Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/could-you-modify-it-to-stop-students-from-becoming-this-advanced/

by docgnome • 15 years ago

279 234 15 years ago

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

It doesn't surprise me at all. The incentives are all wrong. Teachers are incentivized to push students to the next grade with as little fuss as possible. They aren't ever asked to help kids improve themselves... Only to make sure they learned the minimum required knowledge.

That teachers would ask that students be kept ignorant just to make their job easier does not surprise me a bit.

To be clear, not all teachers are asking this. Some teachers really care about the students. I had quite a few good teachers in school, and only a few bad ones. But my perception is that that balance has been changing. Lower pay, more work, and general bad conditions have been driving the good teachers to go elsewhere while the bad ones stay to collect a paycheck.

jbooth3• 15 years ago

So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?

I know that anecdote < data but surely anecdote > ramblings, right?

talmand3• 15 years ago

"So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?"

Not at all. I would have to assume he is describing the current state of education as he sees it and not his direct experience with education from whenever he was previously in school. It is perfectly fine for him to say that, in his opinion, there are fewer good teachers today than there were yesterday.

Legion• 15 years ago

In my wife's experience as a teacher, it's not the teacher who is incentivized to push students through, or even the one doing the pushing.

If the parent wants the student to advance to the next grade, the system says that they advance, often over the strenuous objections from the teacher who knows the student has no business advancing.

_delirium3• 15 years ago

I suppose it's a Cato blog post, but I was hoping for a more interesting discussion than just a random call for private education, with a market-will-solve it assertion. People learning at different paces and on their own is a fairly interesting problem highlighted here, but I think it's wishful thinking to claim that the perfect answer is already known.

It's not entirely clear to me that private schools would cater to individuals, or group by ability in the way that tutors do. There are other market forces at work, such as the preference of many students and their parents for students to be grouped with those of a similar age--- and the dislike of many parents for their students to be seen as "behind". There are also administrative/cost problems with individual attention that weigh in favor of uniformity. For example, if there are a few students who learn "too fast", the optimal business solution for an education provider might be to say, "fuck 'em, 5% of the students isn't where my money is coming from". Or, it might be to generally go by age but have a smallish exception pool; the age-groups-plus-'gifted'-class model that many public schools already use might cover enough of the skills variance, while being much cheaper to administer than a fully individualized model.

At the very least, I don't think it's entirely obvious what the results would be. The bits of evidence we do have don't seem super-encouraging. For-profit universities, for example, appear to have decided that a mass-production model is the best business strategy. And existing private K-12 schools don't seem to have adopted an ability-based model, instead using traditional age-based classes. Is there a reason that, if market incentives would indeed cause such an outcome, they wouldn't have already caused it? It's true that the private-education market is currently effectively restricted to wealthier families, but it's still quite large.

steins• 15 years ago

I read somewhere that Khan is intending on starting a private school where all ages will share classrooms.

dodo532• 15 years ago

Would be very interested if you could find a link (had brief unsuccessful look myself)

bdunbar• 15 years ago

It's not entirely clear to me that private schools would cater to individuals, or group by ability in the way that tutors do.

My wife taught at a private school for some years that did that. They had the traditonal grade levels, coursework was modified for the student.

They had to have the grade levels: it was K-8, placing students back in public schools, or a private high school, is really difficult if you don't.

This was a learning disabled private school, so your mileage may vary.

yummyfajitas5• 15 years ago

At the college level, private schools certainly do cater to the individual. I was fast in math, regular speed in everything else. They put me into grad level math and physics classes, while my writing/history/etc classes were still at the normal pace.

I don't see much reason why the incentives would be different below the college level.

Whenever you want to ask "what would a privatized primary education system do", you can often ask instead "what does the privatized secondary education system currently do?"

khafra• 15 years ago

College level state schools also have many different levels of classes. I think there are other differences at work.

mdwrigh2• 15 years ago

Except that this is _exactly_ what happens at public colleges as well. In fact, my public high school saw that I was fast at math and got me into college classes early, so it even occurs there to some degree.

grandalf14• 15 years ago

You seem to be picturing "ACME Education" creating schools in the model of factories under some scary privatization scheme.

In fact, the current "public" model of centralized control, standardized curriculum, and cookie-cutter learning objectives is based on an antiquated understanding of human development, social systems, and motivation. In fact, by forcing a child to endure hours of boredom and conformity it prepares its inmates for a life of work in a factory.

If market forces were allowed to act on K-12 education we'd see something quite unpredictable but very much unlike what you seem to be imagining... unless, that is, large companies obtained a monopoly on education in the same way that public schools have thusfar.

Without a monopoly, we'd see innovations like Khan Academy all the time (let's face it, what Khan created is trivial and obvious and it's only remarkable b/c most teachers and curricula are so utterly bad).

You are also overlooking the fact that humans have a natural hunger for knowledge, and any notion that there is a lack of demand for top quality k-12 education is an artifact of our current corrupt system.

jshen16• 15 years ago

Private schools will lead to a marketing driven education system that preys on peoples ignorance.

Here's a simple thought experiment. Look at all the education systems around the world, and ask if the ones with the best results are private or public.

absconditus• 15 years ago

Private schools are already widely available.

DanielRibeiro• 15 years ago

This ACME education and its origins is very well discussed on this famous RSA video "Changing Education Paradigms ": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

Furthermore: I think there's enough variance among private schools, and among public schools, that we still can't even draw generalizations about "public schools" and "private schools" as homogenous sets. It alwyas irks me to see education-policy discussions turn into political debates about the merits of public vs. private sectors.

stretchwithme4• 15 years ago

Public schools are the ones who cater to the large percentage. And have no real revenue loss when they fail to deliver.

Private schools do cater to a small percentage, not everybody in a neighborhood, but a small percentage to whom the school appeals. Just like any other kind of business.

Mercedes doesn't say "screw those snobs. We want the masses." Nope, they cater specifically to a very small set of buyers.

