[fatbird]

Another "If education had been more customized to me, education would be better for everyone" lament. Know what, Nabeel? Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating. That's not to say that Nabeel is a special flower and everyone else is a drone, it's to say that everyone is different--I mean, really different, in a way that any education system is going to struggle with.

Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them. Some kids really do want, and thrive in, extremely structured, rote learning environments. Some kids really do want, and succeed best in, environments geared for professional advancement. And others want self-directed learning.

The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students.

[btilly]

Few people are like you. Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating.

Ever seen a group of 3 year olds in a sandbox?

Most people may not be tinkerers, but it seems to me that most people have the potential to be. It is also a matter of historical fact that our school system was explicitly designed to train a population that would endure working in a factories.

I remember one class I was a tutor for while I was in grad school. I wrote up sample answers for the final, and I took a step that is seldom taken - for each question I wrote down 3 different answers using 3 different techniques. (Normally, of course, the person writing sample answers just tries the approach that is probably going to be easiest.)

It was a shock for the students. In a second year college course at an Ivy League college (Dartmouth College in this case) it was a revelation that there wouldn't be just one way to answer a math question. They had thought that if they tried one approach and the math prof another, that was proof that they had failed to understand the subject. It isn't. But far too many adults are walking around without understanding that.

[yareally]

I just thought I would share the origins of the US public education system for anyone who wanted to know more or was not aware of how it came to be. Much of it was derived from the German (Prussian) public education system by Horace Mann. I'm not sure if it was tailored towards factory work in the beginning, due to the time period (first half of the 1800s for the US), so that must have come later in the second half of 19th century America. However, I'm guessing it never thought overly high of creativity and free thinking when at the time, many who were going through the education system were still working on farms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Mann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

[LDale]

The book you really want for this information is "America's Public Schools: From the Common School to "No Child Left Behind" by education historian William Reese.

[yareally]

Best part of HN is always getting replies with ever more details on a subject, thank you. I'll have to check it out and read it. Having gone through the American Public School System for part of my education, I am always fascinated to learn more about its origins.

[rayiner]

I find this angle particularly interesting in context of mathematics education, because it presupposes a certain mathematical intuition that many (most?) people lack. If you don't have reasonably strong spatial skills, chances are you're not going to find in pleasure in "exploring" K-12 mathematics. I went to engineering school and made it through on a "okay this is the equation I have to use" basis because for the life of me I couldn't visualize even simple things like order of rotations not being commutative. Even if I did it with a ruler to show myself, it didn't mean anything to me.

So when I see people say that the solution to mathematics education is to just get kids to explore, my reaction is "meh." At 28, I can do all the math I learned just fine, even though I learned it in an answer-seeking way. Had I been left on my own to just try and see the underlying nature of how it worked, I probably wouldn't be able to do even that much.

[protomyth]

"Lots of people aren't curious"

every child is curious, we just beat that out of them because the questions sometimes make adults uncomfortable

[randomchars]

Exactly. Just sit straight on the chair, don't move too much, don't look funny, bored, don't yawn, don't chew gum, don't drink, don't eat, don't look at that bug that's flying by, don't draw, don't chew on your pencil don't talk back. Heck, don't even talk unless the you're talked to!

[fatbird]

You don't know any teachers, do you?

[betterunix]

I can remember many of my middle and high school teachers, both good and bad, with "bad" being a majority.

The best teacher I had was a middle school math teacher who realized that my problem was not a lack of understanding, and that expecting discipline from a 12 year old boy was folly. She knew that my boredom was turning me in a distraction for the other boys in the class. Her solution was brilliant: she taught me material beyond what we were learning, and let me have at it. I will never forget learning the square root algorithm from her, because it kept me occupied for weeks (my notebooks are filled with pages where I computed square roots of various numbers in various bases).

