
How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses - 0cool
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/
======
pinaceae
let's have some dissenting opinion here.

not all kids are equal. not all kids _want_ to learn. in each and every
discussion over this topic people bring up quotes by very smart people, like
kubrick, sagan, etc. on how organised learning is not needed, a young mind
wants to learn, grows like a flower, all by itself, even better without the
shackles of structured education.

i call bullshit. this is biased through the people stating these arguments. if
you're a genius or borderline genious then of course the standardized school
system is not for you. if you're smarter and faster than your teachers the
whole thing can't work.

but the vast majority of kids is not like that. yes, some people are plain
dumb. nothing to do, not a bad thing, pure nature. might be great at
something, sports, fine manual labor, but simply not good with high mental
tasks. some kids don't like reading, it's too hard and does not bring any
value to them, nothing sticks, no mental images are formed. just letters stuck
together.

this romantic view of humans is the root of a lot of failed social
experiments. from open school systems (montessori, waldorf,...) to the new
humans that communism wanted to create.

the modern school system is built to provide a base level of education,
targeted for the medium range intellect. learn basic skills, through
repetition - tried and tested method, from sports to art to education.
reading, writing, counting, calculating. if you're one of those kids that
taught yourself how to read at age 4, well, guess what, your experience in
school will be subpar. but just don't go around and push for school reform to
have schools fitted for your style of self learning. the vast majority is not
like you.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Frankly, I hope _none_ of the education-related ideas coming out of high tech
hubs such as the Silicon Valley, come true. Nothing wrong with the fine
individuals living and working here, but we are not the most gifted ones when
it comes to figuring out how _human beings_ function.

We are great at figuring out _systems_. Hardware. Computers. Robots. Networks
thereof.

But self-aware nature-made wetware... please, just step away from that stuff.
You're only making a mess.

~~~
vdaniuk
Wow, so nice to see a refreshing attitude here on HN. You nailed the arrogance
of SV types. Not everything can be improved with technology, just look at
these massive failures in disrupting education : Coursera, Edx, Udacity. I,
too, hope that engineers will just step away from education. /s

~~~
aantix
Khan Academy?

"Today, there have been 85 million users to date. Each month, there are 6
million unique users on the Khan Academy site. In total, there have been 260
million lessons delivered and over 1 billion problems answered on the related
exercises." [http://jpalfrey.andover.edu/2013/05/09/khan-academy-meets-
ph...](http://jpalfrey.andover.edu/2013/05/09/khan-academy-meets-phillips-
academy/)

~~~
vdaniuk
I guess the sarcasm tag should have been more obvious :D

~~~
aantix
Sorry, lately it's been hard to distinguish whether people are being sarcastic
or are just idiots.

My apologies.

~~~
vdaniuk
Very relevant to your thoughts
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law)

------
noonespecial
“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and
by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of
not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale
compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” ― Stanley Kubrick

~~~
mjn
That's been a popular view among progressive education reformers as well. It's
the basis of Montessori schools, for example. I went to one up through
Kindergarten and liked it, finding regular 1st grade utterly dull in
comparison. But I don't have a good guess as to whether it would've been a
better overall schooling (I still found plenty of time to learn things on my
own).

I've also long liked this Seymour Papert quote vaguely along those lines:
[http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html](http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/papert85_logovisions.html)

However in parallel to these kinds of views being popular among education
reformers, it's also been popular to mock them as idealistic hippie views of
education. And a different category of education reformer has had almost 180º
opposite ideas, based around standardized, repeatable, scientifically
measurable education (the basis of NCLB, MOOCs, etc.).

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
While a radical departure from the old school methods, Montessori is not
intrinsically "progressive". It is built on the idea that there is a clear
curriculum with the very big difference being children are primarily
responsible for choosing from that menu of options, trusted that their own
interests are an adequate guide.

Someone who definitely falls outside the progressive reformers would be John
Holt, yet he passionately argues along similar lines as what Kubrick is saying
here.