There's no reason to think there won't be brands of schools targeted at different kinds of students.

But we won't know until people can actually make choices without having to pay for education twice. Most people can't afford to pay the taxes required to support public schools and also pay for tuition. They shouldn't have to.

In old communist Yugoslavia, the government produced one car for all. Without any competition it captured 100% of the market. And it was a piece of crap.

Competition ended that stupidity and hopefully one day it will do the same for education.

_delirium3• 15 years ago

That's a possible outcome, I'm just not convinced of its probability. Unless the government enforces equal prices at all the private schools, via some sort of fixed tradeable credits scheme, I would expect the most affordable schools to be those that cater to a large proportion of the population in a cost-effective and fairly standardized way, and that those would be by far the most popular schools. Essentially, that education would look like many other market sectors, with a power-law distribution of market share.

There could well be boutique schools that cater to people with specialized interests who are willing to pay a significant premium (the BMW rather than Civic), but that's also true today.

A major difference from communist Yugoslavia is that private education isn't actually illegal; anyone can buy any education they want. Perhaps more people would buy boutique education if the public school system were abolished along with the taxes that paid for it, since their overall disposable income would be higher. But I suspect most people wouldn't buy a significantly more expensive educational solution if a cheap and decent one were available--- not much more than they do today, even if the price gap were slightly smaller. Instead, my guess is that the vast majority would opt for a cost-effective, fairly standardized large education provider.

(This does depend on how exactly it's implemented. Many of the voucher schemes being proposed would in effect prevent low-end competition, by giving movable fixed-dollar-amount vouchers that aren't refundable, which would make the more expensive schools seem relatively more attractive. For example, if it's a $6k nonrefundable voucher, there's no incentive for a private education provider to improve efficiency to the point where they can provide education for only $4k, because why would you go to the $4k school when it's no cheaper than the $6k school? So that in effect would put a floor on prices and make boutique schools more competitive. That's not really a libertarian solution, though, but sort of a social-engineering-via-managed-market solution.)

Astrohacker• 15 years ago

Let's not forget that, in the US, the US government gives enormous amounts of funding to private universities. So the behavior of universities is not exactly the result of a free market with no government intervention... the government has a huge influence on the way universities work.

Magnin• 15 years ago

My parents actually pulled us out of PRIVATE school and put us into PUBLIC school because we were outpacing the curriculum, being bored, and losing interest.

My sister got to 4th grade in the private school and suddenly didn't want to go to school anymore. She wasn't challenged. The private school's solution when my parent's talked to them was to assign my sister MORE BUSYWORK. The public school had an actual gifted & talented program we were able to exploit.

It wasn't all roses though- my mom had yell at several Administrators to get us the programs to challange us (my brother was in AP Calc, the highest math available, his freshman year of HS). It's true though: the biggest indicator of success in school is parental involvement.

randallsquared• 15 years ago

I think it's wishful thinking to claim that the perfect answer is already known.

Markets aren't the answer; they're a method for finding the answer, or (more likely) multiple answers.

Wentz• 15 years ago

>wishful thinking to claim that the perfect answer is already known

...which is exactly why to leave it to the market.

bendotc3• 15 years ago

Really interesting, shocking quote from the original article, but the Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News, IMO. The original Wired piece is great, though.

jswinghammer2• 15 years ago

I'm probably the biggest libertarian you'd meet (that doesn't live in his or her mom's basement) and I feel like HN is pretty friendly to my thinking.

bendotc3• 15 years ago

I agree. And I have no problem with people having their opinions. I know it feels like my own beliefs are in the minority here, and I don't have a problem with that, but Hacker News is always a better site when it sticks to what it's best at: hacking, technology and entrepreneurship. The politics and religion discussions here are always huge distractions.

davidw2• 15 years ago

Maybe he means the guidelines: "off-topic: most articles about politics". Anything from Cato is going to be politics.

rmc• 15 years ago

Agreed. It just quotes something from the original article without really adding anything new.

gdfsnob7• 15 years ago

"Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News"

As if Hacker News is somehow more qualified on economic issues than Cato, which has 10 Nobel Laureates?

F. A. Hayek

Milton Friedman

James M. Buchanan

Robert Mundell

Edward C. Prescott

Douglass C. North

Vernon L. Smith

Gary S. Becker

Ronald Coase

Thomas C. Schelling

http://www.cato.org/people/nobel-index.html

bendotc3• 15 years ago

You seem to be arguing against a point I didn't make. I didn't say that "Hacker News is more qualified on economic issues than Cato" as you put it. I said that I found the case made in this blog post to be questionable and that this political content is not well-suited to Hacker News.

I was not impeaching the intellectual output of the Nobel laureates associated with the Cato institute, but I do have to note here that none of them wrote this blog post, nor is there any indication that any of them reviewed it. I could further debate your name-dropping, but I've wasted enough key-strokes on this as is.

Symmetry2• 15 years ago

I wouldn't use the present tense when some of those guys are dead.

thisuser4• 15 years ago

You would think that at least a few of these Laureates would entertain the possibility that under the right conditions a community of technocratic professionals freely debating the merits of various policies could have a better answer than any single individual picked by a committee of Norwegians. It's almost like this is a free market of ideas, and you being downvoted is an invisible hand telling you to have better ideas if you want to make it.

skrebbel• 15 years ago

The article identifies a strong problem, but:

> "This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as a monopoly."

Without any arguments to support it, the libertarian approach is served as the only solution.

jswinghammer2• 15 years ago

I'm not always a big fan of Cato but a short blog post isn't really the place for a full dissertation on libertarian education perspectives.

dodo532• 15 years ago

It's a very bad way of putting it - but I think there's a valid discussion needed around whether schools should enforce 'rounded' education - I think the question is essentially what should we do students who are at 10th grade maths and 5th grade social science?

