does change in the SAT give us hope? not really, but something is in the air

It is a rare moment that I am hopeful about our educational system, but in the last week, there has been some reason to be optimistic.

The news has been alive with the usual silliness about educational change. What has been different is people are starting to react in interesting ways.

Take the announcement that the SAT is going to change. This was major news on the national news networks. To me, of course, all this meant that a really dumb multiple choice test would now become a different dumb multiple choice test. Since multiple choice tests are all about efficiency of grading and really test nothing except memorization and adeptness at test taking, I was unmoved.

But others had some good stuff to say:

Leon Botstein. President of Bard College, and a radical after my own heart, wrote something very nice in Time magazine:

http://time.com/15199/college-president-sat-is-part-hoax-and-part-fraud/

entitled: SAT Is Part Hoax, Part Fraud

Even the New York Times, that bastion of educational conservatism printed a very good article by Jennifer Bouillon entitled: Save Us From the SAT

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/save-us-from-the-sat.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Of course, the New York Times also printed why the SAT change was wonderful really:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html?smid=tw-share

Nevertheless people are starting to show their disgust with the system. There was this, for example, from Wired about college:

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/03/universities-moocs-need-consider-culture/

Entitled: Colleges Need to Act Like Startups — Or Risk Becoming Obsolete

and there was this in Slate:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html

entitled: PowerPointless: Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education.

It was this last one that really got my attention. A professor admitting that standing up and reading PowerPoint slides might not actually be good educational practice? Amazing. It included tweets from students that said:

““for class today I’ll be reading the PowerPoint word for word.” every professor, everywhere””

“Being a college professor would be easy. Read off a PowerPoint you made 10 years ago and give online quizzes with questions you googled.”

“College basically consists of you spending thousands of dollars for a professor to point at a PowerPoint and read the bullets.”

The students are starting to object to how undergraduates are treated. Undergraduate education has become a very expensive and pointless exercise. As long as we keep insisting that “everyone must go to college” nothing will change. But when the College Board, the driver behind the SAT, starts getting scared, and believe me they are scared, there is hope.

For those who are wondering what it is I am for, it is simple really:

1. learning through experience
2. learning through just in time mentoring
3. learning to do things, not know things
4. learning that is meant to help you do something you actually might do in the real world
5. testing of performance not memorization

Online education has been so awful in the last ten years (MOOCs being the height of the absurdity) that I am loathe to suggest that the improvement must come from developing high quality online experiences that meet the above 5 criteria. 

But there is no other way. Colleges have no incentive to change their ways.

Yet.

help your child find their passion; expose them to everything; or not...

I recently overheard a mother of college-age kids talking about helping her children find their passion. Then I received an email from a professor who I know, about a test someone she knew was creating to help kids find their passion. Numerous books exist on helping you find your passion, complete with exercises to help you remember what you loved to do as a child, or teaching you how to brainstorm. And then of course, there are plenty of academics who write about passion-based curricula.

Sounds nice. Everyone should do what they love.

On the other hand, we have the “exposure” people.  Defenders of the existing school curriculum often use the word “exposure” to defend the fact that everyone must take algebra or chemistry in high school or write papers on Dickens in college. How could you know if you are interested in these things you are never exposed to them?

This puts modern day parents in a bind. They are torn between racing around to various after school classes and summer programs and extra lessons that will help their children find their passion and, at the same time, reinforcing decisions made by educators a century ago that their child must study, and do well in school, and learn to love whatever it is they are being exposed to this year.

I feel sorry for today’s parent. So much obsession with something they cannot control. They can’t fix the curriculum (only Bill Gates can do that -- hence Common Core -- and its hardly a fix) and they can’t figure out how to help their child find their passion. (Chess club, skating lessons, flute playing, soccer practice -- there is so little time.)

So let me make a few observations. I realize I am long past the age where I have been raising children, and that the modern generation of parents takes it all so seriously (while mine just said “go out and play”). But really, let’s think.

