
How Does This Not Blow Your Mind? - irrationaljared
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/how-does-this-not-blow-your-mind/
======
vezzy-fnord
It does not blow my mind.

Not one bit.

I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and
fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted from the beginning, others
mutating later on) with the compulsory schooling system and how the classroom
model is ineffectual.

Remember: education != schooling. Never forget that. This is one of the most
common misconceptions of our time.

What _does_ blows my mind is just how thoroughly the masses have accepted
public school curricula as the only true and legitimate form of education.
People like you blow my mind. I don't mean to be smug or arrogant, I'm glad
you're awakening.

Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in
the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by
industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the
necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor.

Here are some books to read:

John Taylor Gatto: _Dumbing Us Down_ , _Weapons of Mass Instruction_ and _The
Underground History of American Education_.

Charlotte Iserbyt: _the deliberate dumbing down of america_.

Ivan Illich: _Deschooling Society_.

John Holt: Anything at all, but particularly _How Children Fail_ and _How
Children Learn_.

\----------

Besides Sudsbury schools, there's several other alternative school models:
anarchistic free schools and democratic schools. Look those up, as well.

Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most
efficient form of learning. Yet schooling has killed the will to autodidact
for many people, or has delegitimized it in favor of formal schooling and
credentials.

~~~
com2kid
> Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most
> efficient form of learning.

I call bull.

I can learn from a math teacher in an hour what would take me possibly _years_
, or a lifetime for that matter, to discover on my own.

During 2 years of college lecture classes one can learn what took philosophers
and eventually mathematicians nearly 2000 years to discover.

But what about the arts?

Again, same story. Thousands of years of progress and theory can be summed up
and taught in just months. (A wee bit of practice may then be required to
master certain skills! ;) )

Yes some self directed learning is valuable, and indeed almost _every class I
took_ had aspect of self guided learning in it. Teachers loved leading us
halfway to the goal, pointing us in a general direction, and then letting us
go forth and discover the answer for ourselves.

Now do I think how public schools are currently ran is ideal? Heck no, far
from it. No Child Left Behind was a huge damaging blow to the American
educational system.

But what I always wanted out of school was _more_ direction, not less. I
passionately hated assignments where students had to go off and make their own
video presentations and other such activities.

Yet in theory, giving presentations is of some value, it requires the students
to acquire information on their own, summarize it into a communicable form,
and then share that information with others. (I just despised how much class
time was devoted to watching very bad presentations...)

But hey, that sounds like self guided learning, at a public school no less!

One thing to remember is that trying to dictate any one educational style is
going to fail some non-trivial percent of students.

As I said in another comment, I did _horrible_ in unstructured classes. More
structure would have been my desire. IMHO school would have benefited from
having 2 hours set aside just for an open study room for students to do HW in.
But that is mostly because as a kid, left to my own devices, I would go home
and play games rather than study. Heck I'd read a month's worth of reading
assignments on the bus home, then never do the book reports!

Likewise for finding study groups. As someone with social anxiety (which was
much worse as a kid!) asking the class to form groups would result in me
hiding in a corner somewhere. Suffice to say I never was good at getting
language practice in either!

But lab classes, oh wow I rocked at those. Love'd them. On a related note,
questions come up as to the suitability of unstructured learning for certain
topics. E.g. How would unstructured learning have students do genetic
modifications of bacteria? Or play with explosives? Both are some of my
fondest memories from high school! Both involved very explicit step by step
instructions written down that we followed to the letter! (For good reason!)

I guess my overall point is that ideologues of any type tend to have a drum
and enjoy beating it, much to the determent of someone somewhere else.

~~~
tokenrove
> I can learn from a math teacher in an hour what would take me possibly
> years, or a lifetime for that matter, to discover on my own.

I would be surprised if this is true, unless you can't read. Usually the
reverse is true. (Which is not to discount the value of guidance, but real
learning happens with you, not anyone else; in an hour (or less), you can find
out about a good book or problem to study from a math teacher, which could
take years of searching on your own, but the learning doesn't happen by you
listening to them talk, especially in math.)

~~~
Mithaldu
The value of a teacher lies not in the simple provision of knowledge, but in
aiding the student to avoid or escape local maxima of comprehension.

