[HN Gopher] Why Schools Don't Educate (1990)
___________________________________________________________________
Why Schools Don't Educate (1990)
Author : cm_silva
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-09-12 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thesunmagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thesunmagazine.org)
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| I just don't think I can agree with Gatto's main premise that
| schools aren't educating students or that a formal education
| serves no purpose in the modern world. We have seen world wide
| that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out
| of poverty. We also see that the countries with the best schools
| are dominating the world economy. There are also plenty of
| counter examples we can find: entire countries without well
| organized compulsory education systems that have incredibly high
| rates of illiteracy and poverty.
|
| Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our society
| has not "disintegrated" yet, Well-schooled people are far from
| irrelevant, in fact they have given us nearly every single modern
| comfort and technological breakthrough in modern history and they
| have continued to do so over the last 25 years.
|
| What Gatto is proposing would just create even more inequality
| and social injustice, where only parents with the means to see
| their children get a good education can do so, either by having
| the background and time to homeschool or the money to provide
| private schooling or tutors for their own children.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| > We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective
| tool for lifting people out of poverty.
|
| This is false. Schooling has had nothing to do with it,
| capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of poverty,
| not schooling.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| bjornsing wrote:
| Isn't basic schooling a prerequisite for successful
| capitalism though?
|
| (May sound snarky but a genuine question.)
| vkou wrote:
| > capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of
| poverty
|
| This is false. Access to cheap energy, in the form of fossil
| fuels is what has lifted the most people out of poverty, not
| capitalism.
|
| Without burning through millions of years of oil and coal in
| the span of a few centuries, we'd all still be farming and
| eating mud, regardless of which economic system were in play.
|
| Remove capitalism, and industrialized society will still limp
| along, in a relatively prosperous manner compared to
| centuries past.
|
| Remove access to cheap energy, and it will collapse
| overnight, with misery and death on a scale the world has
| never seen.
| notch656a wrote:
| What's your proposed mechanism for incentivizing me to
| efficiently provide energy to customers without capitalism?
| To invest in the capital intensive industries necessary to
| refine and extract this energy? Are you thinking a form of
| anarchism without property rights kind of situation, or
| more of a command economy?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Any of the systems used before the idea of capitalism was
| conceived would probably have done OK at reducing
| poverty, given incredibly cheap energy.
|
| Meanwhile, capitalism would have done very little to
| reduce poverty, without all that dirt-cheap energy.
|
| I think the poster's point was that, even _if_ capitalism
| helped, the cheap energy from fossil fuels was the
| _absolutely necessary_ part. Personally, I 'd not be
| surprised if modern capitalism doesn't even work so well
| without cheap, abundant energy. Is it _so_ effective when
| almost all your energy is human and animal, with a little
| water power on the side? I dunno. Maybe not much more
| effective than other approaches. Maybe even less
| effective.
| scarmig wrote:
| Feudal and socialist systems had access to cheap energy,
| and they weren't nearly as successful at raising people out
| of poverty. In the case of classic centrally planned
| socialist states, they were likely worse for the
| environment during development than comparable capitalist
| states (cf USA vs USSR).
| vkou wrote:
| The USSR (When it was not actively in the middle of an
| existential war) was a dramatically more prosperous
| society than any other point in the region's history. As
| it turns out, rising tides lift all boats, and
| industrialization, whether in planned economies, or
| otherwise, is what lifts people out of poverty.
|
| But that industrialization can't happen without cheap
| energy. Energy is the critical factor, here.
| jcz_nz wrote:
| That's just laughable. About a billion Chinese might disagree
| with this.
| notch656a wrote:
| Didn't Chinese spend more time in school after more
| elements of capitalism were introduced and the command
| economy of "get in the fields for the public good" gave way
| to "participate in the world capitalist economy." I agree
| schooling seems an important link to increased wealth, but
| it seems bettering education is as much linked to better
| capitalizing on stock of tax-cattle and realizing the
| capital investment in the children allows them to better
| compete on the capitalists market so their tax money can be
| taken to fatten the government hogs.
| Test0129 wrote:
| > Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our
| society has not "disintegrated" yet
|
| It really depends on how you define disintegrated. What he
| mentioned has manifested over the last 30 years. Slowly, and
| quietly. Now, it has come to a head. The lunatics actively
| arguing parents should have no place in schooling, the
| obsession of children with transient media figures, the state
| of school bells determining the bounds of one's life, and the
| general lack of society to embrace the creativity and novelty
| of a kid's wild imagination. It was present when I was a kid
| but much more muted. These days, watching the children in my
| family grow up, they are far more interested in becoming
| _someone_ they aren 't, rather than the _something_ they want
| to be.
|
| I would consider this disintegration.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| This is a laundry list of vices every generation has faulted
| the youth of the next generation for falling prey to.
| calculatte wrote:
| When has the government in previous generations officially
| called concerned parents "domestic terrorists" for voicing
| their opinions at public meetings?
|
| You don't get to wave off everything at whim when there are
| real concerns out there. A large percentage of the
| population would disagree with you that "disintegration" is
| not happening.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Well, that particular incident was not mentioned in the
| parent comment.
|
| But since you've brought it up, what else do you call an
| organized campaign to assault, threaten to assault,
| vandalize the private property of, threaten the family
| of, defame, and/or falsely level criminal charges against
| public officials?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/schoo
| l-b...
