Education Overhaul - A Modest Proposal.

[Agent Intellect]

First, this proposal is not all that modest. It would be expensive, difficult, and very different from what we have been doing so far. That being said, this system would need to be funded. In order to do this, there would need to be tax increases. This is a curse word in the western world, and especially in America.

So how is this predicament solved without taxing the hell out of people? Here are a few ideas:

1. Legalize and tax marijuana. First of all, there is no good reason why it shouldn't be legal, anyway. It's less addictive, less impairing, and has less serious long term effects than alcohol. Second, if it was legalized, not only could we heavily tax it, but it would save us a lot of money by not having to fill our prisons and jails with marijuana offenders.

2. Sin taxes. Small tax increase on cigarettes, booze, and maybe even unhealthy soft drinks. Here is my idea: make diet drinks be the normal drink, and the sugary, calorie filled one be the 'heavy' drink. When you order a drink at Burger King, it's assumed you're getting the diet kind unless you specify otherwise. The 'heavy' drink costs slightly more for tax (I'm thinking a 99 cent drink would go up to a dollar even - chump change for you, but a small income toward education reform).

3. Higher fines for "common sense" things (in my opinion) including, but not limited to: driving while talking on the cell phone; littering and polluting; perhaps even for having too much trash (by weight - this would require that recycling is available); speeding tickets. This would serve the purpose of a) bringing in money for my proposed education reform and b) making things safer and more healthy.

This list is not all inclusive. It merely contains the ideas I could think of right now.

On to the education reform:

The first issue would be the schools themselves. I would want to turn the school building into a community center. Maybe something that rivals the mall. This might mean having fewer schools per city, but the school campus itself would be much bigger.

This would include having places for kids to hang out, and even activities for adults. In addition to the normal extracurricular activities, such as drama clubs, band, sports teams etc, it could host community outreach programs. These programs would be run by the students (under supervision). There would be other student run events and programs - concerts for student organized bands, talent show like things, debates, speeches, plays and so forth. The point here would be more about having the students run things in order to learn responsibility and leadership.

Other things that would go on at school outside the classroom setting would be student tutoring by older students. Since the schools are condensed into large community centers, all levels of education would be held in the same building. The younger students would attend classes that are taught by older students (more on this later). This would not be lecturing or help with homework, but actual student designed (by the older students) curricula with an emphasis on hands-on learning experiences as opposed to listening and memorizing.

This would be a large emphasis for my theoretical system. First of all, I would do away with grades altogether (as in, being in kindergarten, or first grade, second grade etc). Second, I would get rid of standardized curricula (not all kids learn the same way or at the same speed). And third, I would overhaul the way material is taught. To go through this point by point:

1. Doing away with grades. Students would progress at their own pace in different areas. If a student is great at math but terrible at English, then they'll keep moving ahead in math independent of what year it is - if they're flying through arithmetic the first few months, they'll move up to algebra; if they're flying through that, they'll move up to trigonometry. The point being, there would be no reason to complete an entire course on something if all it's going to do is make you board. On the other hand, if you're doing terrible in English, you won't get "held back" after a certain period of time and do the exact same class over again, you will simply move through the material at a slower pace (this might require moving to a more remedial paced classroom, but there wouldn't be any flunking).

2. This was more or less explained in the first point. The idea is to stop treating every student as if they a) learn the same way as everyone else and b) have the same intelligence in the same areas as everyone else.

3. No more lecture -> homework -> memorize -> test. I've posted it before, but this TED talk on how math should be taught sums it up nicely. The idea is that, instead of telling kids facts, having them memorize it and regurgitate it on a test, they figure it out on their own (with guided supervision, obviously). I like the example used in the video where he talks about having the kid figure out how they would measure the slope of a line (I believe the video uses a ski lift as an example or something - it's been a while since I actually watched it). When the student figures out how to separate it into segments (a coordinate plane) the logic behind it will stick with them much better than just being given some problems with a coordinate plane and told how to do them so they can grind out 50 homework problems using different variables. By figuring things out themselves (or even with peers, it doesn't have to be independent) they will acquire a much greater understanding of the material. This would also be used in other classes (more on this later).