~~~
com2kid
Wow, you said in one sentence what I've failed to say in 10s of paragraphs
throughout this thread!

Kudos for your masterful explanation.

~~~
Mithaldu
It's honestly something that i found out entirely through self-experience. I'm
a self-taught Perl developer who spent 5 years to reach a proficient level. I
managed to get another developer with little Perl experience to nearly my
level within 6 months by handing him two excellent books and reading his code
and pointing out issues in his algorithms and semantics.

The local maxima i am aware of here are:

1\. Outdated books. When i learned Perl i wasted a lot of time on books that
are now known widely to be objectively bad, but are still recommended widely.
The ones i recommended allowed learning with little friction.

2\. Algorithmic and semantic problems that have to be resolved through lengthy
investigation sessions long after they're implemented. I spent a LOT of time
figuring out what doesn't work well in the long run. He's been able to skip
those and spend his time more productively on problems that i haven't
encoutered or solved yet.

I'm not trying to toot my horn here and i think i'm not a good teacher. But
the advantages he had from me being available were staggering.

(The wordy rant to offset my quotable. ;) )

~~~
com2kid
> I spent a LOT of time figuring out what doesn't work well in the long run.
> He's been able to skip those and spend his time more productively on
> problems that i haven't encoutered or solved yet.

This is one thing teachers are really good for!

I'm sure some students would figure out not to sure GOTO after awhile, but,
well, think of all those wasted years! Easier to just explain to them the
problems upfront!

> I managed to get another developer with little Perl experience to nearly my
> level within 6 months by handing him two excellent books and reading his
> code and pointing out issues in his algorithms and semantics.

Part of this is natural ability as well. I have a friend who much to my dismay
is not a software engineer, but who only dabbles.

I was able to explain lambdas and closures to him in a couple of minutes over
IM, and he was almost immediately able to see their uses.

Meanwhile, I know experienced software engineers who cannot fathom the purpose
of a Lambda, and a few friends I know who are just not intelligent enough (?)
to comprehend on a deep level how lambdas and closures work.

Now all this said, the college professor who was supposed to teach us
functional programming did such as piss poor job at it that I ended up not
understanding basic FP concepts until I started using them in C# and reading
about how they are implemented in the CLR. (Part of this is because Eric
Lippert is a damn good writer...)

I think the text book we had at the time defined them solely in terms of
mathematical constructs. Ugh.

------
com2kid
I am willing to bet that the parents of children at this school are educated
(likely have college degrees) and have a strong focus on education.

Some students do well in structured environments, some do really well in
unstructured environments, there is no one right solution for everybody.

Claiming that any one technique works for all demonstrates a lack of empathy
for how others think and learn.

I know that for me, I received failing grades in the few classes I took that
were unstructured. Heck the same applied for online classes. Trivial material,
but lack of forced time to participate (e.g. go to a classroom and listen to a
lecture) means I would just give up on the class and not do anything.

~~~
icegreentea
It's a private school. Tuition is 8k per year. This places the families and
students who may attend in a specific socio-economic situation already.

~~~
fforw
So it would kind of be more meaningful to not compare to the national average
but to private schools targeting the same socio-economic situations, but with
a traditional curriculum.

~~~
irrationaljared
The stats on other schools in MA with a similar socioeconomic average are
around 70% - 90% going on to college:
[http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32](http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32)

Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just
that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible
results.

~~~
com2kid
Thank you for this! 82% is right in the middle.

Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value
learning. This is not a surprise!

I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go
into.

Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are
not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the
person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own
straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an
interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who
learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group!

If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three
learning styles to varying degrees.

Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself
everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't
really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because
that kid is, to say the least, an outlier.

Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can
be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems
for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students
wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier._ //

One of the major problems as I see it is that pretty much all kids are
outliers in some way but _en masse_ education tends to ignore this and force
uniformity to a great extent (much greater than necessary IMO).

------
istorical
Montessori schools are somewhat of a middle ground between what this article
describes and traditional school.

I was in public Montessori schools from preschool through 8th grade. We had
scheduled lectures for maybe two hours a day and the rest of the school day
was spent working on whatever project or assignment you wanted to.