|
| "At an Illinois school board meeting, a man was arrested
| after allegedly striking an education official. A school
| board member in Loudoun County, Va., fielded abusive,
| profane and threatening emails, Facebook messages and
| phone calls for months. In Florida, protesters camped out
| in front of a school board member's house and burned an
| "FU" into her lawn with weed killer. They called her a
| Nazi and a pedophile. Someone falsely reported her as
| abusing her child to the Florida Department of Children
| and Families. "Be careful, your mommy hurts little kids!"
| an activist yelled at her daughter." (links to incident
| reports in original source)
|
| That's not merely "voicing their opinions at public
| meetings."
| calculatte wrote:
| Governments don't make blanket statements about all
| parents in response to "a man" getting arrested. Activist
| school boards working with government enforcement are
| directly destroying lives. This isn't some "old people
| yelling at clouds" that you make it out to be.
|
| There's a reason so many school boards are being flipped.
| It's a response to the obvious hostility towards parents
| and people are actually waking up to it. Your downplaying
| and strawmanning of the situation shows that you actually
| don't know what's going on.
|
| "Father arrested at school board event says they tried
| covering up his daughter's rape by man in girl's
| bathroom"
|
| "Round Rock ISD police force arrests parents at their
| homes"
|
| "Dissident Parents Targeted by School Board in Arizona"
|
| Not to mention the numerous instances of school admins
| promoting discrimination, violence, and their biased
| political agendas.
|
| https://www.projectveritas.com/news/exposed-greenwich-ct-
| ass...
|
| https://www.projectveritas.com/news/prestigious-nyc-
| private-...
|
| https://www.projectveritas.com/news/nyc-assistant-
| principal-...
|
| This isn't education. It's indoctrination backed by
| authoritarianism.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective
| tool for lifting people out of poverty. We also see that the
| countries with the best schools are dominating the world
| economy.
|
| What does this even mean? The US spends more an education than
| anyone else and it dominated the world's economy because it's
| blown up everyone else who tried. This is a tautology. The
| countries with the schools people who rank schools like best
| are ranked best. That doesn't mean they are actually best.
|
| Schooling absolutely helps people get out of poverty. But that
| doesn't mean it's the type of school that dominant in the West.
| We have a school and university system that's extended day care
| and teaches both incredibly slowly and way too fast. With
| smaller classes we could reduce the 12 years of schooling the
| average child gets today to 4. We never will because the
| parents don't know what to do with them and there aren't any
| jobs for 12 year olds.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Gatto is specifically discussing public K-12 education in the
| U.S. And it's absolutely correct to describe that as a dismal
| failure, compared to other developed countries. Especially so
| when you look at outcomes for the most vulnerable sub-groups,
| which should arguably be the highest priority given that their
| family and social milieus cannot pick up the slack to anything
| near the same extent.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| Education varies significantly from state to state in the US,
| even district to district in many areas. Some states compare
| very well internationally, like Massachusetts, which would be
| ranked as high as 4th by some international measurements, if
| it was its own country. We consistently see in the US where
| regions with better public schools have much better economic
| outcomes, and lower rates of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and
| suicide. There are plenty of alternative outcomes to look at
| in the US as well: high school drop outs for example which on
| average have a much lower lifetime earning potential, and
| higher rates of drug abuse, suicide and incarceration.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I have another recent comment where I lament that the rise of
| intelligent machines will lead to humans being looked on as just
| another machine to do a job by those with ultimate power in our
| society, but according to this, we have already become those
| machine cogs.
|
| Instead of trying to produce a "whole person" out of the
| schooling system in America, we are trying to produce specialized
| devices for the performance of certain tasks. Some of the
| students are sorted into the "high power devices" bin (lawyers,
| programmers, etc.), some into the "low power device" bin (manual
| labor), and some into the rubbish bin (physically disabled,
| mentally ill, etc.). Much like Intel bins their chips, in fact.
| Once you bin the parts from the school system, then you start to
| ship those parts throughout the workforce, or perhaps do some
| modifications to them in a university to achieve the most optimal
| output.
|
| I guess there were a lot of people who saw this before me, and I
| am sure that like them my view will never get mainstream
| traction. Someday, perhaps, an AI will be developed to read our
| internet comments, and I'll be labeled as someone who needs
| maintenance and shipped off to a re-education facility.
| HereIGoAgain wrote:
| The problem is that schools, especially in the west, have totally
| lost the plot! We need to get back to its original and sole
| purpose. Teaching young people the basic skills needed to work in
| society. As well as the skills needed to move onto secondary
| education and vocational training. The fact that so much time and
| effort is spent on things other than core subjects, even while we
| graduate children who fail at one or more of said subjects, is
| inexcusable. It also makes efforts to push things like
| political/social activism and issues onto children, all the more
| infuriating! (not to mention the real harm and derangement doing
| so causes to children and young people's mental health)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Could you expand on what you believe are "core" subjects?
| giantg2 wrote:
| There seem to be some good points in here. I'm not sure I agree
| with all of them, but the conclusion that family is important to
| learning seems to be true in my experience. Many parents get so
| hung up on the "best" schools they ignore their own possible
| contributions. Eg work 50-80 hours a week, never teach their kids
| anything, and complain when the school or after school activity
| is doing something "wrong" because their kid isn't a star.
