SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.
And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else. (In 1899, William T. Harris, the US commissioner of education, celebrated the fact that US schools had developed the "appearance of a machine," one that teaches the student "to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place, and not get in the way of others.") We don't openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested. School administrators prepare curriculum standards and "pacing guides" that tell teachers what to teach each day. Legions of managers supervise everything that happens in the classroom; in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers.
...
That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
Good, long article on how education could be reinvented for the 21st century.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday August 24 2015, @02:20PM
If you have motivated, intelligent students whose parents believe in education - then yes. Of course, with students like that, it takes a real effort to prevent them from learning. This sounds like a great approach for certain subject, when teaching the best students. And we do need to invest in the best students.
Unfortunately, that's not what TFA is talking about. TFA doesn't even know what it is talking about. It presents examples where this kind of unstructured learning has worked in some very poor classrooms - in second world countries. We're talking about motivated students, whose parents probably value education very highly as the way forward. Give students like that a good teacher and access to resources, and of course they can excel.
From this basis, the article supposes that the same method will work in inner city schools in the US, to rescue the hundreds of thousands of dropouts. This is a completely different situation. The classrooms in US cities are not starved for resources. The problems lie elsewhere: The unmotivated students. The students whose parents don't care about school. Give these an unstructured learning environment, and, well...let's not go there.
If you really want to make a difference with kids in US inner city schools, you have to face some unpleasant realities. Most of these kids do not need prepared for college. They need basic job and life skills: a trade and the ability to balance their bank account. They need discipline in the schools, because they get none at home. You almost certainly need to haul the hard-cases off to military-style boarding schools, so that they stop disrupting the education of the ones you can actually teach.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 24 2015, @04:31PM
TFA:
step aside so students can teach themselves and one another.
BRADLEY13:
Give these an unstructured learning environment, and, well...let's not go there.
The problem is, we've already gone there.
As soon as they are able, many drop out of school, and begin "teaching themselves and others". Normally we call these gang bangers, or just hoodlums. They adopt a tribal identity.
The first things the teach themselves are skills, habits, and tribal markings that guarantee they will never have any mainstream career and always be employed on the firinges of society, if at all. Head to toe tattoos, piercings, gauges in dangling ear lobes. All signs of the tribe.
And by and large, they get away with it long enough to wall off any possibility of traditional learning from their fellow "students".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 24 2015, @04:54PM
a trade
Who gets unemployed so they get the job? Just saying, increasing the number of people with pieces of paper has never created a single job in the history of humanity. If you've got 100 jobs and 200 people trained for them and 200 untrained, increasing the ratio to 300 trained and 100 untrained isn't going to change the reality of there's still only 100 jobs and now 100 folks are in debt for the training they can't use.
Its a classic micro vs macro economic mistake.
On a micro level a single individual always benefits from becoming more educated than their peers. On a macro level giving everyone a participation trophy / participation degree merely means you'll change from having ten million un and under employed dropouts to having the same ten million now holding a worthless degree, still un and under employed.
Its very similar to the money/inflation argument. I'm better off if I have an extra $100 in my wallet and everyone else doesn't. Put an extra $100 in everyone wallet and nobody is any better off.
This is basically whats going on in higher ed right now with respect to scam like tuition costs and government educational loans.
You can't fix too many people for too few jobs by handing out diplomas.
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Monday August 24 2015, @05:02PM
That's a great post, unusual level of clarity, thanks for writing it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday August 25 2015, @07:50AM
> Just saying, increasing the number of people with pieces of paper has never created a single job in the history of humanity.
Two counter arguments:
* Country A is in competition with country B. A lot of jobs can be moved to another country (see, for example, gripes elsewhere about H1NB or whatever the US visas are called)
* The number of jobs is not static. Probably if you have people who are better educated, they are more able to create jobs (e.g. inventing cool stuff which someone needs to build).
That second point is a fundamental building block of the modern world.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 25 2015, @11:55AM
That second point is a fundamental building block of the modern world.
I agree with a superficial analysis, but at a deeper level of analysis is nothing is pragmatically and observationally more toxic to entrepreneurship than the existing educational system.
We COULD create an ideal educational system where every founder myth doesn't begin with "First, I dropped out of school", but we certainly don't have that now.
There is also the hidden assumption that vocational training and brainwashing for industrial factories circa 1900, which is the system we have now, is any good at educating people. Along the lines of the old saying never let school get in the way of your education.
I guess I'm saying it would be cool if the memes you quoted were true, but they are not, so...
(Score: 2) by threedigits on Tuesday August 25 2015, @08:17AM
> You can't fix too many people for too few jobs by handing out diplomas.
Education is not (or should be not) about handling out diplomas, but about getting knowledge into people's brains, and giving them tools to make a better life for themselves (and society as a whole).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 25 2015, @12:04PM
None of our metrics measure that; we aren't getting that and are not going to get that.
I agree with you it would be cool if we got that.
Its pretty much the Santa or Tooth fairy argument. Man that would be awesome; aint happening; but that would be awesome.
Its interesting that thru human history, formal or informal apprenticeship (or a very similar system) has been extremely effective and stable; the last century of public schooling with the factory whistle and rows of desks has been pretty much an epic expensive fail. The hard sci fi future probably looks a lot like an apprenticeship system with a strong online component (both for well rounded classes to cover things the master hasn't mastered, and quite possibly some apprenticeship relationships).
Interestingly the online component would save the inner cities... without online they'd be stuck, whereas my kid would apprentice under the CFO accountant next door to my house, perhaps. But with a strong online component an inner city kid would at least have a chance at getting a decent apprenticeship, however small it would be better than now.