Education in the Information Age

[WildAboutHarry]

  for an interesting comparison of literary skills, try reading letters to home written during the American revolution and civil war by the average solders in the field, the difference in skill level will shock and put to shame most modern internet posters and even many professional writers...

On a somewhat related topic, a while back a late-night show had two "texters" and two Morse-code operators competing head to head sending the same message.  The Morse code guys won, hands down (no pun intended).

I am very impressed by the Khan Academy.  I have been going through the Algebra section.  My high school algebra was taken circa 1967 or so, and there is something soothing and nostalgic working through those old problems...

The format of the Khan Academy modules I've seen is wonderful - spoken words, written numbers, doing long division on screen!, etc.  Very simple and very powerful.  One advantage that I see with this approach is it is really one-to-one, a very good teacher and a single pupil, and it allows individuals to pace themselves and not have to work at the classroom pace.

The Khan Academy approach reminds me somewhat of the old SRA reading program.  It was  self-paced program where there were color-coded levels of progressively more difficult reading.  In essence, each student was reading at an individual level rather than the collective classroom level.

[Lone Wolf]

The Khan Academy approach reminds me somewhat of the old SRA reading program.  It was  self-paced program where there were color-coded levels of progressively more difficult reading.  In essence, each student was reading at an individual level rather than the collective classroom level.

Wow, that is exactly how I described it to my mother (as my parents would be the only people who'd know\care how much I used to geek out on SRA books when I was a very young child.)  I can't think of any standard homework assignment that motivated me even 10% as much as SRA books.  They really were fantastic.  I'm glad that I'm not the only person that remembers these.

It was almost like an early form of gamification where fun tasks greatly enhance your skill set without you being actively conscious of it.  Rather than "level up" in World of Warcraft (to borrow Moda's example), you're tapping into the way these games tickle the reward center.  World of Warcraft, Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. tap into this "reward center treadmill" in an arguably unhealthy way.  But with things like SRA, the Khan Academy exercises, ReflexMath, etc. the idea of a "level up" represents real-world progress rather than wasting your life away.

[Tortoise]

The format of the Khan Academy modules I've seen is wonderful - spoken words, written numbers, doing long division on screen!, etc.  Very simple and very powerful.  One advantage that I see with this approach is it is really one-to-one, a very good teacher and a single pupil, and it allows individuals to pace themselves and not have to work at the classroom pace.

Won't this self-paced approach potentially widen the performance gap between the most and least gifted students? Students at both extremes may improve, which would be great, but the most highly gifted students may improve much more than the average and below-average students. In fact, I'd say that is the most likely outcome.

It's similar to the effect of wealth inequality growing while overall living standards increase. If the rich and poor are both getting wealthier, but the rich are getting wealthier at a much higher rate than are the poor, is that a good or bad thing? The possible presence of such "winner-take-all" effects in both wealth inequality and educational performance inequality seems a bit controversial to me and suggests there may not be a simple answer.

[Lone Wolf]

Won't this self-paced approach potentially widen the performance gap between the most and least gifted students? Students at both extremes may improve, which would be great, but the most highly gifted students may improve much more than the average and below-average students. In fact, I'd say that is the most likely outcome.

It's similar to the effect of wealth inequality growing while overall living standards increase. If the rich and poor are both getting wealthier, but the rich are getting wealthier at a much higher rate than are the poor, is that a good or bad thing? The possible presence of such "winner-take-all" effects in both wealth inequality and educational performance inequality seems a bit controversial to me and suggests there may not be a simple answer.

That's a great point.  It's an idea that I totally reject but I still think that there's a good chance people will raise a lot of concerns about equality of outcome.

It seems so obvious to me that so long as everyone's level of knowledge is growing, it's not a horrible problem if very, very gifted students gain knowledge even faster than those of average ability.  I think you're 100% right that people will worry about a "winner take all" effect but IMO there's really no need to.

Imagine that Tortoise performs better than I do at every subject.  In the end, Tortoise goes into the lucrative field of cutting-edge, life-saving drug research.  I find work programming computers.  Even though Tortoise would be a better computer programmer than I would, thanks to comparative advantage, I can still trade my computer programming work to Tortoise even though he is better than me at it.  The opportunity cost of doing the programming himself is too high.  We both still have important roles to play.