|
| Unfortunately home schooling isn't an option for most, even if it
| is possibly one of the best options within the current system
| (atleast education wise, not for the conformity).
|
| "Our teenage-suicide rate is the highest in the world -- and
| suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not poor. In
| Manhattan, 70 percent of all new marriages last less than five
| years."
|
| These are very interesting and maybe I'll do some more research
| on these.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I have nothing of value to add to this. This speech encapsulates
| my experience in school growing up America and my experience now
| watching the children in my family grow up. It sums up the cause
| and effect of all of it exactly as I had supposed and hearing it
| from a person with actual authority makes it all the more
| meaningful. Schools, especially K-12, have always felt like a
| prison and this author put it in a way I couldn't even begin to
| write.
|
| More people should read this. It may be the most important
| document on the state of the American education system in it's
| history and it's a full 3 decades old.
| hintymad wrote:
| > The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little
| they do have is transitory
|
| Maybe kids are just not curious about what the author teaches? As
| a parent, I have to admit that kids are not necessarily curious
| about what we value. My kids are not curious about STEM, at least
| not yet. They are, however, are very curious about how to use TNT
| in minecraft, or how to learn cartwheel. It's unfortunate (or
| forutnate?) that not every one is born curious about STEM or any
| subject like their teachers or parents do.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Teach them about red stone and you're teaming them programming.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Very much this, and it shouldn't even be a shocking revelation
| to most people. Nobody I know in my life enjoyed _every_
| subject they were taught in school. At best, they had 1 or 2
| subjects they could be called curious about. Many had none
| (that were taught in school).
|
| And even then, the schooling I went through hardly rewarded
| curiousness. You were incentivized to cram information to pass
| tests, so that you could get good grades, to get into good
| colleges, to cram more information to the pass more tests, to
| get good grades.
|
| Even when my teachers seems to enjoy curious students, the
| curriculum was certainly not structured to incentivize it.
| hintymad wrote:
| > You were incentivized to cram information to pass tests
|
| I thought there was a solution: teachers give good questions
| for homework and exams. When I was in school, I rarely got
| repeated questions. Most questions challenged my
| understanding of fundamentals. It's hard to believe that
| people who _only_ cram can ever get decent grades in tests
| like IIT 's JEE, China's National Entrance Exam, or Japan's
| university entrance exams, or Korea's national entrance
| exams. As for the US, it's hard to imagine that anyone can
| solve decently hard problems in textbooks like Jackson's
| Classical Electrodynamics or Cormen et el's Introduction to
| Algorithms (The US does not mandate challenging problems in
| high schools, so I use examples from college).
| RankingMember wrote:
| > My children watch fifty-five hours of television a week,
| according to recent reports.
|
| Would love to have been able to see a source on that whopper-
| even in the days before most had computers, I don't see any
| reporting showing ~8 hours a day of consumption for children.
| jppope wrote:
| quick google search:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...
|
| I know that the US census had the average at like 6 hrs a day.
| No matter what the real number is... its a lot
| emeth wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > But I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge, they'll
| also become self-teachers -- and only self-teaching has any
| lasting value.
|
| Makes me think of Dorothy Sayer's 1948 article, The Lost Tools of
| Learning [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.pccs.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfL...
| hourago wrote:
| > But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the
| only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and
| individualistic -- because the community life that protects the
| dependent and the weak is dead.
|
| Too many people has apocalyptic views of the world. And to push
| for individualistic behavior when you think that your society is
| disintegrating seems to just accelerate any problems that may
| exists. 30 years later the collapse still has not happened.
|
| > The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little
| they do have is transitory;
|
| I have yet to see a child that is not curious, you need some war-
| level trauma to stop children curiosity. I would guess that the
| author real complain is that children are not interested in the
| same things that him, and that is why he is pissed off.
|
| > they're just nice kids from central Harlem, bright and alert,
| but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them
| couldn't add or subtract with any fluency.
|
| I am all for better schools and I can not even imagine how bad
| schooling has been in mainly black neighborhoods but to "just let
| the kids learn by themselves" seems as absurd as the idea of
| "tabula rasa". Kids need to learn to learn but they also need to
| be taught.
|
| > The Swedes realized this in 1976, when they effectively
| abandoned state adoption of unwanted children and instead spent
| national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so
| that children born to Swedes were wanted.
|
| This one is interesting as Abortion laws are changing in the USA.
|
| > Family is the main engine of education.
|
| This makes sense. I just think that schools also have their place
| no only for education but as socializing places.
|
| > to promote during school time confluences of parent and child
| that will strengthen family bonds.
|
| Sweden has a generous parental leave. That is a good way of
| achieving this goal.
|
| In general the article expresses a too extreme view of things.
| But it has some good points even if I do not agree with all the
| conclusions.
| raydiatian wrote:
| > Too many people has apocalyptic views of the world.
|
| Is our children learning?
|
| I'll start with your grammar and end with a look out my window,
| where smoke from forest fires currently fills the sky.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| > And to push for individualistic behavior when you think that
| your society is disintegrating seems to just accelerate any
| problems that may exists.
|
| This can not be understated. Coming from a country that would
| be considered "Eastern European", there is an astounding amount
| of individualism pushed in schools, and yet, it seems that the
| most prosperous and "equal" countries take the opposite
| approach.
