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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

This isn't surprising, really. MOOCs disproportionately benefit those who already have the means, the background, and most importantly the drive to learn.

The greatest challenge of education is to nurture the desire for learning in students and for students to be in a situation in life (e.g. situation at home - income, safety, etc) in order to even have a chance at becoming motivated.

MOOCs address the problem of access. But access wasn't the main problem to begin with for the vast majority of students whom people like Thurn was trying to reach.

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Wouldn't any educational effort disproportionately benefit those who have the means, the background and the drive to learn?

What you are describing is not education, it's convincing people to get education, which is completely different issue not solved by MOOCs or any other education technology.

Also, given how expensive currently education in the US is and how it still does not have any need to reduce the prices - on the contrary, educational prices are raising way ahead of inflation and most other prices - I wouldn't say at least US society has the luck of motivation to get educated as a widespread problem. Some people surely do, but how many? How many of them are similar enough to be captured by any single approach or narrow set of approaches that a single company could cover?

> Wouldn't any educational effort disproportionately benefit those who have the means, the background and the drive to learn?

No. New Zealand's Reading Recovery program is one example that springs to mind. Since it focuses on providing one-on-one tutoring to children who are severly behind in their reading (e.g. 10 year olds who read like 5 year olds), those who ebenefit defintely tend to have problems with the means, background, and drive.

Awesome example. But that's a targeted intervention. Any treatment/course that's provided universally will tend to help most those best able to use it, i.e. the best prepared, most privileged, etc.

This is part of why equality of opportunity can't lead to opportunity of outcome: Differences in ability and character exist and the better the background environment the more they matter. It's like height. When there's substantial variation in nutrition a lot of variation in height can be explained by that but once more or less everyone has adequate nutrition there's still a hell of a lot of variation in height, and it's due to genes and randomness. Environmental influence has been reduced to close to zero by equalization.

You are correct, in that if you are talking about remedial programs, they would benefit those who have already failed (by the virtue of being remedial programs) to achieve something that is considered normal to achieve. However, if you're talking at general education programs, not specifically targeted and limited as remedial ones, I think my point still stands. I'm not saying remedial education is not important, but I think it's a different field - like a gym and a hospital, both aim for people to be healthy, but they address different populations by different means.

It's worse than that: MOOCs don't increase employability even to someone who has the "means, the background, and most importantly the drive to learn."

It's like reading a book: No one else give a shit.

I would add that for most jobs knowing more than the basics from a course, and often not even that, isn't useful.

Reading a book won't get you a job. Being a person who reads books may very well get you one.

Books got me a few jobs.

Indeed. I got a job offer merely on the basis of having worked through much of K & R.

Reading books is not a reliable way to get a job, certain university degrees are, as are certain types of work experience and certain accreditations.

Not at all true. My girlfriend, a Stanford graduate in mechanical engineering, used MOOCs to do a career transition from product design to computational disease research. She would never have been hired without the skills she learned online.

If you get college credit and eventually a degree then people do give a shit.

Which is the point: It's not book reading itself, it's the (valued) certification.

I disagree. I can't quantify it, but taking a few impressive-sounding (and -being) courses makes you look good in employers' eyes. It shows you to be a self-driven learner who tangles with hard stuff. At least somewhat. But you're right in that it's soft; a hint, rather than a certification.

"The greatest challenge of education is to nurture the desire for learning in students"

I could not agree more. I think the idea of a curriculum is quite broken, especially in high school and below. I'd much rather have a huge list of stuff that will be tested upon university entry and let students learn whatever they want during high school (well ideally I'd want universities to do 1 on 1s with every entrant) and spend 100% of the time on creating an environment in which learning and exploring what interest you is encouraged.

I think the fundamental problem is that most people (including myself) have some assumptions on what a good education is supposed to entail and have a really hard time not trying to "force" kids to learn certain things. I blame Plato :P

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