Sadly, she was a rare exception, not even remotely approaching the norm. Most of my math teachers said that I should prove my talent by doing my homework, and told me that getting perfect marks on exams or otherwise demonstrating a well-developed understanding of the material was irrelevant if my homework was not being done. My teachers were vehemently opposed to the idea of grades reflecting aptitude; it was unfair to students who needed to do their homework to understand the material, and it would be equally unfair to give one student more interesting homework instead of the standard "busy work." If a bored student cuts class, and thus refrains from distracting other students, that is not acceptable either: attendance is part of the grade and to be fair to everyone no exceptions can be made. The only acceptable solution to a student who distracts others is compliance -- the student must be forced to obey and just be like everyone else.

I only barely got through the school system, despite having standardized math, reading, and writing scores of "PHS" -- post high-school. I was once forced to attend summer school because of an "F" I received in an English class, where the teacher basically said that he thought I deserved to be there as punishment (but ultimately allowed me to skip his class to attend a summer science program, but only as long as I wrote a pair of $n page essays). I was once threatened with being transferred to a high school with a violence problem if I did not start following orders.

So despite the fact that I come from a long line of teachers, I have difficulty believing that most teachers want to encourage creativity or curiosity among their students. In my experience, teachers want to encourage compliance, and only accept creativity when it leads to specific results and behavior. Curiosity seems to only be permissible after all instructions have been executed, and the teacher is free to give such a long list of instructions to follow that no compliant student could have time for creativity.

[nglevin]

Depends on where he's coming from.

I went to a few private schools (K-8, K-12) staffed with teachers like that, when I was younger.

[randomchars]

On a personal level, no.

What I described above is my experience with most of my teachers during my K-12 education. In 5 out of the 7 schools I attended almost all teachers were horrible. But so is the whole education system, and I think the bad teachers are just the byproduct of it.

If you can explain why is it the way I described it, I'm listening.

[DividesByZero]

"Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them."

This fits quite well into the "if you can measure it, you can change it" paradigm.

Shameless self-promotion: My startup, Geddit, is seeking to do exactly that, and empower students to take more control over their learning experience. http://letsgeddit.com

We're pretty basic at the moment but the feedback tool has got a good reception from both teachers and students in the classrooms we're live in - the next step is delivering the data mining and analytics.

[Cushman]

> Lots of people aren't curious

Lots of adults aren't curious, but it seems like most small children are. What's going on there?

[fatbird]

The curiosity we see in children at play rarely translates to the kind of self-directed learning that Nabeel holds up as an ideal. This is not the education system's fault--ask any teacher and they'll tell you that they'd love for children to be engaged and curious, and they're frustrated that it frequently feels like leading them by the nose and making them drink.

But there's another side as well: Watch children at play, and you'll see that children frequently sort themselves into leaders and followers. Children are often curious, but very often they're also looking for someone to give them cues and direction and structure. Children are complex; people are complex.

[Cushman]

> they're frustrated that it frequently feels like leading them by the nose and making them drink.

And aren't they? I mean, isn't that exactly what we are talking about?

> Watch children at play

This also cuts to the core of the issue. It seems to me like children are curious all the time, and they don't seem to occupy states like "playing" and "working". That's basically what our industrial-age public school system is supposed to teach, right? Number one lesson, sit down and be quiet-- you're not playing, you're learning, and it's serious.

[fatbird]

Number one lesson, sit down and be quiet-- you're not playing, you're learning, and it's serious.

This is nonsense. Teachers talk endlessly about methods of engaging children and teenagers that are the exact opposite of that, and they're constantly trying things. This sort of Prussian, militarized school setting is a dystopian fantasy.

It seems to me like children are curious all the time

They're not. Some are, some aren't. Some are curious in ways that are useless for education. And I haven't even started discussing some of the practical issues that affect pedagogy, like poverty and bullying, that mitigate against creative, free-form "unschooling".

You're treating children like noble savages, with all the fallacious reasoning that entails.

[betterunix]

"Teachers talk endlessly about methods of engaging children"

Unless they are faced with a child who spent all of their time learning instead of doing mind-numbing homework assignments. Then you'll hear teachers talk about how they have a student who is wasting his talent and how shameful it is that someone who can handle more advanced material is getting failing grades (even though they are the ones giving the grades). Teachers may talk about trying to get students to think "outside the box," but when a student actually does so they are punished for it.

