Liberal Homeschooling Response

This is a comment in response to: http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/2012/06/liberals-who-homeschool-special-needs.html  My response is longer than the comments allow, so I am posting it here.


First my disclaimer: I am conservative.  We are homeschooling our children (they are 3, 2, and 1 right now, so it is not very rigorous yet).  I was homeschooled from 6th grade on.  I was pulled out of public school because I was failing 6th grade.  At the same time, I was in the Talented and Gifted program.  The primary reason I was failing was that public school was slow and boring, so I would do things that were more interesting, instead of homework.  For me, homeschool allowed me to do my work at my own pace (fairly quickly) and then study more interesting things with the extra time.

Now, for the subject at hand.  The biggest argument, by far, that I have heard against homeschooling is that kids don't get properly "socialized."  The argument is that for kids to become socially adept, they must interact with others of their own age, in an uncontrolled environment (and public schools with 15 to 20 times as many students as teachers certainly provide this uncontrolled environment).  The problem here is that before 12 to 16 years old, it is just plain stupid to put kids into an uncontrolled social environment (the internet has verified this repeatedly).  Young children have poor judgement (mostly due to lack of experience and mental maturity).  Putting a bunch of people with poor judgement together without any moderator will result in situations like the one mentioned in the article.  They will essentially form their own government, which will typically be led by whoever is most charismatic or strongest (as in, whoever bullies the most effectively, mentally or physically).  This is very bad.  In fact, the cultures in many U.S. public schools are about the same as ancient barbarian civilizations like the Mongols, where the ruler was the one who killed anyone who challenged his rule.  (No wonder autistic kids get physically abused.  They tend to care less about power hierarchies, which is perceived as a challenge by whoever thinks they are in charge.  Having mild Asperger's, I know about this.)  In this environment, kids who are different (whether autistic, Down's Syndrome, or even just an unusual hair color) should expect to get bullied, and if their parents don't understand why their kid gets singled out, then they don't understand how kids work.

There is another problem with this argument.  First, up until the last 100 years, there has not been a public school system that segregated children by age.  Before this period, kids were primarily socialized in family, church, and community settings.  These settings are very highly controlled and are not segregated by age (sometimes children would be segregated from adults, but "children" included all ages from 2 to 15, not groups for each individual age).  Further though, during the last 100 years, the "generation gap" has slowly widened.  Now, recent highschool graduates coming into the workforce have a very difficult time working with older workers (as in, workers 25 years old or older).  I have personal experience with this (I got along fine with older workers at a large hardware store I worked at, but every single highschool student or new graduate had problems with socialization with older employees).  Back before we had age segregated public schools, even 16 year olds worked well with older workers.  I would argue that our school system, where students are segregated by age in an uncontrolled social environment, is the primary cause of the so called "generation gap."  In real life, a vast majority of those we will be expected to get along with are not our own age.  Arguing that good socialization requires uncontrolled groups of similar ages is absurd.

In addition to all of this, most homeschoolers are either fairly religious, or have the sense to find social groups for their children.  My family is religious.  We attend church every Sunday, which gives our children a variety of people with a large age range to socialize with.  There is a 2 hour nursery class that they go to while we are in Sunday School, which has 3 or 4 supervisors for maybe 10 or 12 children (very controlled).  My mom takes my siblings who are still in school to a homeschool social group and sends some of them to external classes (my brother took a science class for homeschoolers that included 10 or so other homeschooled children).  In each of these situations, the social environment was controlled (maybe not so much for the science class, but this was when my brother was 16 or 17, and required less control).  Good homeschoolers do this whenever possible.  Homeschoolers with large families may not even need to do this, because a home with more than 4 or 5 children makes a very good, controlled social environment (it tends to include a good age range as well).  In my experience, homeschooled people tend to fit into social groups with a wide range of ages far better than people who were in public school.  Since this includes almost every post highschool social group on the planet, this is far more important than the kind of "socialization" that U.S. public schools provides.