Due dates were due dates and this type of schooling encouraged individual
agency and personal responsibility. If you wanted to you could sit around and
talk to your friends all day and not work on / learn anything, but if you
didn't complete all of your work before deadline you faced consequences. But
"homework" was just whatever you wanted or needed to work on at home to meet
deadlines.

You can't imagine how shocked I was in when I entered a traditional American
high school and felt like a prisoner. Not allowed to speak or socialize
(unless to ask a question of the instructor), move out of my seat, or do what
I wanted. Just frozen in a chair listening to a teacher speak for hours on
end. I was always the student who would raise their hand to ask a question,
answer the teacher's question, or give my opinion because I was starving for
any form of social interaction during classes.

That anyone has the capacity to see a traditional western high school as
anything BUT prison daycare is what shocks me. It speaks to the ability of
normalization to blind us to extreme circumstances.

Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons are the sole reason that our
education system is so lecture-based, non-interactive, socially suffocating,
creativity-draining, and non-personalized. Why would we spend more money,
human capital, and time on improving the education system when it doesn't
directly increase the GDP? What market force pushes us to improve education?
What shareholder will benefit? This is the failure of a political and economic
system that places too little emphasis on improving the public good.

~~~
jetako
Distributed fairly evenly from K to 12, I enjoyed a handful of passionate
teachers that conducted class in a more Montessori fashion, all at public
schools. At the very least, they permitted me to guide my own curriculum.

My CAD/CAM teacher permitted me to spend an entire semester messing around
with Photoshop. He would simply check in on me once a week. Without question,
the skills I learned in those months got me my first industry job 3 years
later.

The vast majority of my teachers followed the mediocre status quo that you
describe, but there certainly was no mandate to teach that way. I know the
problem is far more complex than individual teacher engagement, but that's
what it boils down to. Anything that can be done to inspire teachers and keep
them happy (better pay wouldn't hurt) should have a positive effect on
education. The teachers that had the best impact on me cared the most about
teaching, simple as that.

------
twelvechairs
> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared
> to 63% of public school students nationwide.

The comparison of a private school in Massachusetts (Sudbury) with public
schools nationwide is poor.

And this is the single statistic on which the thrust of the article is based.

~~~
everettForth
The one in Massachusetts is the original Sudbury school. Families literally
move across the country to enroll their children at that school, so I'd say
it's a pretty special case.

------
_red
The thing that blows my mind is how so many accept industrialized schooling
methods as some sort of long-term facet of humanity.

The truth is its been around for about 100 years give or take. It was
instituted by the large monopolist who bribed politicians to force tax-payers
to subsidize their worker training.

The purpose is not to create "intelligent, creative thinkers" \- its purpose
is to create obedient factory workers who can place the round peg in the round
hole.

------
jackmaney
Interesting...of the Sudbury Valley students who do go on to college, how do
they fare in college against their peers?

~~~
irrationaljared
I haven't yet seen any studies showing specific comparisons, but they seem to
do well, enjoy college, and graduate. Again the point is not that Sudbury
Valley does significantly better at preparing students for college/jobs but
that it clearly is not doing a poor job of this, which I think is a
significant observation given how different the environment is.

------
tthomas48
Actually for a school that self-selects students and is a private education
those college continuation rates aren't so hot.

~~~
irrationaljared
Sudbury Valley does not self-select students. It is a private school, but if
you can afford the relatively low tuition ($9k a year) and want to go there
you can. There is no selection process other than making sure the family is on
board with the educational philosophy.

~~~
chockablock
I think you've just described what 'self-selection' is: the school is not
selective, but the students who choose to attend the school may not be
representative of the general population

~~~
irrationaljared
I agree. The students at Sudbury Valley and the families are not
representative. That said, there is no application process outside of making
sure you want to be there and your family is on board. They are not filtering
out lower-performing students at all.

But it is certainly possible that this model would fail miserably when applied
more generally. I don't think that can be the null hypothesis, though...

------
alan_cx
I have 6 kids. One, my 10 yo daughter is mostly at home due to long term
illness. School attendance, 10%, ish. In education tests, she is in the top
10%. My conclusion? Kids learn. Its what they do.