Our education philosophy is based on attacking independence and ensuring compliance, and our teachers show it. Rigid structures are enforced everywhere in school, explicitly and implicitly. Assignments are rigidly structured. Classrooms are rigidly structured. Daily schedules are rigidly structured. Grades, which become the purpose of school for many students, reflect how well students follow instructions more than how well they understand the material.

"This sort of Prussian, militarized school setting is a dystopian fantasy."

Well, maybe so, but in dystopian fiction the hero is typically one a small group of people who can recognize that anything is wrong with the system; everyone else believes they live in a utopia. Perhaps school truly is dystopian, and only a minority of people can actually recognize the existence of a problem.

[Cushman]

> Teachers talk endlessly about methods of engaging children and teenagers

Step 1: Force all children to go to a big building eight hours a day for twelve years "to learn".

Step 2: They aren't learning. Figure out a way to make the average child interested and engaged by this circumstance.

Step 3: Who knows?

I'm sure teachers are, by and large, intelligent, caring people who really want to help pupils to fulfil themselves. But that doesn't help much if (as is being proposed) the education system itself is founded on flawed principles.

> Some are curious in ways that are useless for education.

Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity? As I define it curiosity means wanting to know more; I can't make that be not useful for education in my head.

[DanBC]

> Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity?

Boys like learning lists of names and stats. You'll have met boys who can give you a very long list of dinosaur names or pokemon or supercars. But that's just rote recitation of facts; there's nothing in there about why things are how they are. Feynmann gives an interesting anecdote about his father talking about birds and trees. He'd rarely give just the name, but he would talk about why the tree had broad leaves or such.

[fatbird]

The problem with Step 1 is "all". The whole point of my initial post is that children vary, and the methods by which they're educated need to vary as well. "All children will be lead into the forest by an experienced guide who will let their curiosity guide them in a journey of self-exploration" is just as wrong.

Can you give me an example of such a form of curiosity?

My friend's son is endlessly curious about dinosaurs, so much so that he refuses to invest any time in math homework. In general, curiosity leads to specialization, which is great only to the extent that it doesn't preclude some time being exposed to other subjects. Curiosity is like having a favourite food: Children need to learn a balanced diet, lest they die of malnutrition for eating nothing but candy.

[betterunix]

"The education system failing one student doesn't mean its failing all students."

Except that the education system is failing all students, at least here in America. Some countries expect high school graduates to be able to do basic calculus; in the US, we barely expect high school graduates to be able to do basic algebra. The average literacy in the USA is middle school level.

"Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious"

I would say that the education system shares some of the blame for that. American schools punish curiosity and creativity. We live in a country where a student who finds the correct answer using a logically sound approach may still get marks off because they used a technique they did not learn in class. Not only are curious and creative students harmed by that, but all the other students who see curiosity being punished learn not to act on whatever curiosity they possess. By the time a student is in high school, they have been subjected to years of training to suppress their independence, curiosity, and creativity.

When a student shows aptitude, they should be praised and given more challenging assignments, rather than punished.

[MereInterest]

Tell me this, then. What should we be attempting to optimize in education? Currently, schools try to optimize for maximum average knowledge. They try to put as much knowledge in each student.

However, this leads to the ever-present question "When will I need this in life?" from students who don't care about a given subject. The correct answer to that is always "Because you are the sort of person who asks that question, you won't need it."

Why not, instead, optimize for the most usefulness of knowledge. If a student is interested in math, they should receive extra attention in math, rather than the attitude of "Oh, good. A student that I can ignore because they'll learn it on their own." The correct response is "Oh, good. A student that I should continue teaching because they will remember it five years from now."

This has turned into a bit of rambling, but in summary, schools should focus efforts on people who will use the information given, rather than focusing efforts on temporarily boosting mediocre students who will just forget the information after the test.

[betterunix]

"Currently, schools try to optimize for maximum average knowledge"

From where I sit, schools try to optimize for minimum average independent thought, with knowledge being a secondary goal. A student who receives perfect scores on their exams can still receive a D- in a class; a student who does all their homework, even if they do not get everything right, will likely receive no less than an A-. Schools reward compliance over understanding, and often punish curiosity, creativity, and independence.

