
Reinventing the School - olivercameron
https://medium.com/better-humans/60b45ae894f1
======
codva
Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the
school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are
just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and
being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education
in school, because many of us did.

We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate and
dedicated teachers. Passion trumps intelligence for teachers just about every
time. The best teachers don't teach so much as they light the fire in a kid to
learn. It's a subtle but important difference.

If I were designing better schools I'd stick with the basic group format up
through about 8th grade, then go to a community college type model where every
kid could branch off to follow their interests. The universe of stuff that
everybody needs to know is much smaller than most people presume. Everybody
needs to write well, read well, and handle math up through about Algebra I.
After that, it is all electives. So after about 8th grade, when the 3 Rs
should be solid in most kids, let them do what they want. That is how we
handled our kids educations (we homeschooled) and it worked out very well.
HSing is not an option for most, but the "system" can learn a lot from what
works for homeschoolers.

~~~
arethuza
A quick question - when you say "where every kid could branch off to follow
their interests" does this imply that kids in the US education system don't
choose a set of subjects to focus on at about 14?

~~~
SirSkidmore
Completely true, if not implied. I just graduated from secondary school in the
US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class; my
school didn't offer them. Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would
like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to
college.

At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't
enough classes to to "specialize" or focus on any one particular field. You
just took the core classes every year: a science (sometimes), a math, an
English.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I just graduated from primary school in the US. I want to be a programmer,
> but I never once took a programming class.

Normally I would say "that's okay, you've got plenty of time to do that in
secondary school (middle/high school)". But then you go on to say this:

> Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even
> though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college.

If you just graduated from primary school, why are your peers going to
college? That's quite odd. I suspect, in declining order of likelihood, that
either "primary school", or "college", or "peers" is an error...

~~~
zanny
US doesn't see middle / high as "secondary" school. Secondary school is
college. Primary school is just the K-12 process because it is continuous with
no breaks in between, besides maybe the divide between one year being led
around hallways by a teacher and next going room to room on your own.

~~~
dragonwriter
> US doesn't see middle / high as "secondary" school.

Yes, it does. [1]

> Secondary school is college.

No, secondary school is either equivalent to "high school" or equivalent to
"middle and high school". [2] College is "post-secondary school". [3]

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_school#United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_school#United_States)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_school#United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_school#United_States)

[3] e.g.,
[http://www.cpec.ca.gov/SecondPages/CommissionHistory.asp](http://www.cpec.ca.gov/SecondPages/CommissionHistory.asp)

------
blhack
The school isn't the problem.

There are huge social problems that need to be addressed, which are
unfortunately politically-incorrect, before we start changing schools.

Go visit a school in a very poor area sometime. They need social workers, not
teachers.

The problem is that a lot of teachers don't want to be social workers, they
want to be teachers.

~~~
jarrett
Very true, but it's not just socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that are
in trouble. Schools serving middle-class populations often have the problems
the author enumerates. For example, the author says that classes do not teach
practical skills such as filing taxes or negotiating. He also says that
teacher pay is too low, considering its social importance. These (and other)
problems the author addresses are not at all confined to poorer schools.

So yes, deeper issues of inequality play a major role in education outcomes.
But the education itself is also flawed.

Part of the reason for this is the political culture in our country. We tend
to lurch from quick fix to quick fix. A reform is introduced, and three years
later the world hasn't turned upside down, so a new reform replaces it. Repeat
indefinitely. Or else, a simplistic solution, like expanding standardized
testing, is pushed farther and farther every year, in the hopes that if we
just take it far enough, it will solve all our problems.

~~~
ironchef
Sure...and part of it is that to do things well there's (generally) not a one-
size fits all solution. Unfortunately that's what most americans are geared
towards. To get a multitude of solutions is typically more costly.

