American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing/

by callum85 • 11 years ago

67 65 11 years ago

chiph• 11 years ago

How does the Flynn Effect enter into this? [1] Because it seems unlikely that we're getting both dumber and smarter at the same time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

wtallis2• 11 years ago

The Flynn Effect is about scores on IQ tests, which ask very different questions than things like the SAT. Additionally, the Flynn effect seems to have been weakening and perhaps even reversing in recent decades.

stonemetal• 11 years ago

From your own link it doesn't seem to enter into it much if at all. Not only has it had the least effect on school subjects but some of the increase has been shown to be because of improved test taking skills rather than actual intelligence improvements.

There is debate about whether the rise in IQ scores also corresponds to a rise in general intelligence, or only a rise in special skills related to taking IQ tests. Because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional decreases over the years.
Researchers have shown that the IQ gains described by the Flynn effect are due in part to increasing intelligence, and in part to increases in test-specific skills.

novalis784• 11 years ago

We can get smarter and dumber at the same time:

By thinking that we are getting smarter, when in fact we are actually getting dumber.

greedo• 11 years ago

The article lost me immediately when it started mentioning food production in Malthusian terms. It read more as a brochure for a cult than a fact based essay.

stolio4• 11 years ago

You don't like Malthusian population doctrine?

If we add 2 billion people or 30% to the world population over the next 20 years it raises some interesting questions about feeding these new 2 billion people. Especially since most of the projected population boom is coming from countries who already have problems feeding their people:

During 2005–2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, United States, Ethiopia, and China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...)

nowarninglabel3• 11 years ago

Because feeding people is not a production problem, it's a economic and distribution problem. We already produce enough food to feed 2 billion extra mouths, and there's no evidence to the contrary, there's issues with how climate change will affect food production, but those models are still being worked out and are on much longer timelines than 20 years.

balls187• 11 years ago

Having nearly exhausted nature’s ability to feed the planet, we now need to discover a new food system.

Source for this?

wyager• 11 years ago

It's bullshit, of course. We exceeded "natural" food production capacity (if you take agriculture to be "unnatural") a long time ago.

The only hard limits on food production are the amount of energy and carbon/nitrogen/oxygen/etc. we can get our hands on. We are nowhere near these limits. We still have plenty of room for growth left with current popular agricultural technology. If that is exhausted, we have plenty of room for growth through hydroponics, GM, etc.

DubiousPusher2• 11 years ago

Yes, the real limit on food production is profitability. Plenty of America's arable land lies fallow or has condos built atop it.

I will say however that it seems some of our large food supply sources may be in danger and the economic and human cost of pivoting a food supply chain will be astronomical.

metaphorm• 11 years ago

An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus, 1798

swalsh• 11 years ago

I mean in a way, we kind of have been innovating "new food systems" for a pretty long time. By using genetic modifications we've found the ability to make plants immune to pesticides, reducing crops lost to bugs, and we've modified plants to have higher yields, or to travel better. We've also innovated ways to store crops, and to use them differently. The fact that we're even able to have this movement about organic crops is a testament to how far we've come.

Of course there's still a very large part of the world that doesn't have the same food security we have. Now most of that could probably be solved by simply taking the things that work here, and using them "over there". But its possible that as the world keeps growing we'll have to keep finding better ways.

Of course, even if quantity isn't an issue... we still need to innovate ways to improve quality, or to maintain sustainability.

My point is, food is already pretty industrialized, and we probably need to maintain some research to keep it going.

vacri• 11 years ago

Americans 'discover' just fine. What they need to learn is to have the political will to act on discoveries that require taking something other than the path of least resistance. A culture of people raised in these magic new labs is meaningless if society's professional decision-makers (politicians) are allowed to continue their sport of stalling any change.

In short 'discovery' is not enough. Implementation is also important.

germinalphrase2• 11 years ago

My only gut instinct is that we need to drastically expand our society's understanding of systems thinking.

If we could develop (even...barely...just a little) common understanding that what you do impacts those around you (and those who will live in this place after you) then perhaps we could regain some sense of common purpose, vision, or responsibility.

at-fates-hands• 11 years ago

"Over the next twenty years the earth is predicted to add another two billion people. Having nearly exhausted nature’s ability to feed the planet, we now need to discover a new food system."

Why does the author sound like he's saying we're going to add another 2 billion people to the current population over the next 20 years?