[jrogers65]

Humans have one very prominent attribute - they rationalise what they have. Kids who were physically hit will rationalise that this is the correct way to rear a child when they become adults. Similarly, kids who were taught not to think will rationalise that it's not a necessary thing after they grow up.

There are opinions, there is rarely an absolute truth, but one can be more wrong or less wrong about something. You are more wrong about education than you think.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_t...

[fatbird]

I've said nothing about education beyond "children are complex", that we need a variety of educational methods, and most crucially, we need to identify what the best variant is for any child--that's currently the great failing. You're the one handing out an absolute truth about education--like Cushman, you're indulging in a myth of the noble savage.

[Cushman]

Since this is the second time you mention it: The noble savage trope is about the innate goodness of indigenous peoples, particularly in their connection to nature and the spiritual. It's a pretty weak analogy here— may I suggest you instead reference the cult of childhood, a trope that idealizes and idolizes the youthful innocence of children?

[fatbird]

Fair enough. The (metaphorical) point I was trying to communicate was that, in discussions like these, you constantly get this image of a child as a boundlessly curious creature who would learn all they need to know if we just give them space and time and whatever else they need.

I find this trope to be self-serving in the extreme, and deeply ignorant of the practical realities of education, poverty, and parenting.

[Cushman]

I'll strongly agree with that: The foundational problem with our public education system is that its primary utility to us is not education, but dealing with issues with poverty and parenting that shouldn't exist in the first place.

I remember reading during the Chicago teachers' strike that with public schools closed, many poor kids would not eat lunch, or possibly at all. That is messed up in a way that transcends any thoughts we might have about the best way to educate.

[fatbird]

Thank you for acknowledging this. I'm so angry right now at jrogers65's blithe dismissal above of the problem of poverty and poor family life that I'm not even going to respond to him.

Yes, it is a messed up situation all around, and the roots of the problem lie far outside the realm of education; yet no teacher can be successful at their goal of educating children, now matter how they go about it, without dealing with those problems.

[jrogers65]

I would argue that in circumstances where they are not unfairly burdened, children are indeed naturally curious.

The problems they inherit from poverty or poor family life are not resolvable through education in the first place. That is a separate issue which requires just as much attention, but it's not a teacher's job to do so.

Giving those children a route where they can skip learning how to think and instead memorise everything is putting a bandage on the wound, not healing the illness.

Moreover, when we talk of different learning styles, it does not mean that one human is robotic in their thinking while another is not. Learning styles are about how to communicate information - i.e. through visual, auditory or kinesthetic means. There is not one person who would not benefit from learning how to think for themself, just as all people benefit from learning how to use their emotion and intuition to inspire creativity.

[jhuni]

> Most people aren't tinkerers. Lots of people aren't curious, and many people respond to freeform environments with indecision and frustration that's self-defeating.

They weren't born they way, these people lost their curiosity because they were put into a society that alienates them from the design process. Proprietary software alienates its users from the software design process and it thereby destroys the curiosity people have about the inner workings of computers. Nonetheless, proprietary software is heavily present in schools because companies like Microsoft give out free licenses to them.

[guard-of-terra]

You are wrong. "Some kids really do want, and thrive in, extremely structured, rote learning environments" < here

Some kids do want structured, rote enviroments, but there is no meaning in such environments. There's no use of structured, rote math. There's no problems to solve with structured, rote physics. This kind of education is worthless.

Now, you are saying to us, "Some students only excel at pointless activity. Therefore we should teach pointless activity". But what's the value of such education? Better no education at all, which would free the time to something marginally productive.

[fatbird]

The name of the fallacy you demonstrate for us all is "straw man".

New Jersey's Youth Challenge Academies have been remarkably successful at graduating children from at-risk environments, who go on to college and successful careers. They are NOT a general model for education, but for the children who get into them, they are a tremendously effective and advantageous educational experience that helps them overcome a background in poverty and gives them the opportunity to do much more meaningful things with their lives.

[guard-of-terra]

I don't understand how does it relate to the point that I made.

