Why we’re working our young people too hard
lkd.ccThis article finally revealed to me the mathematical structure of curriculum optimization. It's a bias/variance tradeoff.
If you've done statistics, you know that B/V tradeoffs are more or less an unavoidable feature of optimization or learning. If you go in with less clear goals, you depend on learning on the fly to find the best solution which means your performance varies a lot depending on environmental conditions. If you go in with very clear goals, it's likely that people will cluster around them tightly, but if you're wrong with your bias, you'll be surely fucked.
How do you beat B/V tradeoffs? You put in more effort, more experience, better sharing of information. You select your biases very carefully such that they are less clear but cannot possibly be wrong. You constrain your variance such that it is less harmful to your task.
Finally, there's the idea of consistency and convergence rates. Consistency means that if any person spends enough time and effort they will eventually overcome both bias and variance and find the best solution. Rate of convergence is how much time and effort it takes to get reasonably close. Consistency and fast convergence are highly valuable properties, obviously, but both are easy to hurt and destroy, especially through biasing.
>"... = Better future workforce"
Any educational system where that is the goal is going to be fucked from the beginning...at least for anybody who agrees with Dewey's idea that the goal of education is to make better people.
A country that considers itself made up of consumers and workers rather than citizens, invites crap like SOPA, PATRIOT, and the TSA's shoe fetish.
The goal of a country is to continue improving the quality of life of its citizens. Grouping working and consuming in that is totally bogus. Working (theoretically) produces things which should, all in all, improve the quality of life. Consuming is totally different and an essentially broken way to promote growth.
The goal of a country is to continue improving the quality of life of its citizens.
Respectfully, I disagree.
The goal of a country is to allow her citizens to have "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
The problem with saying a country should have goals is that you can't get more than three people to agree on what to have for lunch, let alone millions upon millions to agree on goals, means and how to optimally achieve them.
> The goal of a country is to allow her citizens to have "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
I think you mean just one country there... Generalising to all countries is a little ethnocentric, no?
I meant what I wrote.
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are natural rights of man, not [1] 'contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable.'
Human-centric, perhaps. Not ethnocentric.
[1] cut and pasted from wiki to save typing.
... That's complete crap, not all cultures believe that.
Even the concept of 'individual rights' is a western concept. Ever considered the possibility that we (humans) don't have rights.
Again, ethnocentric, just because you think the world should be like that, doesn't mean the rest of the world wants that. This is the kind of crap the british empire believed that it was "educating the barbarians" it's just an excuse to destroy other peoples culture.
not all cultures believe that.
I did not say that they did. Sucks to be them.
Ever considered the possibility that we (humans) don't have rights.
I did. I've grown up and moved on.
just because you think the world should be like that
I don't think the world _should_ be like that. I believe it's a universal truth, like love, gravity, and the idea that puppy breath smells good.
The world _is_ like that.
doesn't mean the rest of the world wants that.
They are welcome to their wants and desires.
Note that where people have a chance to run their own affairs, live unafraid of their government, and etc they prefer it over the alternative.
belated response but:
> I did. I've grown up and moved on.
Belittling me as what, immature? for pointing out a completely valid part of history and philosophy, is hardly a compelling argument. I think you should read some more on philosophy to understand what I said better.
> I believe it's a universal truth
It's a self created concept of how people should be. By definition it can't be a universal truth. It isn't a scientific observation (like all your other examples). I don't believe it, and given it is a human concept, it isn't universal (else I'd believe it as well). Again, I suggest even a basic intro into philosophy.
> The world _is_ like that.
No it isn't. Most people in the world, live to survive, not any lofty notion of 'pursuit of happiness', or even a concept of "rights". Simply survival, by nature that is what most animals live for, you could perhaps say that is the universal truth (empirically), as that is what is observed.
> Note that where people have a chance to run their own affairs, live unafraid of their government, and etc they prefer it over the alternative.
An example would help illustrate the point? I think you'll find that throughout human history there has been very little example of 'human rights'. Even in modern times, a lot of "rights" are ignored by (possibly) every country. It is just a convenient and simple way to think about how societies should act. It is by no means the be and end all though.
I understand the want to be idealistic, and the draw to simple solutions. But consider the notion, that perhaps more people could have a better life without the notion of "rights". Perhaps there are other ways to think about this that is closer to human nature, or hold more benefits.
That was his point. Read the rest of his comment.
Of course, not working is a much quicker way to increase most people's quality of life.
Except it doesn't. Being unemployed isn't fun, it isn't "a holiday". Most people feel stressed because of that uncertainty in their life. There is also a strong social stigma associated with unemployment, no one goes around at a party gloating about being unemployed.
You should read up, or better yet talk to people, about retiring. So many people struggle with retirement. It is hard to find a new purpose for life after a big chunk of who you were is gone. Most people I have met tend to take up volunteer work, charity, running some hobby project or some other busywork (I know more than one person who retired into playing MMORPGs fulltime). Most hackers retire into one project or another.
If you have never been without a job, you have no idea. You are hardwired to seek social acceptance and reward and a job is the main way society says you should achieve that.
