Cantrip

How about the teachers who despite the comprehensive takedown in "Sold A Story" just love the "coziness" of the failing methods and promise to continue using those proven-to-fail methods of teaching reading? Or the ones sexually assaulting students? In your work, do you exclusively work with people at your own skill level? Is that an effective way to become more skilled? John Taylor Gatto nailed it over 30 years ago: https://cantrip.org/gatto.html You're confused because you think the purpose of school is to educate.

Because of how much more effective one on one tutoring is, it needs significantly less effort in total hours even maintaining a 30-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." [1] Unless you have some strong evidence to argue why "sit down and lecture" is the most cost effective way to educate a population, I will retain my belief that it is a cargo cult at best. [1] https://cantrip.org/gatto.html

The tone of this article resembles that in http://cantrip.org/bomb.html , by the brilliant Mark O'Donnell: "matter can be neither created nor destroyed, though it can get very discouraged." Also: "A little stray grime or margarine in your hairs-breadth mechanisms and you may find yourself festooning several square miles of nearby woodland."

I did. Kids all grown now, doing fine. My oldest daughter hated going to school, asked to stay home, so we started there. Then we read up and got involved with other homeschoolers. I recommend John Holt's books, "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilich, and anything by John Taylor Gatto. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html Not sure how we would have managed if we both had to work, or for a single parent. I had a flexible job and schedule, my wife was a full-time mom, teacher, and social director. We didn't follow any curriculum, more like the Montessori model. All of my kids have high school diplomas (through community college), one has a BA, another still in college. I went to private (Catholic) elementary school, then public schools. My wife went to public schools.

And if their stuff doesn't work as expected? "Sorry, you are not paying customer, so buzz off" or "sorry, but not enough paying customers want that fixed. You are minority, your money is worthless, so buzz off". While with Free Software you can have your people fix it, or hire consultant. I don't believe in that Bill Gates' ( http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html ) "Microsoft code has no bugs" religious gospel. All software has bugs, except Free one can get fixed.

It reminds me more of John Gatto's "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher." http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html The schooling industry is amazingly broken. At least if our goal is to raise educated, critically thinking, independent adults.

Yes, I do think both of those goals are realistic, although certainly difficult to achieve. I typed six or seven drafts of a comment trying to approach you from a convincing angle and realized that it was probably hopeless, because we likely have too many conflicting assumptions about society, morals, human nature, etc. to come to an agreement in a web forum. I would like to extend to you an invitation, and that is to read the following essay: > The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html If you find this essay accurate and intriguing, consider sending me an email (address in profile) and I'll send you a large set of essays I've collected that discuss the same principle (i.e. that modern education is harming society more than it's helping). If you find the essay naive and inaccurate, then there's likely very little that we would agree on at all, and it's not worth a 10-message reply chain where we argue over semantics. (Although I admit I enjoy a comments section rumble, as my post history reveals.)

I read the fine article kindly submitted here and a great many of the comments here before commenting. First of all, the headline of this submission (which is the original article headline, and thus expected by Hacker News rules) is a misstatement of fact. The author of the submitted article is a Virginian who has been teacher of the year at his little-known high school, but NOT the "Virginia Teacher of the Year."[1] The exaggerations go on from there. The author writes, "But public education is painted as a career where you make a difference in the lives of students. When a system becomes so deeply flawed that students suffer and good teachers leave (or become jaded), we must examine how and why we do things." Well, yes, but he could have asked different questions, and come up with the different answers earlier reached by John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year decades ago.[2] Teachers should never kid themselves about how much the school-system-as-such is designed to enable learners to learn well. That has hardly ever been its main purpose. Meanwhile, I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Virginia needs to catch up with all those reforms. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota…

I think this is a horrible article. His central argument is that the kids who demonstrate exceptional intelligence have too much attention heaped upon them, and discards the argument that in fact out school system fails these kids. While I agree in part that it is easy to put too much pressure on these kids by talking about their "potential" too much and pressuring them in directions they may not actually want to go, the answer is not to simply treat them as average. He was part of the Vanderbilt University study of kids who score at least 700 on the verbal part of the SAT, or 630 in math, by age 13. I was part of the Johns Hopkins program, which is now the Center for Talented Youth which has similar requirements. he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is. Those kids are under-served by the school system to the point of failure or near failure.He's completely right, talent isn't a number, but that number is indicative on an innate skill for knowledge assimilation and synthesis that is greater than average. Given the proper scholastic environment, these kids ARE capable of more than most, and should be allowed to find their niche just as much as the majority. The problem, in my opinion, isn't that the school system is too…