[fatbird]

You said that I was wrong about some students wanting and needing a strict environment full of rote learning. I provided an example of one such environment that has been remarkably successful for a certain group of students. You said such an environment was worthless. I observed that the students coming out of such an environment were escaping poverty and finding new opportunities they didn't have before, which would suggest that it wasn't worthless.

[guard-of-terra]

I don't think the facility you described is different from the ordinary schools when it comes to how sciences are taught and how tests are performed.

And that's where the useless rote lives, not in the "strictness" of the environment. As well a liberal, private school will have the same problems. It's not about the where we teach. It's about how we teach.

[tokenadult]

Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them.

Finding out what learning environment, inside or outside school, is optimal for each learner is definitely a worthy goal, especially if means are then provided to obtain that environment. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

To achieve the worthy goal mentioned in the parent post involves changing the incentives now operating in the school system in most countries, both as to direct regulations and as to funding. Mark Blaug, one of the co-founders of the academic discipline of economics of education, wrote about this over the decades of his career: "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. The state of Minnesota in the United States had what was called "the Minnesota Miracle" in the 1970s, state legislation that changed the pattern of school finance so that most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of

detect the optimum education environment for each student

(by parents observing what works for each of their differing children)

and

give it to them

by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

[biscarch]

"Want to revolutionize education?"

Yes

"Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them."

tokenadult, If you wouldn't mind discussing some ideas myself and a friend have, my email is in my profile. We're in the fairly early stages, but the above seems to be the pervading idea and feedback would be great.

[fatbird]

When you're talking about solving this problem, please please please consider the role that poverty plays in education. Many of these discussions occur in a vacuum, absent any considerations about how various externalities affect education. At a minimum, consider examples like school lunches raising test scores because students aren't too hungry to concentrate.

Every problem a child has outside of school, shows up in the classroom as a barrier to learning. If you want to revolutionize education, understanding that is a very good starting point.

[johnjlocke]

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You have to take care of survival before you get to betterment and self-actualization. Thank yo for remembering that these things play out in the very real world, not inside a bubble.

[biscarch]

One thing on my mind is the notion of a "Star Trek Economy". The idea being that in Star Trek, specifically TNG, the basic needs aren't an issue. Food is provided when needed, entertainment and physical fitness are available, etc. I use the Star Trek metaphor because people around HN are very likely to understand what I mean.

I think that things like living arrangements, mental health and necessities (food,etc) must be provided in a way that allows focus on learning. The larger problem seems to be a cultural one, which isn't an easy fix, but the aforementioned items are a decent start.

From my thoughts, I believe that the approach necessitates starting at a University-type level, with the self-directed learners. From the self-directed learners, we can then extrapolate flexible structure for those that want/need it and expand further to the concept of "classes" or "programs" down the line. I am interested in the fact that graduate level programs in the current model of education tend to go from the rigorous structure of K-12 to very unstructured, research driven.

My personal experience doesn't include extreme poverty, but I will make sure I consider the impact of deficits on the educational process.

[yukoncornelius]

The term you are looking for is a post-scarcity economy.

[biscarch]

Thank you very much! I don't know how that slipped my mind.

[tokenadult]

my email is in my profile

I think like a lot of other HN users, you think you have disclosed your email address because you've filled out the field that lets the Hacker News curation team know how to reach you (for example, to get a new password for your username if you forget your old password). I actually can't see an email address when I view your profile. You should be able to discover how to reach me by reading my profile, and I'm happy to discuss your ideas.

[biscarch]

Ah. Thank you for pointing that out. I've fixed my profile and found your contact information as well.

I'll make contact soon.

[chefsurfing]

Fatbird, you suggest that we "reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them".

Replace the word education in your statement with the word training and you have a good definition of what exists in schools around the world today.

"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order." - John Taylor Gatto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30fxRwkBbHc

[Mz]

Yeah, I used to quote Gatto too, as well as the publishing house founder who established a publishing house to get Gatto's work published. It is super popular on homeschooling lists, even gifted homeschooling lists where people parrot this crapola like it is Gospel without ever engaging their brain. I figured it was kosher because it was repeated by so many smart, highly educated folk on elitist lists. (People who have been to big name colleges, like Harvard, some on scholarship because they were brainiacs.)