With a big chunk of the population being aging baby boomers, adding another billion people over 20 years wouldn't seem like its going to tax the planet any more that it is today.

I'm off course banking on a large aging population with falling birth rates.

JoeAltmaier3• 11 years ago

Exhausted? Nonsense. Iowa grows enough food to feed 2 United States. America could feed the world, right now. No, its societies that have failed to feed their people, not Mother Earth.

RIMR• 11 years ago

The point remains. People, and the societies they comprise are a part of the Earth.

It's really funny how people view themselves as separate from the Earth. Aside from the thousand or so people that have had the opportunity to travel to orbit, when was the last time we left Earth?

If anything, we are just a unique geographic feature.

stolio4• 11 years ago

Sub-Saharan Africa alone will add 1.3 billion people by 2050

http://www.voanews.com/content/africa-to-record-largest-popu...

panzagl• 11 years ago

Where have I heard this before...

Take up the White Man’s burden– The savage wars of peace– Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

diydsp• 11 years ago

The author accidentally reveals the solution and it's not 100% congruous with his own efforts:

"We “learn,” and after this we “do.” We go to school and then we go to work."

The actual solution is to continuously learn, after leaving school. That is the formula for success. Getting fascinated by looking at 3-d printouts ("people enter words that turn into architectural forms") is a small part of motivating people to do continuous learning- but no one will learn calculus in a culture lab.

ex_govt_it• 11 years ago

Here I was thinking this would be an article about how the education system fails to educate our children on how the world and the economy actually works instead of an idealization from yesteryear.

germinalphrase2• 11 years ago

Indeed. It's hard enough to define curriculum around the world as it exists right now, so how are we to steer this big ship toward designing curriculum for the world to come?

The answer is that we (very probably) can't - so we should focus on preparing our young people to be resilient, flexible, and motivated.

zhemao• 11 years ago

That's cool and all, but maybe we should make sure kids have the basics down first.

An elementary school in my town had an attachment for sixth graders being held back from advancing to middle school because they were functionally illiterate. Somehow, none of their teachers in five years of school noticed this.

Once all students are literate and have a grasp of basic mathematics, then maybe we can talk about teaching "discovery".

novalis784• 11 years ago

This is so true.

When my eldest was in 2nd grade I asked when they would be learning how to (finally) start learning cursive. The school's response was that they don't need cursive anymore because soon everyone will just be typing. Great, I said, so when are you starting your touch typing class? School response: oh, we won't need to teach that either, because in the future people will just talk to their computers...(this was in Florida, one of the top school districts, highly acclaimed A+ elementary school). I don't think banking on the Singularity and a benign AI should be the education system's only policy... I could barely decipher the 3rd-4th graders' texts. Spelling mistakes everywhere ("Don't want to stifle their creativity").

The daughter of a neighboring family did terribly at math. The school thought she needed to repeat 5th grade. They got a tutor who concluded that she did not know her multiplication table. Are you serious? Five years and no basic, fundamental skills taught (but it's all about self-esteem, creativity, exploration...). The girl started memorizing the times table, finally, passed the last exams already improved. At the middle school they evaluated her 6 months later and found that she was "way ahead of the class" - this is sad!

The ongoing war on memorization and lack of basic and elementary skills like proper writing and mental math (from what I could see as a German expatriate) makes it all unnecessarily hard for students.

Terr_• 11 years ago

The school thought she needed to repeat 5th grade. They got a tutor who concluded that she did not know her multiplication table. [...] The ongoing war on memorization

This might be down to different personal experiences, but... Is the "War on Memorization" the same as the perennial "War on Christmas", while both become more and more popular?

My memory is that memorization (like Christmas) was rife throughout the test-centric establishment, because it was the easiest thing to make multiple-choice tests for, demanded relatively little from the teachers, and made it simpler to create state-wide tests than more subjective fare.

What if there's plenty of memorization, but none of it takes because there's no application, and because the student just moves to the next thing they have to memorize?

gscott4• 11 years ago

Just my rant on schooling:

My Son just recently graduated High School and now is in his first year of college for dual major in Aviation Science (to be an air traffic controller) and Business. His high school (Valhalla High School in El Cajon California) gave him a test to determine his aptitude that said he should go into "building maintenance" (being a Janitor more or less) and wouldn't move up his classes to more difficult ones so he was in classes with kids who didn't really want to be there and were continually disruptive.