Holt: "... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are
good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the
processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or
control it."

By modern definitions, Holt is not even exactly "homeschooling". More
accurately, he advocates what would be called "Unschooling" \-- the idea that
home life observing adults is a more than powerful enough motivator for young
children to acquire basic skills.

------
tokenadult
The article reports, without references, "So in 2011—when Paloma entered his
class—Juárez Correa decided to start experimenting. He began reading books and
searching for ideas online. Soon he stumbled on a video describing the work of
Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in
the UK. In the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, Mitra conducted
experiments in which he gave children in India access to computers. Without
any instruction, they were able to teach themselves a surprising variety of
things, from DNA replication to English."

Where are the publications about this? How much peer review have they had? We
have discussed Mitra's work here on HN before. What is the latest news about
follow-up on his studies? I would be delighted to hear about new and more
effective methods of helping young learners learn (I am a teacher of young
learners) and I am especially interested in following up on the research to
make sure that it is accurate.

[http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php](http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php)

(Above link is an example of my following up on educational research claims. I
do this continually.)

AFTER EDIT: I find by Google Scholar search that most of Mitra's publications
on education research are reposted on his own Hole-in-the-Wall website.

[http://hole-in-the-wall.com/](http://hole-in-the-wall.com/)

------
rst
Interesting how the public school "reform" movement in the US cuts hard
against this sort of experimentation --- in particular, by mandating
curricula, and evaluating students and schools by performance on cookie-cutter
tests that make no room for individual interests or variation.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
Not really. That is not intrinsic to the reform movement. That is the
educational system responding to political pressure. The reformers have to
play the game by the rules as they exist in the moment. If the standardized
cookie cutter test results become the coin of the realm, then every kind
change will be justified by test results, whether the proponents think that is
a useful idea or not.

------
hobs
Children want to learn, and if you dont beat out their love of learning by
forcing them into a box that hardly anyone fits in, their inherent need to
understand the world comes out. Its almost... logical.

~~~
ht_th
I am a fervent proponent for modern constructionistic learning environments,
but affecting change in the current system is almost impossible. Some teachers
are enthusiastic and willing to spend their own time to develop and implement
these modern* ideas about learning, but in the end, one way or another, they
have to conform to the traditional educational system. If it isn't for
management that presses for better test results, parents that want good
grades, children that cannot take to the new way (for whatever reason) it is
the seemingly incommensurability of these ideas with the traditional norm for
education that leads to a watering down of the ideas and a feeling of
hopelessness about it all.

What many don't understand is the enormous difference between the learning of
the one child (your child) and the education of a nation. Try
institutionalizing these "almost logical" ideas about learning for nation-wide
implementation for a reasonable price and see what happens. I think it is
possible to implement these ideas, but that means that we as a nation have to
make hard choices. At the moment, we choose to fund education for all and
learning for all be damned.

*: Every couple of decades these ideas or similar ideas seem to be reïnvented by a new generation ...

~~~
jackmaney
"...affecting change in the current system is almost impossible."

As the kids say, nowadays: This. Any major change in education will take a
cultural shift. And cultural shifts are generally very, very slow to form.

------
vinceguidry
There have always been techniques and methods available to vastly improve the
outcomes of students. The problem is that education is a very political
subject and the winds shift as quickly as the politicians do.

Education is a favorite pet issue of every wanna-be FDR and for whatever
reason, they can't just let teachers do their jobs. They have to tell them
what they can and can't teach, what targets they have to meet, create
arbitrary and senseless metrics of merit.

So forgive me if I'm unimpressed with this so-called solution to education.
Would it be better than what we have now? Sure it will, virtually anything
would be that reduces the amount of oversight in the system. Could you sell it
to the public? Not a snowball's chance in hell. It wouldn't last a year.

------
truthteller
"One SIMPLE TRICK to radically change educational outcomes!!"

it's amazing that people still actively publicize idiotic self promoters and
charlatans like Mitra.

