
Ask HN: Thought experiment on how to disrupt public education - jelliclesfarm
Ref: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbclosangeles.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;Los-Angeles-Teachers-Strike-Pushed-Back-To-Monday-504167821.html<p>Teachers Unions are taking schools hostage. This is literally not unlike asking for a ransom. ‘Work to rule’ and strike threats brewing in Bay Area too.<p>How can public education be revamped? We have so much technology but nothing has changed in recent times.<p>(At least in CA. I am not sure about other places)
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oldmancoyote
How do you disrupt public education? You do what certain political activists
have done during the past 70 or so years.

1) You relax the laws that require public education using the rubric that
private schools will allow for competition and force improvement. It is no
accident that fewer families dependent of public schools weakens support for
public schools. It also means that political and religious agendas can be
entered into American education where before they were forbidden.

2) You couple that with a long term propaganda campaign about how bad public
schools are including portraying teacher union activists in the worst possible
light in the news.

3) You starve funding for education to the point where, for example,
California goes from the foremost example of excellence in education to one of
the worst.

4) When teachers start to rebel at the corruption of American education, you
vilify teachers claiming they are taking American education hostage.

The idea that technology offers a solution to a political issue is not
realistic.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Why are unions a good thing? They seem to hold students as hostages and at
random.

It’s pretty gnarly. CA unfunded pension liabilities may be around $100
trillion

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherburnham/2018/07/30/t...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherburnham/2018/07/30/three-
cheers-for-the-los-angeles-times/)

It has made CA into a nanny state. Gov. Newsom now wants to provide pre school
education for the first four years. Where is the money for all this?

After school tutoring classes have become a cottage industry in affluent
cities. In low income districts, schools are everything from day care to free
meals. Meanwhile school funding is highest in low income districts (LAUSD is
17.xxk per student ..OUSD is 14.5k/student) and on the lower scale in affluent
areas(Bay Area: 8-9k/student) as property tax and general fund gets
redistributed.

Which is fine as society must bear the burden of educating all. But it seems
like it’s all going for the care and feeding of union backed retired teachers.
Unions have become so powerful that in LA, it’s a strike. In Fremont, teachers
refusing to do more their hours...in Oakland...well. That’s a huge can of
worms that no one can understand or fix. I don’t even know where to start with
Oakland’s problems.

So clearly throwing money at ‘public education’ isn’t working because there
isn’t a whole lot of educating going on for that money.

Interestingly there is just one school district that isn’t unionized. Clovis
Unified School District. It’s near Fresno. If you google it, there is some
fascinating info there. And yes, they are doing very well.

I am reminded of the 2010 documentary, “Waiting for Superman”

~~~
yesenadam
_So clearly throwing money at ‘public education’ isn’t working_

I wasn't aware that money was being 'thrown at' public education anywhere.
However you define that exactly. But it sounds, the way you describe it, like
stopping 'throwing money' is part of the solution? i.e. spending even less on
public schools? How much _is_ spent anyway, compared with some other important
things the US spends money on, like, say, invading/attacking other countries?
Or keeping so many people locked up?

~~~
jelliclesfarm
California spends between 50-70k per prisoner.(a lot of it goes to pensions
for the prison guard union. Google it. Spine tingling. But then there are less
of them than students and kids are more reliable on the rolls and increasing
every year..and hence only averages to 10k/year) Most of them products of the
public school system. That’s one way to look at it.

Public education isn’t free. Someone is paying for it. But public education
isn’t accountable to the people paying for it.

Here is an extension of the thought experiment:

If public school education is parent directed/funded and ALL higher
education/university/research/vocational studies after passing a very tough
high school diploma is absolutely free, how do you think we would all fare as
a society? Equal opportunity to all who have cleared their high school exams
with flying colours.

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brad0
\- offer better incentives/pay: Right now in Australia no one who does well in
school goes into teaching. The demand is there so universities bring in people
who get 20/100 on their high school scores.

\- change the format of education: kids are more anxious than ever (see
current HN front page). There’s no guarantee that you will be okay financially
with the current education system.

~~~
oldmancoyote
It appears that the censors have struck again and remove a thoughtful and
fair-minded discussion.

I have had enough I will never again contribute to HN.

~~~
yesenadam
Aw, not sure why you say that. What was removed? I enjoyed reading this page,
and particularly what you wrote.

~~~
tmaly
I really enjoyed the discussion on this post as I have children and I want the
best for their future.

I would like to see more discussion on this topic.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I was thinking about Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. What if every child has a
cloned AI in the form of a robot or a tablet etc. it mirrors the child’s
knowledge base. And depending on the life circumstances of the child, every
choice the child has to make, it offers a variety of subjects to learn and
master. In the future, there are no ‘degrees’ ..only skills that are
marketable. I find it difficult to believe that we will have a job market as
we know it now for the future generations. What is education for then...if we
do end up in a post scarcity world..education still has value, yes? OTOH, if
we end up with a resource scarce world, survivability would be based on skill
sets that are not salary based. Just wool gathering here. What kind of future
do you think your kids will have and what kind of education do you think
they’d need in their future?

~~~
tmaly
I caught one of the Akimbo podcasts a while back where Seth Godin argued that
kids will need creativity and leadership as the core skill set for future
jobs.

I tend to agree with this, the current form of public education worked well
when manufacturing jobs were plentiful post WWII. Those types of jobs have
migrated overseas. Trying to bring them back here will not work as many firms
have begun using advancements in robotics.

Some form of art, craftsmanship, or apprenticeship will likely be part of the
future mix of jobs. If you read books like The End of Jobs by Pearson or The 4
Hour Work Week by Ferris, you get a sense that being an entrepreneur is a
possibility. However, I think one has to consider the real odds and
survivorship bias.

What I have done with my kids is to try to instill a love of learning. I have
taught my 5 year old daughter using a visual programming language. I think it
is very important that you make an effort to teach your children skills that
are not generally taught in school.

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WheelsAtLarge
Use technology to reduce the size of the teaching groups and tailor the
curriculum towards what the kids like and will be happy to learn.

Each group would be about 5-6 kids in size and one of the kids would be the
team leader also they would work together throughout the year. The teacher
would teach the class but groups would work together to learn the assigned
work. The teacher would manage the groups and be available to help. Tech would
help reduce the teacher's paperwork and help reinforce the materials thru
video.

Why the groups? It would make it easier to manage unruly kids thru peer
pressure and identify kids that are falling behind and challenge those that
learn faster.

I would also design the curriculum so that kids will have some kind of career
skill by the time they graduate high school. Preparing kids for college is not
enough. They should have a skill plus they can continue to college if they
like. It's shameful that kids can go thru 12years of school yet not be able to
earn a living- at the very least learn to give haircuts.

Also, kids should be able to tailor their assigned work towards what they like
thru tech.

Example, say I like electronics then part of my day would include a project
that applies what I learned in school by doing a big project in electronics.

Schools have become a place to babysit kids while their parents work. I also
think that 12 years of school is probably too many years of school. The last
three should be used to start learning what they want to be in life.

Also, parents need to be part of the equation. Parents want to blame the
schools and the teachers if their kids fall behind but the parents need to
figure out what the problem is and get the help the kids need. The parents
have the ultimate responsibility for making sure their kids learn. In short,
parents will be assigned responsibilities along with the kids.

~~~
tmaly
Parents absolutely have to be part of the learning. If both parents work and
make no time to contribute to the development of the child's abilities, the
outcome is obvious.