Should we allow earlier education specialization? (ie move them up grades but accept they'll be lacking in some areas) Or keep them in 5th grade until they are sufficiently good in all areas - maybe allowing them skip classes they're already excelling in so they have more free time for self-study?

I imagine allowing 5th graders to attend 10th grade maths only say (or more general any student being in a mix of any level in any subject) becomes impractical to schedule.

UPDATE: and as other people pointed out that's ignoring all the potential social advantages of being roughly grouped by age

SwellJoe• 15 years ago

You're simply accepting that "grades" are an ideal concept, and that in order for a kid to learn higher math, they also have to accelerate English, history, etc. If you remove the concept of grades from the picture, you no longer have to call a kid who's really good at math a math specialist...you can just say he's very advanced at math, and on par with his age group at English and history and science.

Remove the preconceived notion that everyone needs to be studying the same thing in order to be in the same "grade", and you don't have this problem. Obviously some kids can self-direct their education to some degree. So, why not let them? If they can advance this way via online instruction, why on earth would you want to stand in their way?

I had a lot of bitterness about my school experience, because I was so often bored and slowed by the pace of my classmates. If I'd had the ability to set my own pace, I would have been much happier and much more successful. We're beginning to have the technology to allow kids to go at their own pace...it's obvious to me (and should be to any other adult who was a "gifted" kid growing up but shackled by the limitations of public school) that the only ethical thing to do is let kids learn as fast as they want to learn. It's the teachers and schools job to figure out how to accommodate that learning, not try to shackle it to a pace that matches the least common denominator.

barry-cotter• 15 years ago

that's ignoring all the potential social advantages of being roughly grouped by age

Which are?

wnight• 15 years ago

> all the potential social advantages of being roughly grouped by age

Actually, from what I've seen the one-room-schoolhouse concept is the best. You don't have a single age-group preying on each other in a lord-of-the-flies situation.

True socialization comes from interacting with a reasonable sample of society, in its natural state - such as being surrounded by people of all ages interacting with each other. If we ship kids off the age-segregated prisons every day they become hyper-focused on the views of their peers and vulnerable to pressure.

Duff2• 15 years ago

The education system is broken and has been for decades. The supporters of the system re-characterize criticism of the system into "attacks" on teachers (ie. union membership) and demand more money.

The establishment "won" their side of the argument in many states -- states that richly compensated employees (the payscale in most NY school districts ends at $110k, plus 65% pension for life) and administrators (typical school superintendents make $175k in NY) and built lots of new schools. Yet those investments yielded marginal "value" at best.

Until recently, the critics were mostly focused on religion (ie. Catholic schooling dominated education in many areas until fairly recently), monetary issues (taxes) and ideological stuff (unions suck).

That seems to be changing now. Movements like the Khan Academy are bringing scientific methods focused on outcomes to education. There was a recent "Freakonomics" podcast talking about how the New York City school system is experimenting with multi-modal learning, which seems to be successful in its early stages.

timsally4• 15 years ago

$100K+ and $150K+ /w pension are the salaries it takes to attract and retain excellent teachers and school administrators respectively (adjust for locality). These are the going rates at all the top public schools in the nation. With a fully staffed school, it works out to be about $15K per student per year if you include overhead. The results you get are a 99% graduation rate, average standardized testings scores in the 90th percentile or above, special education, tons of AP classes, and top flight athletics and fine arts programs. Success in college admissions follows from the aforementioned facts, i.e. extraordinarily successful.

So I would propose to reframe the discussion. Because talking about money is silly. We know how much it costs to run a top tier school. The central question in my mind is whether we can develop new methods of education that are cheaper but achieve the same result.

Duff2• 15 years ago

Read my comment. I specifically didn't focus on money. The point is throwing money and bodies at the problems of education has a proven track record of NOT working.

Those results that you refer to apply to a suburban school in high-income area with few challenges. Those students have an edge because they have parents (note the plural) who can fill in the blanks left at school or have the resources to hire someone to do that. That's why the stoner white kids from the suburbs graduate from high school and the middle of the pack urban students get swept out the door.

I live in a small city with low costs (standard of living index is 1.1) where the per-pupil costs are in excess of $23,000/child, the average teacher salary is $85k, median income in the city is $50k, the graduation rate is 42%, and in many elementary schools less than 15% of the 4th graders are in the upper half of state testing results for math.

That NYC multi-modal experiment offers the promise of bridging the gap between urban students without access to supplemental instruction and the suburban kids who have lots of resources available. Kids spend time in large/small classroom settings, Khan-academy type computer applications and "virtual" tutoring. Results are measured and kids get rotated through various modes of learning based on their results.

What does that mean? It means that we can improve education and reduce the inequity in our society without throwing $100k+ teachers into the breach like infantrymen. Being born in a city shouldn't condemn you to a marginal education and future prospects.

It's not a matter of being "against" teachers or whatever -- it's applying their talents strategically in a way that benefits the students. Would you solve an IT or difficult programming problem by throwing more IT guys at it? Or would you break the problem down and figure out the best way to address it?

canistr• 15 years ago

But this is already occurring for students enrolled in extracurricular math programs like Kumon that accelerate their math skills. Khan Academy isn't doing anything that Kumon isn't already doing other than adding a few more science subjects.

raldi• 15 years ago

If you ran a school with complete authority, how would you handle these cases?

(I don't mean that rhetorically; I'm curious to see some hacker brainstorming.)

politician• 15 years ago

Well, I'd allow students the option to take the final exam once per semester at any time. Those that pass at 90% would be transferred to a mixed-grade same-subject classroom for that period where they could study at their own pace.

I'd start with Khan Academy math, since they've got pretty good tools for supervising students learning at different rates, and the math track is pretty thorough for someone in K-12.

Since the students are self-selected, I wouldn't expect significant discipline problems, and since each mixed-grade classroom focuses on a specific subject there exists the possibility for easier collaboration.

