Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

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It may not be new, but in regard to education in particular, it is worth repeating loudly and often. I work in the educational governance arena, and am exposed to many discussions that go on at the school district administration level.

It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people.

I was at a conference this fall, with two session at the same time, in rooms right next to each other -- one promoting why the Common Core is the greatest thing ever, the other denouncing it. Both sessions were equally full, and both sessions got the worst reviews of the entire conference, mostly because the people are so conflicted about how to deal with innovation and creativity vs standardization.

It is a problem that is easy to identify, but much more difficult to fix. People are trying. For example, Khan academy is a great resource for independent learning, but even their elementary math lessons are categorized by traditional grade levels.

The best solution I have to improve creativity in the American educational system is to educate the parents. Make sure that all parents are aware of the issues, and make sure that all parents know that the education of their children is not in the hand of their local school district, but in their own hands. They need to understand the pros and cons of all schooling options, and make the right decisions for their children, and include their children in those discussions when they get old enough.

I know this is a huge tangent away from the original article, but this strikes a bit of a nerve with me, and I agree with you that education is an arena in which the issue of creativity is vitally important, probably moreso than in the workplace.

Any educational solution that works within the framework of the existing system is doomed to failure.

Schooling, in its present form, is the greatest lie ever told, I would say.

Education is something that should heavily depend on the individual person. The best way to educate is to self-educate. Then there could be certain gatherings like free schools (free as in freedom, look them up if you aren't aware) and democratic schools if one wants to study with a group or requires tutoring from an experienced person. Apprenticeship is also something I would like to see make a comeback.

The school system, however, has done a truly horrifying and dreadful act in that it has killed off the desire for people to autodidact, and has convinced generations that it is the only right way. Of course, many people self-educate in their spare time, but they often do not realize it and instead hold faith in formal academics and schooling as the sole credible form of education.

Another fallacy the schooling system has perpetuated is the incorrect equivocation of school and education. They have nothing alike. One is a strict and guided system, the other is the acquisition of knowledge by any means that are possible.

People want to believe they are special snowflakes and the "system" is holding them down. Have you ever heard anyone say "I wanted to be a dancer, thank god the teachers were more interested in teaching me quadratic functions, which is how I ended up being an accountant now, because it turned out I sucked at dancing!"

If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years? It's the same tired argument as "Capitalism is inherently evil." Yeah, maybe, except that no other system was shown to be better.

An accountant using quadratic functions?

I would guess that the most advanced math people use in their daily lives is cross-multiplication.

That is also true for what is usually considered math heavy fields.

I've studied in mechanical engineering. I've never EVER seen anyone use calculus to solve their problem in the real world.

Well, we do it a lot when we make your engineering tools ;-)

When you specify you have "studied in mechanical engineering", is it safe to assume that you have never held a position as a mechanical engineer in a non-educational capacity?

If that is the case, how is your anecdotal observation that you have "never EVER seen anyone use calculus to solve their problem in the real world" even remotely close to relevant?

Furthermore, I have noticed that people have a tendency to conflate "using calculus" with their experience completing homework assignments in their high school/college calc 1 courses.

No, that's not what "using calculus" is, unless of course you're still a student or cannot conceive of a world beyond your own narrow life experiences.

Many of us use mathematics to solve real problems in the real world on a daily basis - and it would be beyond arrogance to suggest that calculus is irrelevant. If you get a chance, pick up the book "Concrete Mathematics" - and "Concrete" is a play on "Continuous and Discrete" math. It's by Donald Knuth and it's a wonderful read. If you're a working programmer or employed in a technical field, you will be better off after understanding how to solve the problems in that book.

Calculus and all derivative mathematics touches more facets of our daily lives than perhaps any other "theoretical" field in academia.

I have studied Mechanical Engineering as well, and I, on the other hand see plenty of opportunities to use things taught in ME in real life. Might be as simple as "How safe is this plank for me to walk on" (bending moment) to "It's strange that there are cold pockets in this room, what's the optimum positioning of a flow mixer".

But we don't generally think even for a second. People just take a 'common sense approach' to most things, which while good enough for a large set of applications breaks down in many cases. And come on, you're an engineer, you should try to get the optimum solution possible. Obviously, I'm not pointing to you directly but to people in general.

And yes, I do know that there's analysis paralysis situation as well, but a good engineer know where that line is, and to stop just before that line.