To expand on the idea of individualized curriculum, what I propose is that a personality profile of a student is developed over time. My idea has school starting earlier (three years old - more on this later). Right away a profile will begin to be generated that will allow for more personalized curricula. This would take into account personality (perhaps even an MBTI-like system), intelligence in several areas, and the interests of the student. This system would allow the student to cultivate their strengths and strengthen their weaknesses in a way that suits their learning style.

Here is a breakdown of how school would look for a student under my system:

Pre-school:
This starts at three years old. Aside from just being a day-care center, there would be various activities that would stimulate intelligence and brain development during this critical period in a students life. Simple activities to develop visual-spatial awareness, simple logic and outside the box thinking, and creativity. Right away a profile of the student would begin to emerge, perhaps even by administering various types of intelligence tests.

Class 1:
There would be some level of standardization at the very beginning. The point of this would be to lay down a foundation for future learning and further develop the personalized curriculum by observing what areas the different students excel or struggle with. Advancement would happen accordingly.

Class 2:
This is where the personalization really begins. Here is my idea: having 8 classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In these classes, the learning style enumerated above would be utilized. Classes would be small - ideally, I'm thinking 10 students and 2 teachers per class (but that would probably be difficult to achieve, but this is all hypothetical here). There would be more hands on experiences for science with students actually designed and carrying out experiments; class discussions for history, government, and grammar classes, where ideas are discussed and critical analysis is applied to a variety of works (instead of a single, standard textbook); application based inquiry for maths (particularly as talked about the TED video I posted) etc. The point is to get rid of lectures.

Tuesdays and Thursdays would be group inquiry days. An idea I had was having the first half of Tuesday be a meeting of a small group of students who have student profiles similar to your own - it would be like being in a group of all INTP's for us. This group would be guided by tutors (older students) who also have personalities similar to the students in the group, who would guide them through various critical thinking, problem solving (logic puzzles, engineering problems etc), rational analysis, and group inquiry exercises.

The second half of the day would meet with another group with a variety of students with different profiles. This group would be for teaching students how to work together, utilizing their strengths and working with other peoples strengths in order to solve puzzles of increasing complexity.

Thursday could perhaps be sort of a "wild card" day - I'm thinking having students undertake individual inquiries. Thursday would be the day that would most resemble homework for the students. Could also be open to various events, such as field trips and guest speakers.

Class 3:
This would be sort of an intermediary level where students begin really focusing on their strengths. At this point, it would be much more clear what an individual student excels at and what sort of personality they have. It's at this point that one of a very few standardized tests would be administered - similar to the SAT's or ACT's. This would be for profile purposes; also, a certain score would be needed in order to be eligible for the senatorial school.

Class 4:
This is what's considered an "older student". At this point their education has become very specialized for their needs - someone who has shown great mechanical acuity would be taking appliance repair and installation, auto-repair, and other mechanically oriented classes (of course, this would be their choice - someone awesome at being a mechanic wouldn't be pigeonholed, but the point is, the students would be taking classes for whatever specialty their interested in).

There would still be a certain level that every student would have to achieve in various core classes, which would include math (I'd say geometry is minimum), writing (the ability to write a coherent essay that can express and defend an idea would be minimal), government (not sure where I'd cut this off, but it would be necessary), reading (if someone can explicate on Shakespeare coherently, they can probably read good enough), world studies (geography, foreign cultures etc).

At this level, the students Tuesdays and Thursdays would be spent tutoring the younger students. Their would be a minimum curriculum about what sorts of things would need to be taught (as enumerated above) but much of it would be designed by these students. Their progress in this would be assessed by teachers.