The (UK) Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health would disagree. They've been pushing hard on a "helping people with MH problems get back to work"; not just for the benefits to wider society but for the benefits to the individual of better mental health.
I disagree entirely, for two reasons: 1) Working is all about becoming a part of society, of contributing, of belonging. Few people can take a prolonged period of not contributing without some level of depression.
2) The overall quality of life of people is determined by the application of time and labor saving devices, as well as by technical enhancements to lifestyle and health. There is no higher improvement of quality of life than low infant mortality and longer lifespans. All of these things are delivered by a society that embraces specialisation as a way of increasing productivity by everyone.
Sure, you'll get no argument from me that pointless consumerism backed up by debt-based spending is not the path forwards, but that is an entirely different proposition to stopping working altogether. Only the committed hobo will get satisfaction from a life like that.
> There is no higher improvement of quality of life than low infant mortality and longer lifespans.
Really? You'd trade off absolutely anything to increase those metrics?
Obviously these are things that are harder to improve in a Western society, so the big gains are in developed countries. My original comment was probably slipping towards rhetoric-ville, but the point still stands - maximising the chance your child will make it's 5th birthday and that you and your family will live as long as possible definitely trumps most things.
A person without a job is more likely to be depressed, even if they don't need the job to pay their bills i.e. Rich people.
So many times I have complained about the horrors of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access and Turbo Pascal and Typing Mario (does anybody even know what that is anymore?). Education is a complete mess. There’s a particular sentence that I think needs more emphasis:
"I noticed a recurring theme. Hackers would bring up anecdotes of playing around with BBC Micros in their spare time, learning C in their spare time or building basic command-line games in their spare time."
How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it’s Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature? Students are only allowed to interpret a literary work as the teachers see fit, only allowed to play with chemicals on paper in their own imagination, only given dull Math problems and a few certain “tricks” to solve them, and, yes, of course, only allowed to complete computer projects that involve Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access. I don’t hate you, Bill Gates, but your office suite is killing me. There has to be change. Only the best of the best will be able teach him/herself the basics of IT while survivng high school (and K12 and higher education in general); the rest will just lose interests even though they have tremendous capabilities. Not to mention how it gets lonely once in a while.
How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it’s Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature? This is because it is too hard to grade otherwise. I agree with you, it stinks, but the first step to solving a problem is understanding it. We “need” these types of assignments to gauge the progress of the students. Maybe the instrument is wrong, but all things considered, it’s the best we have. Ideally we’d have more teachers to reduce class size & these teachers will have the skills to make children explore. Instead, we have standardized tests that only really measure how well you can prepare for standardized test.
The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get elected/re-elected. The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular testing. It's a vicious cycle.
There are schools that eschew the standardized, rote methods of learning. But they produce people like Cory Doctorow, who is a writer/speaker/etc. and doesn't produce anything terribly useful. Well, except for thoughts, books, etc. - things that do not follow measurable standards. But certainly no iPhones, yet.
We will have to flip the whole teaching scheme on it's head in order to sort this out, and it will be painful. Teachers will have to be valued more than engineers and politicians (since the teachers produce little engineers and politicians) and we'll actually have to trust them to know enough and do their job. Possibly even pay them more.
Until then, it's square pegs in round holes all around.
NOTE: I am not Cory Doctorow nor would I even know him if he laid a hard, sharp thought on me in a crowded room. But he did go to a liberal school in Canada.
> The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get elected/re-elected.
You write "demand results" like it's a bad thing.
It isn't. If we're not getting "results", why bother?
Of course, which results we're talking about matter. I'll pay for some results but not others.
> The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular testing.
Not true.
We tried the alternative, namely "trust the teachers". We got crap results.
That said, a kid who can read a crappy standardized test is better off than a kid who can't. I mention that because we have hundreds of thousands of kids who can't read.
If you can't measure it, how do you know whether you're doing it?
He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear. Did you not get that from what he was writing?
Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"? Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests, abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?
> He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear.
That's a different point. Since there is no shortage of folks complaining about demand results, it's reasonable to assume that he meant what he wrote.
Besides, why is demand statistics wrong? Why don't you think that we should know how well (or not) things are going?
> Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"?
Trust the teachers is what we did before the current testing mania.
> Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests
Huh?
> abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?
Trust the teachers seemed to work for quite a while. Then we noticed that it wasn't working.
Are you claiming that US education worked better right before the testing mania?
I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".
Some amount of quantitative results measuring makes sense in any situation. But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of. Kloc, issue tickets, or standardized test scores. I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.
> I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".
Why can't we say that? We did have a big downturn in education quality. If we don't know whether teachers are doing their job right, why should we pay them?
> But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of.
Absolutely.
Why the assumption that the majority of education is untestable?
> I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.
Which reminds me - why the assumption that teachers are professionals? Yes, they're paid, but traditional professionals are liable.
What have teachers done to earn leeway?
It's good that we've recognized many of the problems with education. However, simply recognizing them isn't enough. I think that in this post you've highlighted the next step.
I'd love to see a slew of articles that talk about different testing methods rather than all of the articles we see about different teaching methods. These articles are interesting, but are accompanied only by anecdotal evidence that the different methods are doing any good. It's not that they aren't, it's just that we can't measure it.
