15-Year-Old Student's Ed Reform Plan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/13/a-15-year-old-students-ed-reform-plan-self-directed-learning/

by aroojahmad • 13 years ago

30 45 13 years ago

washingtonpost.com

logn5• 13 years ago

Personally, I went to a very traditional private high school and received a great education. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with education. I think the three current problems are 1) education is expensive, 2) people are too poor, and 3) people of average or below average intelligence probably aren't served very well by the high school curriculum.

We should close all corporate tax loopholes and send the money to schools and require that school funding is not proportional to property tax.

We should institute a minimum wage of ~$12/hr tied to inflation to fight poverty.

The high school curriculum should have alternate vocational and tech skills tracks.

unimpressive• 13 years ago

>We should institute a minimum wage of ~$12/hr tied to inflation to fight poverty.

Can you walk me through the economic justification for this?

logn5• 13 years ago

Sure. Take Walmart for example. They had over 100 billion (edit: I was wrong it's 36 billion) in profits in 2012. If you assume they pay every one of their 2 million workers $8/hr then giving them a raise to $12/hr would cost around 15-20 billion dollars. In my opinion this means they can afford it. It also means that the government would stop subsidizing their profits through government handouts for the working poor.

Edit: realistic numbers of average pay for Walmart is approaching $10/hr making the total cost of a wage hike 10 billion.

thatswrong0• 13 years ago

The U.S. already spends more than any other country on education. Throwing more money at the problem won't necessarily fix it. I also want to add that people of above average intelligence are not well served by the high school curriculum either.

Next, the minimum wage will not fight poverty like you think it will. Something like a negative income tax would be more effective. Also, how would you go about paying for a school in a district if not for property taxes? There isn't just an easy solution to that problem.

I do agree with your last point though. Not everyone needs to or should go to college. Beyond that, I think more people should work after high school or take a years break instead of going straight to college so that they can actually think about what they want to do. The fewer people that get saddled with crippling debt and a useless degree, the better.

yardie• 13 years ago

Yes, there is spending and then there is spending effectively. Something like half the money allocated for each student is siphoned at various points starting at the federal, state, county, district, and school. When teachers have to spend their own money to get basic schools supplies (like paper for the printer) and the school board is bragging how much they spend on each student* you know something is really wrong about where that money is going.

*My school board was require to print an annual report with the school performance and the average spent on each student. It was something like $6000/year; as a student I don't think they spent a tenth of that on me.

kiba4• 13 years ago

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with education. I think the three current problems are 1) education is expensive, 2) people are too poor, and 3) people of average or below average intelligence probably aren't served very well by the high school curriculum.

Yes, it is, and it have nothing to do with our funding. The way we teach is extraordinary inefficient and outdated.

For example, spaced repetition is a learning technique that takes advantage of the spacing effect phenomenon that is present in all humans. You know why your teachers told you to study everyday instead of cramming? Well, cramming doesn't help you retain information in the long run! Computers can be used to track every answers and problem, what our weakness are, and to schedule when to review, allowing us to take spaced repetition to its logical conclusion. The computer can generate problems on demand, give out recorded lectures by the very best teacher, and so on.

Spacing effects also implies summer vacation is harmful to knowledge acquisition process unless we continuously practice. When we finish high school and college, decays begin to set in because we stop practicing. The result is that countless generation learned mathematics, history, language art, literature, only to forget upon exiting formal education.

That's why khanacademy is so powerful. They really do leverage computers to generate problems, explain stuff, track your every mistakes, and schedule practices problem using spaced repetition. Right now, long run khanacademy users like me knows more and is the most refreshed on mathematics than the vast majority of high school students and working adults. We practice math problems everyday, thus ensuring that we never forget and be prepared to build a new knowledge as soon as Khan Academy adds new exercises or revise old one.