Class 5:
This would be what could be considered early college level now (community college level). This would focus on students strengths, but there would be classes that also integrate different areas. Things like writing scientific papers and critical analysis of other peoples work (in areas including science, history, philosophy, politics); attempting to come up with mathematical formula to describe social interactions and statistics etc. These things would be presented to and defended against panels of teachers (much like a masters program, I guess).

There would be a lot of focus on critical thinking and problem solving at this point. I would probably utilize technology a lot here, running various simulations and having the students apply knowledge to solve complex problems, run virtual cities (government), assess various ethical dilemmas in both human interactions and in science, run a virtual business in which they have to make tough decisions by analyzing available data and so forth.

College:
This would be private institutions, so not much to say about it with my system.



A few other things to mention:

Year round school - bear with me here. During the summer there would be more fun type classes - arts (learning guitar, or painting, or writing etc), physical activities (perhaps like martial arts, sports) and field trips to various places. This could be something that meets only 3 days a week or something, so summer is still a vacation for the most part.

Simple things, such as smaller class sizes, more teachers (with higher pay, particularly based on merit), nutritional food, student participation in programs (mock government type things, laboratory time with student designed experiments, upperclassman tutoring younger children etc), and just offering children a place to be even outside of class time.

The main objectives, as stated before, is to increase peoples ability to think critically and rationally, be able to solve problems, and still act as a cohesive member of society. On a shorter scale, though, making school more accessible, fun, individualized, with focus on problem solving as opposed to memorization would be the primary objective.

Spoiler

I got lazy and copy-pasted some of my summary from the "Emotional Politics" thread here at the end, but I had a long day and am falling asleep. I assume this is enough to read for now, anyway. This is not all inclusive, nor is it complete. Unfortunately, exhaustion is getting the better of me.

 

[ApostateAbe]

1. Legalize and tax marijuana. First of all, there is no good reason why it shouldn't be legal, anyway. It's less addictive, less impairing, and has less serious long term effects than alcohol. Second, if it was legalized, not only could we heavily tax it, but it would save us a lot of money by not having to fill our prisons and jails with marijuana offenders.

Just about to happen in California, and I hope and expect it is for the best. It will save only a small sum next to California's enormous debt, unfortunately, but more freedom is typically a good thing.

2. Sin taxes. Small tax increase on cigarettes, booze, and maybe even unhealthy soft drinks. Here is my idea: make diet drinks be the normal drink, and the sugary, calorie filled one be the 'heavy' drink. When you order a drink at Burger King, it's assumed you're getting the diet kind unless you specify otherwise. The 'heavy' drink costs slightly more for tax (I'm thinking a 99 cent drink would go up to a dollar even - chump change for you, but a small income toward education reform).

Alcohol actually helps you live longer. Nobody expected it, but the science is clear. It shouldn't be included as one of the sins. Diet drinks are worse than non-diet drinks. Diet drinks stimulate the appetite without providing the calories, whereas fructose drinks provide the calories that are stimulated. Mice that were fed artificially-sweetened water became fatter than the mice that were fed sugar water. Both types of drinks should be taxed. The only drinks that don't make people fat are water, green tea, black coffee, wine and beer.

3. No more lecture -> homework -> memorize -> test. I've posted it before, but this TED talk on how math should be taught sums it up nicely. The idea is that, instead of telling kids facts, having them memorize it and regurgitate it on a test, they figure it out on their own (with guided supervision, obviously). I like the example used in the video where he talks about having the kid figure out how they would measure the slope of a line (I believe the video uses a ski lift as an example or something - it's been a while since I actually watched it). When the student figures out how to separate it into segments (a coordinate plane) the logic behind it will stick with them much better than just being given some problems with a coordinate plane and told how to do them so they can grind out 50 homework problems using different variables. By figuring things out themselves (or even with peers, it doesn't have to be independent) they will acquire a much greater understanding of the material. This would also be used in other classes (more on this later).