Spot on about the middle classes also feeling it by the way. On the plus side,
I know even in a poor school here they have consumer education classes which
includes things such as balancing checkbooks, how financing big purchases
works, how the stock market works, etc. It's very nice to see.

~~~
ollysb
Given recent events it seems that an understanding of how government related
systems work e.g. democracy, capitalism, legal etc. And I'm not talking about
how to participate at a practical/individual level, I mean how these systems
benefit society and what dangers the population needs to guard against to
ensure that they continue to work.

------
2arrs2ells
"Let’s imagine that a tablet sits on every child's desk, and text books have
been banished. The tablet is filled to the brim with the best educational
content curated by the finest teaching minds in the country. The content isn’t
simply paragraphs and images, it’s completely interactive. Don’t understand
Pythagoras theorem? Here’s a demonstrative video. A word in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth that you don’t understand? Simply highlight it and see the definition.
Photosynthesis just not making sense right now? Mark it to read later so you
can study it at home. Your entire educational life would live on this tablet,
from homework to novels to quizzes."

This is happening _today_ , we're helping power this transition at Clever (YC
S12). Interested in helping out? We're hiring:
[http://getclever.com/about/jobs](http://getclever.com/about/jobs)

------
msluyter
I'd love to pay teachers more -- if I were appointed Dictator of the United
States, I would also (at least) double their salaries.

But how would we actually go about achieving that goal in the actual world we
live in? Well, we'd have to raise taxes[2], and a solid third of US citizens
would veto any raise in taxes for any reason whatsoever, and another 50% or so
would veto raising teacher salaries on tribal affiliation grounds (I'm
assuming a fair amount of overlap between these groups), meaning, you probably
have at least a solid plurality against the idea[1]. Not to mention the
difficulty of how a city like Stockton, CA (now bankrupt) could achieve such a
goal.

I hate to be so pessimistic, but I tend to believe that anything beyond
tinkering with the margins of the school system is unlikely and probably
politically impossible.

[1] For example, in Austin, TX, 2/4 of the last round of AISD bond initiatives
passed, by very slim margins. And Austin is a rather liberal city.

[http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/elect...](http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/election_results/2013.05.11/Official/20130511aisdcume.pdf)

[2] Edit: or cut other things, in which case we're back to the same debate
that's more or less immobilized our country for the last few years, thus
illustrating my point.

~~~
matula
The problem with the AISD bonds was the school district getting cocky and
assuming they could ANYTHING through. There were inconsistencies and vagueness
throughout the proposals, and I think voters are finally getting tired of
AISD's "just throw money at the problem" attitude, with no real plans for
making low-performing schools better.

IMHO, if we want to fix our education system, we need to cut the ties between
funding and property values. Also, Democrats in office should probably get
over the hard-line "no vouchers" position. With vouchers, they could also
increase schools' funding to give them a better chance at competing. Of
course, Republicans won't allow for the increased funding or "robin hood"
funding. So yeah... we're screwed.

~~~
jbooth
The problem with vouchers is that they effectively de-fund public schools in
the way they're implemented. Private schools will take the best students,
hurting the school's funding next year and leaving them with a per-capita more
expensive student base. Plus, the private schools create other burdens on the
town without paying for them (parking, bussing, policing, etc).

Maybe democrats should be a little less hardline but just expanding vouchers
willy-nilly won't fix anything about the opportunity gap facing kids today.

------
ironchef
OP has a number of interesting points; however, I would suggest he's also
_probably_ myopic in his views on education.

I think the reason that the post feels all over the board to me is because of
the complexity of the situation. The system is made up of teachers,
administrators, boards, parents, materials, and (most importantly) kids.
Fixing one doesn't fix them all. It gets even more complex when one looks at
the socioeconomic situations of the systems.

Teachers are not in it for the money. The majority (nix that...the good ones I
know) want to make a difference in society and the world around them. That
being said, I'd love it if they were making more.

The socioeconomic ties can NOT be underplayed. Give every kid in a poor
section of town an ipad and I would guarantee you that some would be sold, a
lot would get busted, etc.

OP stated that "parents today are often left in the dark as to their child’s
progress". This can be true. A lot of parents I see also can not be bothered
to lift a finger to check up on how their kids are doing. As a part of the
system, EVERY piece must be willing to step up. Only if most of the parts are
strong can the system deal with weakness in other components.

Let's say a quarter of the parents are doing a crappy job. The teachers of
those students have to work extra hard to engage those kids. Those kids have
to work extra hard to push themselves.

Got some crappy teachers? Then the parents and kids need to work extra hard.

tl;dr: it's a complex system and every part must improve and take
responsibility.

------
thejteam
Not sure what is meant by getting rid of textbooks. If they mean dropping
physical books and going electronic, even interactive... fine, doesn't matter
one way or the other to me. If they mean dropping the idea of books in favor
of a hodgepodge of apps and websites and videos... I'm not so sure. There is
merit to having a consistent voice throughout and stepping from one subject to
the next. This is something that googling for information on the internet and
reading wikipedia haven't replaced yet.

------
MarcScott
As a teacher myself I agree with most of what is said here. However, with few
exceptions, I can spot students who are going to succeed in school within a
week of teaching them. These are the students who have supportive parents that
are engaged in their children's education.

As a profession we strive to get all our students to engage, but we are with
them for a few hours a week at best and have nowhere near as much impact on
their lives as their parents.

Note, however, that I said 'succeed in school'. Many students have passed
through my classroom door over the years, who have not achieved academically,
but have gone on to achieve in later life. These students are often those for
whom the Model Victorian Classroom is simply not appropriate.

The very concept that you can take a random sample of thirty teenagers, place
them in a socially pressured environment and then expect them all to make
academic progress under the tutelage of a single individual is frankly
ridiculous.

Ken Robinson say's it far more eloquently than me though, and with pretty
graphics to hammer home the point.

[http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-
animate-...](http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-
changing-paradigms)

------
vtempest
Good ideas, but lets just not have classrooms / teachers - just learn online
and then come in to use teacher as consultant