1. your kids passion may suck: my son was passionate about being a rock star; I said no
2. my daughter wanted to be a ballerina; I said no
3. my son wanted to be quarterback of the New York Giants (so did I ); I said no  -- this time because “really?” it wasn’t going to happen
4. my daughter wanted to be a full time writer; I said she had to learn a real profession, something that would help her eat.

Yes, I know, I am out of touch. I actually vetoed my children’s choices of majors in college (english and history). I would have vetoed my son in law’s choice too (russian literature) but I didn’t get a vote.

We need to realize that high school and college are so out of touch with the real world that the choices they offer (what they expose kids to) is for the most part useless (unless of course they wish to be professors or researchers.)

The other options, the passions that we hope our kids will develop, are typically taken from a set of hobbies and are not about realistic opportunities in the real world. They should be passionate about getting a job someday.

In 1962, I chose computer science as my field of study. I didn’t know a thing about it, except it seemed to be something new that might matter, and being good at math (which I was) was supposed to be helpful. (It wasn’t.) Nevertheless I was able to find my passion within that field. 

I have found over the years that things that make me angry give me a passion to fix them. First I was angry that computers were so dumb, so I decided to try and fix them. I was angry that they didn’t understand English, so I worked on fixing that. And I was angry that they didn’t learn, so I worked on fixing that. 

Now I am angry that people don’t learn anything of value, so I work on that.

What is it that people don’t seem to be able to learn? For one thing they aren't able to make good parenting choices. (If parenting was or is your passion good luck with courses on that.)

1. Stop helping your kids find their passion and listen to what they talk about. (My son talked about subways all the time, so I helped him work on learning how to do that for a living. He has done quite well at that. You could look him up.) 
2. Start helping the school system change. Do this by letting your kid learn anything that seems like fun while asking constantly: how are you going to make a living from that?
3. Don’t insist on college. Tell your kid to go to work for a few years and decide on college when they know what they want to do. After working in a real world job they might learn what makes them angry.
4. Let your kids do something on their own. I sent my son out on the subway, or anywhere else he wanted to go when he was ten. I played on the streets when I was eight. Today’s parents would have me (or my parents) arrested for doing that. Good luck with your totally dependent children who need you to help them find their passion and who need you to expose them to things.

A simple maxim: don’t expose and don’t look for passions; just listen and make good suggestions

the old university system is dead -- time for a professional university

I once had lunch with a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. I asked him how it felt to be in charge of a fraudulent institution. He was shocked by the question, of course, but I continued. How many of the people who attend the University of Illinois do you think go there because they think they will get jobs upon graduation? He supposed that all of them did. I asked if they actually did job training at Illinois. He agreed that they didn't. I pointed out that most of the faculty there had never had jobs (except as professors) and might not know how to do any other jobs. He agreed.

I once suggested fixing this state of affairs while I was a professor at Yale. I discussed this with the President of Yale at the time, Bart Giammati. He replied that Yale didn't do training. But Yale does do training. Yale trains professors.

Universities were started as places for classical education for wealthy people. Typically they indeed had a large training component since they were usually religiously based and future religious leaders were expected to come out of these schools. Yale started as a divinity school and morphed into a school where the wealthy could hobnob with members of the their own class of people and then turn out to be the leaders of the country (who knew Latin and the classics.) Although most did go into business, business was never taught.

The world has changed in the sense that anyone with exceptionally good test scores and grades can get into Yale. But Yale hasn’t changed. One is still expected to study the classics and there are no programs for job training. Even the computer science department, of which I was part for 15 years, has no interest in training future programmers.

I am not criticizing Yale here actually. Most universities have copied the “training of intellectuals and professors model of education” and have disregarded the idea that future employment might be of major concern to students. Professors can do this because they are forced by no one to teach job skills. They don’t really know much about job skills in any case. The major focus of a professor at any research university is research. Teaching is low on their priority list and teaching job skills is far very from any real concern. So, economics departments teach theories of economics and not how to run a business, and law schools teach the theory of law and not how to be a lawyer, and medical schools teach the science of the human body but not how to be a doctor. Psychology focusses on how to run an experiment, when students really want to know why they are screwed up or why they can’t get along. Mathematics departments teach stuff that no one will ever use, and education departments forget to teach people how to teach.