Actually, if the goal is to gauge students' progress and make grading easy, you can get that same effect with periodic short quizzes and occasional exams. There are loads of college classes that do this, and make homework assignments optional. Loading students down with vast busywork isn't necessary for tracking and easy grading.
I think the main reason why students get lots of busywork is because it feels like diligent teaching, and it's relatively easy. Cynical of me, I suppose.
This article is working ME too hard in order to read a dark grey font on a darker grey background
Oddly, I liked it, but that's probably due to my bias for coding with a dark background.
I highly recommend installing one of the many instapaper/readability extensions -- god knows with my ever-aging eyes I'm hitting that '~' key more and more often.
Agreed. To fix, open up the JavaScript console: $("p").css("color", "white").
Fixed. Try now.
It's often hard to see a bright side of something as broken as the US educational system, and perhaps I'm just a weird kid, but the mindless bureaucratic nature of school actually caused me to seek out more interesting subjects and read more books whenever possible because school never left me "satisfied."
I used all of my high school "elective" blocks to attend a specialty school to study CIT (graduated high school A+ and NET+ certified!) and spent all of my free time doing IT consulting and building websites for clients. It taught me a TON, but I'm almost positive that if school was mentally fulfilling each day I probably would have just gone home and watched TV and socialized like everyone else.
It is strange, though, that while most most of the messages and predictions of dystopian/Cyberpunk novels and films tend to be vastly over-exaggerated, the underlying principals and ideas seem to have come true. One of the nearly universal themes tends to be an extremely bureaucratic and systematic world and when you compare most aspects of 21st century life to 50 years ago, it's a little frightening.
While consulting and building websites is a fine thing, it is not the only thing.
Moreover: You literally have the rest of your life to do paying work. Unless the alternative to going to work as a kid is hardship or hunger (which would be an even more regrettable problem) I see no sense in rushing into the workforce.
It would be nice if your school had been interesting enough to capture your attention with one of the hundreds of other subjects of possible study. One, perhaps, that is mind-expanding and awesome but which doesn't pay. Math and science. Art and music. History and philosophy. Languages and literature. Machine shop and robotics lab. Studying these things is what school is for. Building stuff for clients is what the remaining five or six decades of your working life are for.
I find it heartbreaking that the most interesting thing you found to do in your school days was to get a NET+ certification. Obviously, everyone's tastes are different, and details matter, but my first-order reaction is to regard that as a terrible failure of your environment.
Well like I said, I found lots of subjects interesting because they weren't ruined for me by school. I'm only taking a few classes in college now, yet I find myself spending every free moment in the school's library because I feel free to learn on my own terms now.
So I guess to clarify, what I meant in my first comment was that school sucking helped me learn the one of most important skills around: self education.
In the past few years I've become interested in several subjects that I wouldn't have enjoyed in a classroom setting. My recent interests have been philosophy (specifically Stoic and Epicurean), tea, Javascript and Node.js, Redis and MongoDB, Japanese art and aesthetics, investing/finance, Guitar, and classical music.
I hated learning Visual Basic, for example, because my teacher was aweful. That's what you risk when you put your education in the hands of others. When you teach yourself a subject, the only person you have to blame is yourself if you don't learn it well.
Okay, I feel much better for you now. ;)
But I managed to simultaneously enjoy school a lot and learn to self-educate. These things aren't mutually exclusive by any means. All good education is self-education, and a good school is one that operates with this principle in mind: The teachers and the environment should amplify your self-educational tendencies, not thwart them.
Mind you, you'll never find a whole school, of any size, that works that well. (Especially in high school, and especially these days, when my understanding is that school is more regimented than ever.) You have to find the special corners.
You should take classes that help you. One rule is simply to study any subject that has a good teacher, no matter what it is: Ask around, find the teachers that are any good, and learn from them. Another rule, which I suggest often around here, is to take classes that incorporate resources that you won't find on your own. Guitars are easy to find on your own. Entire student symphony orchestras or choirs are harder to find, and fully-equipped semiconductor wafer fabs are the hardest of all to assemble in your garage, unless you're Bill Gates.
Ah I do see your point now. Knowledge is easy to acquire nowadays, but the resources to pursue the knowledge further, to experiment, and materialize it into something useful are much harder to find outside of a classroom.
Also, I really appreciate your tips on how to get the most out of my college experience.
The number one tip for learning lots of cool stuff at university: you don't have to be enrolled in a course to attend it. The tutors generally don't give a shit who you are or if you're meant to be there. Just turn up to whatever you want, it's fine.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and make friends with someone who has access to the Film Studies department's DVD collection. That, or hang around the door with an RFiD scanner. If you lack one of these, make your own.
EDIT2: By the way, I take no responsibility if the administrators at your educational institution are crazy and you get in trouble as a result of anything you may have read here.
Haha that's awesome. I'm definitely going to try dropping into some classes (I kinda like breaking rules).
Here's some money saving tips then. Most universities don't charge extra for taking crazy numbers of units as an undergrad, so rather than just drop in why not take 30 units a semester. A lot of undergrad survey courses have multiple choice exams and don't represent significant additional workload, but can be fun, the psych classes are also a place that will have pretty girls you don't find in engineering.
