Category Archives: At school

Socioeconomic barriers

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On this blog, we’re always talking about problems in education that need solving. One of these is the socioeconomic gap in access, quality, and achievement. What specific issues should stakeholders in education be aware of in solving this problem? Here are some examples:

High cost

Sure, in most countries public education is funded by the taxpayer, so it’s ostensibly free. Unfortunately, this isn’t the whole picture. Even in the developed world, public education is often of low quality, requiring learners to supplement their instruction with expensive, resource-heavy private services. And outside of primary school education, the world is full of people who want to learn something but aren’t able to because of prohibitive costs.

Poor access/low quality

In low-income areas of developed countries, as well as those in the developing world, access to quality education is in short supply. Good teachers are few and far between, and other educational resources are even more scarce.

Lack of relevance

As we discussed in our commentary on curricular problems and in our last post, the things that are being taught in public schools are often irrelevant to the learners. For example, often people who require instruction in a trade will receive an abstract education that is of little use in advancing their career aspirations. There are no services broadly available to effectively and cheaply educate interested people in a subject they find relevant or necessary to their life or career advancement.

In our next installment, we’ll be talking about the ways in which online education technologies can help to address these issues.

Relevance in Education

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At Rukuku, we’re always thinking about solutions that will give people options when it comes to education. One of the problems we are trying to solve is the problem of relevance: we want people to be learning things that are relevant to their personal interests and professional goals.

The United States is respected around the world for its venerable system of higher education. There is much to laud: there’s no doubt that we have some of the world’s best colleges and universities, greatest opportunities for research and innovation, and most talented people.

Unfortunately, American education is also severely deficient in one very important area: real-life career training. When it comes to technical or vocational programs, or even just learning a relevant skill at one’s own initiative, we do not have many quality options available. This is in stark contrast to other developed countries, such as Germany, where only a small fraction of people attend full-fledged universities, with most opting for narrower professional programs.

In a recent exchange of political slurs between our president and candidate Rick Santorum, the latter called Obama a “snob” for suggesting that everyone should go to college. It’s a shame Santorum’s many years of higher education didn’t teach him any tact, because he missed a perfect opportunity to make a serious statement on the matter. What he might have been trying to say, in his indelicate Santorumish way, is that there should be a lot of alternatives to the traditional four-year higher education model. That, actually, would have been a pretty sensible thing to say. If he had said it.

As important as higher education is to many people, there are many other people who do not need to attend universities and learn useless things that will not help them to become productive members of society. There was a time in America when it was possible to be make a great living doing a skilled trade without having to go through the motions of receiving a (completely useless for many) bachelor’s degree. Those days can return if we’re willing to accept the idea that college really isn’t for everyone, and that many of us would be better off learning real, useful skills instead.

This argument has some seriously positive economic implications, too. The United States, once the world’s most prolific producer, currently exports much less than it imports. A lot less. We don’t make anything anymore in this country – and I daresay part of the reason is that we’ve forgotten how.

Now, you can talk all you want about how our labor can’t compete with cheap labor from Asia, and how we’re destined to become a 100% service economy, and all that jazz. But guess what? The Germans clearly didn’t get that memo. Despite having one of the most expensive labor forces in the world, they continue to produce everything from washing machines to cars to electronics to medical equipment to Märzen. You can go ask their $18 billion trade surplus if you don’t believe me.

College is undoubtedly one of the most important ways to encourage an educated, productive population. But it should not be the only answer, and if you still think it is, perhaps you ought to get off your ivory tower!

What do you think, readers? Leave your angry comments below.

How are we going to motivate today’s learners?

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All ideas are on the table, and of them is gamification.

Learning in a packed college lecture hall does not seem to be most people’s idea of fun. I distinctly remember one day when I came into my Econ 101 lecture right after having been to traffic court: I couldn’t help but notice that the general excitement level was lower in front of the professor than it had been front of the judge.

What is gamification?

Gamification is essentially the application of game mechanics and game rewards to real-life situations. It’s based on the concept that humans have an innate desire to engage in reward-based activities. It’s used by retailers to engage customers, employers to involve workers, social networks to excite users, and so on, and it’s been shown to improve productivity and involvement across the board.

How can gamification be used by educators?

Education is particularly well-suited to this concept: gamifying learning can help to engage otherwise bored learners and push them to succeed by infusing some fun into the learning process. People instinctively look for payoffs, but the payoffs of education are typically long-term. Applying some features of a game to the educational process means that the reward structure will also include short-term gratification – something we all enjoy.

This is especially exciting in the realm of online education because of the vast interactive possibilities provided by a digital interface.

What do you think about the potential of gamification in online learning?

American students: “Where’s New York?”

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Now that we’ve dabbled in the topic of teachers, it may also be useful to direct some attention towards curricula. Here are the questions we think should be asked in evaluating the quality of what is being taught at American primary schools, colleges, and universities.

Are students in our education system acquiring valuable, relevant, actionable skills?

For too many people, especially those in higher education, instruction yields very little in the way of a useful skill set that can be applied towards a real job. Employers often quip that their entry-level employees are woefully incompetent at actually doing things – a result of four years of learning abstractions rather than skills.

