Author Topic: Education  (Read 39862 times)

Ichabod Spoonbill

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Re: Education
« Reply #90 on: March 30, 2015, 08:16:51 AM »
Here's a letter I wrote on testing that was published on Diane Ravitch's blog:

http://www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php/topic,26737.75.html

BTW, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is one of my heroes. I'd like to talk to him about education some time. I agree with him on these ideas, but you have to be cautious about wanting an ideal education. I agree that this is what kids should be doing, and schools should be supporting kids' natural curiosity at all times, but when schools are having their budgets reduced year after year, that's wrong to expect. Give us the resources, the manpower, the equipment, to make wonderful education happen. Then those demands are appropriate, but when reducing taxes become the most important thing instead of funding education, then this is fantasyland stuff.

Bill, I like the Kahn Academy too, but the Bill & Melinda gates foundation has been instrumental in funding and forcing the implementation of the Common Core Standards, which are having the opposite effect than what Mr. Tyson is talking about. I have a serious problem with them and anyone who forces their own agenda on public schools when they don't and won't send their own kids to public schools. If they want to send their kids to alternative schooling, that's their concern, but please leave public schools to those who have invested our lives in it. Just because their wealthy doesn't mean they know everything.

BTW, I'm having a very pissy morning today. Governor Cuomo has decided to push through the legislature a bunch of new laws that are destroying my profession. This is what happens when non-educators create laws about education. Please send me paddleboards to cheer me up. ;-)
« Last Edit: March 30, 2015, 08:33:14 AM by Ichabod Spoonbill »
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spookini

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Re: Education
« Reply #91 on: March 30, 2015, 09:13:34 AM »
Kahn academy.. enables people to study what they choose..
I agree w/ Ichabod -- Khan can't be the answer on a large scale.  Most kids if given the choice wouldn't CHOOSE to study.  God knows I wouldn't have. :)

To a certain extent, I think the school system isn't there just to teach.. it's also there to supervise and raise your kids.  It's where they go from 7a-3p, while the parents are off at work.  In addition to writin' and 'rithmatic, kids learn social skills at school.  I question if that's missing from a home-school environment.  Most of my memories from school are interactions w/ my classmates.  Do you get that if Mommy is your teacher??
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PonoBill

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Re: Education
« Reply #92 on: March 30, 2015, 10:26:37 AM »
I empathize with your anguish Ichabod, but if the general public believed educators could fix the obvious problems with education in the USA there wouldn't be political capital in forcing changes. I certainly don't believe giving educators a blank check will fix any of the problems we've talked about just on this thread. And your logic about the Gates trust doesn't work for me either. Do you have to have malaria to want to eradicate malaria? Or more precisely, do you have to expose your kids to a problem you consider devastating to want to fix the problem?

Honestly, and brutally, if the best argument you can come up with is "trust us, we know what we're doing" then don't expect things to go your way. That's the reason teachers are not well served by unions. People care about how their kids are educated. Politicians respond to the pressure that creates. Unions respond politically, to obstruct change and protect their members. There's no incentive to run ahead of the problem and find solutions. There isn't a way I can see to fix that, so teachers are going to get mowed. That's a tragedy, but it's what's going to happen.

Spook--most school systems that implement programs based on Kahn Academy by having kid study on their own, often at home, and then come together as a class to review progress, resolve issues, and provide any needed help. Weak and problem areas are exposed with the teachers guide system. I've never met anyone who actually tried Kahn Academy and explored it's features for students and teachers who didn't consider it to be an important solution for some of the challenges facing education. Most simply say "this is the future of education". I don't believe that, but I think a composite of tools like Kahn to build core performance and physical schools to provide all the rest of the components of education is more likely.

Periodic tests are a clumsy way to check performance. In a computer aided environment they are unnecessary. You can tell in realtime where a group of students is for every subject. Who is having problems, who is not. The general finding is that no one student always excels. Yesterdays' laggard is tomorrow's tutor.

The notion is not to just set kids loose and say go study on Kahn Academy. It's to use effective tools to boost learning and precisely monitor progress and performance. Give it a go. I'm currently working my way through the Physics, Chemistry and Multivariable Calculus curricula. I've been through all the math courses up to this, filling in the holes in my math. I'm a reluctant student, but it's always there, teasing me along. I look forward to seeing this tool grow. When I started it was mostly math, now you can take a lot of different courses, and they seem uniformly good. What to learn about hedge funds? I used Kahn for that. It's a single perspective, but so is a book, or a class, or a teacher.

