Hacker News Reader

Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

Student-to-student tutoring is super effective.

Even if most students suck as tutors (which they probably do – tutoring is difficult), the benefits outweigh the problems by a big margin. Most importantly, it allows each student the desired individual focus. But it also improves the tutors' memories of the classes they used to take.

I'm baffled it's not more widely employed in lower education. (Higher education seems to get it right by using former students as TAs. Although then it happens against payment. I'd argue for simply making it part of the regular curriculum.)

View on HN

The finish system seems to get this mostly right, from what I've read. No clear age based classes, group work across traditional class boundaries, older kids helping the younger ones. They also seem to get excellent results based on the Pisa studies.

Mind you, this is from reading about it, I don't have first hand experience how the system works. I can however attest to the effectiveness of tutoring in higher education. Tutors (typically grad students) often understand much better the subtle points that are difficult to understand in a topic, I guess because it's been more recent that they have learnt it. There also seems to be less reluctance for students to ask questions of their tutor then their lecturer.

Come on Finns of HN, we know you're out there. What's your experience of this?

The Finnish school system is nice, until you wanna go to college/university.

I think higher education in Finland isn't anything special, if you actually want a quality education you'll have to go abroad (like the actually successful people do here anyway). Even the arguably best schools aren't that good. People mostly coast through them once they get in and just want the piece of paper at the end. Good parties though.

Years later in the work force they'll wake up and see they barely make more money then an electrician with their fancy degree because of the insane tax policies here. What's the point of having a nice degree if you're still gonna have a moderately low salary compared to other European countries?

> What's the point of having a nice degree if you're still gonna have a moderately low salary compared to other European countries?

Interesting comment in a thread about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation...

It's not an either or though. Just because a company generates good extrinsic motivation by paying well, that doesn't mean its impossible for them to also foster intrinsic motivation too. It's really not unreasonable to ask for both.

+100000

> Even if most students suck as tutors [...]

Teaching is such a valuable skill in itself! And, it can be improved. I'd argue that you can't say that you understand something unless you can explain it to someone a step away from your current level of depth in the domain.

Now, imagine every developer spend 5%, 1% of their (coding) time learning how to teach or communicate ideas in a succinct, empathetic way.

We'd not only have less 40yo ranting at some 15yo project, because they used React, but also the quality of our work would improve drastically.

> We'd not only have less 40yo ranting at some 15yo project, because they used React, but also the quality of our work would improve drastically.

I’m not sure what you have against people in their 40s but, it might be worth it to spend 5% of your time learning to respect and have empathy for them.

Side note, people in their 40s aren’t old. Damn.

Whoa, I meant something completely different! My point was that when you're in your 40s your emotional intelligence is probably well developed.

Context: As I was replying to this post I saw another one where a bunch of senior 10x developers were bashing a 15yo who came up with a personal project, because the poor guy/gal used React(!).

I mean, surely we can do better than that. I'm really tired of seeing senior engineers, often fairly intelligent people acting as if being kind to others wasn't their responsibility because how smart they perceive themselves. HN is a prime example of that (despite some amazing content that can be found here too).

I'm sorry if my comment hurt you in any way. I hope it's a bit more clear now. (I won't edit the parent comment—to keep the context of your reply and remind myself to be more specific).

> Side note, people in their 40s aren’t old. Damn.

Personal note: I hope so!

> Teaching is such a valuable skill in itself! And, it can be improved.

You dont improve peoples skills in general just by throwing them into water and hoping that swimming happens by itself.

Very bad analogy. Yes, for almost all skills, just doing them improves your proficiency. For example, toddlers learn primarily by mimicking their parents, replicating their behaviour.

The exception to this is skills that will kill you if you get in over your head. But that's a rather small category of skills, and it only calls for supervision, not avoidance.

As for tutoring itself: it increases the skill level of both the teacher and the student. The student gets 1-on-1 directed focus, and the teacher is forced to reflect more deeply on his own skills. Having students teach each other is very beneficial at all levels of education.

> As for tutoring itself: it increases the skill level of both the teacher and the student.

As someone who was a kid in that position, no it did not increased my skill in thing I was supposed to teach at all. That might happen when you are teaching interested peer at similar level, does not happen when you are teaching someone uninterested and someone who has much lower skills.

> For example, toddlers learn primarily by mimicking their parents, replicating their behaviour.

That body of knowledge wears off after you are like 3. Then explicit teaching by parents and other adults becomes much more prominent. And even toddlers are explicit taught a lot.

> Very bad analogy. Yes, for almost all skills, just doing them improves your proficiency.

Only up to the pretty low level for most people and most activities. After that, you reach a plateau.

It makes no sense to blame a bad outcome on the student being uninterested and of lower skill. As a tutor, you have exactly two jobs:

1. Make the student interested.

2. Improve the student's skills.

Of course the student is uninterested and has low skills when you start out. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to the activity.

You might argue that it's not the tutor's job to make the student interested, but it is. The primary thing that sets good tutors apart from bad ones is their ability to motivate their students. To care. To fiendishly ask questions that are just out of reach of the students ability, or will reveal some tiny flaw in the students understanding. This type of thing engages everyone when done well.

(I did have a source for this but I seem to have lost it. That is a shame because it was a really good article.)

To fiendishly ask questions that are just out of reach of the students ability, or will reveal some tiny flaw in the students understanding. This type of thing engages everyone when done well.

What you are describing is out of range for peer tutoring (child-to-child) which is what I was thinking of. For children, the motivation for the task doesn't need to come from the subject matter itself, the very fact that a friend/peer is working with you can be all the motivation you need.

So now, you are blaming another kid for failure to be perfect tutor where adult educated teacher failed too. And that good kid is supposed to study out tutoring methods from materials targeted at adults. Which is definitely not fun free exploration for that good kid.

Which is why literally this whole setup where you have good students tutoring weak ones is a trap and punishment for the good one.

Expecting well behaved kid to be that emphatetic mind reading tutor is waaay beyond age appropriate expectations and abilities of typical kid.

I think you'll find better discussions if you choose to attack the steel man version of someone's argument, rather than the straw man.

Nowhere did I state I expected any expert tutors from children. I merely said that something, anything at all, is better than nothing. It might not even be better in all cases, but on average, the evidence tells us it is.

Literally in the comment I responded to, you expect student tutor to make the subject interesting. This is your description of what you expect: To fiendishly ask questions that are just out of reach of the students ability, or will reveal some tiny flaw in the students understanding. This type of thing engages everyone when done well.

Plus, this is your attitude toward kid tutoring another kid: as a tutor, you have exactly two jobs: Make the student interested. Improve the student's skills. And you have this expectation placed on a kid.

> I merely said that something, anything at all, is better than nothing.

That something is to put responsibility on a kid and then blame a kid for not tutoring well enough it it fails. And I am telling you that it is unfair to punish the good kid by doing this. Because this plan is not caring about the "good" kid at at all.

Well, yes. Your point being?

It sucks to be the kid who behaves well is punished by being a tutor for kid with issues the adults have hard time to motivate or deal with.

The tutors is not improving own recall. The tutor is dealing with social problem outside of tutors control or abilities. And no, good student kid wont be able to individualize teaching better then adult teacher. The good student kid will struggle with the whole motivational thing much much more.

> And no, good student kid wont be able to individualize teaching better then adult teacher.

That's not the alternative, either, because nobody will pay for one adult teacher per student. The alternative is no tutoring at all.

One kid teaching another is nice occasional exercise.

It is absolutely not solution to lack of teachers. Even teacher having 15 bad students the same time is better then one kid trying to be tutor.

It is also quite unfair expectation to be placed on a kid.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com