Still we hear that everyone must go to college. Why?

It is time for a change.

I propose the creation of a Professional University. By this I mean a university that teaches only job skills. It would do this by creating simulations of the actual life of someone who works in a particular job. After a year or more living in a simulation of the life of an actual engineer, computer scientist, psychologist, business person, or health care professional, the graduate would actually be employable and would have a pretty good idea of whether they had made a good choice of profession. Creating these simulations is not that complicated. Small projects can lead  to larger projects that build upon what was learned in the earlier projects. Constant required deliverables with mentoring by faculty, not lectures. Students try to do things, and faculty are there to help.

The faculty in a professional university would be practitioners who had done it themselves. The students could come to campus or work on line. It makes no difference. Deliverables would not be given grades. If your business idea isn’t good, work harder on it. If your technological solution to something doesn’t work, keep working on it. Degrees would not be based upon an accumulation of credits and would have nothing to do with the time a student was in the program. The students would have to complete well specified tasks, and when they demonstrated they could actually do something they would move on to a more complicated task. If the students weren’t immediately employable, the programs would have to be modified until they were.

We can do this. It just takes money. Existing universities won’t help. They will be threatened by it. Yale can keep producing professors and intellectuals. But most countries in the world need way fewer professors than they need well educated functioning professionals.

Would graduates of the Professional University be able to speak, write, reason, and solve complex problems? Of course. Those skills would be built into every program.

The top ten mistakes in education. Twenty years later.

It has been 20 years since I wrote about the top ten mistakes in education. Although this list is on many places on the web, here is the original link:

http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/NODE-283-pg.html

The ten mistakes I listed were these (go the site to see what I said about each):

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.

Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role 

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.

Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.

 Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.

 Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.

 Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.

Twenty years have passed. Surely my writing about this and other’s re-posting and writing about this have had a big effect on education. Let’s look at them one by one:

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.

Yes. Things have changed. They are worse. The latest horror is MOOCs which is just more talking and insists on the idea the education means knowledge transfer and that knowledge can be acquired by listening.

Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role 

Yes. Things have really changed here. They are much worse. Before there were just lots of bad tests. Now there are tests at every grade. Tests to get ready for the test. And now -- teacher evaluations based on the tests.

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.

Wow! This one has gotten even worse than the others. Now it isn’t schools that create standard curricula it is Bill Gates, Common Core, the US Department of Education and every state Department of Education. We sure fixed that one.  

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.

I am not sure about this one. I don’t think teachers think much of anything anymore other than how to survive in a system where they are not valued and teaching doesn’t matter except with respect to test scores.

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.

No change. Still no use for algebra, physics formulae, random knowledge about history or literature. No use for anything taught in school actually, after reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.

No change. 

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.

No change. 

 Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.

No change.

 Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.

Perhaps this has changed. There seems to be a lot less discipline.

 Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.

Nah. No one believes that anymore.

I am not only one loudly talking into the wind. There are lots of people who agree with me and say things similar to what I say. 

Is there anyone listening?

Sure. Parents are noticing how stupid the tests are and how stupid Common Core is. The kids are noticing, now more than ever. The teachers are upset.

Is anyone listening to them? No. There is big money at stake in keeping things as they are.

Well, that's the report from 20 years on the front lines. We shall not retreat, but victory looks to be far away.

The lost art of conversation -- or-- why thinking is on it's way out

I was walking on the beach in Florida and thinking about how the young people I passed were not all on their cell phones (as seems usual when I walk down the streets of New York.) I wondered if maybe the beach was one place where people were actually just letting their minds wander and relax. But soon enough I noticed the phones and people were texting and taking pictures of themselves.

I was reminded of Wittgenstein’s 3 B’s. He said that all important thinking takes place in the Bed, in the Bath, or on The Bus. (I guess he didn’t go to the Beach.) His point was that in order to think clearly one needs to let one’s mind relax and avoid outside stimuli because it is one’s unconscious mind that does the real thinking. My question is: does anyone think any more?