I think this model would stand a greater chance of success in middle- or high schools where students have a class schedule. I don't think it would be practical in very small schools; however, I would expect that very small schools already have their own ways of handling students learning at different rates for budgeting reasons.

icegreentea• 15 years ago

Could also mean that some teachers don't want the headache of dealing with a class with even greater disparities in skill and knowledge. It's hard enough dealing with a couple students bored in class cause they already know it. It's even harder to deal with half the class bored cause they already know it.

Or it could really mean anything. Removed from context and the teacher's deeper reasoning, these quotes are largely useless. Maybe it was just the really lazy teachers who didn't want to deal with kids asking more advance questions who talked to them. Could be -anything-.

Trying to squeeze more analysis out of this will just result in all sorts of confirmation biases regarding teachers and the education system.

roc• 15 years ago

Indeed. All I see here, is an aptitude-driven advancement system (Kahn) coming into conflict with an age-based advancement system (public schools).

Clearly, if we're to reap the benefits of an aptitude-driven advancement system, we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum. (age-based peer groups, pass/fail an entire grade at a time, etc)

When students are permitted to progress in different subjects at different speeds, the desire to see "brakes" put on tools like Kahn's will evaporate.

maxharris2• 15 years ago

we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum

Great, I agree. Why do you think these assumptions are so hard to change? Who are the people holding the assumptions? Why haven't they changed their minds already?

nkassis• 15 years ago

Also I don't think we can assume that teachers are able to give tutoring in all the levels the children might get too using the khan videos. You might say "how hard could it be for a 5th grade teacher to tutor trig?" but they like anyone else (including khan) probably would have to review some concepts (most teachers don't remember heron's formula by heart). This means they have to prepare multiple tutoring subjects at the same time. In one on one tutoring sessions that's easy but with a class of 25 children it can get quite hard.

It requires a rethinking of the way schools are designed I believe. Maybe have multiple teachers per class with each one specializing in a level to tutor. Classes would be bigger but you'd still have a similar teacher to student ratio.

chopsueyar5• 15 years ago

Why can't the more advanced children tutor the less advanced children?

shawndrost• 15 years ago

Could you modify it "to not take a random quote from out of context and extrapolate a false portrayal of a system"?

vnchr2• 15 years ago

I think the innocence behind that statement comes from the difficulty a teacher will face if s/he must teach students with diverse learning needs (child A is learning timestables while child B has moved on to trigonometry).

That said, I think a teacher should suck it up for the sake of students in this sort of situation. At worst, we find ways to reorganize teachers and students based on students' self-progress.

hugh39• 15 years ago

Clearly students need to be placed into classes based on their ability. There is no goddamn reason why student A and student B should be in the same class, or even at the same school.

vnchr2• 15 years ago

Agreed. Maybe techies gotta band together and create a better online infrastructure for the whole homeschooling process. Just combine Meetup with Khan Academy and you can have decentralized collaborative homeschooling@!

zafka• 15 years ago

This is a fine example of supplying a quote from an imaginary adversary to show how much better your own position is.

The proponent is just using the popularity of the khan schools to frame the bashing of public schools.

user24• 15 years ago

Reminds me very much of Lockhart's Lament[1] - an excellent essay on the state of mathematics education, and which has featured on HN several times[2]. So yeah, if this topic interests you and you haven't yet read the lament, go and read it!

[1] http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

[2]a http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130499

[2]b http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666563

[2]c http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176

pnathan5• 15 years ago

I like the US college system. In each track, you move along at the appropriate speed and levels.

Pointsly• 15 years ago

College is not working - by the time kids graduate most of what they 'learned' in the classroom is outdated. College if anything is just a good place to gain 'social experiences'.

hnal943• 15 years ago

That's ridiculous when applied to college education in general. Do you really think that history, mechanical engineering or business majors graduate only to find that their education is rendered uselessly out of date?

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

You are misunderstanding what college is intended to accomplish. The goal is to teach students how to teach themselves. This knowledge doesn't become outdated, and ensures that students never have to allow their other knowledge to become outdated as well.

pnathan5• 15 years ago

Crap, I didn't know that. My big-O notation is out of date, as is my knowledge of calculus.

j_baker• 15 years ago

That's not how it worked at my university. I had some choice as far as what order I could take classes in, but everything still worked at the same pace no matter what.

pnathan5• 15 years ago

Um.

You can be taking freshman-level courses your senior year.

Or, if you are up to the challenging, junior level courses your freshmen year.

jmtame• 15 years ago

That is why the for-profit Asian tutoring industry groups students by performance, not by age. There are “grades,” but they do not depend on when a student was born, only on what she knows and is able to do.

I just interviewed Andrew Hsu for Startups Open Sourced and he mentioned this was very important in education. He had scored so high on his IQ test at 6 years old he was classified as "genius" and received 3 B.S. degrees at 16, and then dropped out of his Stanford Ph.D. at 19 to do a startup. One thing he says really makes a difference is splitting students based on skill level, not by age. Hoping to release the interview soon.

hugh39• 15 years ago

I'm sorry, but how the hell do you recieve three BS degrees at the age of sixteen (unless you mean BS degrees, which I'd imagine they'd really have to be...)

samlevine• 15 years ago

If you can learn the material you can pass classes by examination.

Alex39172• 15 years ago

This isn't surprising. There was actually an experimental elementary school in my town that was eventually shut down because the students were too advanced in math, so once they got to middle school it started causing political issues. Rather than having the other three elementary schools adopt the same system, they literally demolished the school and replaced it with a parking lot. There is actually a pretty good book about the whole incident called Public Schools Should Learn To Ski.

chopsueyar5• 15 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873892763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

jdvolz• 15 years ago

As the father of a near 3 year old the educational questions weigh heavily on my mind. While this is a great thought experiment ("How could we make it better?") it's scary when given a concrete example that is near and dear to your heart.

I believe:

[1] Each general subject has a core competency that you have to achieve at a minimum.

It's broken into skills and subjects.