|
| What I cherish the most from my time in Scandinavian
| Universities is how much emphasis there is on collective work.
| Those who work in group will always achieve and learn a lot
| more than those who do it alone, unless the latter are truly
| exceptional.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Those who work in group will always achieve and learn a lot
| more than those who do it alone, unless the latter are truly
| exceptional."
|
| Many people in the US who have done group projects at school
| will disagree - you typically end up with dead weight or
| overbearing partners (it tends to get better when you get out
| of the compulsory school years).
|
| With the right partners, I completely agree though. In my
| undergrad and even moreso in my masters I had some good
| groups.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I'd wager that it is the sense of individualism that causes
| the feeling of carrying dead weight as the dead weight does
| not feel any sense of responsibility towards the group.
|
| Given what I have read about such individualistic
| behaviour, I am inclined to believe that public
| transportation as found in Denmark wouldn't function in the
| US simply because it requires a form of trust between
| citizen and state. You just enter the bus / metro / train,
| you generally don't have to show ticket or anything. You
| are "caught" however if an inspector happens to be on board
| and goes for a check. I have had such checks only on the M2
| line in Copenhagen (the one from the airport). People just
| buy the ticket from their phone and understand their
| responsibilities.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it depends on what we mean for individualism. One
| can have a strong sense of individualism and still
| function well in society. An individual can still want to
| do their part. I think it's mostly a lack of honor or
| integrity - they'd rather put their name on a project and
| get credit for the work of others, or get a free ride on
| the bus.
|
| For example, the boy scouts teach integrity, teamwork,
| and also self-reliance (individualism).
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| This exact model is used in my city train / rail system
| so it is in fact possible in the U.S.
|
| I assume it would be more challenging to use this model
| in our largest Metro areas.
| tsol wrote:
| > The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what
| little they do have is transitory;
|
| If that curiosity is all satisfied at home on
| youtube/television then kids really won't much real curiosity
| for school. Kids are curious but not about everything all the
| time
| Spivak wrote:
| There is nothing more sure to kill your love of anything than
| to have it be taught at school.
|
| Like come on, we were stuck in the boredom cube for 6ish
| hours a day, the alternative is nothing and most of us still
| didn't pay attention.
| grendelt wrote:
| > than to have it be taught at school.
|
| than to have it be taught IN A BORING WAY WITHOUT CONTEXT
|
| Learning my multiplication tables was fun when it was
| turned into a race with my friends. Memorizing the state
| capitals and abbreviations was fun when it was turned into
| a game.
|
| You can turn most anything into a fun way of learning it
| with just a modicum of effort. One problem is too many
| teachers get beat down to only teach what they are told to
| teach through some ready-made commercial curriculum. We
| have a huge number of teachers who are poorly paid. Too
| many run-ins with difficulty and admins who want things
| done _their_ way, and that teacher 's lifelong career gets
| sapped of any joy and they default to just teaching as
| they're told to teach.
|
| If education was better funded in order to pay teachers
| very competitive wages, you'd attract more can-do teachers
| to the field instead of bright eyed young college graduates
| who end up leaving the profession within the first 5 years
| because of how stifling the bureaucracy of it all is. Pay
| the job well to attract and retain the best and brightest
| and you'll get amazing results through creativity and
| mastery of the art of education.
|
| We don't do that, so you often get what you pay for.
| robocat wrote:
| It is the intolerable conditions that need fixing.
|
| You make a tired stereotypical argument that better pay
| attracts and retains better people: the idea that money
| can fix all problems is a thoughtless crutch.
|
| Better pay retains those people that despite the
| intolerable working conditions, people who slavishly
| force themselves to remain. Why presume there is a
| correlation between teaching ability and slavishness?
|
| The argument that better pay attracts better people makes
| little sense for jobs that people desire regardless of
| pay: becoming a teacher is often a calling. the great
| teachers I know are not necessarily academic (high GPA)
| achievers, instead they have a passion for teaching
| children, and they learn skills that are not testable by
| written exams.
|
| You yourself even point out that money is not the issue:
| "young college graduates [leave] the profession within
| the first five years because of how stifling the
| bureaucracy [is]".
|
| Most private preschool teachers in New Zealand work for
| nearly minimum wage, and I have friends who are teaching
| preschoolers (under 5 year old). These are smart,
| motivated, dedicated women working long hours and they
| remain in the profession earning little: even those that
| move up the preschool career ladder earn well below
| equivalent jobs in other industries.
|
| In New Zealand teachers of 5+ year olds get paid a more
| reasonable salary. I have many friends that remain
| teachers for decades mostly because of the joy and
| satisfaction they get from the job, not because they are
| tied to the job by money or lack of opportunity.
|
| Fix the conditions, not the pay.
|
| Edited: improved writing.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > If education was better funded in order to pay teachers
| very competitive wages
|
| I see it as a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Are teachers
| paid less because they suck, or do they suck because
| they're not paid well?
|
| Putting aside wages, does education _really_ need more
| funding? What exactly is more expensive about teaching
| the fundamentals now than 50 years ago?