Dorms and school cafeteria food are expensive. But living off campus means commute time and parking expenses. Two options are to secretly rent a couch from someone living on campus, and to find a location on campus to stash a bedroll and just live there. Where I went to school there were carefully camouflaged dugouts in a canyon behind the physics building where there were about a dozen students living incognito for free.
People at my university used to live in the woods, in tents. Some were known to construct multi-storey treehouses. Says a lot about the institution I attended. (It says it was full of hippies, rather than that it was expensive.)
Can't you just live on campus and cook your own food rather than eating at the cafeteria? Or are you forced to pay for the cafeteria as part of the package? I'm unfamiliar with the american system.
>Where I went to school there were carefully camouflaged dugouts in a canyon behind the physics building where there were about a dozen students living incognito for free.
That sounds awesome. This probably isn't correct, but when you say camoflaged dugouts, I'm thinking of an elaborate system of WWI style trenches, or perhaps that Al Queada cave complex that Dick Cheney saw in a fever dream. In my mind, it's like some kind of survivalist-nerd version of a frat house.
I doubt I would have been able to resist the temptation to forget my classes and concentrate on expanding my invisible canyon-based physics fortress. Who amongst us can honestly say that it has never been their dream to inhabit a secret underground base with a team of renegades?
There's room for disagreement, but I think it's not such a good idea to take 30 units per semester even if you can ace the exams.
It's like everything else involving time: The secret to life is not to work N hours per week, but to work (N/2) hours per week on the right things.
For example, courses with middling-to-poor teachers are just not worth your time: You can watch better lectures online, instead, or just read the textbooks out of the library. And on the flip side, if you find a course with an excellent teacher it's probably worth your time to take that course seriously: Do the readings or the labs, and if you're some sort of ungodly speed-reader do extra readings or labs in that course. (Ask the teacher what else you can do. They will fall over themselves to tell you. That is why they are excellent.)
And if all your courses require no brainpower you need more challenging courses. There are always more challenging courses. After all, even if you're some kind of super-genius who has taken every course and is now bored, you can always invent new courses.
I don't think the blame can be necessarily be placed entirely on the school systems though. I find that I have to fight my own urges to over schedule my kids' free time. I am also way more involved in my kids' lives than my parents were, for better and sometimes for worse.
I think it's important for parents to make sure that their kids have some time to do nothing, get bored, and find their own mischief and passions. It's a tough balancing act.
My parents had a very laissez-faire approach to involvement in our lives. They'd have some family activities from time to time, but for the most part it was up to us to find things to do. We'd disappear in the morning and so long as we were back by dinner (mandatory family time), all was well.
Sometimes I'd go check out what my father was doing in his workshop, and he'd show me how to use the tools or teach me the theories behind whatever he was working on (construction, metal work, electronics, magnetism, etc). It was up to me to decide if I was interested enough to try my own hand at it, and there was no fallout if I decided after starting that I wasn't interested after all.
As a result, we've grown up to be independent thinkers. We don't depend on other people to give our lives meaning or to give us structure. And most importantly, we're all very creative.
Kids will find things to be interested in so long as you don't smother them or stunt their independence.
anecdotes are not data. you have no idea of the correlation between your upbringing and your creativity and independence. twin studies disagree with you.
An anecdote about one's own life is not just an anecdote...it's personal experience. And personal experience offers a perspective that no amount of data can. We are discussing how to nurture creativity and productive skills, after all, and inherent in that goal there is a severe measurement problem that severely limits any data-driven approach.
The twin studies I'm aware of basically say that you can expose twins to identical circumstances and they will still turn out different. I'm not sure how that contradicts his main point though.
I assumed he meant that two twins growing up under completely different circumstances will still turn out to be the same. Which then implies to me that success is already determined before birth. If true, working our young people hard or not working them won't have any profound affect on their lives.
Incidentally, my upbringing sounds a lot like kstenerud's. My brother and myself sound much like he and his siblings. Another anecdote, sure, but still an intriguing point of view.
Mine as well. Also an anecdote, but we had the same results. I'm definitely planning on raising my kids the same way.
the problem isn't the conclusion he drew, it's that he made a causal link (at least he used causal language, "as a result we grew up X") instead of drawing a correlation. This would be wrong regardless of whether the conclusion was actually correct because no matter the conclusion, his experience is insufficient to make that causal link with high confidence.
Kids will find things to be interested in so long as you don't smother them or stunt their independence
Spot-on, at least in my experience. My parents pounded into me a piece of wisdom- "Boredom is a choice". It seems to have paid off.
Totally agree with boredom is a choice. My parents don't believe in boredom... if you say you're bored, there's always housework, books to read, things to do. It's just a question of what you want to do.
It is a tough balancing act. You just hope they grow up and thank you for it around age 25. I'm thanking my parents now recently.
It's really great to have them involved in things even if it's a lot of things. They'll tell you if they really don't like it. Don't confuse laziness or tiredness with disinterest, that's all. You never know if you did right until much later. All you can do is try what you think is best, hold your breath, and let the chips fall where they may.
