Comment by vm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vm | Hacker News Reader

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The author hits on a powerful point that is getting missed in this HN discussion. That is: talented and driven students are limited by the US education system.

Some of those young people cultivate skill by getting practice during youth. Doing that while young builds a compounding machine of personal interest + confidence + progress.

I have never seen broad data to support this, so discussions revolve around anecdotes[1]. That's fine by me though because we have countless examples of the legends of their craft who fit that mold: bill gates, zuck, warren buffett, taylor swift, mozart, da vinci... the list is long.

No single system will work for every single student. But that isn't the point. The point is that the best of the best deserve to feed their interests at a young age, which the current US upbringing limits. How many more bill gates and zuck-level creators could the world have if more talented youths could cultivate their talents very early in life?

[1] Although not broad data, the thinking behind these works build on a similar point: Thiel Fellowship [https://thielfellowship.org/]; PG's essay How to Do Great Work [https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html]

Well, just look at the design. State education is designed to get ~97% of pupils to some minimum education level.

That means the coursework and schedules are designed specifically for the lowest common denominator of a student.

This means that if you're anything but, say, the bottom 20% of students, public school isn't an efficient use of time for you. You should be learning more in the same amount of time.

There are a lot of other problems with it too, but that's the most egregious. If education was more efficient, a lot of the other problems with it could be solved as well.

While I really want to agree with you because I spent 10 years of my education with people who were exactly the bottom 20% which was beyond frustrating, unfortunately the resources are limited, so if you try to create a society where the top 10% has all the opportunities to develop to their full potential, you'll end up leaving behind the other 90%, which will make average voter even less informed about the world around them.

> create a society where the top 10% has all the opportunities

Fixing the inefficiency doesn't necessarily mean paying more attention to the top 10% at the cost of denying resources to the bottom 90%.

One path is to develop individualized plans that allow students to work at their own pace. Instead of advancement at the end of the year, advance at attainment of a proven proficiency level.

Still require kids to physically go to school, but transform the classroom for the modern age.

Have teachers balance working with local students with working with ones in a nation-wide online network. Leverage that network of instructors and bring it to bear on a child's education, instead of leaving it entirely to those in geographic proximity.

Since most of them are teaching the same topics, start recording the lectures and promote the best of them. Balance live and recorded lecture with live hands-on local assistance as well as online Q&A.

This wouldn't increase inequality. If anything, it can't be worse than sending the richest 10% to private school while the other 90% are left to.. what it is now.

Hard to imagine what less informed would be compared to the current ignorance.

Holding back capable people from reaching their potential is a unique kind of evil to me.

It's not even about giving them more resources, but the taking away that infuriates me. The single most valuable thing a child can have is curiosity, the second most is their time. Anyone who takes away one or the other are fundamentally an enemy to me.

Forcing kids who have great potential to go at the pace of the worst is taking away both of those things at the same time. These kids don't need much babysitting, they are also completely able to learn from anything. They do not need a live instructor, that's for sure.

this assumes that the point of school is to maximize student learning. i think it's better to look at it as free daycare so that adults can work. the whole system makes more sense in that context

With a competent tutor, material and emotional support you don't need to cultivate talents, you simply create complex skills. You typically don't search so much for a hidden talent in a child as leverage their neuroplasticity and accelerated learning to lay a life-long foundation.

But this doesn't come cheap, and tutoring is also going a bit out of style, regrettably.

Well I wouldn’t mind a few less Zucks and a few more e.g. Doudna.

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