

Techies care about education, but not enough - rafaelc
http://www.learnboost.com/techies-care-about-education-but-not-enough/

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terra_t
It's a frustrating area for "techies" to get involved with because, like a lot
of areas where there's an "establishment", decisions get made by political
processes and "techies" don't have the right credentials.

For instance, to be taken seriously as an "educator" I'd need to get a Masters
or PhD in education. This (1) would cost a lot of money, and (2) not raise my
income (though it might get me a better benefits package), would (3) qualify
me for a job I don't want to do, and (4) [most importantly] steal time from
hacking on things that might have an impact on education.

Another half of it is that, from a systemantic viewpoint (what does the system
do vs. what does the system say that it does?) the real thing that "the
public" wants from education is a way to pass (i) values and (ii) social
status onto their children. Overall, the purpose of the system is to sort
people out in social status by something that corresponds somewhat to ability
[broadly defined] but as much to the social status of the parents... and to do
so in a way that people perceive that "I failed" rather than "I was failed."
As Habermas says, this creates a feeling that the 'system' is legitimate which
can somewhat compensate for the irrational and erroneous decisions that are
made by governments and corporations.

(Questions of legitimacy don't come up so much when governments & corporations
are successful at managing the economy, since people are busy working and
spending...)

The other major stakeholders are all self-interested, and they've got pretty
good rackets going. You can't entirely blame, say, textbook publishers or
teacher's unions for all the problems of education, but they'll fight to the
death any change that threatens them.

Personally I'm very interested in diffusing knowledge to people who want it --
be that free or for a fee. Some people may differ, but I'm not at all
interested in selling products to governments... Because it's not about fun
marketing and technology, it's about lobbying (that is, bribing politicians.)

~~~
mkramlich
fuck the establishment. fuck "authority". just do it.

do it well and do it long enough then YOU will become the authority.

i've had caffeine.

~~~
terra_t
I just do what feels good, and it's not dealing with governments.

My web sites appeal to students, teachers, and others all over the world --
and they earn me a check every month.

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kylemathews
Well, I'm one techie who's walking the walk. I'm building an open source
social learning platform based on Drupal and starting a company to provide
commercial support and hosting. See more at <http://eduglu.com>

But per Jacobolus's comment, I don't really blame other techies for not
getting involved. Most of education's problems are structural not
technological. My hope is that by providing really good social learning tools
-- much better than anything else out there and at a much lower cost -- that
by making it much easier to move to better teaching practices, the structural
problems will work themselves out easier.

But honestly, I don't give myself a huge chance of succeeding. Others far more
gifted than I have failed over and over. But I figure you can only be young
and idealistic once.

Edit: And to clarify what I mean by "succeeding", I mean by that succeeding at
"fixing" education. As for succeeding as a company, based on feedback I've
gotten so far, I think success is achievable.

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jacobolus
> _But you get the point: technologists care about education._

Everyone cares about education. Everyone has a strong opinion about the way
things should be, because everyone went through school and approaches the
topic through their personal experiences. Unfortunately, most of that everyone
is clueless (including most techies), and lots of their ideas are
contradictory. That is why education policy (like all controversial/important
policy) is fundamentally hard. There are no obvious solutions that everyone
can agree about – if there were, we’d use them. Instead, it’s a constant hard
fight to organize, educate, reach out, debate, and for teachers, just get on
doing their jobs the best they can in their own classrooms.

Talk on this discussion board and elsewhere “the industry” being complacent
and motivated to keep things “bad” is absurd. “The industry” is millions of
individual teachers, parents, students, and administrators, all striving to do
their best in their own little local niches. Unfortunately the big structural
challenges are often difficult or even insurmountable, and kids end up
suffering for it. This isn’t the fault of teacher’s unions (as Obama recently
has been saying, parroting a longtime right-wing anti-tax talking point), and
it isn’t the fault of “government”, and it isn’t the fault of any singly
identifiable actor or institution. It’s just hard.