One way people used to communicate was by writing letters. To me the main point of writing a letter was to find out what you yourself were thinking. Today everyone wants to text or tweet. Do they have to think in order to do that? In order to find out what everyday people are tweeting (I understand that many people, including me, tweet to get their ideas out to a community of which they are part.

Here are some tweets that came up when I typed my last name into twitter. They are from (3) teenage girls I am guessing:

There is just something really special about snow.

IU is just so cool❤

Bloomington bound

I really, really, hate when I accidentally favorite things. And most of the time, I favorite things from people I don't even know that well

I've come to the conclusion I really need to get some friends

Finally get to play my game!! 

My game better be finished downloading when I get home or ill be so upset 

Hate stupid shifts like this like 8-1 if you're gunna get me up early why cant I have a full fucking shift 

COOOOOOL ...

Leggings have made me realize how uncomfortable jeans really are

Hahahahha omg   

I guess these are conversations in a sense but they are not ones that are causing anyone to think very hard. If everyone is tweeting, checking for tweets, texting, or plugged into some sound or other, when does anyone let their mind wander and think?

One problem with not letting one’s unconscious free to muse every now and then is that real learning, real education, is about dialogue. (Aristotle certainly made this clear as does any professor who talks with students rather than lecturing at them.) No dialogue, no hard thinking. 

School is busy pressing on with “its all about testing” philosophy so even if their were teachers inclined to engage young people in dialogue they probably wouldn’t have much of a chance to do it.

So where does this leave us as a society? We stop any conversation we might be having in order to answer a text. We don’t have the opportunity to find out what we think because we never muse and talk with about our ideas. We text on the Bus. We text in the Bath (or listen to headphones). We are texting goodnight as we go to Bed.

I read recently where sharks are tweeting their location. Soon, perhaps our bodies can tweet how they are doing. Our stomachs will tweet that they are hungry. No one will have to think or talk at all.

Do Gifted Programs Improve Learning? (wow! really dumb question)

This is the actual title of an actual article published in the The Atlantic. I am saying this in this way because the question itself is absurd. What does it mean to “improve learning?” How can you improve learning? Does learning need improvement? I am upset by this question because in today’s world this almost seems like a meaningful idea.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/do-gifted-programs-improve-learning/282532/

What the writer means to ask, of course, is if gifted and talented programs improve test scores. This too is a silly question because you need good test scores to get into them in the first place. The right question is whether gifted programs make school any more interesting or relevant. My grandson Milo is in one at P.S. 10 in Brooklyn. When I ask him how school is, he always answers “boring.”

I was in one myself, although they didn’t call it that in my day. They called them the one classes. If you were in 6-1 in P.S. 247 you were in the smart class. If you were in 6-6 you were in the dumb class. (Also, given that this was Bensonhurst, this also meant that your parents were likely in the Mafia and you had been thrown out of Catholic School.)

If you asked me about school, I would have told you it was boring.

At the moment I am trying to learn how to improve my softball swing. I have a mentor I ask to look at what I am doing and occasionally he provides tips. He told me I was holding the bat wrong the other day. All these years of softball and no one had ever mentioned this to me. Now I am hitting better. I have improved my hitting not my learning.

We need to recognize that school should be about improving kid’s life -- about encouraging him to think new thoughts -- about giving him new abilities -- or about coming up with new ambitions. But, in this test crazed world we have created, we want to improve learning, which is not only meaningless, but insane.

In other news, the article says that gifted programs improve nothing. Not true. What they improve is a kid’s safety. What we have always meant by a “good school” is a safe school. I would have been beaten up regularly had I been in the 6-6 class. And that is why I am happy that Milo is in the gifted class, not because his learning will be improved.

OECD should stop pushing math in the name of reasoning and do its job

As I write this I am at sea, both literally and figuratively. I was just getting away from it all for a week, but now as the week comes to an end, I see I simply can’t get away from it in any way. By “it” I mean the general absurdity of the nonsense we say and do about education.

