Nah, unfortunately OOP is thinking too high level.
Sure you could in theory fix societies with that. But you can’t do that because of how society works at a lower level. Capitalism.
The way the economy works where there is vastly more money in options, which is basically gambling on the stock market, than there is money in the actual economy. Billionaires and massive investment firms essential hold the global economy to ransom.
So even if you do decide to throw money at the problems to make society better. The rich people wether intentionally coordinated, or through the emergent effects of I dividual decisions, will crash the economy if things aren’t going there way, and force you to either give them what they want or deal with a recession or massive inflation.
Everyone save this post, this is how we will rebuild from the rubble. And if it doesnt get to that point its what we will need anyway. An equitable society.
Why eliminate standardized testing?
Because then education ends up being about the damn test instead of developing beings. The goal shouldn’t be passing the test, it should be learning how to learn, plus a good base in general knowledge so that you can apply critical thinking and successfully integrate new knowledge and experiences.
Would you say the same about other tests, like for driving, engineers, doctors, …? Or is this issue unrelated to the concept of tests but instead how they are implemented or done?
Skill tests evaluate a person’s knowledge of that skill. Standardized testing in theory evaluates a student’s knowledge of the material tested, but in practice teachers often focus more on test-taking strategies in order to boost scores and secure funding. In theory these tests should incentivize learning the material, in practice they incentivize learning to take the test.
So we should not remove the standardized testing but how the tests are done…?
We can keep the standardized testing if they unlink the results from school funding. It’s just another weapon that rich (white) people use to keep money from poor (minority) communities.
Is that how it’s done in the USA? Insane.
“tests”: Bulemic learning by heart of lecture material just to pass the damn exam and forget most of the stuff a bit later anyway. Practical relevance of tests: approximating zero.
That’s why a lot of “younger” companies don’t even look that critically at grades anymore.
It doesn’t promote knowledge, it’s gamed, and it’s used to further discriminate against schools that need funds.
Problem of a poorly designed test and and poorly implemented standard. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You need to test but designing tests that test the thing you are looking for is EXTREMELY hard. This is also part of the alignment problem with AI. If we had this stuff nailed down it would be nice.
AI was also what I was thinking about. The ways it can find to get rewards is crazy.
It’s been successfully demonized by teachers unions over the years. While there are limitations, with the medium, it’s far from useless. It can’t fully assess mastery of a subject, but it can determine basic and applied understanding of one. It’s a very simple step to expand from student competency to teacher competency.
Why do teachers not like it, and how are unions part of that issue?
Okay, but have you considered yachts though? Also, what if I spend $100 million on helping people not die but then my business rival beats me at business this year by $99 million? I’d look like a fool!
And the investors! Won’t someone please stop to think of the investors!
I have come around to the view that you do not need to “wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders”. You could also disappear that wealth.
Throwing money at public education doesn’t fix it. Some of the worst schools get well above average funding. There are of course outliers on both sides, but in the average case the US spends more for less in pretty much everything, spending even more isn’t going to fix it.
Are you suggesting that the quality of education will go down with more school funding? That doesn’t seem very logical.
I think they’re saying that an increase in school funding doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase or decrease in quality of education. Like maybe it’s essentially uncorrelated above a minimum amount to fund basics (lights, desks, teachers, etc.). There’s a lot more factors than money at play here. In other words, a poorly-run school with bad policies, teachers, etc. is crap whether it has X million dollars or 2X million, and a well-run school is good even with a small budget.
What about throwing money at teacher salary/education/recruitment?
Exactly what I was thinking. 2 teachers for every classroom, highly paid career teachers, make the job attractive
If that’s what they meant, I’m still gonna have to disagree, or at least point out that we are well below that level of funding where there are diminishing returns.
The quality of the ‘basics’ matter, I believe teacher salary has a direct correlation to the quality of teachers. My current school (a community college), which is well-run is being forced to cut programs right now because they cant afford it. Our bookstore is closed. One of my professors needs to also work at a different school to support her child. Another of my professors was in a panic when his heater broke and he had to figure out to get it fixed cheap.
I get that there are a lot more factors than money at play, but when you start taking a look at these problems, money is the common denominator and bottleneck for a lot of schools.
The quality doesn’t go down l, but it doesn’t go up either.
Having been through that system I have to say, it’s inherently more about training students to be ok with having their movements and thoughts constrained, following instructions, being kept safely contained while their parents are at work, and (if you’re trying for academic success) developing a toxic concept of self worth and “success”, than helping them become informed and capable people. I don’t understand how anyone can graduate and conclude, yes, more of this is what our society needs to thrive. Maybe they just choose not to think about what it was actually like because they don’t have to deal with it anymore, or still buy into the idea that putting themselves through that gave them value because the alternative is too painful. There’s a reason so many people have anxiety dreams about being in school even decades later.
Not at all an endorsement of replacing school with child labor like some people seem to want, but we really need an entirely different way for people to have an opportunity to become literate and explore science and history etc. rather than putting more resources into this awful institution.
Schooling definitely has many problems. There’s a lot of competing interests and partially serving all of them is failing spectacularly.
