Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program | Hacker News Reader

Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

nytimes.com

77 pointsdjoldman27 comments

The idea that children should spend their days staring at screens and never interacting with other human beings seems really sick. But oh so on brand for the Valley.

It's not just the Valley, it's also the model of traditional schooling. The majority of classroom time in many places is spent sitting quietly and listening to a teacher lecture.

Of course we all understand why school is run this way, but the alternatives would cost a lot more money. Isn't that the story of life everywhere...

Although it's my understanding that the valley rich people pay for their children to get educated by humans rather than computer monitors.

It fits into the narrative that the Zuckerburg's want for their target market -- a peron that you can track everything they read and learn and consistently target with ads all day long.

I can't tell if you meant "person" or "peon". Both do fit, though.

Our daughter is enrolled in a Summit school in the Bay Area. It’s been a very positive experience and not one I’d recognize from the way it’s described in the story. Her teachers are extremely available and supportive, and there’s a lot of emphasis on group and individual projects and presentations.

But I would agree that a lot of the linked resources in the curriculum are not of very high quality. I don’t know whether better sources at the appropriate reading level aren’t available, or if they just grabbed something from the first page of Google results.

I’m wondering if some of the issues in the story have to do with the implementation of the program and not the program itself.

I'm a board member of a school district, and I have to say I was shocked at the resistance to trying new methods of learning from both the administration and educators in our districts. Flat out statements that "kids can't learn from computers," while not universal, were common. Resistance to change is enormous. Combine this with the education industrial complex that has built up around traditional schools, and getting anything done is very very hard.

So I would have a view that there was likely some bumpy implementation, that there were some grumpy parents, and the teachers were more than happy to have the rebellion established. Don't underestimate a passive-aggressive implementation approach as an attempt to scuttle the whole thing. (I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did. Even though that was obviously not the intent of common core.)

So yes -- poor implementation in an environment that easily rolls small snowballs into avalanches that hit the NYT.

> I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did.

Wow, that sounds like exactly what we heard from the teachers in our daughter's school. My mom is a math professor who helps write high school curriculum and was initially a big proponent of Common Core. She has tutored my daughter through common core and now 5000 miles away in a third-world country. She has come face-to-face with the fact that something was terribly wrong. I honestly can't tell if how much was truly common core vs the passive-aggressive implementation by unwilling teachers, but, you know something's wrong when you can literally move to a place where the availability of electric power and fresh vegetables are uncertain, and do better in math.

It's certainly true that some children (and indeed, many adults) do not seem to have the ability to learn from computers, and the computer won't do anything about that (where a human teacher would identify the children who cannot learn from them and can do something about it).

Learning from computers is a skill like any other; is that skill taught first? I wonder if there's an unrealised assumption that everyone can simply sit down in front of a computer and be efficiently educated by it.

> “There’s people who don’t want change. They like the schools the way they are,” she said. “The same people who don’t like Summit have been the sort of vocal opposition to change throughout the process.”

It makes sense that the company would respond this way: those who oppose them aren't customers, just the people forced to use the product.

This school is so lacking in funds, they can't even guarantee ten minutes of time with a teacher per week? That's over 200 students per teacher. The new program likely has some problems, but I'd guess the change is just highlighting how bad it was before. Except the student with epilepsy, that's ridiculous.

It’s Kansas. Public education funding was gutted.

That said, the number of parents working in Silicon Valley who would send their kids to a school that worked like this is very low. The closest thing would be Alt-School which pretty much failed.

So on one hand, the hypocrisy is annoying. On the other hand, these schools have no money so maybe this helps them stay open at least.

>That said, the number of parents working in Silicon Valley who would send their kids to a school that worked like this is very low

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Many people prefer self directed and independent learning. And the reality is that once you're out of college effectively all learning happens that way.

I’m one of these parents, and I know a lot of them.

Most restrict screen time to ... zero. And they’re big names at Google and FB and whatever.

“Self directed” comes in many different forms. I’m not saying Summit is negative (although one of the comments on this story references a study that says it’s net-equal to negative). I’m just pointing out that SF/SV is a weird place.

> “Self directed” comes in many different forms

e.g. Montessori schools are very much in favor of self directed learning, but not in the form of computer instruction.

>Most restrict screen time to ... zero.

For young kids? Sure. For middle school to high school kids like the article is talking about? I seriously doubt it.

This article was pretty light on substantial criticism of the program. I suppose the most significant was the girl with epilepsy who was advised not to look at computer screens more than 30 minutes a day. That's definitely unfortunate.

I’m all for exploring new ways to educate kids but does anyone else think it’s kind of weird these experiments are happening in public schools?

Why not set up low-cost private opt-in “Lab schools” instead? That way, if the experimental program isn’t working for a student they can transfer back to regular school.

That was the original premise of charter schools, and decades later, the pitch for AltSchools.

> Summit demands an extraordinary amount of personal information about each student and plans to track them through college and beyond,

Exactly what I would expect from Facebook: schooling means optimizing kids for maximum engagement.

> In one class covering Paleolithic history, Summit included a link to an article in The Daily Mail,

Wait, what? So we're replacing textbooks with random tabloid articles? I'm sure it saves lots of money to use the ad-supported web as "learning material."

I'll believe this works when Chan and Zuckerberg enroll their kids in one of these schools.

One of the things that worries me about the current approaches to improving schools is that we focus so much on ensuring a minimum standard for all students to meet. I think for the future of the country, we should care much more about ensuring that exceptional students are allowed to excel. An exceptional student from a wealthy background will get the extra support they need, but we need a system where exceptional students from any background are able to reach their real potential.

If something like personalized learning can be made to work, it really has a ton of potential to realize this vision. It's a major project to really get this right though. Not sure if Summit has the right approach, but this article doesn't talk at all about what they're actually doing. It would be nice to see some much more thoughtful criticism.

Agreed that exceptional students should be given tools to excel. College admissions is supposed to work that way by accepting the best academically and supporting them with academic scholarships.

Still, the world is full of people who will not excel at anything. They deserve help to be their best too.

Silicon Valley’s mantra for finding suckers(in their minds) in the flyover country is “we come bearing gifts” and don’t forget the mission to “change the world”

Actual title of the NY times piece: "Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion."

How convenient for Zuckerberg that his "learning" program directs children to click links that send them to ad and tracking filled websites.

This is exactly the type of "philanthropy" I expected from his "charity" when it was announced.

Surely they could have used money from the foundation to pay for original content on subjects instead ofb linking to random websites. Besides, links die, content can change. There's no guarantee any of those links will be good.

Summit demands an extraordinary amount of personal information about each student and plans to track them through college and beyond,”

If true, then, this info should have been in the first paragraph ...

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