Skills includes: programming, reading, writing, functional mathematics (+-*/ and solving word problems), learning (figuring out how the pupil best learns for themselves, or if you want "meta-learning"). I may be missing some skills here.

Subjects include: english, history, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics (both higher level functional math and theory / proofs). I may be missing some subjects here.

[2] on top of #1 you have focused subjects of interest which you should support the pupil learning to whatever depth they are interested in learning. Most people I know upon finding something they are truly interested in become a borderline expert. Are they world class? Maybe or maybe not, but they are certainly journeymen. These range everywhere from finance to car repair to engineering to language learning to musical instruments to basically anything people take an interest in.

If your student can reach functional usage in all parts of #1 earlier that gives them more time to learn different things from #2. Note that the skills and background knowledge learned in #1 are reusable to various subjects in #2.

Circling back to the article: It's a stupid idea to even attempt to prevent a student from mastering anything in #1 above faster. It might help if the peer group instead of being defined by age could be defined by what your interests in #2 are. Then you get cross pollination of students by more advanced students in those same interesting subjects.

dkokelley5• 15 years ago

Why is programming a basic skill? To me, programming is more of a trade than a basic skill. People get by just fine without knowing a thing about programming. When students can't read, write, and do simple mathematics, then they have trouble later in life.

I believe logic and basic computing (this is a folder, that is a keyboard, etc.) are necessary. In fact, these form the foundation for programming later, but how could programming be considered a skill comparable to reading or writing?

derleth4• 15 years ago

> Why is programming a basic skill?

For the same reason being able to write English[1] well is: If you can use English effectively, you can better influence the people you have to deal with. If you can write code effectively, you can often find ways to better influence the computers you have to deal with.

[1] (Replace 'English' with any natural language of your choice, if you want.)

ohyes2• 15 years ago

How did this article hit the front page? What is insightful or interesting about it?

"This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as a monopoly."

This is blatantly not true, in the US we do not operate education as a monopoly. There are plenty of private schools.

talmand3• 15 years ago

True, plenty of private schools, but it depends on your definition of monopoly. Microsoft had competition but that didn't stop the lawsuits from the Feds.

Government education may not be a monopoly in appearance but in many cases it sure does behave as one. Look up the examples of local government education bureaucracies doing much to attempt to eliminate those private schools as competition.

Washingto D.C. is an excellent example of this.

In many areas I would define government education as a monopoly simply because they do everything they can to prevent you from not entering your child into their system. And they use government force to do so.

Symmetry2• 15 years ago

Its not a perfect monopoly, but the market dominance of state education is greater than that of Microsoft, or Standard Oil, or any of the other companies we tend to think of as monopolies.

ohyes2• 15 years ago

But it isn't a monopoly. There is no single entity controlling all of the public schools. There is no Gates or Rockefeller of education.

Each school is controlled by the state and local government, which is in turn controlled by elected officials. There are federal and government regulations, but aside from that, it is run by the people.

If you don't like what your town or district is doing, get on the school board and change it, or vote for someone who agrees with you. And if you really don't like what the state is doing, offer your own option through private education.

steamer25• 15 years ago

It is monopolistic in the sense that you have to pay for it whether you use it or not. Private schools may only be attended by those who can afford to pay twice and even then, the establishment caste gets at least a full cut.

If I were to set the policy, I'd subsidize students rather than teachers and administrators, etc. I.e., demonstrate learning and we'll pay you $XX,XXX to cover your costs whether tutors or books or online courses or brick and mortar schools.

grandalf14• 15 years ago

If public education is not a monopoly, what is it?

tokenadult2• 15 years ago

Strictly speaking, government-operated schooling is an oligopoly, and one very stringently protected against meaningful competition. As the other two replies at your reply level I see here pointed out, a private business having the same market position in the United States and the same preferences that government-operated schools have would probably be illegal.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

I spent some time with a 6 year old, who was my girlfriend's nephew. I noticed that he spoke well and was very sharp, but wasn't able to read. I suggested that we should read some things and he should learn to read, but no - his mother said that he was going to learn to read in 1st grade, with the other kids. Starting him earlier than that, she said, would stunt his social performance because he would be so far ahead of his peers.

stretchwithme4• 15 years ago

wow, that's bad.

carpdiem• 15 years ago

As someone who learned to read at a very early age, this is horrifying to me.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

I didn't know what to say. I can't believe the logic. I wanted to help this kid, but it seems his parents are set on him not turning out any smarter or better educated than they are.

shareme• 15 years ago

It skips the whole effing core of the debate...

Its not, "How do we get better test performing students?"

Its, "How do we produce people who are at the top of their self-learning game?"

The general idea is that someone progresses from elementary school of directed learning to self-directed learning when finishing a University degree..

Some of us reach that stage when in fact we are in High School..

sequoia7• 15 years ago

I'm a parent of two who does NOT plan on putting his kids in public school because I think they won't be served well there (plan on "home schooling"). My 5yo uses Khan Academy and it seems to be great. Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school.

That said, I get sick of everyone piling on public school whenever something like this comes up. Public school is set to the following task: "take everyone, everywhere, all across the country, and bring them to the same level of proficiency across the board, with tightly limited funding and regardless of outside factors." Someone comes along and finds a tool that works on a teeny tiny cohort then climbs on their pedestal and declares their system better than public schools.

Personally, I think public schools are being set to an (almost?) impossible task. What the reviewer said in that article about "slow them down please" is obviously abhorrent, but the "They have a monopoly! They're monopolists!" chatter is silly, in my opinion. First of all they don't have a monopoly (for those who can afford it: private charter homeschooling etc.). Secondly, they are just trying to do their best to meet their goals with what they have. It's selfish, yes, but having students at more or less the same level of competency makes it easier for them to do the task to which they've been set.