That's in contrast to going to a very inefficient traditional institutions and receiving a "great education" and then immediately forgetting most of what you're taught. That's a very inefficient way to learn.

logn5• 13 years ago

I don't think high schools exist so that you remember things. They're to teach you how to learn.

EnderMB2• 13 years ago

> Yes, it is, and it have nothing to do with our funding. The way we teach is extraordinary inefficient and outdated.

I don't disagree, but do you have anything to back this up?

I ask because my girlfriend is a teacher, and teaching is a lot harder than most people seem to believe.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>>Personally, I went to a very traditional private high school and received a great education. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with education.

Of course you would say that, since you went to a private high school and received, in your words, a great education. There are many others who were not so lucky (to have parents who could afford private school tuition).

qxcv• 13 years ago

> people of average or below average intelligence probably aren't served very well by the high school curriculum.

Explain. My experience has been that high school is little more than a legal straightjacket to prevent the archetypal hormone-addled teenager from going off and doing stupid shit or otherwise causing potential problems for themselves.

> The high school curriculum should have alternate vocational and tech skills tracks.

This doesn't happen already? What's the pipeline in your education system for someone who wants to become, say, a diesel mechanic? Can they leave school early and get an apprenticeship?

arethuza• 13 years ago

I'm a big fan of private education - my son has attended a private school here in the UK from the age of 4 and he is now 14 and he loves his school (both for academic studies and sports).

However, in many respects it is easy for private schools - they have plenty resources, excellent buildings, huge playing grounds and a fairly uniform set of reasonably high achieving parents - who are motivated to encourage their kids to try and excel.

jacques_chester5• 13 years ago

I hate being mean to 15 year olds.

But this was just platitudes and motherhood statements.

Did you win an essay contest or something?

trdtaylor• 13 years ago

Ways to fix the education system are like assholes

Everyone's got one.

clicks• 13 years ago

I personally think mine is the best one. :-)

Public boarding schools.

Lots of folks are hurting financially these days, so there's a lot of distraction for teenagers and not enough structure. Boarding schools will go a long way to solving that.

I also think what Obama mentioned in the SOTU address is a great idea: pre-school for all, not just those who can afford it.

Tichy2• 13 years ago

I suppose anything you already know could be described as a platitude. Doesn't mean everybody else knows it already. Apparently the people currently responsible for education don't know it yet.

jacques_chester5• 13 years ago

> I suppose anything you already know could be described as a platitude.

It's platitudes because of the vagueness. Students should want to learn, stuff should be relevant, etc etc. These are unmeasurable, untestable and thus irrefutable statements.

Given that education has as an inputs billions of dollars and amongst its outputs the future of civilisation, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a little analytical rigour.

alid4• 13 years ago

For anyone who's interested, I recommend watching the film 'Race to Nowhere' - it documents the current education system's focus on standardized tests and questions what 'success' looks like.

Personally I think we should be gearing curriculums towards what are being defined as the 21st Century Set of Literacies: how well we can find information, validate it, synthesize it, leverage it, communicate it, collaborate with it and problem solve with it.

What's education really for? I'd like to see the focus move from a focus on test scores towards producing future generations who are creative, empathetic, resilient, driven and entrepreneurial.

yummyfajitas3• 13 years ago

I'd like to see the focus move from a focus on test scores towards producing future generations who are creative, empathetic, resilient, driven and entrepreneurial.

Without testing, how will we know if we succeeded?

alid4• 13 years ago

I don't think testing as a way of tracking progress should be stopped completely (what gets measured gets done, right?) But the focus on testing is too strong.

In systems geared around testing, it creates a culture of scarcity in which teachers and schools are competing against each other. This compares with a system such as Finland, where they have no standardized tests (and hence have a more collaborative approach to education) and yet they rate among the world's best for educational outcomes.

Comkid• 13 years ago

A significant portion of this reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I

gfagd• 13 years ago

Please see the Editor's Note attached to this article: Arooj Ahmad plagiarized excessively.

15-Year-Old Student's Ed Reform Plan

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