Today I read an article about an OECD report:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/world/asia/oecd-warns-west-on-education-gaps.html?src=rechp&_r=0

The article talks about how terrible it is that  Sweden’s PISA scores are slipping and quotes the U.K. education minister blaming the U.K.’s poor performance on the labor party. Do really need international math contests? 

Apparently we do because OECD’s real mission seems to be to standardize teaching around the world. I have been loudly against Common Core’s attempts to do this in the U.S., an idea being pushed by Bill Gates for reasons best known to himself.

The standard canard that one hears in every report about low math scores is that math teaches reasoning and problem solving skills and is critical for surviving in the 21st century. OECD says that their “mathematics test required creativity and problem solving skills based on a deep understanding of mathematical concepts.” Uh huh. “Math teaches creativity and problem solving” has almost become a religious proverb.

I have this odd idea that one should have evidence for statements one makes, especially statements that large organizations make that affect everyone.

Where is the evidence that math teaches problem solving and reasoning? It doesn’t exist.

As an example, I will talk about myself for a minute. I was a math major in college. I liked math and was very good at it.

Now let’s talk about my math ability has helped me solve problems and reason in  my own life. We all do many kinds of reasoning but three areas most of us need to reason about are relationships with people, business/everyday decision making and decisions about our own health.

Let’s start with the last one. I am getting older and health decisions come up again and again. I find that I am not particularly adept at making them. I don’t know enough for one thing. Also doctor’s say contradictory things so I have to figure whom to trust. There are many issues I worry about and nearly as many answers from various sources about them. Maybe I am better at making my medical decisions than others and maybe I am not, but my math ability has absolutely nothing to do with it. If only I were a better mathematician than surely I would be great at making the medical decisions I need to make? Does this sentence make sense to anyone?

Oh, but personal decision making, my math ability has surely helped there right? I can’t think of any area of my life that it has helped less. Love is not an equation. Nor is parenting, Nor do relationships at work go well because you can do algebra.

Business? I suppose it depends on what kind of business you are in.

The voyage I am on as I write this has taken me to some very rich places and some very poor places. In one of poor places, a place I have been to many times, I met with a university president. He is worried about the education he his offering to his students because there really are no jobs for them where he lives. We discussed teaching practical business and entrepreneurial skills. We did not discuss the need for more mathematics.

Later I visited a very wealthy place, a place where people who are rich have second and third homes. The other people there are people who work for low wages to help rich people live easier lives. More mathematics would have helped the poor people there I am sure. They could reason better and then...  Ooops. They would still be stuck living where they live in the economic and cultural situation that exists there. Surely the rich people got there by reasoning so well because they have learned mathematics. 

This sounds so silly it is difficult to write it without laughing. Rich people become (or are born) rich for many reasons. Were they all good at math?

Just as I was asking myself this question, my ship passed by a private island that I recognized because it belongs to a friend of mine and I had been there. Is my friend very good at mathematics? Yes. It turns out he is. Does he make money from being good at mathematics? Yes. It turns out he does. So how is my friend doing in other areas of his life and in other decisions he makes? To my mind -- not so well -- but it is not for me to judge. 

Suffice it to say that mathematics ability does not teach reasoning in general. Why don’t we teach reasoning in general? Everyone agrees that it is very important. Maybe we don’t know how.

But we do know how. The problem is that mathematics is easier to test. Reasoning would be more amorphous, there would be less certainty about right answers, in fact there would be many possible answers. There is also a cultural component. Reasoning about how to fix a social or economic problem would be different in any given place because the answers would depend upon the many factors that make up that place. There are good places and bad places to build a luxury hotel for example. While certainly some simple mathematics would be part of the decision making process about such a business idea, the answer would depend upon many factors most of which would be difficult to assess in a multiple choice test.

OECD has to get smarter. Pay attention to your own name. Teach economic and cultural development. Stop the nonsense about PISA scores and start thinking about what kids in different populations need to learn to do. Reason? Solve problems? Sure. Teach them to solve real problems, ones that exist in the environment in which they live. Forget the math problems.