[shanev]

Naval Ravikant's tweetstorm today is highly relevant to this [1]:

1/ If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing.

2/ Schools survive anti-educational behavior (i.e. groupthink) due to symbiosis between institutions that issue and accept credentials.

3/ Employers looking past traditional credentials can arbitrage the gap. @ycombinator made $Bs doing this for young founders.

4/ The more meritocratic an industry, the faster it moves away from false credentialing. I.e., the MBA and tech startups.

5/ A generation of auto-didacts, educated by the Internet & leveraged by technology, will eventually starve the industrial-education system.

6/ Until then, only the most desperate and talented students will make the leap.

7/ Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long.

8/ The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet.

9/ The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.

10/ Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class. Expect elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system.

11/ Eventually, the tide of the Internet and rational, self-interested employers will create and accept efficient credentialing...

12/ ...and wash away our obsolete industrial-education system.

[1]: https://twitter.com/naval/status/912220382450524160

[jansho]

Respectfully, I disagree with a lot of the points here.

School isn't just about credentialing or dishing out information. You learn a lot about interacting with others, getting a social life, developing relationships with different people, discovering more about yourself and the list goes on. Even a bad experience is still an experience.

I'm in the digital learning field and can get doe-eyed about the potential of tech. But the Internet will never replace teachers. Many online courses can be excellent alternatives to class-learning, but not everyone learns best from sole Internet use or auto-didacting. And of course, when you do have a good teacher, that's irreplaceable.

Credentials can be a form of an elitist badge - so if this is the problem, then perhaps the best way to tackle it is to change mindsets, rather than change the whole system. Many good employers seem to be aware of this already.

I sometimes lean towards meritocracy too but it is terribly dangerous to apply Darwinism to education. Education is a right. Everyone NEEDS education, regardless of who they are and their level of natural intelligence. If the system starts favouring a certain type of people, or worse, implement a Darwinist funnel, that would be tragic for the majority of people, and will have a dangerous impact on society overall.

[Balgair]

I think that there needs to be a delineation between undergraduate education and secondary/primary education. With undergraduate education, I think there is a good case to be made that it is about credentialing. Many undergrad students, just via the filter that is the admissions process, are capable and likely going to be tax-payers and not tax-users, so-to-speak.

For primary/secondary education, it is about education. However, it's not just math and history education, it's how to be an adult as well. School dances, sports, yearbook, school newspaper, etc. are all education for young adults just like knowing to let others finish their sentences, not using violence when frustrated, or that looking at porn in the stairwell is not a good way to woo your crush. Education is more of a socialization 'thingy' than a just knowledge one. As such, you need role-models, teachers, and mentors in your life, not on a screen that you can turn off when you don't like what they are saying. Education, in the HS time period of puberty, is not fit for a consumer model as it takes true sacrifice.

[jakubp]

"You learn a lot about interacting with others, getting a social life, developing relationships with different people, discovering more about yourself and the list goes on."

This. Very important, and this process is made much more effective if parents or teachers or other adults are with the young on that journey to coach them. Not easy to do online as you need to see the young people in their everyday interactions.

"But the Internet will never replace teachers."

I'm not sure. The point isn't to replace teachers, is it? You can get to great teachers, mentors and peers through other means, schools aren't the only source of teachers for the young.

You can follow thinkers, business people etc. online, and reach out to them or their communities, and that effectively can act as a teacher.

You can actually meat with people who become your teachers/mentors because you engaged in online activities.

None of these require an institution, and specifically, poorly run schools will actually promote groupthink and monoculture. It's good balance to get some experience and 'education' outside the regular system for diversity.

[jansho]

I was referring to OP's eighth point, "the best teachers are on the Internet." Sorry if that was vague.

Yeah schools aren't perfect either, but it's very hard to replicate the teacher role online. Peers yes, but I'll eat my hat if anyone can come up with a digital platform that allows students and teachers (totally strangers) to connect and build relationships that last for years.

You might accidentally bump into a mentor, but that's extreeeemely rare. It's a nice dream though, hope it happens to me one day. But in all my time as an active participant in online courses (small sample, I know) the most personal interaction I got was someone reaching out via private messaging. This is totally within expectation though, many of us still unconsciously regard the Internet space as not really real.

[jakubp]

Now that you wrote it, I feel like I was idealizing the online potential by thinking "you can get online to the right people", but that only helps if you can then meet them in person. Otherwise it's just online contact, which at scale may not be that awesome.

[untilHellbanned]

Ycombinator doesn't care about credentials?

Sam Alton - Stanford Drew Houston - mit Collision brothers - mit/harvard Airbnb guys - RISD

We could go on, so let's do...

Please tell me honestly if you think google Facebook Amazon Microsoft would be where they were without the "traditional credentials" of their founders? Stanford, harvard, Princeton, harvard, respectively.