When I was in school, the teacher would often say "Sequoia, that's a great question, but it's a bit advanced and I've got 30 other students here. I can't spend a lot of time answering advanced questions when half the class is struggling with basic concepts." That was annoying and I'm not going to send my kids to public school in part because of it, but I didn't rail against the teacher for being a selfish monopolist. S/he was just doing his/her best given the circumstances and requirements: often times public schools are doing the same.

EDIT: an article that informs my thinking here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-ch... Great article, whether you've seen Waiting for Superman (hit piece "documentary" about why public schools suck and charter schools are the answer) or not.

pnathan5• 15 years ago

"Sequoia, that's a great question, but it's a bit advanced and I've got 30 other students here. I can't spend a lot of time answering advanced questions when half the class is struggling with basic concepts.""

Yep, that happened when I TA'd CS 1. I managed to coopt some of the brighter students into helping the others, but, well, it didn't do much for them inasmuch they wanted to learn CS (they just got some social polishing).

Really a pity. :-/

jleader• 15 years ago

Actually, one of the best ways to learn something (even after you think you know it) is to try to explain it to someone who doesn't understand it yet. There's a big difference in depth of understanding between "I can get the right answer to the test questions" and "I can explain the subject well enough that now you'll be able to answer the test questions".

klenwell2• 15 years ago

Well put.

Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school.

I was ready to agree with this. But then I reflected. What I really hated were my rotten peers (and, to an extent, my rotten self) from around the start of junior high to the end of high school. They weren't horrible, mind you. Just middle-of-the-distribution-curve kids, with the inevitable psychopath or two. I don't think privatization is going to filter that out.

And I rather liked my public community colleges and universities.

sequoia7• 15 years ago

By no means universal, merely a reflection of my experiences.

For example, I was an exchange student for a year and when I came back I was told I'd get no credits for it because I couldn't produce a report card , so I was held back (i.e. punished for studying in a diff. country for a year).

Same year: moved from another state, forced to take freshman "earth & environmental sciences" because it's a state requirement. I requested being able to take AP Environmental Science instead: "no, it's a requirement." So I'm turning 18, held back to 11th grade because I got an exchange scholarship, forced to take a freshman (remedial) course surrounded by kids straight out of middle school (embarrassing and discouraging as a teenager) when I'm willing to take a comparable AP course.

This stuff happened with me all throughout school. To be fair I was somewhat lazy, but much of this was due to the feeling of powerlessness and inevitability public school is designed to instill.

inb4 someone who had a different, great public school experience. As I said, this is my experience.

danneu• 15 years ago

I go to the massive UT and my best experience in academics has come from, without fail, local community colleges. I took my Calculus, History, Government, and English courses in class sizes no bigger than 15 kids, got to know my professor/peers through class interaction rather than office hour groveling, and could ask specific questions all day. And I paid $165/class instead of $1,400/class.

When I compare the same course alternative at UT, it's instead taught by TAs, needlessly much harder (how is a class average of 30% on an exam not an institutional failure?), and I spent my time struggling to teach myself on the side rather than feeling like I grasped the concepts in class.

It's unfortunate that our system glorifies the inferior experience through compensation, taboos, and social status.

w1ntermute• 15 years ago

> They weren't horrible, mind you. Just middle-of-the-distribution-curve kids, with the inevitable psychopath or two. I don't think privatization is going to filter that out.

Why not? That's exactly what privatization would do. All you need to do is identify the average kids and psychopaths, give them a chance to redeem themselves, and if they don't, unceremoniously kick them out.

niels_olson3• 15 years ago

I can tell you my daughter did very well in most subjects in private school, but had a terrible time with math. We switched her to a public school this year.* She has done better overall, and her math has improved most of all. There are some other factors involved (I'm not in residency, we like where we live in general, we're not facing the possibility of being upside down in a house, etc), but I can't say enough that public vs private is not necessarily the deciding factor it's made out to be when you get down to individual cases.

By the way, how, exactly, do you use Kahn Academy? My kids got bored with it.

---------

* My wife had worked as a therapist in San Diego schools for years and when we moved back, we targeted a few neighborhoods to move into. Word on the street was that the private schools were no better than the public schools, at least in elementary.

sequoia7• 15 years ago

regarding Kahn Academy: I don't know. My 5 year old is competitive so the game mechanics work well. She's been using pbskids.org for years playing educational games, so it comes very naturally at this point. Also, she likes to learn :p Mostly I think it's her competitive nature.

dkokelley5• 15 years ago

I was home schooled, and I wish there was a Khan Academy when I was growing up. We did use something similar with DVDs and an electronic blackboard.

All in all, it worked out well for me, and I would encourage you to stick with home schooling. If you can, find a private school that allows home study. That way, you can get group field trips and sports activities while staying in control of your child's educational growth.

sequoia7• 15 years ago

We'd consider private if we could afford it, but it's fuggin expensive, and with two kids it's out of the question.

Interestingly, as home schoolers we're allowed to purchase tickets to local educational events (plays etc.) at the same price as local schools. So if there's a special showing of a play at noon for school kids, we can buy the discounted tickets and go to it. For sports etc., I believe that technically our local schools are obligated to allow our children to join their extracurricular groups, such as sports. As for field trips, that would be nice to be able to go with the private school, but frankly that's the least of my worries. If there's one thing homeschooling (at least how we do it) does better than any other model, it's field trips! :)

palish2• 15 years ago

I'm a parent of two who does NOT plan on putting his kids in public school because I think they won't be served well there (plan on "home schooling").

6th through 12th grade is where people learn that life isn't about smart-ness. It's about social-ness.

Are you really comfortable with the idea of potentially stunting one of the most important aspects of your child's abilities --- their ability to interact positively with people? (People other than you. People who don't already like your child.)