Then one day, on a forum unrelated to homescholling, I repeated the bit about how literacy rates used to be lots higher, before public school was instituted. I made an ass of myself. Yes, I have visited old ghost towns and seen the poor spelling conventions and other physical evidence of low general literacy. Yes, I used to be a history major and I know details like you used a pictorial sign for your tavern because so few people could read and that the purpose of church stained glass windows was to share some of the bible stories in pictorial form with the illiterate masses. I was taken in anyway, as are lots of very intelligent, educated folks.

Yes, I also know that there is a huge, important difference between a real education, which teaches you to think effectively, and mere training, which typically prepares you for a particular job. I have spoken of that many times. (FYI: "liberal arts" is designed to teach you to think. They are called that because they are supposed to be very freeing: If you can think effectively, you have much more genuine choice in life than the average person. Liberal Arts gets pissed on a lot as a really terrible thing to major in. And it may well be terrible, at a lot of schools. I don't really know. I think there is some truth to the idea that "90% of everything is crap".)

These days I find it questionable to quote anything by Gatto. The book was published with a hugely biased political agenda. The publishing house founder is a homeschooling crusader who would love to have public school abolished. For that matter, he would like to also have private school abolished. He would like homeschooling to be compulsory nationwide in the U.S. (if not globally).

That's a much more questionable agenda in my opinion than whatever agenda the powers that be had when they dreamed up public school.

(I homeschooled for many years. I think it can be a wonderful thing. But I see zero reason to believe that compulsory homeschooling would be inherently superior to what we do today. In the U.S. today, homeschoolers are generally rebels, defying the system in order to do right by their children. So they are typically very devoted parents. There is no reason to believe the excellence in education typical of homeschoolers today would remain the norm for homeschooling if it was the only avenue for getting a k-12 education.)

[Crake]

"In the U.S. today, homeschoolers are generally rebels, defying the system in order to do right by children."

Or to shove creationist propaganda down their throat, as in my case. A significantly large part of the homeschooling movement is dominated by christian fundamentalists determined to keep their children from "secular pollution" by evilutionists. Unfortunately, all the censorship just made me even more curious about real science.

[qu4z-2]

I'm going to go ahead and say that's "fortunate" rather than "unfortunate"...

[Crake]

It's unfortunate from the fundamentalist parents' perspective.

[Mz]

Have an upvote. I will take that as agreement with my basic point that homeschooling is not some perfect, idyllic solution and all the world would be a better place if we ensured that parents had near total control of what their kids learned by doing away with all other options, like public school and private school.

[tokenadult]

In fairness to John Gatto, Horace Mann himself estimated the general level of literacy in Massachusetts to be quite high well before school attendance was first made compulsory in Massachusetts. (I read many back issues of Mann's Common School Journal back in the day when you and I were learning about homeschooling.) Mann desired compulsory public schools for reasons other than promoting literacy. I have many people in my direct ancestral line, whose books from centuries ago I have inherited, who learned to read without a public school system.

[chefsurfing]

JTG also emphasizes active literacy (writing, speaking) versus passive literacy (reading, listening). One without the other is as a table with half it's legs.

[Mz]

Two wrongs do not make a right. And public works typically need to serve multiple agendas in order to serve the common good.

You are hardly of average intelligence. I see zero reason to believe your ancestors were either. Your remarks remind me that the publishing house founder routinely said "literacy was quite high where it mattered". A way to hedge his bets and justify the many folks who were illiterate and signed their name with an X. I guess that also completely justifies the average 2nd to 4th grade education typical of American women during Abe Lincoln's life. God knows women don't need an education. They just need to cook and clean and do as they are told.

(To everyone about to flame me: Please note that is sarcasm. I am a college educated woman.)

[chefsurfing]

Hi Mz,

I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two:

a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought.

b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts.