|
| > you'd attract more can-do teachers
|
| That would be possible not by merely increasing teacher
| pay. One of the biggest complaints by most teachers is
| that they are not allowed to deviate from the state
| sponsored lesson plan. Why would anyone who is qualified
| to be teaching children be inspired to be a mouthpiece
| for the state and nothing more? Teachers shouldn't be
| getting lesson plans from the state. Their students
| should either pass the exams or the teachers get fired.
| Yes, I'm using the word _fired_ here, because I don 't
| believe in teachers being protected from fucking up the
| minds of children. Maybe teachers who are actually
| qualified to teach children will find that inspiration in
| having their prestige be on the line, and the truly evil
| teachers out there wouldn't last as long if they weren't
| effective at educating.
|
| Who were the best teachers you had? I bet they weren't
| the ones who just read out of a textbook and did whatever
| the state guidelines told them to do. Usually the best
| teachers and professors are so interested in their
| subject matter that they can effectively convey
| information and its importance without reading notes
| verbatim. We need _more_ teachers like that, but when I
| was growing up there might have been one of those in
| every 10. Hopefully it 's better than that now, but I
| don't see why it would be.
|
| As long as the system itself is rotten, it really doesn't
| matter what pay teachers. The way the that the education
| system in America is constructed does not attract virtue.
| It attracts those who can fit well into bureaucracy and
| do what they're told in exchange for protection. There
| are still good teachers within that system, but I need
| more than one hand to count how many lazy, stupid, and
| sadistic teachers I've encountered.
| kansface wrote:
| Is fixing the stifling bureaucracy is out of the
| question?
| notch656a wrote:
| >Is fixing the stifling bureaucracy is out of the
| question?
|
| I mean no but the issue is the system has to be changed
| as to not encourage stifling bureaucracy. Unfortunately a
| monopolized school system with a captive customer ('pay
| up to this exact single school district or you know just
| sell your house and uproot yourself and move') is anti-
| thetical to the kind of free-market competition that aids
| in rooting out inefficient bureaucracy.
|
| I love the responses I often get when suggesting to let
| the parents use their own discretion to pay directly for
| their children's education using the per-child tax
| allocation. Somehow striking teachers are simultaneously
| people we're supposed to listen to as people who know how
| to fix the system when things go wrong, but god forbid we
| allow a system that allows the parent to pay the teachers
| directly and privately to bypass the broken public school
| administrators.
|
| Somehow teachers are simultaneously the source we can
| listen to about how to fix things when they strike, but
| suddenly become distrustful evil capitalists if we're
| allowed to let them privately educate on the free market
| in lieu of public school system. I wish the public would
| make up their mind.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes. I think the first time I learned about proportions
| is when me and my buddy applied formula we learned in
| chemistry class and we used it to estimate speed %
| increase of CPU OC from 100 to 120. It was something I
| really wanted to know so even though it was math, I
| wanted to understand it ( edit: obviously it was a rough
| estimate, but for our purposes it was sufficient ).
|
| That said, some things have to be boring. The fun comes
| later with application:>
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > And to push for individualistic behavior when you think that
| your society is disintegrating seems to just accelerate any
| problems that may exists.
|
| I don't think individualism and participation in community are
| necessarily at odds with one another. Communities of choice can
| be really powerful and meaningful in peoples' lives. I think
| the tricky part is figuring out how to equip young people to
| find and build communities in a society that no longer provides
| it by default.
| fiziks_hckr wrote:
| I've taught in schools from all corners of San Francisco, and
| can't agree more with majority of what was said in this
| article, except maybe the money part*, I'll leave a footnote
| for this.
|
| One day when I was volunteering at one of these schools, a
| student came up to me showing a picture of a robot how cool it
| was. When I mentioned that it was relatively easy to build, he
| got super stoked, told his friends and before you know it, we
| had a class of 8 students pursuing their own interest, learning
| CS/Breadboarding/Electrical-Circuits, all student driven,
| building cardboard-box arduino-based robots afterschool.**
|
| These student led classes were majority black students and
| pushed forward most by black students. Everything was honestly
| instantly working great, and at the end of every class my
| students made to promise not to forget to show up to the next
| session (I don't recall missing a session, I believe this was
| out attachment for the course).
|
| Self-driven learning is a thing, and all we have to do is give
| kids grounds to explore -- in this case to create designs from
| from their own imagination (ey, isn't that why we're hackers
| here : D? We can all relate).
|
| * Small class sizes help (or student:teacher ratio of 6:1
| ideally). This is the ratio (lower works too) that really
| works, and I've seen only at really rich schools (see
| Branson/UHS/Lick Wilmerding) and programs based on it. I've
| seen this emulated to great success in Summerbridge SF, and too
| at a summerschool I helped start in the bay area based on
| project-based/student-led learning, access to technology, and
| most importantly these small class sizes that enables hosting
| these free-learning classes.
|
| **Again money is important, materials costs for this class were
| supported by my concurrent 4 jobs, doing mainly part-time
| engineering work for startups, electrical-engineering
| curriculum development for a summer-schools, as well as
| tutoring.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Small class sizes don't just help, they are essential for
| this type of setup, which is why it can never work at scale
| and will not be relevant to 99% of kids in the country. There
| simply aren't enough teachers.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Their easily could be, we just can't imagine as a society
| putting this much effort into caring for the young.
