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Jessica Hannan writes at I4U that Elon Musk pulled his children out of an established school after discovering they weren't receiving the quality of education that catered to their abilities and built his own school with only 14 students whose parents are primarily SpaceX employees. Musk wants to eliminate grades so there's no distinction between students in 1st grade and 3rd and students focus on the important elements of each subject. By integrating the thinking process to include a progressive step-by-step approach, children will be challenged and able to understand result through a systemic pattern. "Let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be saying, 'we're going to teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches.' This is a very difficult way to do it." Instead, Musk says it makes more sense to give students an engine and then work to disassemble it. "How are we going to take it apart? You need a screwdriver." When you show "what the screwdriver is for," Musk explains "a very important thing happens" because students then witness the relevancy of task, tool, and solution in a long term application."
According to Hannan, Musk's approach to delete grade level numbers and focus on aptitude may take the pressure off non-linear students and creates a more balanced assessment of ingenuity. Admitting books were "comforting" to him as a child and to reading everything from science fiction to the encyclopedia and philosophers from "morning to night," Musk points out that not everyone will be strong in every subject, or be able to retain regurgitated standardized aptitude facts beyond the test. "It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities." So far, Ad Astra "seems to be going pretty well," according to Musk. "The kids really love going to school."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Covalent on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:00PM
This is the problem. Everyone in education knows how to produce amazing education: Lots of teachers. If you have a teacher who can focus on just a few kids, that teacher can tailor instruction just for those kids. Most teachers would be amazingly successful in that arena.
But now imagine you're a high school teacher with 209 students. This number is not unusual, by the way. Just remembering their NAMES is tough duty, much less the intricacies of their strengths and weaknesses. Even the best teacher can't tailor specific instruction to that many people, and so some kids get stuff that is too easy, some kids get stuff that is too hard, and many kids get stuff that is too boring, so they tune out.
If you really want to improve education, the answer is the same as it is for software engineering, or having a space program, or fine dining: You get what you pay for. Get those class sizes way down, pay teachers a lot more money, and you'll see impressive results. But if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/what-finland-and-asia-tell-us-about-real-education-reform/ [parentsacrossamerica.org]
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:15PM
Keep your eyes on the radar for stories about the Estonian. That's where I'm currently paying my not-quite-as-horricic tax bills, and the education system does seem to be patting itself on the back fairly often nowadays when international comparisons are published.
Clearly, if you want your education system improved - find me a job in your country!
(However, a side effect of this is that you will also adopt the Euro within 2 years. The UK doesn't want me back!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:20PM
everything is eventually paid for by taxes
What a novel perspective.
I guess that makes me a crazy socialist.
Any moment now, someone will try to declare the so-that-everyone-has-enough meme a pejorative and say "Greed is good. It works".
you will also adopt the Euro within 2 years
You must have missed how Greece is struggling to make their payments this time and how it looks like the next time they simply won't.
You can't get blood from a stone.
The just-completed local elections in Spain had major wins for The Left and anti-austerity and anti-corruption.
They have national elections mandated before December 22.
What it looks like to me is that the days of the Eurozone are numbered.
Greece will stop saluting the greedy German bankers and will exit the Euro to be joined by Podemos.
The house of cards that never offered any advantage to the little countries will then collapse.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:18AM
And I've noticed that Greece and Spain have been struggling for 40 endless years, it's nothing to do with the Euro. Between the 70s and 90s, in the spirit of European cooperation, Germany was paying on average about 9 billion quid into an EC pot per year, and Spain was being funded to the tune of #9bn per year too. The UK was only paying about #6bn/yr into that pot, and Greece was being propped up to the tune of #6bn. Those two have *always* been charity cases.
The german bankers aren't greedy - they're bitter.
Your final sentence is ignorant bollocks. I live in one of the little countries, and we've benefitted enormously.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @08:29PM
If the German banksters are so much better, why is it that are they giving loans to entities that obviously can't pay them back?
What Germany is is a flock of vultures.
In 1953, Germany got half its debt written off by its debtors.
...yet Germany won't make a similar move for Greece.
This doesn't even cover the damage that Germany did to Greece during the invasion and occupation of that country.
Germany is not better; it is predatory and evil--and that goes back a lot of decades too.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:17PM
Teacher pay is actually not bad in most places (since most of SN is in the US, this is true in most States [teacherportal.com]), compared to other professions with similar demands. Whatever teachers say, in most places they do get a lot of time off, and during the school year they don't work more overtime than other professions. Class size is also pretty reasonable, ranging anywhere from 20 to 35 - and the larger sizes actually tend to be in places with better school performance (stereotypically, more rural locations). The problems lie elsewhere.
First, "everyone in education" does not know how to produce amazing results. The education majors are, let's be honest here, far from the best and brightest. Individual exceptions, sure, but on average they're not exactly rocket scientists.
Second, it would be fine that education majors aren't brilliant, if they only taught through early primary school. By 5th or 6th grade, a teacher needs solid knowledge of the subject matter being taught - and needs to be better at it that than even the good students. That means that teachers must have degrees in their subject material, with a few courses on the side in pedagogy. That's how it is in most countries that do well on things like PISA. However, in the USA and the UK, you can have a education major who barely passed a couple of math courses teaching calculus - and that's just pathetic.
Anecdote: I went to school in the US, and I was better at math than my public school teachers, starting around 6th grade. I'm good at math, but I'm no genius - the teachers were just that bad. Now I'm in Switzerland, and my kids' teachers are good at what they teach; mostly, they have masters' degrees in their subjects. Wow, what a difference!
Finally, culture and family play a huge role. HairyFeet pointed out in another post that American black urban culture is poisonous, and that education is not even on the radar of that culture. In Europe, I can tell you that there are also poorly integrated subcultures here that have the same problem. You cannot educate someone who doesn't want to be educated. What, exactly, you are supposed to do with them? Well, that's a difficult question, but pouring extra time, effort and money down a black hole is probably not the answer.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Wednesday May 27 2015, @10:39PM
You said "most teachers would be amazingly successful in that arena." By using the word 'most' you have made me wonder. Is this a world-wide view, US-centric, or in another country? My experience, in public schools in the US, is that most teachers are apathetic, teaching to a book, or teaching to pass a standardized test. It makes me doubt the validity of the word 'most' in that context. I can not speak for the planet as a whole nor for other countries thus I decline to opine as such would be speculation and would also be invalid.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."