I was sent to a "Montissouri" school Kindergarten through 3rd grade, and it was ... Well, let's just say it turned out quite badly. Then I was sent to a private school 4th through 8th grade, with small class sizes. It was one of the most terrible experiences of my life. Personally, I wish my parents had sent me to public school, because I believe I would be a better person today.

sequoia7• 15 years ago

>Are you really comfortable with the idea of potentially stunting one of the most important aspects of your child's abilities --- their ability to interact positively with people? (People other than you. People who don't already like your child.)

heh heh... as someone who's been thru the public school system, I can safely say I don't WANT my kids learning the sort of "social skills" you learn there. You describing it as "interact[ing] positively" has me convinced that your story of not having gone to public school is true. :p

It's funny that people always bring this up: social skills. Have you met many home schooled kids? They are some of the most mature, well balanced, intelligent kids I've met. Secondly, what do you think home schoolers do, live in a bubble? Contrariwise, they interact ("socialize," if you prefer) with kids of all ages, as well as adults, in a normal, "real world" context.

As for "stunting" my child's abilities: I am absolutely certain public school does this, so I'll take my chances, thank you very much. I don't appreciate your insinuation, by the way.

kenjackson4• 15 years ago

Without attribution of who made the original statement and the context, this is completely meaningless. The Wired article is good, but the Cato article is not HN worthy at all. Purely political propaganda.

gdfsnob7• 15 years ago

Why would you automatically declare an organization like Cato, which comprises a lot of living and dying Nobel Laureates (10 in fact) and read by a large number of PhDs in economics from our top universities, not HN worthy and "political propaganda"? It's a little absurd to make such a claim without substantiating your argument.

kenjackson4• 15 years ago

To be clear, my pronouncement of it not being HN worthy has nothing to with it being from Cato. But purely with the content of the article. Let me explain.

It opens with an unattributed quote. One that is somewhat surprising given what I've seen from the teachers and educators I know who have seen Khan Academy. While some complain about things like the rigor of the exercises, I've never heard the complaint about needing to slow down the education of students. Ben's statement, which Cato parrots needs to be attributed to someone. Cato should known better than to base a story on it.

Furthermore, the Cato story say, "This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as a monopoly." Is it really? Where is the argument that substantiates such a claim?

Then they say, "In a competitive marketplace, educators have incentives to serve each individual child to the best of their ability, because each child can easily be enrolled elsewhere if they fail to do so." Again, can they substantiate that claim? Supermarkets exist in a competitive marketplace, but things like geography make it far from a frictionless market. Again, I'd love to see the data that supports this claim.

Lastly, "But why should a monopolist bother doing that? It’s easier just to feed children through the system on a uniform conveyor belt based on when they were born." Again, this is a claim with no finding in fact. And ignores a LOT of things like the fact that schools typically have single classes by grade, but subclasses broken out by skill. In my experience a child who is three grade levels ahead in math often should't be placed for social interaction with children three years older.

So again, my point is that this Cato article is full of speculation and absolutely no data. Now your appeals to Cato's authority (Nobel prizes and such) is fine. They should put their skills that won them the Noble prize to work and actually write credible stories. This was a junk story simply meant to attack public schools. Plain and simple. It's political propaganda. No data. No logical arguments. Not worthy of HN.

But that's just my opinion.

numeromancer• 15 years ago

I don't think this article is worthy of any up-votes myself, because it doesn't say much.

And if political leanings have corrupted this article, it is in phrasing the solution to the problem in terms of "market competition" and "monopolies"--i.e. the terms of capitalism--rather than in terms of freedom.

In the name of providing an informed citizenry, the educationists have demanded the power to shape American life(how many years of your formative life did you spend in school?), and in too many cases have misshaped it--for their own purposes, good and bad--into a clumsy mess. And still demand that we provide the clay. For evidence, read what the NEA and the AFT say about home-schooling and charter schools.

And to paraphrase Nietzsche, take care in decrying against "political propaganda", lest you become a propagandist yourself.

tokenadult2• 15 years ago

Segregating pupils by age in school has always been a bad idea, and it has always been known to be a bad idea by careful observers of children and their learning.

http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html

Segregating pupils by age in school began in the English-speaking world (in Massachusetts) as an imitation of the Prussian schools of that time. It was strictly for administrative convenience. It is not at all a cultural or historical universal to group school learners into lock-step groups by age.

After edit: One comment about the author of the submitted article. He is actually a programmer by occupation. When his employee shares of Microsoft stock vested, he turned his good fortune to improving education in the United States. I have known him online for years as a thoughtful contributor to discussions of education policy.

I came to Hacker News by links from Paul Graham's essays

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

and came to those because pg frequently writes about education policy and has some of his own thoughts about how schools could be better. So I've always expected threads about education policy to be within the Hacker News topic scope of "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

wizard_2• 15 years ago

I've read though most of our comments here and I have a question. Are people concerned with the education of their neighbors kids?

I'll be able to afford private schooling for my children. The average demographic here probably can. I relish at the idea of seeing how a Khan Academy Classroom could teach my child (maybe in some sort of "Free school" environment?) and I realize that public education probably wont be able to cover that.

What I worry about more is that my children's friends wont be able to go to a private school, and while I realize Khan Academy is free online. Most kids will probably be sent to public schools.

I was educated in public school and I don't think it was horrible but I do think we can do better.

I think the question is; How do we bring this type of learning to public education?

sukuriant• 15 years ago

Get the parents involved, get them to help teach their children, or even just point their children to Khan Academy.

lwhi• 15 years ago

I don't think the issue involves monopolies as much as a historically based needs.

Our education systems were formed as part of the drive that became known as the industrial revolution. Standardisation was a key focus, because people needed to be able to become part of the industrial processes that surrounded their day-to-day lives working in factories and offices.

Workers needed to possess skill sets that are known, and they ultimately needed to become replaceable.

It stands to reason that our education system will change as we move away from the industrial revolution and into the next.