A lot of people have idealistic opinions on how to best teach students. For example, it was a very established and widespread myth that students can be divided according to learning styles, but it was discovered that all students learn best through pretty much the same methods. An engaging, interesting, well-prepared teacher, from my own lifetime of experience, makes the most difference. Relevant homework assignments are also essentials. All reading should be done with learning goals in mind, so reading questions help. Learning is hard work, inherently, and I don't think there is anything to be done to solve that problem. Lazy or stupid students will not succeed, period. Those are cruel adjectives, because it may not be their fault that they are lazy or stupid. A bunch of people are born that way.

1. Doing away with grades. Students would progress at their own pace in different areas. If a student is great at math but terrible at English, then they'll keep moving ahead in math independent of what year it is - if they're flying through arithmetic the first few months, they'll move up to algebra; if they're flying through that, they'll move up to trigonometry. The point being, there would be no reason to complete an entire course on something if all it's going to do is make you board. On the other hand, if you're doing terrible in English, you won't get "held back" after a certain period of time and do the exact same class over again, you will simply move through the material at a slower pace (this might require moving to a more remedial paced classroom, but there wouldn't be any flunking).

This is one those wishful thoughts, isn't it? People like us know how valuable education is, and we do it because we know that the learning will benefit us. And then there are the other 6 billion people in the world. They would rather do anything besides school work, like play video games or play football or watch TV or go bowling, but they do school work because they are afraid of getting a bunch of "F"s, getting privileges taken away from them by their parents, not making it into college or even trade school and working dead-end jobs for the rest of their lives.

It is also a very bad idea to neglect the skills that a student may not be so good at. Everyone who wishes to succeed needs to write good English. Everyone. It doesn't matter if you are a math wiz. You'll need to write proposals, reports, letters, presentations, comments, notes, emails, summaries--if you don't know how to write well, then it won't matter if you can model multivariate linear regressions better than anyone else, because you'll be unable to effectively communicate and you'll come off as an idiot.

Pre-school:
This starts at three years old. Aside from just being a day-care center, there would be various activities that would stimulate intelligence and brain development during this critical period in a students life. Simple activities to develop visual-spatial awareness, simple logic and outside the box thinking, and creativity. Right away a profile of the student would begin to emerge, perhaps even by administering various types of intelligence tests.

Intelligence tests? What for? It is an essential period in a person's life, and they need plenty of play, love, friendship, adventure and nutrition. There doesn't need to be any school, which is why they call it "pre-school." It is what happens before any actual school.

The public educational system is actually better than it has ever been. Students come out of school smarter than ever before, despite all of the cynicism surrounding it. It takes someone who knows the subject of education, knows the psychology of the every-student, knows the sociology, to think of new ideas, and those new ideas really are put to the test. I have a bunch of my own ideas, as you know, but I know that my own ideas are based on a very limited experience, being a long-time student, not a teacher.

One of my suggestions would be to design courses for a mixture of life goals, not just for higher education, but also for people who want to be plumbers, electricians, construction workers, communications technicians, and that sort of thing.

The most important life skills, that don't seem to get a lot of focus in academia, is spoken communication and politics. For example, I would love it if schools would teach students how to effectively make friends, keep friends and lie.

 

[Agent Intellect]

Alcohol actually helps you live longer. Nobody expected it, but the science is clear. It shouldn't be included as one of the sins. Diet drinks are worse than non-diet drinks. Diet drinks stimulate the appetite without providing the calories, whereas fructose drinks provide the calories that are stimulated. Mice that were fed artificially-sweetened water became fatter than the mice that were fed sugar water. Both types of drinks should be taxed. The only drinks that don't make people fat are water, green tea, black coffee, wine and beer.

In moderation, yes. Heavy consumption can cause liver disease and brain shrinkage, along with other problems (not to mention the short term, where it makes you prone to injuring yourself or others).