------
riggins
I always find it a little sad to reflect on education because I think we can
unleash a generation of geniuses.

I don't think it even takes a radical teaching method. I think it takes a
radical reordering of priorities.

Instead of glorifying athletes and closet organizers famous for making sex
tapes ... we need to glorify education, hard work, and resourcefulness. And
parents need to reinforce the message by rewarding/encouraging those traits.

~~~
vdaniuk
Glorify hard work? Madness. We don't need these protestant values in the
coming post-scarcity economy. We should glorify efficiency, curiousity, self-
sufficiency and internal state of tranquil happiness.

------
evunveot
Unsurprisingly, the headline's "new" teaching method isn't particularly new
(as the timeline sidebar in the article itself makes somewhat apparent). For
example, the Sudbury Valley School [1] has been around since 1968 and is even
more "radical". No grades, no curriculum, no classes, no separation by age.
The governance of the school is democratic, with all decisions -- including
those regarding budget and staff -- decided by a body called the School
Meeting which is composed of the staff and the students together, with one
vote per person.

The Sudbury School of Atlanta has an interesting blog post [2] describing how
the students can naturally pick up basic skills through participating in the
management of the school, in this case by choosing and acquiring a school pet.

This Wired article is more about the undirected aspect, but the compelling
thing to me about adding the democratic element (the oldest running example is
the Summerhill School [3], established in 1921) is that the decisions being
made affect the student, so the student has a motive to participate and learns
as a by-product. Thus there's a hope that children in general could benefit,
not only those children who are particularly "self-directed learners".

Additionally, the things they're learning (reading, writing and arithmetic,
but also teamwork, negotiation and leadership) are directly beneficial in
society -- because the school itself is a microcosm of society.

It may not be a model that produces "geniuses", but it does seem like a good
model for producing adults/citizens. (I have no personal experience with
alternative schooling.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School)

[2]
[http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-a...](http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-
assignment-learn-math-reading.html)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School)

~~~
Ologn
You're right that there is nothing new about almost all of these ideas. John
Dewey covered a lot of this in his 1902 book "The Child and the Curriculum".

~~~
niccl
So what if it's not absolutely new? It's new to the people in their specific
context and _appears_ to be producing results, again, in that specific
context. Very little of what we do is new, but still has merit when applied in
a novel way or a novel context.

~~~
Ologn
"So what" is that the article says it is new when it is not new.

------
GrinningFool
And who, in the role of mentor or teacher, has not discovered this to be an
obvious truth? The difference between "here is what you do to solve this" and
"here is the problem and (possibly) some areas that it might be worth focusing
on". Someone given the latter wil come away with knowledge. Someone given the
former will come away with a set of steps to follow.

That aside, this long-winded series of human-interest anecdotes reminds me of
why I stopped reading Wired. The whole thing could have been written in 1/3rd
the space.

------
Charos
Freedom in learning is so, so important. This case study illuminates that
pretty well. It's a great look into an example of allowing children to truly
learn at their own pace, with gentle guidance regarding subject areas and
provided with the resources they need to discover new knowledge. The story is
heartwarming and a great read, and a useful comparison to the modern American
style of education.

As others have pointed out, there is no magic bullet. This method would work
incredibly well for 90% of subjects taught in elementary school. However, for
non-English language learning, additional guidance would be needed - the
teachers could nudge them towards Duolingo, various online multilingual
dictionaries, etc. I do believe that this system could be used as the core of
a new teaching paradigm, but it is not solely sufficient for a complete
learning experience to the standards that we have come to expect in America.

For developing countries (which, sadly, Mexico bears much resemblance to),
this could be an incredible tool. An internet-connected computer and guidance
from involved teachers can easily produce students who are ready to help lift
their countries out of economic malaise. In this way, I believe the internet
can serve as the Great Equalizer many of us hoped it would someday become. If
this method used alone is capable of producing students 70% as capable (by
some nonexistent perfect metric) as those in first-world nations, that would
still be an enormous leap forward for developing nations. I think these guys
are really on to something in this regard.