A lot of times I think it all depends on the kid too. I was signed up for everything from swimming lessons to soccer to boy scouts and more before I even turned 1! That's right, before I was a year old! All things considered I turned out smart and productive.
My younger sister on the other hand wasn't very involved. My mom dragged her to girl scouts for a good 4 years or so and she hated it though it probably did her good. But she's great too! She's a straight A student coming up on graduating from Penn State in about a year.
So it's all just relative.
I was sucking it big time on a video game once, and my friend turned to me and said "Don't try harder; try better."
We should be working young people better.
It's interesting how subtle yet important that difference is.
I don't get the difference. Can someone please explain? Seriously, I'm not kidding.
To extend the video game analogy, one activity that some video gamers have made a sport of is "speed running," or trying to completely a single-player game in as little time as possible. Sites like http://speeddemosarchive.com/ host videos, and people compete to get the lowest time.
There are two ways that one typically goes about improving on the existing record. The first is to look at the video posted by the current record holder, dissect the run, and find all of the small mistakes that the current record-holder made. Shave off a few seconds here, a few seconds there, and by the end of your run you've beaten a game in 4 hours and 57 minutes instead of 5 hours. That's playing harder.
The other way to break existing records is to start completely from scratch, map out the game and figure out if there's a different route to take that the previous runner didn't. Maybe it's doing the levels in a different order so you spend less time walking across the world map. Maybe you spend an extra 10 minutes picking up a stronger sword that allows you to save 20 minutes over the course of the game because you're killing enemies faster. These are the kinds of improvements that lead to people turning a 5 hour game into a 4 hour game. That's playing better, not harder.
Don't try to become faster or quantitatively better at something you're having enormous difficulty with; seek to become qualitatively better by trying different approaches to solving the same problem.
Several factors are important here:
Degeneration of K-12 education. College freshmen have to spend significant effort (up to 1-2 years on average I'd guess) just getting caught up to levels of basic mastery of reading, writing, logic, and mathematics that they should have had as a HS graduate.
Increasing concentration on volume of "material" rather than on level of mastery.
As the college loan bubble and the increasing reliance on a college degree as a necessary credential for most white collar work colleges have shifted towards becoming degree mills. More and more students are valuing the credential more than the knowledge, and they are pumping huge amounts of money into the system sustaining those values. This necessarily warps the institutions of higher education. And as they struggle with ways to soak up massive influxes of tuition without throwing their integrity out the window (or losing their accreditation) they've increasingly fallen back on volume and intensity of course work in lieu of demonstration of mastery of knowledge.
Nobody wants to admit that the concept of "school" itself was designed to church out assembly line slaves.
It's not a surprise that when the system is designed to turn humans into robots... that's what you get.
Anyone who comes out of school with useful skills does it despite school, not because of school.
John Taylor Gatto figured this out years ago.
Perhaps nobody wants to admit it because few are that stupidly paranoid.
For one, schools predate assembly lines. For another, if that is what schools were designed to do then they are remarkably poor at it. The ruling cabal who you seem to think is trying to push us all into servitude would surely have noticed and remedied the situation YEARS ago. Finally, you did read enough of the article to realise it was about the UK? What this Gatto person thinks is irrelevant.
He does have a point. A high school teacher friend of mine and I were discussing how certain aspects of school, like scheduled class time, project deadlines, etc. were intended to prepare the students for the workplace.
As an adult who makes my own choices, I only work when I want to work, and I only meet deadlines which I set on my own accord. I imagine, given the context of this site, that a lot in the HN crowd are the same way. However, when you get out into the real world, most people do follow the same schedule and obey the same rules that were ingrained into them in school.
A lot of people do not even realize that they have choice. I have actually met people who look down upon me for not following the same 9-5 schedule that everyone else does, like it matters or something. I imagine that attitude comes from their upbringing by having it pushed upon them by educators.
I wouldn't go as far to say that the only reason for school is to shape people into obedient workers, but that element is definitely present.
If you cancelled all schools right now, no one would stop learning useful and applicable skills.
But many many people would stop being obedient.
The bait of school is the opportunity to learn, something every human inherantly loves. The opportunity to learn and access to knowledge is just the sugar that is used to get you to swallow the medicine: the medicine is your obedience training.
When people graduate from high school, often the only thing they have to show for it is their obedience and conformity. If they are good readers, they probably read a lot outside the curriculum. If they are good at math, they probably did a lot of math outside the curriculum. etc.
One thing from the curriculum which they did thoroughly learn, however, is how to obey, how to conform, how to navigate bureaucracy, how to play social pecking order games, when to bully, when to submit.
Conspicuously absent from the gifts of the curriculum is anything related to what used to be called a liberal education or an enlightened scientific education. These things are always learned despite curriculums, and those who achieve a true scientific or artistic education usually have the air of a rebel or hacker, someone who eschews their lessons, who breaks out of the mold, who skips their homework in favour of reading poetry or hacking their graphics calculator.
At school, true learning is always a form of rebellion.