| Especially those of the wrong skin color. The US is the
| wealthiest country in the world, we could easily change
| some of the governments wealth distribution to educate all
| students 8:1
| bcassedy wrote:
| You have a viewpoint that is shaped by a very niche
| experience. Your experience was with students that happened
| into an interest that was itself a project that can drive
| learning in a handful of subjects. This kind of approach
| doesn't work so well when the subjects that need to be
| learned don't lend themselves so well to exciting projects or
| even when the students don't get to self-select based on
| their interests.
| auslegung wrote:
| > you need some war-level trauma to stop children curiosity
|
| See inner city, ghetto living experiences
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Those kids aren't incurious it's just directed other places.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Agreed, there's nothing like fear and anxiety about basic
| needs and relationships to remove a sense of curiosity; and
| nothing like security to help people regain it.
| ravenstine wrote:
| True, though I'm not so sure I would even assume that wealth
| facilitates curiosity. Perhaps it doesn't get in the way as
| the trauma of ghetto life, but there's plenty of well off
| children who grow up totally uninspired to do anything but
| walk the beaten path before them, let alone actually learn
| about things with no clear financial benefit (modern college
| notwithstanding).
| ravenstine wrote:
| > I have yet to see a child that is not curious, you need some
| war-level trauma to stop children curiosity.
|
| I hope you're right and I'm wrong, but that doesn't reflect my
| experience at all. Some children are indeed curious, but I
| wouldn't say anywhere near most. Saying that only serious
| trauma stops curiosity comes off as overly optimistic, but what
| do I know.
|
| After all, would you make the same statement about adults? Are
| nearly all or most adults curious except for when there's
| trauma? My guess is that you would struggle to make a similar
| statement about adults in general. If adults aren't that
| curious, but children are, then why is that?
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Pretty sure it applies with adults to, in my experience,
| those who aren't curious about the world have had many awful
| experiences with family, jobs, relationships. Pretty much
| everyone under capitalism will have some pretty substantial
| trama in their life.
| Natsu wrote:
| For curiosity, it helps if they're doing something they
| actually want to do. Being forced to do things tends to kill
| this off. When kids are into something because they think
| it's cool and fun and it sparks their imagination, they can
| go really far beyond what kids are 'supposed' to learn at
| some age.
|
| I learned very little in school, myself. Instead I read my
| brother's textbooks long before I was 'supposed' to because I
| thought it was fun and spent the bulk of my time in school
| devouring the parts of the library I found engaging.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Kids need to learn to learn but they also need to be taught.
|
| I have no children (so grain of salt), but what I think kids
| need is more what you'd call "guidance".
|
| Not necessarily teaching them, but more showing them _how_ to
| learn, and how to discover interests and pursue them, which may
| lead them down a life path.
|
| I had it easy. My dad just had to leave some computers lying
| around. None of my other siblings went into tech. 2/3 of my
| siblings did a bunch of different things before settling into
| their current careers.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << I have yet to see a child that is not curious, you need some
| war-level trauma to stop children curiosity. I would guess that
| the author real complain is that children are not interested in
| the same things that him, and that is why he is pissed off.
|
| I think I agree. Some time ago I was doing volunteering at a
| HS. We were basically teaching basic computer skills ( Excel,
| Word and so on ); helped with problems with resume or something
| along those lines. I think 9/10 kids logged onto FB and/or
| played Plants vs Zombies. I did try to engage them, but their
| goals were clearly different. They were interested, but in
| nothing that those volunteer hours could offer. The kid that is
| interested will seek this stuff out. The rest will play Plants
| vs Zombies.
|
| I will admit it was a little disheartening for me and I stopped
| doing it for a while. I am debating proposing something similar
| now at my local library, but I am worried the results will be
| about the same.
| jollybean wrote:
| I think they mean to see children are not curious in a
| concientious and applied way.
|
| All kids are a bit curious, but it's hard to get them to
| 'stick' to something.
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| There's a book called Dumbing Us Down that is a collection of his
| essays. I liked it.
|
| I'm glad I read it after I finished school and before my kids
| start.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Off topic but why are there so many fairly fresh accounts posting
| hot takes that reach high on the front page lately?
| cm_silva wrote:
| I just happened to find this article today.
|
| It was well written and resonated with my experiences and what
| I found school to be, as a child growing up. I thought it was a
| good submission for HN.
| tempie_deleteme wrote:
| because they teach.
|
| the difference being drawing (evoking, pulling) something already
| there out of the student (education).
|
| versus putting some _knowledge_ from the outside inside of the
| student (teaching).
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Wow, it's wild to see this here. About 20 years ago, a grief
| counselor I was seeing after the death of my mom shared this
| article with me after I told him about how school felt pointless
| and cruel. I stopped seeing that grief counselor not long after
| (I think my family couldn't afford to see him) but the impact of
| this essay was deep. It was the first piece of writing I had read
| by 14 that critiqued something as mundane and entrenched as the
| public school system in the United States, and in terms that
| spoke to my experiences.
|
| It inspired me to start honing my writing skills with
| intentionality, and sharpened my interest in activism.
|
| I have mixed feelings reading this article now -- it's not quite
| as well written as I remember, although I still agree with many
| of the critiques.
| nosianu wrote:
| Just an unimportant comment about a minor aspect of what you
| wrote.