A lot of people have idealistic opinions on how to best teach students. For example, it was a very established and widespread myth that students can be divided according to learning styles, but it was discovered that all students learn best through pretty much the same methods.

Creating profiles for students would be an ongoing study in finding better ways to teach them. I don't claim to know what ways different people may or may not learn, and I also won't claim that my hypothetical system could be implanted in a year or two. I think it would be something that would have to slowly be implemented, with changes being made as new information became available.

I think a modal approach to learning styles could be utilized. Instead of splitting students into "visual learners" and "auditory learners" etc a more individualized profile could allow the school to know how the student best learns grammar, how they best learn mathematics, how they best learn science and so forth, looking at how they do in each category as opposed to lumping them in a large group. Also, by doing this, new ways of teaching could be discovered that haven't been thought of yet.

An engaging, interesting, well-prepared teacher, from my own lifetime of experience, makes the most difference.

I agree. And hopefully measures to find better teachers could be implemented, unfortunately, it would be difficult to include a clause that all teachers now need to be engaging, interesting, and well prepared.

My hope is that by making the curriculum more engaging, interesting, and often times led by students (inquiry) it would help the students be more engaged and interested in what they're learning.

Relevant homework assignments are also essentials.

I agree with this as well. One thing I dislike about school, and math classed in particular, is that we are taught a concept, and given 50 problems to grind this concept out with so that we memorize it. After the test it can just be forgotten. I think homework that focuses more on students figuring out how to solve problems on their own would be more relevant.

All reading should be done with learning goals in mind, so reading questions help. Learning is hard work, inherently, and I don't think there is anything to be done to solve that problem. Lazy or stupid students will not succeed, period. Those are cruel adjectives, because it may not be their fault that they are lazy or stupid. A bunch of people are born that way.

You're almost certainly right. My hope would be to separate the lazy from the uninterested (maybe there is some overlap there). I know for myself, I did terrible in junior high and high school (I was a D student that almost dropped out). I'm sure I was lazy, but I was also very uninterested. I couldn't stand the way school was done.

After I graduated, six years later I finally went back to college. I'm getting all A's now with a 4.0. I'm really not any less lazy than I was back then, but I'm much more interested in learning. There is no way to prevent someone who is just a failure plain and simple, but my hope would be to find those who do poorly because of things like being uninterested, or socioeconomic issues (dropout rates in inner city schools would hopefully be minimized - especially if we were able to get rid of the idea of "inner city schools" altogether).

This is one those wishful thoughts, isn't it? People like us know how valuable education is, and we do it because we know that the learning will benefit us. And then there are the other 6 billion people in the world. They would rather do anything besides school work, like play video games or play football or watch TV or go bowling, but they do school work because they are afraid of getting a bunch of "F"s, getting privileges taken away from them by their parents, not making it into college or even trade school and working dead-end jobs for the rest of their lives.

One of the fundamental aspects of the system I'm proposing is attempting to make learning more interesting and engaging, particularly by looking for ways to gear it towards the individuals. Once again, I won't pretend to know the best way that any certain student should be taught, but I will propose that such a method can be found by creating individual profiles for students and seeing what works best for them.

It is also a very bad idea to neglect the skills that a student may not be so good at. Everyone who wishes to succeed needs to write good English. Everyone. It doesn't matter if you are a math wiz. You'll need to write proposals, reports, letters, presentations, comments, notes, emails, summaries--if you don't know how to write well, then it won't matter if you can model multivariate linear regressions better than anyone else, because you'll be unable to effectively communicate and you'll come off as an idiot.

I didn't suggest that their weaknesses are neglected. My proposal, at worst, wouldn't be any worse than the way it is already, and at best would do a better job of strengthening peoples weak areas. As stated later in my post, there would still be a minimum requirement that students would need to meet in all areas, the difference being that in mine students reach that at their own pace - they advance quicker if their better in an area (no semester commitment to a class a student may not need to take) and advance slower in areas they are weak in (no semester do-overs, just slower paced learning that allows them to grasp a subject before moving on, or simply having to redo the same exact thing again for another whole semester).