Hi Mz, I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two: a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought. b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts. The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda? http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html

This kind of stuff is the backbone of the public education system. John Taylor Gatto outlines very well the six lessons every student is taught. I think this fits well with lesson 5: In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Let's put that grit argument another way: Surviving prison develops grit. Therefore it is beneficial to go to prison. Counting the grains of sand on the beach develops grit. Therefore, it is beneficial to count the grains of sand on a beach. Point: not all activities that develop grit are beneficial. The implication of the grit argument is that any tedious activity has some benefit - if not for anything else, then at least for the development of 'grit' itself. Which is a ridiculous argument; some tedious activities are tedious because they are pointless. A better lesson to learn is to spend your time wisely - on activities that are tedious for a reason. So is school tedious for a reason? The answer is no, not really - but to prove that to you would likely take some time. I recommend you read up on John Taylor Gatto, which the speaker references above. See: http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html and http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Belatedly changed from http://cantrip.org/sortfast.html. Thanks!

Here's the article linked as https; I'll email the mods. https://cantrip.org/sortfast.html

" . . . The new version - it's not there to fix bugs. That's not the reason we come up with a new version. " - Bill Gates http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html

Then, Gamers' Desiderata, https://cantrip.org/gamers-desiderata.html I guess the "crates and ramps" reference dates it a bit.

Your last statement reminds me of this rather brutal take on the US's (and really the whole world's) educational systems, reposted to HN a few days ago: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html. The main idea is that if you look past the things we're told that school is meant to be for, school is pretty clearly meant to turn humans into compliant drones.

> Kids can't learn all day long in a classroom John Taylor Gatto is an award-winning public school teacher who was honest and brave enough to concur with you: The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

If you found this interesting, you may find John Taylor Gatto’s “The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher” fascinating. He is mentioned in the linked book, of course. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182727

Seconded about Amiga. Who knows which factory I would be earning wages to survive payday to payday today if I didn't have that Amiga at that key point in time. I did well in school regardless, because school is about surviving without becoming dumb. The more the effort put into a program that's designed for the stupidest kid, the dumber you become. It was about efficiency, better results than most with minimum effort. Refer to Taylor Gatto's The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher[0]. [0] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

The role of public school in the United States, especially when it first started, explicitly was to churn out factory workers[1]. The fact that non-industrial knowledge is also taught is a side effect of later developments. [1] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is for.School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

You should be able to link on Facebook with the real text using the link http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1 .

Gatto has very interesting ideas about education. I wish more people would listen to him. Here's a good article he wrote that I read a while ago that illuminated a lot of things for me: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

"Such a person will tend be less critical about the value of education than an outsider." Check out John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education. C.f. also http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Reminds me of the "Microsoft Code Has No Bugs" episode: http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html

galangalalgol's assertion, as I read it, was that China was domestically consuming only 81% of its production because the populace was insufficiently educated because not enough money was being spent on education, and maybe that the cause of this was economic inequality. Are you supporting that assertion, or are you making an unrelated point about educational models? Because the connection isn't clear to me. To the question of vocational training vs. liberal arts education, I think you're exaggerating subtle differences in cultural attitudes toward education that really do exist. Schools in China have compulsory classes in physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and history, among other things — vocational training for a few percent of the population, but liberal arts for the rest. The most respected form of education is still calligraphy. And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html Steve Jobs wasn't the product of the Western education system; he was the product of LSD, his machinist father, a neighborhood full of engineers, working at Hewlett Packard at 13, Hare Krishna prasad, Zen Buddhism, a pilgrimage to India, Transcendental Meditation, and Primal Scream Therapy, but especially LSD. Elon Musk isn't the product of the Western education system; he's the product of his emerald-tycoon engineer father, his supermodel…

I believe this, too, was linked from Hacker News at some point recently: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991 "The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory. Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist. The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of…

I think that your insight, while simple, is profound. Yes, I think it's the mind state, to a large degree. With that insight, what does a teacher have to do? She has to find a way to change their minds. She has to make it feel interesting also to them, and most of all inspire them. She has to be a leader for that class, in an exploration of the world. Anytime a student asks why (anytime! In any context) that's an opportunity to take that student, and her question, seriously. Have a discussion on why, the reasons, perhaps the history of the subject matter. Create a special environment. Let the student's know that even if the rest of the school is boring, with teachers that just don't understand or seem grey and dull, this is not that, it's different. Spark curiosity. Don't argue with those who say they're not interested, cater to those who are, and make it easy to join in. But most of all, take the children seriously, create a culture of trust in the class, and read the six lesson school teacher by John Gatto: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html