> I've studied in mechanical engineering. I've never EVER seen anyone use calculus to solve their problem in the real world.

Consider yourself lucky you haven't been exposed to process chemistry. Those people have to rely on experimentally discovered equations where fractional exponents are the the norm. Not to mention that the math involved is, to an IT person, counterintuitive at best - and outright opaque at worst.

The impossibly devious math involved in that field was one of the major reasons I switched my major. (The same maths come across everywhere in that field.) It is hard to imagine the joy you feel once you get to deal with discrete, math after spending a couple of years trying to wrap your head around the mental torture of applied physical chemistry.

That's the worst straw man I've heard in ages.

If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years?

This is a very narrow and one-dimensional argument. You're assuming that everything is sugary, benevolent and works for the common good. No. Compulsory schooling serves a strategic purpose, it's defective by design.

Replace "school systems" with "retributive penitentiary systems" and you'll see what I mean.

It's the same tired argument as "Capitalism is inherently evil."

Not even close. I do not oppose capitalism in any way, personally.

Yeah, maybe, except that no other system was shown to be better.

No other system has really been tested. There's a lot of alternatives that are applied on small scales and are shown to work just fine (i.e. Sudsbury schools), but they receive little attention and are often deliberately misrepresented.

Maybe they sucked at dancing because everyone always told them to quit wasting time on dancing, so they never got to practice?

> If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically successful countries have public school systems that go on for years?

Long compulsory schooling was not a leading indicator of the success of the U.S. We were an outstandingly successful nation back when most people were schooled far less than they are now.

This isn't strong proof of anything about today, but it is at odds with the narrative that institutional schooling is the basic feature that makes a society good.

Actually... it's not really about capitalism. I like capitalism. It's flawed, yes, but everything is and I believe it's the best we've got.

In fact, capitalism, by design, rewards the most entrepreneurial. Our current school system punishes those sorts of people -- its goal is to produce worker bees who do what they're told (I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the education system in the U.S. was designed by a rich business owner specifically to produce workers for his company and others like it... although I'm not entirely sure about that)

Now, that's not to say the school system is inherently evil, either. I do wish it had promoted more creative and entrepreneurial ideas, but it is what it is. I felt pretty aimless throughout school simply because the vast majority of what I was learning really didn't apply to anything in my life until I started learning CS in college (and even then, if I was designing my own curriculum, I'd have done it a bit differently)

Its kind of missing the point to bring up the notion that all the economically advanced countries have public school systems that go on for years, when most of the people arguing against the education system would probably agree that its main purpose is to turn individuals into a compliant, unquestioning, regimented work-force required by such a system.

What's more interesting is whether schooling exists to supply an economic system, or whether it should exist to create a rational, creative, questioning, skeptical, critical thinking population. Is that the measure of a successful education system, or a successful society?

I think the really dangerous thought is not that the people in the schools are special snowflakes held back by the system, but the realization that those at the top are not special snowflakes and are instead propped up by the system. Because then even the very faint illusion of meritocracy as a justification for the distribution of wealth and our current system falls apart completely.

Perhaps a good education system would also have to face the friction between freedom, merit, enlightenment, democracy, and economic output. The US has a strong ideological undercurrent that the earlier factors directly lead to the last. I would argue not only that is it possible that there is in fact potentially an economic cost to a free and enlightened populace, but that such an ideology primarily exists in the US as a social-psychological-bulwark to justify the position of the wealthy. To chip away at such a subconscious connection would lead people to the realization of the dangerous thought I mentioned in the preceding paragraph...

> It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people.

You do realize that the two aren't actually contradictory, right? The adoption of open standards for the web made it more possible for an outpouring of creativity. That's what standardization does.

For a problem you claim is "easy to identify", you haven't even found it.

Holy crap you even italicized the word "do" in that obnoxious phrase...

I think that subjects like math are better modeled as graphs of prerequisites rather than "levels". There are so many discrete areas that you can go into without learning about others, it makes very little sense to categorize math the way we do before college. Even topics like "geometry" or "calculus" are too broad.

I think the problem with real creativity is that it is difficult to measure. And schools are all about measuring.

With regards to creativity, I think the infamous assertion about how to distinguish pornography applies: "I know it when I see it."

The problem is, you can't standardize on subjective measurements.

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