~~~
SirSkidmore
Online learning can be good, but it can also be absolutely detrimental to
education.

I just graduated from high school in a relatively rural community where online
classes were extremely popular among students. You got time in the computer
lab, and had an "adviser" for each of your online classes. There were notes,
assignments, tests, and quizzes. Sounds great right? Except students quickly
discovered their "adviser" cared a lot less about online classes than the real
counterparts, so notes and assignments quickly vanished from the curriculum.
Computer lab time wasn't regulated by any means, so many students "helped"
(read: cheated) each other on their quizzes and tests no one cared, even after
several incidents were reported.

I even took two online classes my senior year. Each course was supposed to be
a semester long, yet I got both of them done in less than a month. Sure, I was
an honors/AP/gifted student, but a semester course shouldn't be that easy to
complete in such a short amount of time. I took "Online Intro to Creative
Writing," and none, NONE, of the writing assignments were required by my
adviser. There was no context for the lessons; no discussions to solidify
concepts.

Sure, my one experience is probably relatively isolated, but I have heard
similar stories from other students in the state. Online learning, imho, isn't
helping the problem, it's making it worse.

~~~
zanny
Online learning only works when you aren't coerced into having to undertake
it. Your peers cheated because they had no reason to give a crap about
learning the subject matter forced upon them.

> a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount
> of time.

Sure they can. When you go to college, by the way, take an absurd amount of
CLEP tests. Preferably now. You can skip upwards of a year or two of
attendance and save buttloads of money. You also save a lot of time. I
completely avoided a senior year of college by CLEP testing out of all my
schools requirement courses and it took me around 2 weeks of study per subject
(rigorous, 4 - 6 hours a day) to accure enough to pass the tests. And I passed
all 6 of them.

Your problem just demonstrates the trend - there is no "do this and everyone
learns wonderfully and the world is butterflies and rainbows". People are
different, will interact differently, and the capacity of an education system
hinges on the participation and good intentions of all parties involved. I
think that requires more voluntarism and self-motivation on the parts of
students, and instructors and mentors that have passion for their craft.

------
hxrts
If you think about the people you know, the people you admire, how many of
them are teachers? I would wager very few. The teaching profession (at least
in the US) is not structured to attract quality candidates in the same way
other professions do. The public / private divide exacerbates this problem.
This requires money and legislation which makes the issue nearly intractable
because efforts are most often put toward short-term gain rather than
sustainable infrastructure.

------
koops
Normally this could slide: "...most of it’s citizens..." But in a piece about
the importance of education? (The apostrophe doesn't belong in the possessive
version.)

------
mathattack
I like the topic, but it's a little too idealistic to tell an underfunded
school system to double the pay of teachers just because you can't afford to
be timid in reform.