|
| > it's not quite as well written as I remember,
|
| Maybe because it is a speech? :-)
|
| > _What follows is the text of the speech he gave upon being
| named Teacher of the Year._
|
| We don't know if the words were said exactly as written, or how
| it was delivered, which often is more important than the text
| itself.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Yes, I know very well -- I thought about qualifying with that
| in my comment, thought it probably wasn't necessary, and as
| usual HN was swift in delivering justice/pedantry :D
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| Cached version:
|
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xHi_lK...
| hintymad wrote:
| > "just let the kids learn by themselves"
|
| This has been the central theme of progressive education movement
| in the US. IIRC, Jo Boaler has been advocating that kids could
| discover most of the maths by exploring and learning by
| themselves. I fundamentally disagree with this belief, though. It
| took thousands of years for our greatest minds to simplify our
| maths to its current incarnation. Discovering "everything" by
| myself wastes my time and reduces my chance of working on
| something more meaningful.
| theptip wrote:
| This seems like a bit of a strawman. I don't know Jo Boaler but
| I have never encountered the idea that students could
| rediscover everything from scratch. It's clearly a dumb idea.
|
| A much more common position is that self-paced exploration --
| but using the latest textbooks and also a variety of teaching
| styles -- could interest students much more than "no child left
| behind" style common curricula which constrain both the teacher
| and the student.
|
| Personally I think the current system is terrible for below-
| and above-average students, and perhaps passable for average
| students.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Good luck in a classroom of 30 kids of wildly varying
| abilities and interests doing "self paced exploration". Maybe
| 1/100 kids would actually choose to learn any traditional
| school subject. Structured learning is required for the other
| 99/100 to learn important and valuable parts of human
| knowledge that they wouldn't pursue otherwise.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Schools used to be designed exactly this way, with kids of
| varying ages/abilities all in the same room learning and
| teaching each other. It's actually quite successful and
| more aligned with how we are wired to learn
| (tribal/community style).
|
| The Prussian model we use currently was not designed to
| create more educated people, it was designed to most
| efficiently create factory workers. That's an important
| factor to keep in mind. I would argue the school model is
| working, it's just not doing what you think it's doing. Any
| discussion of "improving" schools that doesn't completely
| overturn the Prussian model is just grifting for more
| funding.
|
| You can get some of the benefits of this environment today
| if you are willing to pay a premium for Montessori style
| private schooling. My daughter loved it and was WAY ahead
| of everyone else, including the "honors" kids, when she
| transitioned to a regular public school.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Sure...when you pay for good schools with small class
| sizes you get better education. The point is that this
| doesn't work for 99% of children who are going to be in
| classes of 25-35 kids, and I wouldn't count the child of
| a smart HN reader as representative of the average
| "Montessori" kid.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| My daughter's Montessori school had similar class sizes,
| 25-30. The kids were loosely grouped by age with ~4 years
| range in the same room. She was not uniquely successful,
| though I will acknowledge any private school will tend to
| be self-selected.
|
| And you still missed that we had multi-age schoolhouses
| for generations that were successful.
|
| If you want to argue for smaller classroom sizes, I'm on
| board, but you won't get a single vote from me for school
| funding until you're ready to completely upend the
| Prussian model. It converted our public schools into
| literal prisons for children and is a scourge on this
| Earth.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Class sizes in traditional schools were not always small.
| However, large classes would be taught differently,
| usually based on the students memorizing their daily
| "lessons" and chanting them out word-for-word. These
| "direct instruction" methods have only fallen out of use
| relatively recently as teachers sometimes felt them to be
| somehow demeaning, compared to more formal or intuition-
| driven teaching practices.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| They would also break into smaller groups and the
| older/advanced children would teach the younger children
| lessons.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "NCLB" curricula focus on the basics for a reason - we're
| failing to teach those basic skills. Maybe we need a system
| that's not so terrible for the "average" below-students (as
| opposed to those who expressly get skilled teaching attention
| as 'special-needs' cases).
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What are those "basic skills"?
| season2episode3 wrote:
| I'd venture a guess that they're talking about the "three
| R's": reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| Queue midwit meme.
| nus07 wrote:
| Totally agree. Which countries are dominating STEM education?
| Israel, Russia, China , India and a few others which have
| strict schedules, competition and discipline. Looking at the
| failing US model I am starting to believe that finding your
| path and self motivation may work for 5% while leading the
| other 95% to slacking , cheap entertainment and failure.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Discipline is dead here (US). Very few people have discipline
| as adults, so the kids don't learn it either. Society doesn't
| value it, so it generally doest pay off.
|
| I used to show up early to work, took my responsibilities
| seriously, and not take shortcuts. Guess what? I get paid the
| same either way, so what's the point? We're "fat and happy",
| so something would have to change culturally.
| fineIllregister wrote:
| > I used to show up early to work, took my responsibilities
| seriously, and not take shortcuts. Guess what? I get paid
| the same either way, so what's the point?
|
| What do you imagine happens in Israel, Russia, India, or
| China when people do that? They get profit sharing? Seems
| unlikely.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Which countries are dominating STEM research? You know, the
| part that is actually useful instead of just coersive?