How many people do you imagine do maths outside of school?
certain aspects of school, like scheduled class time, project deadlines, etc. were intended to prepare the students for the workplace
In my view, it is preparation for the world. Preparation to be a functioning member of society. Sure, everybody has a choice. I have walked both worlds. I have decided there is little to no value in trying to live in some alternate world. Stores are closed at night. Are they evil corporations bending me to their structure and will? Friends go to sleep at night. Are they sinister secret agents controlling my thoughts? I feel better physically when I live normal hours. Is the government injecting me with chemicals while I sleep?
Of course you can rebel and follow your own schedule. But just as it is up to you to choose to rebel, it is also in your power to decide there is no value in rallying to such a silly cause. If I found value in it I might, but I don't. At the end of the day, schedule and structure provides value when you are trying to interact with a large number of other people. That's just the way it works, not some secret evil ploy.
It's hardly rebelling, it is about working when it makes sense to work, not because the clock says it is time to work.
We're just finishing up harvest here. Are you going to shut down at five because the clock says it is time to go home? Of course not. You keep going until the field is done. It might be raining in the morning. You can rest later.
I find creative and technical roles to suffer from the same limitations. You have to be in the right mindset to produce quality work. You can't always count on the clock.
Do what works for you, but if you are only doing it to please someone else, you are cheating both them and you.
You realize you are still working a clock in the field. It's called the sun.
Headlights, my friend.
The idea that farmers work by the sun must be from some place with a different climate, because around here, most of the field work is done during the late afternoon into night. Rarely does any field work get done in the morning. The conditions are often not favourable.
But if I am really tired and want to shut down for the night, I will do so. It's all up to me, not someone else.
Churches predate assembly lines too. It's not about literal assembly lines, it's about obedience and conformity, the tools of social control since time immemorial.
Public school is just the latest version of obedience training.
Can we get more citations for this besides Gatto?
I.e., do we have citations to some of Dewey's works, or the early 1900s academic reformers advocating this?
Compare and contrast tradition schools for the wealthy with what became public school.
A proper education comes when you put pupils in a room with a very smart person and let them question him. He answers their questions and introduces them to new ideas. Pupils guide the learning, tutors are just a resource. There are no lesson plans.
This is how the great thinkers have learned and taught since the dawn of man. This is how the wealthy and in-the-know still educate themselves.
When public school was demanded, the educated upper class thought it abhorrent and dangerous to give poor children this kind of free-form, liberating education. They invented "public education" and modeled it after church education where students are preached to and rigidly controlled.
Church is a place where poor people go to be controlled. Public school extended this control programming to the formative years of all the children of the non-elite. Everything in public schools is optimized to create obedience, unthinking, conformity, rigidity.
Tell me one thing you learned from a lesson plan that did you any good. All the great thinkers, today and in the past, learned by directing themselves and (ideally) questioning smart people. Never by being whipped into doing lesson plans, always by following their creativity and doing investigations and self-directed projects.
That is a thought experiment, not a citation.
Also, German schooling was famously rigid, and produced a sizable crop of scientists in the 1900-1960 era.
Actually, German schooling was more famous for it's freedom unlike it's French brother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_European_research_un...
Hunh. That is decidedly not the image I had of German schooling. But thank you for the link. It's very interesting.
Most of the information seems to be stuck in books and harder to find on the internet, I looked for a really long time and that was the best resource I've found so far. It's very possible it's relative to other schooling models.
Your mistake is thinking that school produced those scientists. They produced themselves despite school, not because of it, and they thrived because Germany invested heavily higher education and research. Science in Germany was due to German philosophy, higher education, and lots of funds.
Universities in 1900 are indistinguishable from what we have now. In 1900 they were still targeted at the wealthy and unusually talented. Now they are just extended sunday school. Obedience training for adults.
Citations, please!
You are saying these things with massive assumptions!
edit for clarification: you are not using any sort of proof mechanism in your statements. No data, no citations.
Wouldn't it be great if you had a personal research assistant who would spend hours looking stuff up for you?
Wouldn't it be great if you had a conversation with someone who backed up their assertions instead of expecting belief?
I don't expect belief. I expect effort.
I imagine you doing the rounds at dinner parties raising your finger shouting "Citation needed!" over and over again.
Google: gatto, liberal education, conformity, obedience. My argument is a point of view, not a research study.
Gatto cites Dewey, for the record.
No, I expect the asserter to reference things that back their view up if they want me to believe it. Especially if the view is not obvious and controversial.
If your point of view has no data behind it that you are willing to reference besides a singular biased point of information, then I have no reason to believe you. (Hint, if you are read in an area, it's trivial to reference such things off the top of your head).
The cry for data on a topic like this is pointless. It's a point of view informed by my own experiences and observations as well as reading thousands of philosophers, scientists, educators, theologians, statistics, anecdotes, discussions, and so on.
I'm presenting my synthesized point of view based on a lifetime of contemplation. You're trying to cut it down on the merit of one or two citations.
Read the wikipedia article on "liberal education" and compare it to your experiences at public school. That is my citation.
> thousands of philosophers, scientists, educators, theologians, statistics, anecdotes, discussions, and so on.
So, how about citing some of them?