~~~
thejteam
Not only that, but doubling the pay of teachers will only improve your results
if you get rid of your current teachers. Which will be difficult to do.
Otherwise you are just paying the same people more money and probably getting
the same results.

~~~
jerf
The idea is that if you pay more, you may be able to attract more people who
are skilled enough to make more than $52K in the private sector, and thereby
hopefully duck around the "those who can, do, those who can't, teach", as,
alas, there's more than a kernel of truth to that.

~~~
mathattack
This is very true. I just don't like the idea of "Pay up because we idealists
think it's urgent. It should be important like surgeons."

It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore.

I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the
good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have
found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet)
can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best.
(Everything not on the test gets neglected)

This is a very complicated problem.

~~~
jerf
For what it's worth, I don't think it will work either. But not agreeing with
an argument is no excuse to not understand it.

------
dgv
Ricardo Semler lecture in Learning and Technology World Forum 2009
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-
lY4OufXI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-lY4OufXI)

------
pappyo
Aaahhhhh!

This type of post aggravates me. It's part of the reason why nothing ever gets
fixed. Everyone thinks they're an expert when it comes to education. Yet no
one understands the problems.

1\. Education is not about employment.

If you teach a kid to be a great widget maker, his/her entire life hinges on
the demand for widgets. If widgets become irrelevant, the skill set s/he has
developed over 12+ years are useless. [a]

Can anyone, with any certainty, claim their skill set will create a livable
income for them for the next 20 years? Probably not. So why would any k-12
school create a curriculum around todays job market?

2\. The Education system is not broken (mostly).

Everyone likes to point to the fact that the US educational system is failing
in comparison to the rest of the world.

Except...it isn't.

"While reading proficiency in Mississippi is comparable to Russia or Bulgaria,
Massachusetts performs more like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea. Often
better: Massachusetts students rank fifth in the world in reading, lapping
Singapore and Japan, and needless to say, every state in the union." [1][2]

Our problem isn't that the system is broken. The problem is the most of the
country isn't implementing the system correctly.[3] There are a lot of reasons
for that, many of which have nothing to do with the educational system
directly.

Now that's not to say there aren't problems with the current system:

a. Standardized tests only show how good kids are at taking a test. A skill
that is wholly unneeded throughout the rest of society.

b. The US system is structured like a factory. The structure made sense when
we lived in a time when we needed factory workers. Now we need people who can
analyze, think and execute. We do not have a public school system that caters
to that.

c. There is too much emphasis on employment and not enough on creating life
long learning.

3\. Education can't be solved with an algorithm.

Here's a personal anecdote.

I taught geometry in an urban [code for black, hispanic and immigrant] school
system. Each year I taught, I had at least 2 kids who would leave school and
go to McDonalds to work a 4-11 pm shift 3-4 nights a week. They did this so
they could help feed themselves and their family [4].

They never did their homework. They never studies. They slept in the class
frequently and most of them failed.

Do you think you can write some code to fix that problem?

4\. Educate yourself before you fix the problem.

People who write posts like the OP have not spent any time talking to teachers
or admins, let alone spending time in a classroom. Solving the education
problem is incredibly complicated and, actually, doesn't have much to do with
the schools.

[a]: Fun fact: My aunt graduated from college with a degree in Soviet
Economics in 1987. She thought it guaranteed her a job in government for a
long time. Hahaha!!!!!

[1]:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/massachusetts_is_the_best_state_in_the_union_.html)

[2]:
[http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_Globall...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_GloballyChallenged.pdf)

[3]:
[http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?...](http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?tkn=RLRF%2B4mUV1fjxGZAPk7Od%2FfW1p2K2SFHTAx9&cmp=clp-
edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH)

[4]: This is just one problem in particular. I also had a number of kids with
drug problems, problems at home, safety issues walking/taking the bus to
school and a slew of other non-school related issues. This problem stand out
because nobody is actively doing the wrong thing.