Now if I let my envy get the best of me and hold him back, we'll both be worse off.  This was more or less the role of the "Handicapper General" from Harrison Bergeron.  Let's hope he never gets a job in the education system of the future!

[stone]

Has anyone ever said that it is bad for some people to attain an exceptional level of education

Who looses from that

[Tortoise]

I didn't mean to imply that some people will say it's bad for some people to attain an exceptional level of education. That's highly doubtful.

I was trying to focus on the possibility that if self-directed learning becomes very widespread, we might witness significant growth in the performance gap between the brightest and the least bright. This may spark controvery not in the field of education per se, but probably in society at large.

Everyone may end up improving their educational achievement, which is great. But imagine what it might look like if the resulting performance gap between the extremes becomes so massive that it essentially spurs a type of evolutionary bifurcation--the brightest may eventually learn and achieve so much that they may as well be members of a "different species." Along the lines of the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. Some would argue we are already moving in that direction.

I'm just saying a revolution in self-directed learning may bring this kind of discussion to the fore: How do we structure society and treat people if the disparity of intelligence and achievement between different members of that society grows staggeringly huge? This question would also apply in some form if artificial intelligence ever rivals human intelligence in most or all areas and even displays genuine emotion indistinguishable from that of humans.

[WildAboutHarry]

Wow, that is exactly how I described it to my mother (as my parents would be the only people who'd know\care how much I used to geek out on SRA books when I was a very young child.)  I can't think of any standard homework assignment that motivated me even 10% as much as SRA books.  They really were fantastic.  I'm glad that I'm not the only person that remembers these.

I thought they were great, too.  Very, very motivating.  I wonder if you could buy an old set on EBay ?

Won't this self-paced approach potentially widen the performance gap between the most and least gifted students? Students at both extremes may improve, which would be great, but the most highly gifted students may improve much more than the average and below-average students. In fact, I'd say that is the most likely outcome.

You are right, it is not very democratic.  It gives individuals the opportunity to excel at a pace greater than the classroom structure ("the collective") would allow.  In fact, I would not be surprised if this style of learning is attacked precisely because it does allow, and perhaps even enhances as you hypothesize, inequality of outcome.

In one sense, though, all learning is self-directed, in that it has always been up to the individual to learn -- pay attention in class, study, use the library, read, etc.  The advantage of Khan Academy over the more traditional methods is convenience, cost, accessibility, and clarity, among many others.

[MachineGhost]

Aside from "checking the box" of getting a degree, I think this is true (very clearly true for Ivy League grads).  When I was in college the emphasis seemed to be on "gaining knowledge" but now that I've been out in the real world for a few decades I can see how important networking is.  I will emphasize that to my kids (hopefully while also distinguishing between networking and simply socializing).  Of course the internet has also opened up all kinds of opportunities for networking that didn't exist when I was in school.

I forgot to mention nepotism (the 1%).  For instance, Wall Street will only hire graduates or MBA's from Ivy League or sometimes the top 10/20 schools.  The only exception is insurance companies which tend to hire from local universities, but correspondingly the prestige and pay is relatively poor.

I don't want to get into all the many demerits of this kind of nepotic system, but it is the way it is, irregardless of the poor end results on the buy-sde.  What is long overdue is a kind of "Moneyball"-style shakeup.

I haven't been impressed with LinkedIn so far.  It seems just an excuse for people to market/promote their business, rather than any actual networking and support.  EFactor seems to be more in the spirit of what LinkedIn could have been.

MG

[MachineGhost]

It's similar to the effect of wealth inequality growing while overall living standards increase. If the rich and poor are both getting wealthier, but the rich are getting wealthier at a much higher rate than are the poor, is that a good or bad thing? The possible presence of such "winner-take-all" effects in both wealth inequality and educational performance inequality seems a bit controversial to me and suggests there may not be a simple answer.

As long as the poor are being taken care of by taxation/welfare or philanthropism, I don't see what the problem is.  This kind of gut feel issue is always a red herring because we are hardwired to avoid unfairness (except for those 1-2% that are psychopaths).

A true and real problem would be a situation like Brazil in ages past where the gap grew into the widest in the world, but the whole pie was not growing at all.

MG