The post has the right overall idea though: put up or shut up. Do the work,
whether that’s becoming a teacher or just helping out in a local classroom
from time to time, or whether it’s developing new curricula, organizing people
on the ground, etc. Just complaining without action is just nearly useless.

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joshkaufman
I agree with this post, and have dedicated my work to improving the quality of
business education.

If you're interested in improving your business skills in a concrete hacker
kind of way, here are 99 books that I believe are the best to start with:
<http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/>. Reading + personal
experimentation goes a _very_ long way.

I'm currently writing summaries of these books as well:
<http://personalmba.com/category/book-summaries/>

My own book, which is a summary of the most important/powerful concepts in
business (if you know about Charlie Munger's work on "elementary worldly
wisdom," you'll be interested), comes out December 30th:
<http://personalmba.com/book/>

All it takes to get a great education is interest + great resources to learn
from. Plus, if you're DIY-inclined, you can save a _ton_ of time and money
teaching yourself.

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SamAtt
Sorry if this is harsh but I don't have much respect for whiners.

Education is just like every other good cause in that it needs leadership to
be improved. If someone with a background in education put together a concrete
plan and came here and posted an "Ask HN" plea for help I could almost
guarantee they'd get that help.

But as any good programmer knows you can only create a solution if the people
needing the solution give you enough info to give them what they need. Meaning
the ball isn't in our court right now.

~~~
rafaelc
... and any good entrepreneur knows that you create what isn't there, based on
incomplete information. And the community that is here consists generally of
technology oriented people interested in startups (that is, either joining one
or creating one).

No one is whining. I'm just calling it like it is.

~~~
SamAtt
Two things...

First you aren't "Calling it like it is". You're passing judgement on the
community based on what you perceive to be inaction. What I'm saying is we
can't really act until someone who knows the other side comes to us and asks
for help.

Second this isn't about entrepreneurship. The reality of the situation is that
schools are poor and the kids who need help the most are generally the
poorest. So if you really care about reforming education you really can't go
into it as a for-profit venture. Because you have to make whatever you
accomplish available as far and wide as possible to get any traction.

~~~
emilepetrone
"Comes to us and asks for help. Second this isn't about entrepreneurship."
!?!?!

That insider mentality is the logic that kept teachers in NYC rubber rooms.
People from the outside must break in! (And without someone coming and kissing
your ring first!)

The reason you have to have a for-profit venture is sustainability. Lack of
funding creates 2 situations - necessity on grants or necessity on free labor.
Both extremely difficult to make sustainable.

So what are for-profit ventures that have had huge impacts on education?
Blackboard( I don't like to admit that but its true). Chegg too. Both
companies said, "Here's a problem. Here's a solution." The market responds,
and everyone wins. Businesses can/do make the education system better.

~~~
kiba
Trying to compete with the existing school system is idiotic because it is
paid for by taxpayers.

Everything in the education supply chain needs to be interchangeable or else
it is hard to optimize anything.

Imagine trying to start up a hacker school for kids. You have to provide
educations for areas outside of your "teach people how to hack robots and
computers" expertise like history, language art, etc.

Why not let delegate the job to a School of Grammars or a walt-mart style
basic mathematic school? Oh right, you can't! You have to go through the
legislative process to get it approved. Then you have to battle the local
teacher union with all the pink-collar teachers who don't understand the value
of hacking and thinks that all kids should become "creative" people not
mechanical engineers. Imagine politicians dumbing down the hacking education
plan just so they can have easy and inexpensive way to test students.

Sure you can get crappier school in a free market system, but it also mean you
can get really good schools and educational systems.

~~~
russell
In CA you can do just that. They are called Charter Schools. If you can
convince parents and the local school board that your magnet school provides
an exceptional learning experience forr all potential students, not just an
elite, then the state will fund you with the standard per student-day grant.