At this point all these SV demigods like Ravikant (Dartmouth/Stuyvesant-look it up) are just being irresponsible getting kids' hope up.

[anonymous5133]

I'd argue that you could have locked zuckerberg, gates and the rest of them in a closet for 5 years with a computer and they would have still gone on to do amazing stuff. Is it harvard, yale etc that made these people great or was it something that was already in them? Their drive to innovate and passion for exploration is what made them successful, not harvard.

[KGIII]

Do those folks really count as traditional credentials?

Google founders suspended their Ph.D. programs.

Bezos has a BS.

Gates dropped out.

Zuckerberg dropped out.

[sannee]

> Gates dropped out.

> Zuckerberg dropped out.

Both of them managed to get into Harvard, which is an academic achievement in itself though.

[wellboy]

Not as much really as it is about who you know.

[untilHellbanned]

Yes they are a signal at the key initiating step.

[scandox]

> The best books are on the Internet.

I'm neutral on many of these points, except this one. This is simply not true. The Internet can be incredibly shallow on a very wide range of topics. I mean maybe if you have access to University Library systems etc...but I don't think that's the "Internet" you mean.

I hope this will get better, although the impetus to make the Internet deeper seems to have slacked off recently.

[s_kilk]

Agreed. I've payed out north of $100 several times for old print copies of books which simply aren't available in digital form (not even as sketchy scanned PDFs on piracy sites, trust me, I tried).

[sannee]

I mean, it's not exactly the most kosher thing to do (though you can usually get actual oficially released ebooks for the newer stuff), but you can usually get PDF versions of whatever textbook you want on the internet.

I know about a guy with a serious hoarding syndrome, who has hundreds of gigabytes of the stuff stashed somewhere.

[scandox]

I think you'd be amazed at what you just can't get, or which would not even be listed anywhere so that you would know of its existence.

[Vinnl]

That's a very narrow definition of education. If all I learned was what's in the curriculum, then maybe, but being around peers at the same level, being able to make mistakes (in the broad sense of the word) in a safe environment, getting to learn how people work... It's going to be quite a bumpy ride before we'll be able to properly replicate that online.

[alexashka]

The best teachers are absolutely not on the internet. How do you even make that claim?

This is a typical 'technology is going to save the world' rant. No, it isn't. Technology is not a solution to short-sightedness that humans possess.

Education is not in trouble - the economic model that makes it difficult to go study, learn and get to apply that knowledge and those skills to solving real problems is.

Go ask engineers how many of them get to engineer anything. Go ask how many people in science get to work on interesting problems or can even get a job in the area they studied.

We have the smartest people ever, with access to the most information and the best technology of all time, to make incredible things. It's just hard to get to do those things - when the economy is in this frenzy of quarterly profits.

The decision-makers are 'buy for a dollar, sell for two'. Their worldview is incompatible with education, because you don't need education to make profit, you need someone to exploit to make profit. That's the world we've always lived in by the way, this is not new.

The traders sometimes believe some specific technology, would make them incredible profits, so they become interested in education for a minute, and then get busy with everyday business as usual. This is why science has become toxic via the grant system - 'promise a miracle to get money for research.'

I don't see a world where tradesmen relinquish their powerhold - creative people are always going to either be starving artists, with dignity, or shameless shills. Since the idea of starvation only appeals to a few, we have 'desire to learn is scarce.' It's against human nature to choose starvation you know :)

[jamesrcole]

> The best teachers are absolutely not on the internet. How do you even make that claim?

Personally, I have no idea where the best teachers are, but you don't make any attempt to back up your claim.

> This is a typical 'technology is going to save the world' rant. No, it isn't. Technology is not a solution to short-sightedness that humans possess.

First of all, the issue is never whether X will completely solve a problem. It's whether it can help, and how much it can help.

If you think about the last 500 years, there is no question that technology has helped make people, on the whole, less short sighted. The improvements it's helped enable in education, in our knowledge of the world, in the dissemination of knowledge. They have made us more aware of others, of consequences, and so forth.

[alexashka]

Regarding teachers - it's up to the person making extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary evidence [0]. Even at a glance however - how many grade 1-5 teachers are on the internet at all, let alone best. It's pure statistics to know the claim is highly unlikely.

Thinking the best educators are on the internet is a lot like Americans who believe their country is the best country - it's an extreme form of short-sightedness. See how that fits so nicely into the rest of my post?

Regarding people becoming less short-sighted - I'd say next to nothing has changed. From the point of view of your life now versus 500 years ago, it's great. From the point of view of this planet and it's people as a whole - how many people did we kill among ourselves again in the last 100 years alone?

Didn't we nearly blow up the planet less than 50 years ago? We're far more monkey-brained than people who are smart and only associate with at least somewhat smart people like to believe.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[jamesrcole]

> Regarding teachers - it's up to the person making extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary evidence

You should be telling yourself this, not me.