Are they receiving complete, factual information about the world?

Studies expose major gaps in what US students are taught. Geography is one of the most glaring examples: despite constant news coverage since 2003, a 2006 survey revealed that 63% of Americans aged 18-24 could not locate Iraq on a map of the world. Even worse, a more recent study showed that 50% of young Americans couldn’t even identify the state of New York on a map of the US!

Are they being challenged to think critically and develop ideas?

Although American schools are better at encouraging critical thinking and creativity than some of their counterparts around the world, the overall picture remains bleak. Too often, merely following directions is encouraged while reasonable questioning is discouraged. Getting good grades on multiple choice tests is rewarded, while learning profoundly and thoroughly is not. Following a formula is lauded, but explaining a formula, or questioning one, is ignored.

Are they being taught how to effectively use technology and be players in the modern economy?

Even today, most curricula in US schools do not include incorporating or learning about technology that is vital to becoming a productive player in the global economy. Aside from those specialized in technological fields, most American students’ computer knowledge is a result of personal initiative rather than a systematic approach in education.

Visit us on Sunday for an analysis of what factors may be responsible for America’s curricular woes.

Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone…

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According to the OECD, in 2010 the United States ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics (all out of 34), to earn the fantastically run-of-the-mill overall rating of “average.” For a country that, in the not-too-distant past, produced most of the world’s technical innovation and boasted an unparalleled productive and creative output, this is a jarring wake-up call.

On Wednesday, we talked about why standardized test based teacher evaluation is very bad at identifying and rewarding good teachers.  This is definitely a big part of the problem in US education.

Another part of the problem – one that is more controversial to discuss, to be sure – is the problem of bad teachers. We have a lot of them, and they don’t seem to be getting any better.

When I was in school, I once had an English teacher who told us with a straight face that the Soviet Union was not involved in World War II. Granted, this wasn’t his subject, but… really? Slightly dumbfounded by this bold statement, I tried to convince him otherwise. My disruption was to no avail, and only earned me looks of disdain from most of my bored classmates.

In the years since, I’ve often wondered about that incident. How could a person become a teacher without knowing undeniably basic things like that? As it turns out, there are several factors that make this possible.

Some of them are:

Flawed methods of teacher evaluation. This relates straight back to Wednesday’s post. The Department of Education, along with local school boards, seems hell-bent on turning our schools into standardized assessment factories, complete with teachers whose only purpose is to teach students how to take a test (does anyone else hear Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall” playing in their heads?).

Low pay. In 2009, the average yearly salary for a US primary school teacher who has been employed for fifteen years was less than $44,000. For most other professions requiring a college degree, that’s a standard entry level salary. How can schools possibly attract passionate, knowledgeable, proficient, competent professionals when pretty much every other employment option pays better? The result of this is that schools are left with people who either have no other choice but to become teachers, or are very passionate about educating people (bless them, but they’re rare).

Teachers’ unions and entrenched bureaucracy. Teachers’ unions do provide some recourse against unreasonable teacher evaluation, but they also prevent students and parents from having any recourse against bad teachers. Bad teachers are consistently protected from scrutiny and replacement by their unions.

“But Alex,” you might say, “the last two arguments are always used by opposite sides of the political spectrum. I thought they were mutually exclusive!”

The reality is funny. In two-sided political discourse, each party generally tries to convince us that the other’s position is the problem. But as H.L. Mencken once noted, the ironic beauty of it is that they’re usually both right – about each other.

Teacher evaluation and moral hazard

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Following New York’s recent release of teacher rankings, the chatter in the education community has once again focused upon an old question: is it wise to evaluate teachers based on student performance on standardized tests?

For us, the answer seems quite obvious. No!

Simplistic political demagoguery aside, teacher accountability is actually a complex issue. Children in different areas and of different backgrounds are subject to different circumstances, capabilities, and opportunities. Mandating one-size-fits-all standards to an endlessly diverse body of students and educators is great at making politicians seem tough, but very bad at improving the quality of education.

The entrenched standardized evaluation system also creates the phenomenon of “teaching to the test” – that is, educators focusing all their efforts on ensuring that students are able to answer formulaic test questions rather than learn in a meaningful and permanent way. The incentives created by standardized testing are all wrong: teaching students how to fill in circles with a number 2 pencil is rewarded (a la Monday’s comic), while showing them how to think critically, be creative, and learn with real depth is discouraged. This is, by the way, to say nothing of the rampant teacher cheating that the system invites.

Sadly, the stories of the machine’s latest victims – New York City’s teachers and students – seem unlikely to meaningfully diminish the bureaucrats’ heavy-handed influence on education.

The fact that local school boards and the DOE continue to defend rigid educator evaluation based on standardized testing shows that today’s educational bureaucracies are totally out of touch with reality (at best).

For years, it has been plainly obvious that standardized tests are a dreadfully inadequate way of measuring how much students have actually learned. It should follow, then, that using them to measure teacher performance is downright stupid.

Why on earth are we still doing this?