No, Im not sure what the point of school is, except as a babysitting service
for working parents. IMHO, its just an imposition of authority and structure
on kids, so that adults can more easily do as told in.... authority and
structure. Or some such snarky anti-society as we have it now thing. You
know...

I do wish we could start again with a blank sheet of paper.

------
InclinedPlane
It's not surprising at all, it's a facet of a world system that is no longer
relevant. But look at other things such as labor laws and unions, if you
propose changing them people will yell at you because of the perception that
they benefit workers. The same way that schools benefit students. But neither
is true. Unions are exclusionary of entry level workers, they benefit people
who already have good jobs and training often to the detriment of workers who
don't. And laws which force employers to provide benefits to "full time
workers" generally just encourage businesses to keep some workers part time,
forcing those people to work multiple jobs to earn more money.

Similarly, an excess of business regulation tends to force small companies out
of business and promotes the creation of large corporations (due to economies
of scale with respect to regulatory compliance). These effects are probably
not intended but that's rather irrelevant when they are still happening.

I bring these up because they are more controversial than the idea that
institutionalized public schooling in the "prussian" model is harmful. It's
difficult to overcome ingrained biases and prejudices. If you find it
troublesome to consider the idea that unions aren't an unalloyed good then you
shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people have a hard time reconsidering the
value of the current educational system.

------
Mithaldu
> I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more...

There is no need for that since most people with an interest in the topic and
the general techie-community type of intellect will be able to answer almost
any possible interesting question on the topic for themselves and even quickly
disprove your claims without needing any further information besides what you
provided.

The very first wrong thing is your conclusion, quote:

> these students go on to have success in college and jobs

So far you've only shown college enrollment, which has nothing to do with
success in or after college, as it is, looking at the entire USA, completely a
matter of cashflow.

Further, your claim that there is no disadvantage is disproved by yourself
when you state a data point that puts the "success" of that school below what
would be expected from a private school.

In other words, to answer your titular question of:

> How Does This Not Blow Your Mind?

It doesn't because we don't possess your biases and do not easily delude
ourselves into your conclusions.

Next time you try to prove something, please bring along actual numbers and
comparisons.

~~~
irrationaljared
Ok, so would you predict that most of those who get accepted to college flunk
out or are unable to get jobs?

I can certainly appreciate that this might not actually be "mind-blowing", but
personally I think even the college-acceptance rates are a surprising result.

~~~
Mithaldu
My prediction does not matter.

The point is that you claim they are successful past college entrance (without
qualifying in relation to what they are so) without providing ANY EVIDENCE
WHATSOEVER.

Furthermore you just now conflated "acceptance" with merely "going on to"
college and in the process ignored the number of those who didn't even try to
get in and also ignored the simple fact that getting into a college (ANY
COLLEGE) in the USA has literally nothing to do with student ability.

~~~
irrationaljared
I apologize. I don't have specific stats to share on the college success. The
books published by the school have a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the
students having success in college. They don't seem to have universal success
or significantly greater success then their peers from other schools, but they
do seem to be able to handle and graduate from college and have gone on to a
wide-range of jobs.

I should not have simplified the argument to claim that they have universal
success.

~~~
Mithaldu
Cheers for taking my criticism and actually considering it. I hope it will
influence your future writing positively. :)

Also, now that i think of it, let me make a recommendation. Please either
read, or listen to the audiobook, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
about Richard P. Feynman. The latter part of the book discusses how even NASA
accidentally deluded itself into making gross mistakes in the use of
statistics and, if i remember correctly, describes at the very end a general
philosophy and attitude towards science that would greatly improve your
ability to contemplate and argue scientific matters.

------
matthewmacleod
It doesn't blow my mind, and this article doesn't really scratch the surface.

First off, this is a private school. Right off the bat, we'd expect their
educational achievement to be higher, simply down to social class, which is
directly correlated. So we can establish that educational attainment at this
school is in line with other private schools.

This being the case, the conclusion we can draw from this school is: "children
with middle-class parents who are involved in their education can achieve
better outcomes than the public school average when they attend well-funded
private schools, even with an alternative educational model." Phrased like
that, if's pretty obvious.

The Sudbury model is also not the claimed "educational environment where the
students can do what ever they want, when ever they want all day long" \-
that's a bit of a misrepresentation. It's an educational environment where
children are provided the tools and support to plan their own education, and
are required to be involved in that process.