My next challenge is going to be taking electronics from MIT, which I'll do from my home. No credit, but all the same information, work, effort and knowledge as a student who managed to get accepted to MIT (less than 7% of all applicants). And it's free.
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eastbound

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Re: Education
« Reply #93 on: March 30, 2015, 11:40:29 AM »
my kids have all used kahn to supplement and as another source of explanation of concepts they aren't "getting" so well.

but they all would say they highly value the class/school experience, in its entirety--including claasses like SUP PE, and dance and art and music--but more importantly in the opportunity to develop intimate realrionships with like-minded students, and teachers. They all feel the most improtant part of their school experience has been the ability to connect and be inspired by great teachers, where they evolve personal relationships with great teachers.

same thing in college--i ve got one at a tiny, top liberal arts college--she loves the intimacy and personal feel of the whole thing--because she can get inside the heads of some amazing people with whom she shares interests--teachers and students. my other college age is at a top, large national univsrsity--she poo poos the diss that, at shcools like hers, profs are largely inaccessible, as they are to busy writing and posing alonside their (grad students') research. she  has made many important imspiring connections with profs. she also says that the TA system is excellent--TA's are students a few years ahead of the students they teach--and they are already players in their fields, who can offer great, contemporaneous advice on career choices and tracks etcv.

but so much of this is personal--it's based on sitting together in a room, free-forming with exceelnt interested humans. there is, simply, a limit to how "efficiently" this can be done, but my kids would say, without it, theirs would have been a totally different, inferior educational experience.

one problem is that most college kids dont go to school to learn--they go to get laid, party, and game their class choices to get the best grades possible so as to go the next step, whether it's to a job or grad schoiol. and they think that, based upon haviungm completed a 4 year party and slid by with decent grades ,they are entitled to a godd job--these kids should not go to college--they shd go to work. this is simply waste.

as my daughter, who overfills her plate at college says, "dad, if all i wanted from college was to get into a top 5 law school, i could do a quarter the work i am doing here."

obviously, i have never been the student that my children have become.
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PonoBill

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Re: Education
« Reply #94 on: March 30, 2015, 12:09:45 PM »
Congratulations on your kids. I've been exposed to some amazing young people (that sounds like a line from "School of Rock"). At the top of the pile are amazing young people getting an education that is simply superb. I think this thread is about what happens to all the rest.

Incidentally, this is the current curriculum offered by Kahn. The music curriculum is astonishing. The list is really subheads, lots of courses within the subcategories. Sorry about the formatting, the list from an email I just got from Kahn, apparently suggesting I get my ass in gear and take more subjects.

I'm still amazed that this stuff is free. People pay serious money to take university of Pheonix stuff that is lower quality and has mediocre tools just so they can have some kind of certification that no one believes in. The irrationality of humans constantly amazes me. 

Math
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4th grade (U.S.)      Probability and statistics
5th grade (U.S.)     Precalculus
6th grade (U.S.)     Differential calculus
7th grade (U.S.)     Integral calculus
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American Museum of Natural History     Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute
Crash Course
« Last Edit: March 30, 2015, 12:16:26 PM by PonoBill »
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eastbound

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Re: Education
« Reply #95 on: March 30, 2015, 12:57:48 PM »
valid points, pb--there may not resources to provide the small classroom experience that has been a classical earmark of good education, from which my kids have benefited.

and you better believe that, in remote places in India and China, Kahn, the mIT program, the frre Stanford classes, etc, are being hungrily gobbled up by whoomever can get on a computer with an internet connectio0n.

and phoenix and the bulk of for-profit colleges are, simply, criminal frauds, in my book. they shd be shut down.
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PonoBill

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Re: Education
« Reply #96 on: March 30, 2015, 01:10:54 PM »
You bet they are. There are kids in hovels with one bare light bulb that are "going" to MIT. I've read several stories recently about them. From the Washington Post:

    MIT, long a leader in education technology, has been one of the first universities to take steps in this direction. In 2012, a young man named Battushig Myanganbayar was one of only 340 students out of 150,000 worldwide to earn a perfect score in a rigorous online Circuits and Electronics course. At the time, he was 15 and living in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

    All Battushig needed was an Internet connection and a teacher with an eye for engineering potential. After excelling in the MIT class, he took the SAT, and he’s now enrolled at MIT. Another Circuits and Electronics student, Amol Bhave from Jabalpur, India, enjoyed the class so much he created his own online follow-up course in signals and systems. He, too, was admitted into the 2013 MIT freshman class.


The story is about these kids, but don't fail to notice the 150,000 worldwide students taking the Circuits and Electronics class. How many do you suppose are in the USA?

MIT admits about 1500 freshmen per year, and perhaps 10 percent (I don't really know) do electrical engineering. 150 students vs. 150,000 taking the C&E class remotely. Which is more significant to society, to the world?
« Last Edit: March 30, 2015, 01:21:45 PM by PonoBill »
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eastbound

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Re: Education
« Reply #97 on: March 30, 2015, 01:27:28 PM »
it's depressing, PB--all vestiges of US exceptionalism are vaporizing in frt of our eyes--we just dont have the hunger to compete globally, and our definition of "rewards" for hard work is unreasonably high, given what thrills others who compete for our jobs around the world.
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PonoBill

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Re: Education
« Reply #98 on: March 30, 2015, 02:47:33 PM »
It was a mirage to begin with. There are two things that are exceptional about the US. It's not Europe (and the rest of the old world) and it's geopolitical-ally blessed (which is sort of like saying, it's not Europe, but more based on open water ports and resources than patchwork federations). We will continue to be geopolitically blessed unless the country is somehow split in two vertically.