Looking for a solution for this problem I found Grossmont Middle College which is a high school on a 2 year college campus. My son was able to get into that and finished high school with about 34 units in college classes most of which transferred to the 4 year university he now attends (University of North Dakota... why he wants to move from California to the freezing cold I have no idea!).

Common Core can't fix the segregation of high schools between the rich high performing kids and everyone else who isn't allowed into the higher level of learning at schools. Every school is essentially 2 schools and if you don't get into the right classes you are screwed big time.

Reading the article, personally I see what is wrong in schools more about getting kids to where they want to be in life. Either college or a trade. For those who want a trade they should get 2 years of High School and 2 years of trade school along with some additional classes.

gaius• 11 years ago

I'm intrigued by this test - what did it involve? Obviously his quant skills are up to par if he's studying aerospace.

gscott4• 11 years ago

It was only multiple choice. When he brought home the results and told me how his school counselor assured him she would help him get into building maintenance I took him over to our trash can and we threw it away. As a parent you can't trust the school.. what a disaster. I believe most parents are overworked and don't have a good handle on what is happening with their kids in school. Schools has no incentive to make sure the kids succeed in life.

RobertKerans2• 11 years ago

This sounds very similar to the old eleven plus system in the UK; kids in the last year of primary school given a test (with an enormous impact upon their future prospects) that decided whether they went to technical, secondary modern, or grammar school.

gscott4• 11 years ago

That would make sense where the parent knows the test is coming and the impact of it. They would start early to determine how to improve their child's standing in the test, pushing their children's limits on what they can learn before the testing. However it would discriminate against kids who are slow to mature and come out of their shell.

whorleater• 11 years ago

Alternative view here:

While I don't doubt that your kid was hilariously unappreciated from the school based on one test, I was a relatively lazy middle school student, scoring B-C ranges on most of my classes as well as pretty much failing the first aptitude test (pretty sure it said that I should be a truck driver). As a result, I wound up getting placed into non-honors classes freshman year. After a few weeks of finding the classes mind-numbling boring, I offhandedly mentioned to my advisor that I wanted my classes to be more challenging, and she immediately moved me to honors courses because of the fact that I had taken the prerogative to tell her that I wasn't being sufficiently challenged. Currently I'm studying Computer Science at a large state University.

Because both our examples have an n = 1 sample size, it's definitely not correct to generalize high schools across an entire nation. However, in my experience, high school advisors were more than willing to toss out aptitude test results if the student had taken the prerogative themselves. While I agree with the idea that "Every school is essentially 2 schools", the barrier between them is honestly so low that it's not realistically a problem.

codexjourneys• 11 years ago

You were lucky. At my high school someone from the regular track had to jump through hoops and speak up loudly to be allowed into an honors English class. Separately, my high school guidance counselor "lost" the application of a student who wasn't doing very well in high school (it was the student's only application to college, so this may very well have messed up her life for a while), while constantly harassing me in the cafeteria to apply to more/better schools. I believe (somewhat cynically) that her motivation was to make the high school's acceptance rates look better.

But the real crime of the traditional education system, in my mind, is to condition students to be so focused on jumping for gold stars that they don't think about what they really want to accomplish and what activities (stars or no) will get them there.

gscott4• 11 years ago

You had a more supporting environment, I am sure it varies by school. My son did try to get into Honors classes but they would not let him. To get into the Middle College program he tried to get recommendations from all of his teachers and two of them said he would never make it and suggested he give up and that she would actively send a negative recommendation. The rest of the teachers were supportive.

I would say his school situation may have been more on the extreme side. Luckily he was able to get out of there. It was very demoralizing to him but once out of there he received all A and B grades in his college classes and he continues to get A and B grades at UND.

wtallis2• 11 years ago

Trying to cross that barrier before high school is in my experience much harder even though the payoff of doing so is much greater.

tirrellp• 11 years ago

I live in San Diego and my son is a few years away from entering HS, but I had no idea GMC existed. Even worse, I used to live in Fletcher Hills about a block away from the school. Thanks!

WalterBright• 11 years ago

together, they are redefining what it means to learn in America.

This happens every 10 years or so. Google "Why Johnny Can't Read" and "New Math" for examples.

bayesianhorse• 11 years ago

Learning "stuff that matters" should not be the goal of school. Most of the details students learn will be forgotten after a year at most.

But during all this time in school the students develop the mental infrastructure necessary for higher studies. In that sense even dead languages can be of benefit, even if the students never use them again.