| America, by a long shot.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Aren't the actual PhD students often from those other
| countries?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually the statistics around education have completely
| different systems from Finland (very student driven learning)
| as well as Korea and Singapore (very discipline driven) at
| the topic. The main common factor is that the spend
| significantly larger fractions than the average on education.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The unstated subtext in that theme is that some kids are not
| going to teach themselves the entire school curriculum (with
| plenty of help along the way from their literate, well-educated
| parents), but that's OK because they can always go work
| flipping burgers, or something. This is very much along the
| lines of the historically urbanized and socially elitist
| variety of "progressive" thought that gave us things like mass
| eugenics and enforced racial segregation in the early- and
| mid-20th century.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "just let the kids learn by themselves"
|
| This is what companies want. They want a diploma just for the
| credential, but they don't really train you and just want you
| to learn on the job.
| notch656a wrote:
| Sure this works great for things like swimming in the deep
| end and how to use a firearm without grossly endangering
| yourself or others.
|
| Honestly I'm convinced anyone who believes this stuff has
| never watched a toddler.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not sure what you're even trying to say. Sounds like
| support for my comment - companies don't want the ones who
| couldn't self teach (as they wouldnt survive according to
| you).
| glennvtx wrote:
| He means to explore these subjects by themselves, i.e. drawing
| upon the current body of knowledge. This technique works very
| well, i educate 3 children at home, and more or less their own
| interests guide their learning, only occasionally do i feel the
| need to put them onto the path of a specific subject.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If they're at school, they're not being allowed to pick their
| preferred subjects to explore. School kids these days are
| literally expected to teach themselves everything, it's not
| really about exploration or interest.
| yonaguska wrote:
| I disagree, the most productive moments in my math education
| were spent "discovering" patterns while trying to solve
| problems, having been given just enough tools to attempt the
| problem. Credit to Szeszler David goes to those formative
| experiences. The next lesson, after we spent time "discovering"
| and likely failing, we would be given the last tool we needed
| to solve the problem. That discovery process cemented the
| lessons and understanding.
|
| I still believe that there is also value in rote memorization
| and practice, as you simply can't recognize patterns unless you
| have the fundamentals upon which those patterns are based,
| mastered. Only then can you start abstracting complexity away
| mentally, and then do effective "discovery" of new concepts.
|
| I didn't encounter this teaching method until college, but I
| don't see why it can't be applied at an earlier age. One of my
| earliest memories was when I "discovered" that 2 + 2 = 4. I
| distinctly remember the moment where the concept of addition
| and subtraction clicked for me, and it didn't happen in a
| classroom. I was playing by myself and counting my fingers out
| on the front lawn.
|
| http://www.cs.bme.hu/~szeszler/
| RealityVoid wrote:
| My experience is somewhat similar to yours, I just loved
| "discovering" concepts, but I think that while this might
| work for us, it doesn't work for all. And this might be
| exactly what makes this problem hard, each person responds to
| different stimuli and then you either have to find a way to
| identify this, OR just pick something you want to optimize
| for (the average kid, prodigies, whatever) and apply the
| method that works for them, to all. I think this second
| method is what happens in most educational systems.
| nyc111 wrote:
| True. Where there is teaching there is no learning.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto [1]
| is a (long) revealing look into the history of education in the
| United States. I don't agree with everything but certainly had my
| assumptions challenged.
|
| As more families choose to eschew government schools, it's hard
| to argue that he was not ahead of his time with his observations.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8
| dieselgate wrote:
| This is a really well written article though I'm mixed in my
| agreements with it. Thought it was funny they mentioned the
| author "growing garlic" in the forward. It's also curious to read
| about literacy rates before/after "compulsory" education and how
| they seemingly dropped - is this potentially because of different
| "standards" in defining literacy?
|
| I feel everything I've ever learned was "taught to myself" even
| though I've spent close to two decades in school. Of course a
| teacher can catalyze the process by presenting material in an
| organized way. They say "you can lead a horse to water but you
| can't make it drink" and at first this seemed like an appropriate
| analogy for learning - but after some reflection is only partly
| relevant. Peer groups can be beneficial with catalyzing learning
| as well - of course it depends on the peers.
|
| This is a big topic but found it refreshing to be exposed to some
| novel (and old) thoughts
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink"
|
| this is an especially apt metaphor for compulsory education,
| because when a horse is thirsty, it is perfectly capable of
| finding water on its own
| [deleted]
| diffxx wrote:
| For anyone interested in the arguments in this piece, Deschooling
| Society by Ivan Illich is highly recommended.
| cpr wrote:
| Gatto is a true prophet. See his writings at
|
| https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
|
| (though his site is having some problems, it looks like).
| tboyd47 wrote:
| > Using school as a sorting mechanism, we appear to be on the way
| to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander
| through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.
|
| Wow, he nailed that one, didn't he?
|
| > But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who
| reads, writes, or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a
| land of talkers; we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the
| most, and so our children talk constantly, following the public
| models of television and schoolteachers.
|
| In 2022, replace talking with dancing.
|
| > The children I teach are cruel to each other; they lack
| compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have
| contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
|
| Played any multiplayer FPS recently?
|
| > But no large-scale reform is ever going to repair our damaged
| children and our damaged society until we force the idea of
| "school" open -- to include family as the main engine of
| education.
|
| As he proves a few paragraphs later, this is the one thing the
| school system will never do because the two institutions (school
| and family) are in direct competition with each other for the
| hearts and minds of children.
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