59 – Gettin’ Schooled

The Bayesian Conspiracy

59 – Gettin’ Schooled

We discuss schooling and education with Audrey.

Robin Hanson argues that schooling is to domesticate humans.

The Zvi is much more emotionally compelling in his Case Against Education and it’s follow-up (with more coming)

Scott Alexander examines why DC’s graduation rates are projected to plummet

Richard Feynman’s anecdote about students who knew all the details of light polarizing when reflected from a medium, but didn’t know how this applied to light reflecting off water.

From waaaaaay back in the day: Paul Graham on the social environment of schools and their likeness to prisons.

Per Audrey’s request, we have found an education charity that we are in favor of and can gladly recommend. Tostan International, first brought to Eneasz’s attention by Ozy at Thing of Things. (What really impressed Eneasz is that their focus is on education, and as a side effect they’ve been instrumental in over 6,000 villages ending Female Genital Cutting)

How To Win The AI Box Experiment (Sometimes). Massively interesting!

Big thanks to David for our intro music! I’ll add a link here for his stuff when I track it down. 🙂

We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

4 comments

Eddie says:

May 10, 2018 at 7:50 am

Wonderful episode. Audrey is great and passionate and reminiscent of my favorite teachers and friends who went into education. I find myself agreeing with basically everything she said.

Also I might have made a mistake conflating the cdc and fda. I still think fda does a net good, but agree that they could be better. I think splitting the f and d parts into different organizations is a great idea.
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Steve says:

May 14, 2018 at 12:14 pm

Hey Peeps,
Great ep as always. I just came to point out that the guest you had here seems to be unaware of some major solutions to the problems of education that she brought up (to be fair, I’m in the middle of the podcast, so I’m sorry if I just haven’t gotten to it yet).

1. Restorative Justice: Think rigging instincts of tribalism and self-worth inside the classroom to let the students know that the education is theirs too. By giving them a stake in the design and a civil way to talk about other issues they are having, this is making huge leaps and bounds in schools that have been consumed with other social issues.

2. Mastery first Learning: The rational methodology to move toward if you appreciate what science has had to say for the LAST 50 YEARS.

I argue for self-paced, mastery learning. Essentially making a hybrid online and in person school system where you go to school for testing and to control your health as you learn from resources like khan academy and pass all of the testing. Failure should never be an option. I would also do away with GPA scores. Test passing and certifications only.

Employers who want to hire from competition should organize their own competitions rather than expect all of us to jump into the learning olympics the first time we encounter new ideas and then have the nerve to expect us to pay for it too. School should be a healthy environment, period.

My ideas won’t leave anyone behind. Jobs will be the focus and purpose, not an institutionalized hazing ritual.

…. now, back to studying for these shitty finals that make me want to pull my hair out.
James says:

May 21, 2018 at 10:14 am

I feel like it was overlooked that the reason charter schools exist is to privatize schools to divert money from poor, minorities, and unions specifically.

The more the system is dicked around the worse it is and the more they can cut/pocket the money from it.

This starve the beast strategy is a well known tactic for conservative pro business political operators

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59 – Gettin’ Schooled

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59 – Gettin’ Schooled