I find it interesting that as our civilizations mature, we find ourselves
oscillating back away from the industrialized American education system
paradigms and towards a more holistic, broadly-focused educational strategy
using qualitative methods rather than quantitative objectives. Students are
not a homogeneous population, and historically we have tried to deal with this
issue by ignoring it and cramming them all into the same mold, with minor
variations. It makes me glad to see that we are starting to consider that we
should instead allow for this variance by designing systems with broader
definitions and qualitative goals, to allow the students to grow in the
directions they are best suited or disposed to.

------
fexl
"The exterior of his schools will be mostly glass, so outsiders can peer in."

That reminds me of one of the technical schools I saw in downtown Lima, Peru.
It had a huge number of large glass windows on the front, and as I walked
along the main street, I could peer in and see row after row of tables, each
with several large Apple monitors, each with a student or two in front of it.
It was massive.

I'd really like to go in there next time I visit and find out more about their
techniques.

(Incidentally, several blocks away there was a high school named "The Albert
Einstein Institute". :)

------
thehme
This article tells an amazing and inspiring story. I love the burro tale and
how it illustrates the positive attitude of these kids who really want to
learn. I hope that everyone donates to
[http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-
movem...](http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movement/)

Teachers like Sergio Juárez Correa are an example of what teachers should be
doing, specially in rich countries like the US.

------
lifeisstillgood
Aaawww nuts. Yes, education could be vastly improved, but you know what, my
sons school _is_ vastly improved over what I had.

Since 1913 when IQ tests started being nationally or internationally graded,
the IQ median has been kept at 100. But without that smoothing the median
level of 1913 would be 77 or so today, and the median today would be in the
130s

We have got smarter, or perhaps we have had mental tools passed onto us
through education and social norms.

ref: err... a Ted talk recently released....

~~~
tokenadult
Here is your reference, the talk by James R. Flynn on TED (spoken in March
2013, published on TED in September 2013) "James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are
higher than our grandparents'."

[http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.html)

The research by James R. Flynn on changes in IQ raw score levels over time in
many different countries has been described by intelligence researcher N. J.
Mackintosh like this: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished
beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." (IQ
and Human Intelligence 1998, p. 104) In general, Flynn is a very respected
researcher on human intelligence. Here is what the late Arthur Jensen said
about Flynn back in the 1980s: "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my
opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue?
The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Modgil, Sohan
& Modgil, Celia (Eds.) (1987) Arthur Jensen: Concensus and Controversy New
York: Falmer. Here's what Charles Murray says in his back cover blurb for
Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?: "This book is a gold mine of pointers to
interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the
extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses
are in his debt." Flynn has earned the respect and praise of any honest
researcher who takes time to read the scholarly literature on human
intelligence. Robert Sternberg, Ian Deary, Stephen Pinker, Stephen Ceci, Sir
Michael Rutter, and plenty of other eminent psychologists recommend Flynn's
research.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you - and apologies for the late reply.

ps if you ever do come across this I would love to know if you have either a
really good memory, do a lot of research on the spur if the moment, or have an
impressive filing system? cheers

~~~
tokenadult
For topics that come up over and over and over again on Hacker news, I have a
251KB flat text file with some references on various topics (and a few of
those appeared in my reply to you). The particular TED talk was memorable to
me because a local researcher shared it to an email list for the journal club
I participate in, and then I posted that TED talk to my Facebook wall.

------
smellf
> in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were
> teachers.

This has as much to do with schools hiring "staffers" and "instructional
assistants" as a cost-cutting measure as it does with top-heavy public school
bureaucracy. It's akin to the "associate/adjunct professor" fiasco in a
college environment.

------
ihsw
The real question is -- can we do this on a mass scale that the general
populace can benefit from? The problem with getting kids to learn is _public
education_ , namely where one-size-fits-all is sacrosanct.

------
zwischenzug
This is not new, Chomsky was educated the same way.