At the very least, sitting still and focusing on mental work trains the prefrontal cortex which is essential for impulse control and discipline.

But today the focus is too much on learning practical skills, which often aren't that difficult to learn and easily forgotten. Rote learning is despised, even though it is the only way to build up the necessary memory skills for certain subjects.

rayiner4• 11 years ago

The author ironically talks in one breath about feeding another two billion people, and in another breath about how our educational system of "learning" then "doing" doesn't work. How exactly do you think we've gone about making the scientific advancements in food production that have allowed us to feed 7+ billion people? It involved teaching a bunch of kids basic biology, then teaching them advanced biology in college, then teaching them gene splicing techniques as well as research skills in graduate school, then having them chip away at how to get more productive, hardier crops at a research lab. That's also how we put a man on the moon, developed semiconductors, developed several generations of nuclear power, hybrid and electric cars, etc.

There's certainly a place for learning by doing, and "discovering" but most of the science that moves society forward is a very deliberate process involving incremental accretions to the collective knowledge. And our educational system is superbly designed to facilitate that process.

frogpelt• 11 years ago

It is trendy to say the system is broken.

Perhaps we rely on the system more than people used to.

Hard work and dedication to learning is what created all those breakthroughs you mentioned. The education system contributed here and there.

rayiner4• 11 years ago

Hard work and dedication to learning is what created all those breakthroughs you mentioned

Sure, but hard work and dedication is not a sufficient condition for building a modern scientific society. What's crucial is also building the infrastructure for passing along institutional knowledge to enable incremental advances. The modern educational system is very well-designed to facilitate that.

E.g. I studied aerospace engineering in college. You spend 4 years in college + 5-6 years in grad school learning everything about the state of the art. During your PhD you push something forward a little bit. Then you go to Boeing and figure out how to make the turbine blades withstand 5% higher temperatures so you can get 3% better combustion efficiency. And at every step the system is there to keep things moving dutifully forward. Eventually, you'll see you started with a 737 and are staring at a 787.

karmacondon• 11 years ago

The problem here is two-fold and also counter intuitive.

First, the idea is that most people learn more by doing than they do from rote memorization or even school lab experiments. If you want kids to be involved with the process of creating new food sources, have them start creating new food sources. Then they'll have a context for understanding how cells work and the value of organic chemistry and the other basic and advanced biology concepts. If you present it as just another boring thing that they're being forced a learn, a lot of creative and curious minds will shut down and just go through the motions of homework assignments and studying for quizzes. Many of us on hn are programmers not because we were forced to learn programming in school, but because we wanted to make a thing and set about learning the skills necessary to make that thing. That's what this article is saying, learn by doing.

The second issue is that not everyone can or should become a biologist. One of the other commenters mentioned that his son wanted to be an air traffic controller. Why make him sit through a biology class at all? It's possible that he'll be so intrigued by life sciences that he'll change his mind and switch his career path. Certainly wouldn't be the first 16 year old to do that. But our method now is to force young people to sit through dozens of hours of instruction on topics that they will probably never recall or use again in order for a small percentage of them to go on to advanced study. There has to be a better way. What we're doing now isn't just a waste of time and resources, it's actively turning kids against the process of education in general.

We need to allocate resources to hiring better teachers and to standardizing education across states and school districts. But pulling down even these low hanging fruit is highly politicized and controversial. The real core of the problem is to make young people excited enough about the process of education that we can't stop them from learning more on their own. Our current education system fails miserably at this. The one thing we don't need is more of the same. The only way to deal with the challenges of the future is to get the next generation so engaged and invested in solving them that our biggest problem becomes figuring out how to slow them down. Good luck doing that with a text book and homework assignments.

rayiner4• 11 years ago

How are you going to learn calculus or differential equations without a text book and homework assignments? And how are you going to do anything in science without calculus or differential equations?

dcole2929• 11 years ago

It's a small peice of the article and probably meant to be a throwaway line but it still irks me whenever I hear people write/talk about how we are reaching the end of our capacity to provide food for ourselves. There are some 7 billion people in the world right now and America by itself has the capacity to feed all of them. The fact that there are still countries where people are starving is kind of actually ridiculous. Another 2 billion people wouldn't even be noticed. They would probably still all starve because hey there's people starving now that we could feed but that has nothing to do with our ability to produce food.

American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist

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