I absolutely, thoroughly believe that the Sudbury model is an excellent
approach to providing a much more well-rounded education for children.
However, it requires lots of funding, excellent educators, and is arguably not
any more suitable for every child than the current flawed system is.

Formal education and curricula are something I found exceptionally useful as a
child, though I of course recognise the limitations there, and I'm pretty
envious of the Sudbury model. But I wonder if a more general-purpose model may
be effective. I attended a state comprehensive school in the UK, but had a
couple of excellent teachers who were happy to provide materials and support
for additional or alternative self-directed learning in areas where it was
obvious I was bored or disinterested. That worked really well, and I can
totally see that a basic curriculum and standardised attainment, combined with
flexible opportunities for students who want to take more control of their
learning, could be very effective.

Of course, all of this relies of excellent, well-paid educators. And sometimes
these can be hard to come by.

~~~
irrationaljared
Just want to point out a few things:

1) There are no requirements for students to be "involved in the process of
planning their own education". They are only required to be attend school a
certain number of hours per year (I'm not sure the exact number), and serve
time on the judicial committee. There are no requirements at all around any
educational goals.

2) Sudbury Valley School operates on less money per-pupil than neighboring
public schools.

3) The only requirement for adults who work as staff members is that they are
capable of treating students as equals.

------
Havoc
Implement it in a ghetto, achieve similar similar stats and then it'll blow my
mind.

I went to a [non US] high end private school & learned pretty quickly that
education is a matter of "you get what you pay for".

Perhaps its country specific, but locally the private schools crush the public
ones into fine dust. Plus (local) private schools tend to attract the kids of
the elite...which comes with some seriously high caliber connections.

~~~
irrationaljared
That would be more mind-blowing, I agree, but that's an enormously high bar
that no one is achieving.

Sudbury Valley is a private school, but it is much less expensive ($8k vs
$25k+) than many other private schools and does not attract only elite
students. In fact many students turn to Sudbury Valley after struggling with
public schools or even being expelled from public schools.

Unlike most private schools Sudbury Valley will accept all students as long as
they want to be there and agree with the educational philosophy (e.g. adults
will not force your student to do anything)...

------
beachstartup
> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared
> to 63% of public school students nationwide.

this doesn't blow my mind at all. that means a 5th of the students aren't
going on to college.

i'm pretty sure your standard, stereotypical east coast prep school named
after a dead white guy could beat that number easily.

and as long as your metric for success is acceptance into college, that's
probably going to be true.

~~~
irrationaljared
I probably shouldn't have included that stat. The point was not to say that
Sudbury Valley was sending 100% of their grads to MIT or something, but rather
to note that I think people would predict far lower numbers of college-going
graduates if they tried to predict the outcomes of a school that had not
requirements and no curriculum at all...

------
genofon
I really hate titles that don't say anything about the topic, sadly they are
more and more frequent on HN, I now stopped reading or upvoting those posts
and I hope more people will do the same to these attention seekers

~~~
irrationaljared
I am sorry about that.

~~~
Mithaldu
Sorry enough to change the title?

~~~
irrationaljared
What do you think the title should be?

~~~
Mithaldu
It needs to mention two important facts:

1\. the students are self-guided 2\. you have built a theory based on your
observations

I'd suggest, for example:

"How is your mind not blown by students who seem to succeed through self-
guidance?"

~~~
irrationaljared
I've thought about it a bit. I realize the title is annoying on Hacker News,
but I think the title is ok within the general context of my blog for those
who read it regularly.

I'll think about another title, and I'm sorry (sort-of as I've enjoyed the
debate here) for the sensationalist title on Hacker News, but I don't think
it's a huge deal outside of this specific context...

------
alexeisadeski3
The purpose of modern school system is to prepare children to be good factory
workers. Long work day, doing what you're told, sitting still and being a good
little worker.

~~~
aquadrop
In that case it failed miserably.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
What makes you say that?

------
mittermayr
would be interesting to hear more about those who actually go there, the
reasoning of their parents, whether they assembly otherwise to study a 'sort
of' curriculum and so forth... these quick snapshot paragraphs are a great
teaser but naturally too light-weight in detail, would love to see a longer
article on it.