I am crying out for data, because only by the truth represented by data can we make informed decisions. All else is blowing in the wind, gibbering tones of madness based on personal biases and opinions.
further edit:
I specifically asked for citations to demonstrate the validity of this claim:
Nobody wants to admit that the concept of "school" itself was designed to church out assembly line slaves. It's not a surprise that when the system is designed to turn humans into robots... that's what you get. Anyone who comes out of school with useful skills does it despite school, not because of school. John Taylor Gatto figured this out years ago.
In particular, this is an assertion of design, ie, that it was designed. I am saying, "Let's have more information", that is, references to thinkers who have advocated the effect of your quote.
Specifically, I am requesting a demonstration, a proof of these (relatively controversial) claims besides mentioning Gatto. You have refused to provide these so far.
This is not a personal opinion position paper I am poking holes in. I am poking at the need for demonstratable truth to your claim.
Gatto IS the person who went through and made cites point by point about the education system. people point to him because he did a very good job. Sometimes you have to suck it up and read a book rather than expect people to summarize and rephrase what has already been laid out very nicely.
> When public school was demanded, the educated upper class thought it abhorrent and dangerous to give poor children this kind of free-form, liberating education.
Rather a lot of the scientists and engineers on the Apollo program grew up in tiny backwater schools funded by local subscription. Their teachers were high school graduates or (if lucky) graduates of a two year normal college. The "educated upper class" consisted of the local town fathers who thought that the average teenager was capable of a lot more than the amusements they would have otherwise picked for themselves. It turns out the town fathers were right.
> Everything in public schools is optimized to create obedience, unthinking, conformity, rigidity.
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of learning the classics of high culture in what you are claiming are industrial indoctrination factories.
> Tell me one thing you learned from a lesson plan that did you any good.
Calculus, computer science, electromagnetism, chemistry, writing, poetry, etc. 16-year-old me was not yet organized and knowledgeable enough to know where to even begin.
Education is broken. Everyone is different, and meant to excel at one thing they do well to make a difference, yet the standardized education forces people to be indifferent. It also keeps you locked in an idealized world of grades and exams delaying your chance to become street-smart for a mere 15 years. We then end up with people in their 30s having their first born children, whereas the biological clock for this kicks at teen ages.
> Everyone is different, and meant to excel at one thing they do well to make a difference
And that one thing is genetically wired? As in their DNA was just 'Ballet Dancing' inclined?
The only reason people excel at something, is because they practice it.
They are not genetically wired but definitely inclined.
I'm lucky enough to attend a high school where freshman are required to take the equivalent of AP Computer Science, and those who wish to can go on to take CS classes taught by teachers with PhDs from MIT and Yale - you'd be hard pressed to find a better curriculum.
Despite the environment, there are very few students with a "hacker" mentality- maybe ten or so, a number not drastically higher than what you'd expect to find anywhere else. Plenty of kids choose to take the upper level (from a high school perspective) classes, and have no trouble understanding recursion, pointers, or any of the traditional hangups, but it's a much smaller number who would ever consider working on a project that wasn't assigned by a teacher. For everyone else, even among these incredibly bright students, programming is seen as the work you have to sludge through in order to guarantee a cushy $120k job.
For this small percentage of self-motivated students, the free time proposed in the original post would be a godsend, used more productively than any sort of schoolwork. For most everyone else, however, regardless of intelligence, CS education, or resources available, this time would be thrown away to TV or video games, with a net productivity less than an hour spent doing the most menial busywork under the dullest of teachers. I think many of us on Hacker News, surrounded by peers who are the sort of people that start businesses, tend to forget that while students might spend lectures wishing they were elsewhere, that elsewhere is rarely 80x24.
Admittedly, I don't have a solution. Increased STEM funding helps, no doubt, but not in the exponential way many of us envision. Resources in the form of state of the art equipment or funding for student projects only serves to empower those who are already driven, and this drive seems to be something determined long before students enter high school.
I find this to be quite hilarious. I just came back from a movie at my school called "Race To Nowhere" that touches on the issue. I then participated in a 45 minute discussion with members of my community, including my principal and other staff at my school. I was going to go onto Hacker News and make a very detailed thread on the topic....but someone stole my thunder. I will be back over the weekend to discuss this. I obviously can't leave with just this post since it's a pretty low quality post. So here it is:
We must shift the focus of education back to education. It is ridiculous to believe that a single letter can show how much work a student put in to learn the content. A "C" can be given to a student who puts in their best effort but just can't remember when to use a semi colleen. Yet an "A" can be given to a student who crams for the test the night before, yet can't think critically on any subject.
We must rethink our approach to education, and shift it back to education, rather than to that test at the end of the year.
I ignored English homework and taught myself jquery. Now people call me incredibly smart and are jealous of the great agency I started working for at only 21. These days kids have to take education into their own hands, because even though there are classes available in a subject; techers do not know what knowledge is most relevant in the workplace.
Agreed. Self-education is just so much more scalable because a self-educator doesn't need a teacher or assignments to learn. All one needs is a book or access to a knowledge on a subject. The Internet has connected us to more knowledge one every subject imaginable than previous generations could have dreamed, and yet most of my friends still take classes on something that can be picked up with a few tutorials and a well-written book. It's a lot of extra money down the drain that could be spent other, wiser ways.