The question should be: what do (and will) society need from an education system in the coming 50 years?

rglover• 15 years ago

It made me sick to my stomach to read this. Why are people so frightened by intelligence and more importantly, intelligent children? It's sad to see that we've become so competitive and complacent with our shit education system, that we're willing to limit intelligent students on purpose. True educators will find the value in the Khan Academy and similar services. Heartbreaking to learn that people are actually trying to limit the success of a company that promotes free knowledge.

i5ao• 15 years ago

the "problem" isn't student tracks or free markets. it's teacher tracks. teacher unions (or monopolies) retard innovation-- and accommodate failures-- as evidenced by the quote.

clarkevans• 15 years ago

In 90% of the geography (50% of the population?) of the united states, there is effectively only enough population to support a limited set of teachers & facility. It is nice that we can have magnet schools in urban areas. What about deeply surban or rural areas?

Perhaps the whole idea of competition between schools is incorrect -- should we instead focus on creating a competitive learning platform (under neutral brick & mortar facility) where competition is between classrooms?

hugh39• 15 years ago

It is nice that we can have magnet schools in urban areas. What about deeply surban or rural areas?

Well, in a small-to-medium-sized town that can only support one school, you can nonetheless segregate students by ability. A town of eight thousand should have about one hundred students in each year, so you segregate 'em into five classes (alpha through epsilon?) and teach 'em separately, at a pace suitable for each.

The US is actually pretty densely populated, so the number of folks living outside commuting distance of eight thousand other people is pretty low.

The real problem with this is that nobody wants their precious snowflake to be classified as an epsilon, or even a delta or gamma. Bad luck, drones!

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

Seeing that it's a Cato Institute article, I anticipate a lot of noise here. I'd like to note, though, that in a standardized, rule-from-the-top system, outliers create immense problems, whether the outliers are really smart kids or kids who need additional attention.

In a distributed, self-optimizing system, this is not the case. Outliers can be handled in various ways.

This observation isn't political. You can observe the same thing in stuff all over the place, like network traffic. If you had universal rules for everything, the internet would tank. Instead we have a (somewhat) distributed and adaptive system using common protocols. Best of both worlds.

Perhaps the argument begins at how to create such adaptive distributed systems. If so, that's cool, but that should be the starting place, not a discussion of free markets or social concern, at least in my opinion. (I was very discouraged to hear Bill Gates blow right through this concept when talking about helping education systems. He's trying to quantify and create the universally-optimized teacher. Good luck with that pipe-dream, Bill.)

seanalltogether• 15 years ago

My brother is currently working with the Adams County school system which is switching to an entirely new system of public education. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/22189278/detail.html

They will no longer have traditional grades like Grade 7, Grade 8, etc, instead they will only have levels, and all students of a certain level will share the same classroom. When you level up in Math 10, you move to Math 11, even if you're still only in English 6. Your age no longer has any bearing on the level you belong in, only your ability.

The educational track will now be entirely in the hands of the students and they have until the age of 20 I believe to "graduate" from high school under the new system with a certain number of levels achieved.

pbhjpbhj5• 15 years ago

Are they ignoring social aspects of Grade based teaching?

46Bit• 15 years ago

An anonymous quote does not a compelling argument make.

mahyarm• 15 years ago

I think this more a function of all subjects in one classroom and one teacher model of grade 1-7. If this was a grade 8 13 year old, he would be just taking Math 11 classes and English 8 classes in his schedule. If they put their primary school schedule in bands (all classes teach math from 1-2, teach english from 2-3, etc) advanced kids can move to another classroom during that band.

chopsueyar5• 15 years ago

Disgusting.

siromega3• 15 years ago

As a software developer who works with teachers on a regular basis (and one of my parents is one), the issue of becoming "too advanced" is a legitimate problem. Its the same reason why Einstein supposedly got Fs throughout school - he was bored with the curriculum, he was too smart for class.

Teachers have to work within the framework and structure of the current education system. Let me assure you that in education the tallest blades of grass are the first to get cut. I don't really blame them, its just self-preservation.

If you look at the current structure of grouping kids by age, then the teacher's issues are perfectly reasonable. How are they going to keep the 15% of really smart kids from being bored, goofing off, and raising a ruckus while the teacher tries to run around and help the average or behind kids with the exercises. A child could legitimately be 3-4 months ahead in school work if they're brilliant learners. So what do we do, let me out in March if he has mastered all the material for the school year? Let him start on next year's material?

If we start grouping by ability to learn and knowledge level, that has problems too. I was great at math but only a good reader and poor at spelling/grammar. Do I get put in an advanced class and lag the other students in areas where I wasn't as strong? Does elementary school look like high school with different classes throughout the day, and how does that impact students in non-knowledge areas?

The rates at which children learn is not steady across all subjects. The rates at which children learn aren't even steady throughout childhood - they could start slow and speed up at a certain age. Self-paced education would be ideal for every student if we were all self-starters and bright, KA will be great for home-schoolers and tutors. Even kids who need remedial help over the summer, give them an iPad and the Khan Academy app and let them catch up over the summer. But letting a bright, ultra-focused kid master an entire grade level over the summer and then the kid will be a hellraiser in school for the next 9.

pbhjpbhj5• 15 years ago

>But letting a bright, ultra-focused kid master an entire grade level over the summer and then the kid will be a hellraiser in school for the next 9.

If kids fall behind or are poorly motivated then they get extra attention. But if they shoot ahead or are strongly motivated they get ignored? Chastised?

I'm interested in presenting the best opportunities for education to my children and instead of being concerned with making the current educational frameworks run more smoothly (they're not mutually exclusive interests though).

siromega3• 15 years ago

Then take your kid out of school and home-school him. You're shitting in the commons if you don't care about the "current educational framework".

bugsy• 15 years ago

Too short an article. That particular quote was called out and discussed here when the Khan Academy article was discussed previously.

It's a certain mindset that thinks this way. It reminds me of another discussion here where some people and a supporting article (http://geekfeminism.org/2010/08/10/restore-meritocracy-in-cs...) argued that it is unfair that some students have previous experience programming when they enter a CS program, therefore classes should be done in obscure (and thus pretty useless) languages that no one has heard of, in order to equally handicap everyone.

Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

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