 7 percent failed math and 3.5 percent failed Spanish. And while none had posted an Excellent score before, 63 percent were now in that category in math.
The language scores were very high. Even the lowest was well above the national average. Then he noticed the math scores. The top score in Juárez Correa’s class was 921. Zavala Hernandez looked over at the top score in the state: It was 921. When he saw the next box over, the hairs on his arms stood up. The top score in the entire country was also 921."
Granted, it's a fairly limited sample, but it's a sample that shows incredible results as well. Based on this classroom of children, that came from circumstances as far away from privilege as possible, the scores shifted from:
45% Math failure -> 7% Math Failure
31% Spanish failure -> 3.5% Spanish Failure
I don't think you're giving the majority of children/humans enough credit for their potential.
To counter argue myself, there clearly wasn't a 0% failure rate. And while 7% is somewhat low, there is a high probability that some of the children in the class were close to failing with others a little better than that and so on.
Why can't we have an education system that does both? Why not have open ended classrooms that let kids learn at their own pace with personal tutor's to help kids that aren't thriving in that situation.
Frankly, I hope none of the education-related ideas coming out of high tech hubs such as the Silicon Valley, come true. Nothing wrong with the fine individuals living and working here, but we are not the most gifted ones when it comes to figuring out how human beings function.
We are great at figuring out systems. Hardware. Computers. Robots. Networks thereof.
But self-aware nature-made wetware... please, just step away from that stuff. You're only making a mess.
Wow, so nice to see a refreshing attitude here on HN. You nailed the arrogance of SV types. Not everything can be improved with technology, just look at these massive failures in disrupting education : Coursera, Edx, Udacity. I, too, hope that engineers will just step away from education. /s
"Today, there have been 85 million users to date. Each month, there are 6 million unique users on the Khan Academy site. In total, there have been 260 million lessons delivered and over 1 billion problems answered on the related exercises."
http://jpalfrey.andover.edu/2013/05/09/khan-academy-meets-ph...
"SV types" can't solve more socially-oriented/soft problems? All of them? That's too bad, since these skills seem to be vital for things like human computer interaction and interaction design.
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.
In my view this is almost entirely the issue. Yes there are always exceptional cases where a kid from a terrible background turns out to be a genius self-motivated learner, but for the most part, if a kid has both parents in and out of jail, bouncing from foster home to foster home, poor nutrition, always living in "survival" mode, he's not going to do well in school. All the curriculum theory and standardized testing in the world will never help that kid, and really neither will anything else. Irresponsible parenting is really the root of almost all the problems we have with education, and that problem is outside the scope of what educators can solve.
In fairness, the article is entitled, "How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses"
It doesn't say something like, "How a Radical New Teaching Method Will Make All Children Geniuses".
Personally, I think that your dissenting opinion (and its bag of implications) fosters mediocrity in education that hurts the kids on the lower end of the learning curve almost as much as it hurts the kids on the upper end... maybe more so.
i am all for identifying outliers (both on the upper and lower end of the spectrum) and getting them out of the regular system.
you're a genius? off to genius school.
you're just not capable of keeping up with the progress of the class? off to special ed, where the pace is better for you.
different countries approach these things differently, but identifying high and low potentials is proving to be really hard as the symptoms sometimes overlap (boredom).
The single most important thing we can teach is the value of knowledge. The availability of information will continue to grow, the diversity of teaching methods will continue to expand, and the sociopolitical landscapes will continue to change; by teaching how important knowledge is, we can inspire everyone to take advantage of the resources that are increasingly available, and tailored, to the individual.
Attempting to maximize the area with a y value on the bell curve because we fail to utilize existing resources effectively [1] does not support a dissent with the forward progress—the increasing diversity of—education. You're right, not all kids are equal—and that's exactly why we need to open-source education.
The child who doesn't want to learn is the child who doesn't learn to walk and talk. They are few and far between.
Things may happen later on that co-opt or subvert whatever gets the child going, and by the time you come along the child doesn't want to learn, not on your terms at least, not in the ways that you recognize.
Perhaps a tangent, but Waldorf education is the polar opposite of an open school system. It does emphasize the whole human, giving a lot of time to various arts, but the program is curriculum oriented and teacher driven. It's also quite rigorous; having formed the basis of my education, transferring into public high school was a shock.
It's also closely connected to an odd but harmless religious sect, which is a tangent on a tangent.
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.
Young children that don't ask a boatload of questions seems to be the exception. It seems to be that the youngest children with language-ability are the most curious, curiously so young that they probably haven't started school yet...
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.