~~~
irrationaljared
There's a lot of literature out there from the founders of the school.
Generally speaking they do engage in a lot of self-directed learning, but I
think if you walked around the school you would not say that they were
spending their time engaged in learning the way most of us think about it.

I'll be writing more about it. This was meant as a teaser, but I don't mean to
leave it there. As I spend more time at the school I'll have more observations
to share.

------
mikemoka
it would be interesting to know what they do there,I think that they probably
don't party 24/7 there

~~~
irrationaljared
Generally speaking they seem to do similar activities to what I do on the
weekends, with my free time. I might read a book, play a video game, learn
something new, visit with friends, etc. That roughly describes what I've seen
from them in the time I've spent at a Sudbury Valley school in the Bay Area.

------
nazgulnarsil
Children with high IQs don't need to be railroaded, news at 11.

~~~
irrationaljared
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that these students have any higher
IQs than the neighboring public schools. I have not found any evidence to
suggest that.

------
elwell
I was in a similar program in 7th and 8th grade; self-assessments, no-grades,
frequent field-trips... I think I was in the 18% that it didn't work for
though...

------
krsunny
Why on earth would I read this article if I am going into it with my mind pre-
blown???

------
6d0debc071
It doesn't surprise me. If you assume that the school system doesn't exist.
And I asked you how you think people learn best and to design a system around
it, this is not how you'd do it.

Several major points spring to mind:

1) Learning - once you're done with route-memorisation nonsense - is the
process of discovering that what you assumed was wrong or incomplete. What's
standardised testing? The punishment of being wrong or giving an answer that's
more or less complete than the tester wanted.

It's hardly surprising that a culture that grows around punishing failure
would be hostile to learning.

There's research backing that up. We know that people who are rewarded for
finding out that they're wrong, over time, start to _dramatically_ outperform
people who are rewarded for finding out that they're right. The former group
continually seek to find out that they're wrong, which they can only do by
pushing the boundaries, the latter group largely stick to what they already
know.

2) Effort can only take you so far in anything. This is a common enough theme
here that can probably stand without support. No-one wants to hire someone who
doesn't like the job, we expect them to do everything half-arsed. It's not
going to be magically different for education.

So, what are the odds that someone's going to be deeply interested in
everything? I've never met such a person. I've met people who are happy enough
to listen but they don't go off and learn about the subject on their own
afterwards.

What's even the expected return on making everyone learn everything? We need a
few generalists, granted, but we'll get a few generalists anyway from people
who are interested in multiple subjects. Someone who doesn't enjoy maths,
what's the point of making them learn trig, or linear algebra? What's the
point in making someone who wants to be a Scientist take art? Can it even be
said to be learning if they're just doing it because they have to? Skills that
aren't practised wither. I've met people who got quite reasonable GCSE
results, at some point they were able to do the things in the subjects they
got, and can't even work out a percentage anymore. Give them a basic
grounding; add up, divide, work out a percentage; and the rest? Not their
problem. They're not going to learn it properly in the first place and it's
questionable how much use they'd have out of it if they did.

The vast majority of the time spent on someone's education is just pointless
filler subjects that do little more than punish someone with boredom and
failure. Offering no economic or cultural benefit in return. Just try having a
discussion with someone about the underlying causes of the Opium Wars, or the
Boer Wars, or ask them why World War 1 started, or... Then try having a
discussion with them about the religious practices of Buddhists, or Jews.
There's a very limited set of living knowledge in most people - far beneath
that which you'd expect just going off of exam results and taught subjects.
The two should approach each other, and it seems to me the logical way to do
this is to reduce taught knowledge unless an economic or cultural case can be
made for attempting to run things in the other direction.

3) This ties into 2 but is a little different: We have utterly no respect for
diversity. The downside of having a standardised grade system is that there's
a cutoff point where investing more in a student stops being worthwhile. You
have a student getting a B, do you focus on getting them up to an A or do you
focus on getting the D student up to a C so that they count in your students
getting A-C stats? You have a student getting an A, do you work to further
engage them or do they just cease to be worth your time? It makes far more
sense, under that incentive system, to focus that effort on the people who are
under-performing - and who will probably not retain and go on to use the
knowledge.

