How to Fix the Country's Ailing Schools. And How Not To. | Hacker News Reader

How to Fix the Country's Ailing Schools. And How Not To.

nytimes.com

17 pointsarghbleargh7 comments

The piece ends with the following quote:

>"People are... asking: ‘What do we need to do to save traditional public schools?’"

And for the life of me, I cannot understand why people should be interested in saving 'traditional public schools'(TPS). I know that TPSs are a stand-in for a number of political values, but I have to say that emphasizing political values and the status quo is quite disappointing when it comes to the development of childrens' potential. In an age of rapidly improving communications, with responsive websites and machine learning, as well as the massive budgets devoted to 'education', we should be able to do better than small incremental improvements to a model of schooling developed hundreds of years ago.

Perhaps this article is a symptom of Thiel's diagnosis in "Zero to One", that people do not believe that things can be drastically improved, so they rely on incrementalism and a refusal to believe in anything specific. Another possibility is that the author is simply trying to defend the status quo against change, and appealing to cynicism and doubt to achieve this ends. I am not sure which possibility I find more distressing.

I agree with you. Provide a space with facilitators to keep kids out of trouble and point them in the right direction(s), then just let them have at it.

The whole grade and classroom system is horribly antiquated. Children with ability will follow their more successful peers without any external impetus. Those who lag "behind" (based on whatever metric you choose to use) can get one-on-one assistance from instructors to determine where they're running into trouble.

Personally, I think the "traditional" classroom has always been "broken" and I'll be happy to see the back of it.

Without experiment there won't be progress. New technologies should be adopted to aid learning. Not talking about giving ipads, but about using internet to help with accelerated learning. An analogue to this would be that we can't learn basics of programming or become experts in them just by reading it. You have to practice. Using internet materials to help explain things would do great for both teacher and student. There are many wrong articles about stuff out there, so things will have to be curated though.

Also currently there is a situation where not everyone is able to follow what they truly like. That situation will change when there is a "place" where anyone can learn about anything authoritatively(learning by oneself with internet is very tedious and you never know if you are in right path).

"Traditional Public Schools" aren't really that old... the schools resembling what we have today as K-12 in the US is only about a century old, and then in Urban areas mostly. Parents that could, would teach their kids, and those that could afford it, there were private tutors and schools.

Our K-12 system is relatively new, and even then has changed a lot since even when I was a kid, let alone what my parents and grandparents had. My great grandmother was a school teacher, and the English textbook that 5th graders were taught in the 50's was harder than anything I had through graduating 22 years ago.

We're spending far more time on "computer skills" and "soft skills" and "self esteem" and less on core english, math and communications skills... those skills with which you can learn anything else.

I've always felt the system of using property taxes to fund public schools (in the US. I dont know how other countries work) is completely unfair. Affluent, lower population (and predominately white) school districts are well funded while urban (predominately minority) school districts struggle. Also, when the school board has the power to raise your property taxes, the can make it impossible for lower income families to afford to live in places with good schools.

  when the school board has the power to
  raise your property taxes

I don't know of a jurisdiction that gives that power to school boards; generally parcel taxes and such must be voted in (but such measures generally win, since non-property-owners can vote as well).

It's not the fault of the schools or politicians or teachers. It's the parents.

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