~~~
kiba
Now, that's interesting. What sort of incentive does the local school board
have in selecting such an excellent school over keeping kids in their own
institution?

Parents, probably does have more of an interest in making their kids goes to
charter school.

But it still is up to the political process. I mean, parents who vote with
their money still have a disadvantage to political voters who can make the
state provide schools with somebody else's money.

It is an imperfect process but nonetheless better than nothing.

------
robryan
Problem I see with education innovation is that getting the information
together online isn't the hard part. There is already a lot of places to go
and you can create a new service and bring together vast amounts of education
material.

It's getting recognition from industry that you are able to educate people
just as well as the old model. As it stands industry is happy to benefit from
the large outlay of students and students are happy to pay it out stand out
when it comes to getting employed.

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drblast
I think it's funny that people constantly are calling for innovation in
education. We don't need innovation, we need basics.

Education, especially at the elementary level, is a solved problem. The big
thing in homeschooling right now is "classical education," and it works quite
well.

What also works well is just about _any_ method where the student is involved
with a caring teacher that measures progress toward a set of goals and adapts
the curriculum to best fit the student.

Everything "innovative" already exists. There are wonderful online math games
and numerous projects where you can get books online for free. Everything you
need to educate someone through high-school is available for free.

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rameshnid
Learning methodologies change very slowly. You will notice we still learn via
institutions which is something like an 500 year old concept.

It's not about techies not contributing, it's about the pace of the industry
you are in. Learning which is vocational in nature is the market you seek.

------
JoeAltmaier
Schools are run by teachers, who were good students when they were in school.
Its positive feedback, and it has got us into a weird situation, where school
teaches how to be a good school teacher.

------
johnohara
"I've never let my school interfere with my education." \-- Mark Twain

My guess is most students today still agree.

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mkramlich
i'm doing something but it's in stealth/gestation mode.

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startuprules
I am gonna propose something outrageous: currently there's no demand for
better education in US.

\- The high schools in US will get their funding as long as the students are
barely good enough to pass standardized tests, which are jokes compared to the
standardized tests in Asia/Europe.

\- Colleges in US still enjoy the following advantages: global brands that
they've cultivated for 100+ years, as well as the popular culture that extol
fun/socializing over hard courses/hard work. (How often do you see smart
people getting made fun of in American movies/tv...quite sad really).

\- The current demand is dampened by the fact that there's also no real good
way to compare college education quality now (I am sure many people have
experienced professors that are world renowned for their research/knowledge,
but are horrible lecturers/teachers)

Until people in US care about better education, there is no market

~~~
kiba
Last time I check, Google got started in America.

It also doesn't matter if other countries made A to the fourth power, Google
is _still_ started in America.

What we need is kids that can think outside of the box, not get 3000 points on
science tests.

Beside, markets doesn't exists when government basically provide education for
"free". Kinda hard to have a market when the government basically take money
from you. If you don't take your kids to public schools, you get less benefit
if any. In basically every first world countries, education is provided for
you. There's no markets in other countries too.

~~~
startuprules
"What we need is kids that can think outside of the box, not get 3000 points
on science tests."

What you're doing is comparing risk-taking to fundamentals. I would
argue...why can't we have both? Isn't a better-educated population always
better for the society?

"There's no markets in other countries too."

Except there is. In Belgium, government funds education -- at many different
kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of
business.

~~~
kiba
_What you're doing is comparing risk-taking to fundamentals. I would
argue...why can't we have both? Isn't a better-educated population always
better for the society?_

What kind of educated population you wanted? What is the fundamental?

You may want some basic mathematics and grammar, and maybe some courses in
logics.

Science? That's a maybe to me.

You want to make an educated person in politics and governance too? Good luck
with that. Government teaching civic education is like a criminal in jail
teaching kids what's the law of the land is.

Beside, doesn't government plan the educational system? You gotcha do this and
that or else we pull your educational money away.