Unfortunately, I have to go fulfill my own educational obligations right now, so I can't respond to the rest of your points at the moment. You have raised some interesting points, though.

 

[typus]

While I agree with the overall theoretical concept, I have doubts about how it will function in reality. The individually based curricula will probably amount to one math profile, one literary profile, one art profile etc.. While this perhaps will be better than one standardized curriculum it won't be close to the utopian individualistic vision you have. (About this, I have a question about America's education system. When do you split the students into different programs? Not until college? (which is when, by the way? At 17 years of age? Or something like that))

The intensified focus on responsibility of the self will probably lead to upper-class children being even more overall successful in school, unless there is also a highly functioning way to support people from low-educated families, which will actually be used. I suppose the older-pupil tutoring is partially about this, and while they probably will have an easier time relating to the younger students (?) and therefore be able to aid them better I doubt they will do a particularly good job without a proper education in pedagogy, not to mention the experience needed to be a good educator. Decreasing the mechanical learning and really, really emphasizing understanding will, although an incredibly necessary change of perspective, probably contribute to even worse chances for lower class children. Furthermore, studies (I can't find them now! Heck) have shown that earlier grades (as in A-F) increase the success rate of lower class students while lowering them for upper class students. So, I reason, a complete removal of them would be another detrimental factor for the lower class children.
These problems can probably be eliminated by a proper support system, but it will, as you said, cost enormous amounts of money. But, if global economics aren't completely weird an education reform like this will be a good long term investment.

The deal with removing grades (as in 1st grade, 2nd grade etc.) seems awfully complicated in practice. It seems as if one would need not only teachers for the different subjects, but also mentors who would not teach in any subject but be entirely focused on the progress of, say, ten pupils, tops? They would be the ones trying to keep track of how well the student progresses in the different subjects, but also having a constant dialogue about what the student thinks about the current situation, how it might be changed, how his/her curriculum should be changed in the future etc.. This would also contribute to helping who aren't all that predisposed (apparently growing up in a socialist country has made me very concerned about the conditions of the lower class), in regard to spotting problems very early on and being able to form solutions that the individual is happy with.

However, what I think is perfectly possible to implement and also an extremely good idea is the system change from "indoctrination" to "understanding". This would only require rewriting the standard curriculum, maybe not even to a big extent, and reforming the teacher's education. I'm not entirely convinced about fusing schools into bigger ones, since in general smaller institutions seem to be better than large ones in almost every field (possibly because of increased chances to focus on individuals and making more detailed changes to the organization since it is a lot easier to have a detailed overview of what's going down, whereas in big institutions you can get a 'big picture' but with too low "resolution"), but it seems as if this would really help the public perception of schools and their role in youth culture and stuffs.

 

[Kokoro]

I love the ideas and concepts that this system would implement. However, you definitely hit the nail on the head with your first two sentences. It would be quite a challenge to translate this theory into reality; I see many more hindrances besides just the lack of funds. Although, when it comes to the structure of the system, you seem to be on the right track. I'm excited to hear more when you further expound the idea.

The removal of grades(and other external measurements?) causes me to wonder about a couple aspects of this system:

- What are the consequences for the equivalent of failing within this system? Taking into account individual predispositions, are there any disincentives to not fall behind(both intentionally failing and lack of trying)? Do you even think that disincentives would be necessary? While there seems to be some great motivators to excell within this system, I don't see any preparation for the reality after school where there are usually harse consequences for "failing."
(This aspect causes me wonder how discipline in general would be handled, considering that these schools would actually be community centers.)

- Would there be some kind of summary of an individuals performance, skills, and weaknesses in school beyond what level they are at in certain subjects? This summary would be for organisations that currently look at things like grades.