The consequence of having a set test is you have teaching set to the test. You
have a space of things that you expect people to know, and they may fill it to
various degrees but at the end of the day if you take a group of people that
achieved good results, they're all going to know more or less the same stuff.

Strength in groups comes from diversity, new ways of looking at things, new
questions, different answers. Over specialisation creates weaknesses -
cultural blind-spots. If you know the same as me, then I don't need you as
anything more than something to carry out my orders. You make me stronger only
in so far as you're an instrument of my will. There's no point having a
discussion with you, because you'd only be able to tell me what I already
know.

Of course we all go on to live very different lives, so this effect becomes
less pronounced with age. Nonetheless, it's a major screw up.

4) A lot of your success in the current education system seems to hinge on
your ability to visualise yourself enjoying future rewards and the
reinforcement you get at home. There seem likely to be differences in people's
brains in terms of how well they can be motivated by the potential of future
rewards and lots of people have really shitty home lives. Ideally the
reinforcement would take place in the classroom as per 1.

\-------------------------------

So, let's wool-gather a bit: In really broad strokes, what qualities would we
like an education system to have?

Help every child achieve their own strengths.

Things that are immediately rewarding, preferably in the social sense.

Things that allow people to experience environmental mastery.

Some structure for people who lack the ability to self motivate.

So: No set classes that someone has to be in.

No set subjects beyond the very basics.

Optional projects (preferably group projects) rather than tests.

How might that look?

A child goes into school and is presented with a number of groups that are
running around projects at the time. Want to try building a robot? They try
putting a robot together, discover they need to understand more about maths,
go see the maths teacher. They need to learn more about programming, go see
the programming teacher. They need to learn about machining, they go see the
design teacher. And there's a teacher overseeing the project, sharing in their
success, urging them on.

Under that sort of system teachers become more coaches and advisers than they
are the current lecturers and punishers.

Or - a child can go into school and opt for more or less the current set up.
The maths teacher isn't going to be advising all the time after all. There'd
be more time to focus on those children who want more guidance in their
education... though to a certain extent the requirements of projects would
_impose_ structure in the knowledge that people were obliged to seek out. (I'm
honestly not sure this is good for people, you will have to self-direct when
you get out of education, but I'm not sure enough to head it off completely
and I don't see a point in ruling it out - you could adjust the system later
if it turned out to be a poor use of resources / those people were massively
disadvantaged.)

...

Objections?

But where will the money come from?

It's actually not clear to me that this would be more expensive than the
current system. Resources are currently pretty cheap, infrastructure for
making things for projects is a one time cost that when you average it out's
going to be pretty much negligible. It's not clear you'd need to employ _more_
teachers.

But what about bad teachers?

Well, they're a problem that the current system shares too. They're just more
readily apparent in this system. Which is good. Hire, train and fire - if
someone's not living up to expectations - should be a fairly quick cycle.

What you're essentially saying when you're worried about the quality of
teachers under such a system is that a child is going to run into the
limitations of what the teacher knows, or that the teacher's not going to be
bothered to spend time on them. Which is either fantastic or extremely
worrying, but in any case is a clear signal in a way that waiting until they
get their GCSE results isn't.

But if people don't take tests how do we assess them for work?

Well, look, two years out the gate it doesn't make a dang bit of difference
for most things that you might want to do what your education was. I'm a
Philosopher by education. I've worked in public policy research, sales,
programming.... What's important is what jobs you've had and how well you've
done them. Education should be approached in the same way. What did you do and
how well did you do it? Write about your education on your CV as if it were
another job and list your achievements. Not only is it less perverse for you
it tells the person reading the thing a lot more about you. Fifteen years of
work should not be summed up as 'GCSEs including English A, Science A and
Maths A.' But that's how I see it on a lot of CVs.

#

Mind you, I'm not saying that a system you made up _would_ look like this.
There are probably a number of ways it could go, and a number of flaws that
would need tuning. I'm just saying that if you start off thinking about how
you'd teach people I end up in dramatically different places to the current
school system - and consequently I'm not surprised in the least to learn that
the school in OP's link doesn't seem to be doing any worse than comparable
schools in the area. When you start looking at the paths not taken, it's like
that for a lot of things.