Baloney.
Stuff worth knowing in academia takes dedicated effort and access to deep resources that are unavailable on the internet.
Even knowing what book to read can be a significant challenge.
Just cause you can read some tutorials, watch a MIT lecture, and write PHP/jQuery does not a computer scientist or a mathematician make.
Taking a class and getting a piece of paper also does not a computer scientist make.
maroons happen everywhere.
But I guarantee you only the most amazing and celebrated of individuals have self-taught themselves advanced mathematics and performed at the highest level of the art. The only one I can think of the modern era is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan, who is essentially legendary for what he did.
The core issue is climbing the tower of knowledge of what has gone before requires deep investment and usually a guide until you attain a deep and broad knowledge. There is so much knowledge, we must leech off of the knowledge of those who have also done the studying and have more experience. It's a pain.
You are right about the more advanced subjects. I guess, speaking from a college freshman's point of view, I disagree with friends taking courses on subjects that can be easily learned from a book or tutorial. I think it's important to take classes in subjects that can't be easily learned through self-teaching.
PHP or jQuery can be easily learned from books and tutorials, while being a great programmer takes much more practice and knowledge of algorithms, data structures, and probably a classic computer science background. So majoring in computer science would be a wise choice, while a jQuery class is unnecessary unless it's required for the major.
Great points. Also, schools and colleges can't keep up with the changing technologies. One of my friends just graduated from a 4-year accredited design school and they just started teaching CSS 3 years ago. He said he wasted a lot of money and would've been better to just get a two-year degree and do the rest of the stuff on his own.
He said he learned more in his first 8 months out of college, than he did in the the 4 years it took him to earn his degree.
This would perhaps have more impact if you corrected the mis-spelling of teacher :)
jesus, please increase the contrast, i can barely read it
For what it's worth, though I didn't do GCSE's (I was in Switzerland at the time), I coasted through A-levels without much effort. Other high achievers I know also spent about 2-3 days max (in addition to the required time sitting on a school chair, of course) studying and revising for each "paper". That left plenty of time for many extra-curricular activities.
No matter how bad the problem may be, please use a lighter background and higher contrast.
TWENTY TWO GCSEs? Christ... You didn't go to a comprehensive!
Yes, I did. Students with upwards of twenty GCSEs are not all that uncommon anymore
In general, I think students from better schools get fewer GCSEs. I went to a selective state grammar school and I only got the usual ten.
I think you're spot on there, better schools take fewer GCSEs, thus (Im assuming) producing a higher caliber of student not necessarily in terms of qualifications, but in terms of depth of knowledge and culture
I also went to a state grammar and got about ten. I find it hard to understand how you can get 22 though. Your workweek wasn't any longer than mine, and I certainly don't remember any days off.
What on earth is the point of doing 22 GCSEs? They become worthless the moment you get your A levels. I like to think I would've refused to go along with that.
I did ok getting 8 back in 1983, one of the smartish kids. Then 5 highers then university at 16.
I find the thought of 20 absolutely bone-chilling.
I take issue with the idea that there is too much structured time and students need more unstructured time to be creative. I think there's room for lack of structured time but not in school. Does this mean to give a students so,e materials and tools (materials/tools can be anything from clay or other art supplies to mechanic's tools, to computers with an IDE installed) and let them just make something? I don't like that idea. That's not real creativity.
We should be teaching critical thinking skills, then giving them tools and materials along with, most importantly, a problem to solve with a set of constraints. Now that is what creativity is all about. The article is from the UK point of view so I can't speak for them but in the States here we need something more like I described. And really, students aren't too overworked. They're just made to memorize and vomit up later useless facts for standardized tests instead of being taught critical thinking or problem solving skills.
Here, teachers get the short end of the stick. Especially the ones who are really passionate about teaching. I've got several friends and my mother who are all finishing up teaching degrees or have just started teaching and they tell me all the time that they aren't given the tools they need to properly teach their students.
Here we're teaching what used to be middle school math in the 50's in college. I'm not sure if overworked students is a problem. At least not in the U.S.
I think this is no different than the situation with programmers. Are most programmers "overworked" in that they get too much done? No. But many are "overworked" in that they are constantly distracted with little problems and don't protect enough time to think hard about any single issue. As a result, they do lots of short-sighted work and don't get enough done overall, but also feel constantly busy and hard-working.
I think that's pretty close to what normal high school is like today. There are constant distractions for standardized testing, mandatory this-and-that, worry about your SAT scores, etc. And not enough sitting down to understand what this novel is really about. Or what an integral really is.
I think this explains both the subjective feeling that students are "overworked" and the objective truth that they aren't doing or learning nearly as much as was traditionally expected of students.
This. Exactly
Its a combination of all of the little things added together. Worrying about coursework deadlines, conflicts between subjects, modular testing "You dont realize it now, but this test could be the difference between a good life and a wasted life". Its not that there is too much hard work, quite the opposite, its all the little things that count towards the feeling of being "overworked".
I was suggesting in the op that we eliminate at least a few of the little things so that students dont feel overworked, giving them time to think hard about a single issue, rather than barely thinking about multiple.