The other person claimed all the good teachers were online. Yes, we should ask for evidence for this. But did your original comment do that? It didn't.

Instead it made a claim that the good teachers are not on the internet. This is also making a spefific, very broad claim, which we should also ask for evidence for. Which is what I did.

It seems you're under the mistaken impression that the "neutral" stance, that doesn't require evidence is a claim like the one you made, that (if the original person's claim was X) "not X" is true. But the only stance that doesn't require evidence backing it up is the agnostic one of "I don't know where the best teachers are these days".

[alexashka]

- The world' a hexagon

- What? No it isn't

- You haven't provided me evidence that it's not, so you can't...

- Um, ok, you're an idiot

That's the world I live in. I don't know about you.

[banachtarski]

Sorry if this isn't super constructive, but I read your comment twice and don't have the foggiest idea of what you're trying to say. It feels like you're just being contrarian and ranting against, sort of everything?

[jansho]

It's about solutionism, mostly.

"Let's move away from traditional models (which work well most of the time) and digitalise it all! Change the world for the better, oh and make "some" money on the way."

It's a bit cynical but there's some truth in it. This is the mistake that a lot of startups made in the last edtech 'revolution' - hopefully with YC releasing this edtech list, it means that we've become more educated about the education field, to come up with better tech solutions.

[franciscop]

I totally second this. I studied Industrial Engineering in the University (in one of the toughtest universities in Europe). However I didn't go to class most of the times, only to some mandatory ones. What I did instead was:

- Watch youtube lectures/tutorials of the hardest topics. These would be mostly from Latin-American universities or from Indian Universities. Study on my own and pass these subjects.

- Learn programming on my own. This has had huge benefits and that's what I do now for a living (and for fun).

- Create https://makersupv.com/ with a bunch of other high-drive students. We learned and taught so many things.

- Work and go as a Exchange Student to Tokyo University.

It took me a bit longer to finish. I almosy dropped out at some point since it felt a bit pointless but there are advantages of having a degree (applying for a visa for instance).

However, many of my classmates were studying the same degree because it is the one with high chance of getting a job afterwards. I would see them suffer everyday learning things they didn't care about just not to starve to death afterwards in Spain.

From these experiences, I would say that the desire to learn is quite high, however perverse incentives are easily mixed together, which also push people who want to learn away.

[anonymous5133]

He is absolutely right and you can already see the tides shifting with the meteoric rise of "coding boot camps" and similar alternative educational models.

[KGIII]

The coding boot camps are closing en masse. I can't speak for the other alternative educational models, but there has been quite a bit of discussion around the boot camps closing.

Here is a recent article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/technology/coding-boot-ca...

[austenallred]

Nah, two of the 100 closed, the industry is fine. One is going to start up again in the same place with the same people and a different name. The other was purchased by Kaplan, which is as close as you can get to a death knell. Most are making grundles of money.

We’re not really a code bootcamp but we get thousands of applications per month and have employers incredibly hungry for our grads.

[KGIII]

They are two of the major ones with multiple facilities. That doesn't bode well for the industry.

Also, kudos on grundles. That is my new favorite word.

[hydrox24]

Make sure you know the definition before you start using it casually as he has!

> Noun. grundle (plural grundles) (US, slang) The area between anus and scrotum in a male or between anus and vulva in a woman. [0]

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grundle

[KGIII]

Oh, I'm going to use it for everything - except what it really means.

"I will take the 8 oz steak, smashed potatoes with gravy, cauliflower with cheese, a side salad with house Italian dressing, and can you please make it grundle?"

"Thanks for stopping by. When you get home, tell your grundle I said was thinking about them."

I realize this isn't good HN material, but I couldn't resist.

[foxylad]

Intersting. In NZ and Australia, "grundies" is slang for (usually male) underwear.

[withdavidli]

Never even heard of Iron Yard, being funded by Apollo (U of Pohoenix) makes me think it was nothing but a cash grab, likely same as the reviews of Berkeley Extension school’s bootcamp.

This is a business where poor level of service sinks a company fast. Reviews get online from the first few cohorts, if they’re bad the high caliber students who do their research will opt out of applying. These are the students likely to get jobs from career fair which the bootcamp makes their recruitment fee.

[austenallred]

Iron Yard was successful in one rural area, and decided to simultaneously open up 16 new spaces at once. Turns out that's like building 16 separate companies simultaneously.

[austenallred]

Lots of bootcamps with multiple facilities do very well, but that makes costs high, so if you make a few missteps it's game over.

Most are clearing millions in profit.

[anonymous5133]

Didn't know. I see them advertising like crazy on my facebook feed lol

[j45]

Coding bootcamps serve a very niche, often already well off (relative to the other 6 billion people) people.

The basics of education are not being delivered well enough to empower the other 9 out of every 10 children who don't even have access to the basics.

[jfarmer]

I co-founded Dev Bootcamp and disagree with most of his tweetstorm, for what that’s worth.