Educated Rebel
The American system of public education is meant to serve everyone fairly and equitably. But are such goals even possible in an institution devised nearly a century-and-a-half ago?
On his Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib Khan spoke with Hannah Frankman, a self-described rebel educator, in a wide-ranging and fascinating exploration of the state of education in modern America, especially focused on the people attempting to field-test alternatives on their own offspring. In the last half-hour of the interview, she makes a strong case for why even those without kids have a profound stake in what our education system does and fails to do. And some of her and Razib’s anecdotes about what goes on in the modern public-school classroom are concerning.
Hannah herself was home-schooled from first grade on. She opted to accept a tech entrepreneur’s program for an on-the-job apprenticeship in lieu of going to college and getting a degree in business administration. Her model alone is quite inspiring, and in listening to the conversation you have to wonder how much of her success was due to the alternative schooling her parents chose and how much came down to her natural talents and precociousness. Would every child thrive in the home-school environment as well as she did?
The most worrisome segment was near the end, where Razib mentioned his dismay at his daughters’ experience in public schools. In support of recent policy choices to end what used to be known as “gifted” programs for especially bright pupils, classroom teachers had told him that these children could benefit from helping their slower peers. As a classroom teaching technique, this can be quite useful for both pupils: the one receiving help and the one helping. The disturbing bit is that relying on this to give the gifted children something to do during the day—a new form of busywork—takes up time that they could be using to develop their natural talents. But the public school system appears to have given itself the job of leveling schoolchildren in the amount of educational material they are exposed to and formally trained in, all in the name of achieving system-wide equity. Frankly, it looks to me a lot more like a system for trying to make everyone equal while letting gifted children’s talents atrophy.
As Frankman says, this is not something other countries, including America’s rivals, are choosing to do with their own children. Khan describes how such different national attitudes toward education have altered the economic outlooks for countries like Bangladesh, where his parents came from, and Vietnam: At one point decades ago, Bangladesh had a literacy rate of roughly 50 percent while Vietnam’s was nearly 90 percent. Subsequently, Bangladesh has remained mired in simpler, more basic industrial production, while Vietnamese industry has moved into higher tech industries. Having citizens who can read and follow directions gives your country a leg up in international economic competition.
The homepage for Hannah Frankman’s Rebel Educator self-help site is here.
Good afternoon. 90 degrees and partly cloudy here.
I’ve always thought that our school district does pretty well with gifted kids, but it’s the only program I know the details of. So I guess I’ll explain it here and see what you guys think.
Students get tested in 2nd grade (a traditional test and a subsequent IQ test). If they do well enough, they’re admitted to the S.I.N.G.S. program (Serving the Individual Needs of Gifted Students, for those who are wondering). In 3rd-6th grade, it takes the place of a once-a-week, day-long class. In 7th and 8th grade, it gets a period each day like the rest of the classes. They do a lot of weird things in those classes (ie, baby shark dissection). I have it on good authority that the fifth grade S.I.N.G.S. class once tried to build a boat (emphasis on tried).
Any thoughts?
Also, surrealism: https://billwurtz.com/got-a-home-by-the-bay.mp4
Good afternoon all! Hot and humid here and worse on the way.
Interesting piece, MarqueG. Here are some thoughts I am working on, in no discernable order, and very likely to induce lots of TL;DR reactions.
1. Students used to enter school with some knowledge of the world, of farming or shopkeeping or of a craft. They likely had responsibilities at home that made real contributions to their families' day to day life. This is no longer the case.
2. "Not everyone has to go to college" is a negative statement, reinforcing the idea that skilled trades are for people who aren't bright enough for college. We need to stop using it.
3. Skilled trades work with real materials and real physics. The HVAC either works or it doesn't. The car runs or it doesn't. There is either water or no water. No one can wave their hands and turn failure into success. With very few exceptions (in my experience), school does not contribute to the ability to understand, much less deal with, such hard realities.
4. The exceptions to #3 above lie in a school's extracurricular opportunities: The band sounds good or it doesn't. The pass is caught, the ball goes through the hoop, the scenery works, the lines are remembered and delivered effectively, the baking assignment is delicious , the robot functions as intended - or not. These opportunities are tremendously important.
5. Trade skills and "academic" skills are not mutually exclusive!!!! Dirty hands are not a barrier to deep education.
6. Leadership opportunities in the trades are invisible, at least to students, with the exception of running one's own company. The trades are always at the mercy of the bankers and the lawyers and the politicians: they build the world but don't get to run it. That has not always been the case.
6a. #6 above is particularly relevant to efforts to empower black students. A job that pays the bills and then some is important, but a job that does that and offers opportunities to serve one's community may speak to kids who are very aware that they get suspended at a higher rate than white kids and who want to work for change.
7. Government education leaders' determination to structure education for the future workplace is fraught, to say the least. The thing is that the kids whose parents' can afford it will send their children to schools that teach "old fashioned" skills, like handwriting, the ability to read more than one whole (short) novel over the course of the school year, and allow real hands-on science labs. This only widens the distance between the haves and the have nots.
8. Everybody needs to learn epistemology and historiography.
9. Everybody needs to learn the mechanics of language, that "proper" usage is painstakingly structured to enable clear communication. And that math is the language for communicating about quantities and ratios.
10. In my experience, there is a lot of good stuff going on in schools but prudence keeps it under the radar.