The geopolitical advantage will mean commerce is advantaged here for a long time. The isolation that preserved infrastructure during wartime is less effective, but still valuable. Trading freely with the rest of the world does more to preserve our natural advantages than it does harm. But the apparent free ride from 1950 to 1990 is pretty much over.

That's my take anyway. Great place to be, but not the only great place.
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Re: Education
« Reply #99 on: March 30, 2015, 08:05:10 PM »
Kahn Acdemy isn't new to many educators, nor is it the great panacea for everything that ails modern ed. I have been using Kahn affiliated quick lecture videos called "Crash Course" to supplement and/or introduce history units for the last few years.  It's rapid fire, humorous and covers about a chapter's worth of info in about 15 minutes -- the kids watch these at home and often I assign the corresponding textbook pages and related work.  This gives me more time to spend in other ways - using art and music of the time period, having them read and interact with more primary sources and importantly more time writing about history.

This is a version of the "flipped classroom" where homework isn't exactly homework, and teachers aren't all chalk and talk. I'm there to help them develop historical inquiry, critical thinking, analytic skills and put it all down on paper as they construct written work on a variety of curriculum based topics. (Not to say that we don't still occasionally give tests, because we do, but it's less frequent than in the past.)

So yes, there is incredible value in these new tools, but I can't imagine it would be a replacement for classroom teachers in whole or in part, especially for the many teachers that have been integrating technology to strengthen classroom interaction.

Re: Bill Gates. I am a fan of the Big History movement which Mr. Gates has latched on to and promoted and provided lots of support, and I think it's a better way to think and teach about history, but I am skeptical of anyone with that much influence (read cash).  I'm not saying his intentions are tainted, but rather I want to know more about his end game before I make any decisions about his new interest in history ed.  His foundation does great work as PB alluded to with the malaria ref, but nothing is so simple as is the case with anti-malaria nets being used as fishing nets in places like Zambia and Mozambique.

As I've said before, I think its great to hear all of these voices and experiences and opinions.

PonoBill

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Re: Education
« Reply #100 on: March 30, 2015, 11:47:26 PM »
I doubt it is a replacement for classrooms and teachers. I think the value is exactly as you have described, and more--it's fantastic for adults. the music appreciation classes are simply wonderful. I just finished the analysis of Beethoven's fifth symphony. An enjoyable evening.

Do a google search for "teachers unions criticize kahn". You get about a million results. Read a few. Bunch of dickheads. Reminds me of the RIAA working to ban DAT tape. Trying to stop a little yugo when a bulldozer is going to run them over. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

I don't think the Gates foundation is a solution for everything that ails the world. But they're pretty smart about how they do things. Warren Buffet didn't pledge the bulk of his fortune to them because he liked Bill's smile. As for motivation, when you can't possibly use the money you have, it's time to leave a legacy. Bill Gates wanted to be remembered as a person who made a positive contribution to the world. So he recruited the smartest people he knew and put them in charge of a wad of money--a couple of Billion. It felt good, so he doubled down--again and again until he got to 28 billion. I don't think it's much more than that. Probably the smartest charitable organization ever created. Not the most efficient--that would be the Salvation Army--but pretty remarkable. 43 billion in endowments. Ten billion in income. I wish my investments yielded something remotely like 25 percent.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2015, 12:12:14 AM by PonoBill »
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eastbound

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Re: Education
« Reply #101 on: March 31, 2015, 04:42:51 AM »
whatever happens with education, i have deep respect for good, thoughtful, invested teachers--clearly, icky spoon and feet, you guys are cut of this cloth.
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Ichabod Spoonbill

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Re: Education
« Reply #102 on: April 01, 2015, 07:15:43 AM »
Thanks, Eastbound. The New York State officially screwed its teachers last night. Now 50% of my evaluation is based on one test my kids take. This is a test the American Statistical Association officially declared invalid. My profession is being destroyed. There is no profession in the entire country that is punished like we are. There is no country in the civilized world that treats teachers like this.

On a related note, a study just came out the poverty affects kids' brain development from an early age. Here's a link to the a Scientific American report on this. Of course, this is teachers' fault.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-shrinks-brains-from-birth1/

When the hell will this end? I'm literally nauseous from the stress.
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spookini

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Re: Education
« Reply #103 on: April 01, 2015, 07:22:51 AM »
Ich, it's April 1st.  Keep calm and paddle on!!   ;)
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Ichabod Spoonbill

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Re: Education
« Reply #104 on: April 01, 2015, 07:23:32 AM »
Spook, if only that was a joke. I could use a good joke right now.
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