The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda?

http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html

[Mz]

You are barking up the wrong tree. My father and ex husband were both career military. They are both extremely intelligent men. The military needs people who can do some of both, which is an even bigger challenge than promoting one or the other. The military has manuals for things like your uniform which are to be followed to the letter. But it has guidelines (not rules) for battle -- in other words, widom to help you make it up effectively as you go because no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Historically, river-based agricultural systems thrived as long as you had an effectively educated populace for running the large bureaucracy necessary to make the water distribution system work. Historically, they tend to break down periodically. Given that we currently have several billion people alive today, we need to master the need to get good at both things: at dealing with systems which serve a large scale population without killing independent thinking and new ideas. Claiming one is inherently superior to the other is foolish. They each have valuable uses, in appropriate situations.

I will also assume that you are some peacenik and your example is rooted in the assumption that the military is inherently evil. Again: you will get zero sympathy from me. Without a nation and its ability to defend its people, you tend to have anarchy and gang rule, essentially.

If you want to live in some idyllic paradise where large bureaucracies do no exist, you first need to exterminate a few billion people. Good luck with convincing people this is a loving, kind thing to do to improve the lot of your fellow man.

[fatbird]

Gosh, I like you a lot.

[fatbird]

I don't even know what you're talking about besides a plug for a homeschooling crank. If you think "reliably detect the optimum training environment" is what we do now, you know little about the education system.

[chefsurfing]

The ad hominem attacks and annoyed tone of your argument betray a disintrest in any argument that does not match your established view. I invite you to consider new ideas.

"crank": An eccentric person, esp. one obsessed by a particular subject or theory.

John Taylor Gatto is an education crank who has dedicated his life to improving education and fighting schooling. I think we would do well to have more such cranks among us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

[fatbird]

Read MZ's comment above for why I dismiss Gatto as a crank. I not only consider new ideas, I'm familiar with a variety that work in various circumstances and not others, and my point remains that children vary, so should educational options, and that the primary problem is finding the right option, once options are available.

Gatto would have us all homeschooling. Read up on New Jersey Youth Challenge Academies for a very on-point counterexample.

[edwardunknown]

I don't see how pointless memorization is helpful to anyone though.

[fatbird]

I learned the multiplication tables by memorization. Would I have been better served by having numbers explained to me, and then a guided, self-learning experience where I figured out the theory of multiplication myself?

[Cushman]

You get utility from knowing your times tables proportionally to how often you use them. The difference between the amount of time and energy it took you to memorize them deliberately and the amount of time you would spend manually multiplying until you learned them organically defines whether or not that was a useful thing for you to do.

[cma]

Wouldn't you learn it organically as you used it? Why memorize the whole thing at once and not just learn through actual use?

[Cushman]

I realize that last sentence is a mouthful, but yes, that's what I'm saying :)

[abecedarius]

I did in fact learn the times table by keeping a printed one handy as I did my school's arithmetic problems -- 'cheating'. We were supposed to memorize it beforehand but I thought that was silly. My memorizing-along-the-way worked fine.

[mitchi]

Even if you had achieved that, you would memorize the multiplication tables eventually!

[Crake]

In many public schools, "oh you'll have a calculator for that!" is the common response. You don't need to memorize them, so many kids won't. But if you want to be good at foiling later on, you need to know them in your head automatically. Refusing to require some degree of memorization is setting kids up for flunking out of math later, and most tickets out of poverty these days require a college degree with heavy math coursework.

[tingletech]

I never memorized the tables, I either had a calculator, or on the SAT and GRE or other times I don't have a calculator and need to multiply, I just draw dots and then count them up.

[carbocation]

That's a tautology. Memorization of some facts is useful. It's probably best when the memorization happens as a side effect of the knowledge being used frequently.

[Cushman]

Let's invert that and close the loop: memorization is by nature a side-effect of accessing knowledge for some useful purpose. Accessing knowledge for no purpose but to memorize it is, by that definition, pointless.

[willvarfar]

I recall a Grace Hopper interview where she said you had to memorize the heirarchy of the navy; you couldn't derive it.

[Crake]

A lot of memorization that people feel is pointless actually isn't. I was drilled to death on my times tables, and it's served me well in my later math endeavors, even though I wasn't too thrilled about it at the time.

On the other hand, memorizing stuff about how god created the earth in a week about 5,000 years ago was crap I had to scoop out of my brain later on.