Comment by skmurphy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skmurphy | Hacker News Reader

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By far the most interesting two paragraphs in the article for me were these:

"There's precious little experimentation in education. Instead there seems to be a desire for greater regimentation, which I think is nonsense. I think we need to try 100 different things. If I were Arne Duncan, I'd think of myself as a venture capitalist, fund as many wacky and inventive ideas as I could, and closely monitor them to see how they worked.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that in inner-city schools, the thing they do best is sports. They do really, really well in sports. It's not correct to say these schools are dysfunctional; they're highly functional in certain areas. So I've always wondered about using the principles of sports in the classroom. Go same sex; do everything in teams; have teams compete with each other. I'd like to try that. I don't know whether it will work, but it's certainly worth a shot, and we could learn something really useful."

Having spent three summers as a counselor at a military sports camp, I would imagine this approach would work really, really well.

If you can put them in a structure with incentives, accountability, clear lines of authority, and very tangible goals, most young men will flourish.

The teams thing might be an interesting idea.

But doesn't "structure with incentives, accountability, clear lines of authority, and very tangible goals" pretty much describe a typical classroom, and doesn't a typical classroom suck?

If you by structure and incentives you mean do this work or you fail, and by clear lines of authority you mean the teacher is right and if by very tangible goals you mean telling the student that getting an A on this test will mean you have the chance of getting a job after getting about 1000 more As on these tests.

Then yes, but making school into a game where people work together(ie not just alone) you drive accountability, incentives to work, and a very tangible result when the team pulls it together.

I worked there for three summers. During my first two summers for the most part all the campers were on one level of authority, then they'd answer to the assistant counselors who would answer to me. It was a very flat organization.

My third summer I created a structure where every 5 "first summer" campers would report to 1 "second summer" camper and form a "squad." Every 3 squads then reported to a "third summer" camper and formed a "platoon." The two platoons formed a company and reported to the best third summer camper that week, who reported to the counselors.

Then we pitted the squads against eachother in room inspections, sports, percentage of members who had dates to the weekly dance, shower frequency, all sorts of weird stuff. We collected a crapload of data on the squads and posted it up publicly where they could all track it.

The winning squad each week got a big rock that I painted green. The counselors and I sold it to the campers as an old camp award that had been unfairly forgotten by previous counselors. The squad leader could keep it in his room for the week after his squad won it.

Results:

1. The kids worked a lot harder at the things we were grading them on.

2. They spent a lot more time talking to each other and less time talking to the counselors.

3. They generally became more proficient at all of these tasks.

I went to an all boy's high school, and it didn't make much difference academically, to be honest. If anything, the lack of females made us act even more childish in class, and thus focus less, as we had no one to really impress. Kids often pissed in the corners of classrooms and drew penises anywhere on the wall where you had more than a square inch of space.

That's where he above mentioned "clear line of authority" comes in, I guess :-)

using the principles of sports in the classroom

Right. Having kids who are inherently qualified for such-and-such activities.

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