Mal Education - System Design - Should Be VS Is

<b>[shando] "LB, the parts missing from your proposal would seem to be the measurement and evaluation system. You cannot have a contest without umpires - neither can you have an educational system without umpires."</b>

So you suggest -

<ul> Devise a protocol for measuring and evaluating the performance of any given Hyper School clone.</ul>
Not bad. I did touch very lightly on this subject (near the end of footnote 2, "... her clone of the Hyper School might perform well above the average (as measured by how his kids perform in the real world decades later) ...". BTW, if you have a preferred wording for bullet point 8 (or any of the others for that matter), please post it.

I think it is useful to be more explicit on this point than I was. But you may have noticed that all of my "specifics" are actually rather vague. I have a reason for this, and I'd like to get some feedback from you (and any others so inclined).

That reason is:
As much as possible, I'd like to leave the details of implementation to the person or persons managing their specific clone of the Hyper School.
<ul>"Education is not the learning of facts, but training of the mind to think - AE"</ul><ul>"It is true, and important, that education is not JUST the learning of facts, but to become educated you still do have to memorize the alphabet and the math tables. - LB"</ul>
Training the mind to think strikes me as a somewhat creative chore. Not everyone can do it (I enjoy sharing what I know, but I'm not convinced that I'm any good at "educating"), but among those who can some will have a serious talent that others do not. Shackling them with preconceived rules and procedures is probably not a good idea.

Having said that, obvioulsy some decisions need to be made ahead of time and FORCED onto each and every clone (to maintain ?standards? and ?quality?). Trying to find a balance here is going to be hard. But we need to merely look around us and we can see that the "put every kid in the same meat grinder and turn the crank" approach can stand some improvement.

So the balance we are looking for is NOT perfection. Rather, we seek some improvement (well, actually, a lot of improvement) over the current system, to be followed hopefully by some more improvment. And <u>that</u> doesn't seem so hard.

LB

PS - since there are still major points I left out on purpose that are not mentioned, there MUST also be major points left out that I've not yet thought of. We are probably just getting started.

Hmmm ... I am thinking it would be nice to have an on line, free, "goal formation tool" available to students. This tool would help individuals find out what their goals should be in order to maximize their chances of success (actually this module will help the student to determine what "success" means for them individually).

Students using this system are going to be self-motivated (else they will be non-users). This means that learning process has to be interesting AND fun. To be interested in something, the student has to understand WHY he/she is learning it. Ideally, it will relate to achievement of their goals in some visceral way.

Hmmm ... why don't you post a copy of this under the topic "Mal Education - Motivation to Learn"?

Then we can continue there.

And here we can stay on the topic of system design.

***

It is human nature for a discussion like this to drift all over the place. I'm just experimenting with the possibility that this (little piece of human nature) can be changed. What if one of those cool discussions that roams all over the map can actually be organized? Even just a little?

probably too much work, but we'll see.

<font color="pink">***
Continued at topic "Mal Education - Motivation to Learn"

Resume discussion of "Mal Education - System Design - Should Be vs Is" here.</font id="pink">

LB

Done!
I still think development of self-motivation needs to be an inherent attribute of the system designed.

I found the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model to be instructive while considering the topic of System Design, found here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

It gives the history of development and a sense of the level of acceptance of MOOC, as well as the experiential results obtained so far. This model, or some variation of it, might be adaptable to the K-12 educational system we are considering.

<b>[shando] "I still think development of self-motivation needs to be an inherent attribute of the system designed."</b>

I'm more or less in agreement with this. As this discussion has evolved it is becoming clear that we are really talking about two things when we use the word motivation. First, what is it (inside a person) that might motivate a specific kid to learn in general or to learn about a specific subject? Second, what sort of tool or service or protocol (or whatever) might be used to make use of a kid's existing motivation - or alternately to generate motivation where none now exists?

The motivation subtopic now looks to more suited for discussing the first and the system design subtopic looks better for the second.

LB

<font color="pink"> So,

continue here at the system design subtopic for discussion about the attempt to create and or use motivation, especially with tools or services.

and move back to the "motivation" subtopic for discussion about the attempt to understand motivation.</font id="pink">