Given all of this, I think that it is unfair and somewhat cruel to subject my children to the uncontrolled social environment, run by people with poor judgement (other students), that public school provides.  That said, if homeschool just does not work for some of my children, then we may try public school for those children (my mom had to do this with one of my brothers, and for him it worked out very well).

Overall, homeschool should be a careful decision.  Many parents cannot (or are not willing to) handle the rigor required to effectively homeschool their children, and in those cases, it is more important for the children to learn than to be in an ideal social environment.  For those that have special needs children, or just don't want to subject their children to the socially toxic environment of public schools, homeschool can be a very good option, and in my opinion, the needs of the individual child should outweigh some ethereal idea that putting a lot of children together will somehow make the good behavior push out the bad.  This is especially true of special needs children.

Lord Rybec

Gamefication in Schools

If you don't believe that video games are good educational tools, look up Ananth Pai.  I spent a few hours today watching TED videos on gamefication.  One gamefication expert mentioned this guy named Ananth Pai.  Mr. Pai is from India.  He is a teacher in the U.S. and mostly teaches 3rd grade.  His teaching record, based on tests scores of students, was just as crummy as most other U.S. teachers, until one day his 6th grade daughter suggested that his students might respond better if they were able to use Nintendo DS handheld consoles in the classroom for learning.  Initially, he thought her suggestion was absurd, and even said that he would never allow that.  Soon after though, he spent some time hanging out at BestBuy, asking children if they would like it if their classes used those game consoles for learning.  They all said that they would like that a lot.  So, Mr. Pai bought enough Nintendo DS consoles for his entire class (out of his own pockets, because the administration thought the idea was absurd).  Eventually, he added desktop computers, and even XBox Kinect.  His third grade class, which had started with math and reading skills below what is typically expected for a third grader, ended that school year with math and reading skills typically expected of students halfway through forth grade (they learned more than a grade and a half of material in one grade).  His students' test scores improved by 2 to 5 times what was typical for the school.  In addition, when those students moved on, they maintained their lead, even though the classes for later grades were not gamefied in any way.

This is one case of evidence that games are great learning tools.  As I have mentioned before, Khan Academy has shown that children will even respond well to game-like reward systems, with no other game-like elements.  Mr Pai's experience has caught the attention of several large corporations that regularly donate money to education, as well as education system officials for several states.  Unfortunately, this buzz happened in 2011, and we still don't have a large scale gamefication of schools in the U.S.  Why not?  We have all sorts of evidence that this works, and the U.S. education system is becoming one of the worst in the world.  Our government keeps trying to think of new ways to improve the education system, and in the process has managed to hobble it more successfully than it has ever been in the history of our country.  Why do we keep trying new things, hoping they will work, when the answer is staring us in the face?

Most Americans that do believe video games can be useful learning tools think that educational games have to be designed to be educational to be effective.  Up until today I believed that, to some degree.  Games like World of WarCraft have great benefits for general education and brain development, but they just don't teach specific subjects very consistently.  Some Wow players might get good at math from managing their imaginary in-game money.  Others might get better reading skills from reading all of the storyline text presented when accepting quests, or from communicating with other players.  Many players just ignore the difficult elements though.  The game is designed so that this does not make it much more difficult, because otherwise it would not retain players very well.  Most commercial games are designed so that players only have to learn what they want to learn from the game.  Besides that, many of the mental benefits of these games are not easily quantifiable and while they are useful real life skills, they are just not considered important enough to dedicate school time to learning (spatial memory and mapping skills, for instance).  It would be reasonable to assume, knowing only this, that games are good for general mental exercise and improvement, but not for learning specific subjects.  Today I learned that this is totally wrong.

Mr Pai bought store shelf commercial games for his Nintendo DS consoles.  He chose ones with obvious educational value, but not the kind of games that are specifically designed to teach 3rd graders math and reading.  One of the games was a collection of simple brain games.  These are intended to be mentally stimulating, but they were not designed to teach 3rd grade math.  They were designed to be entertaining.  One of these games casts the player in the role of a cashier.  The player rings up items, then takes payment for them.  The player must then count out the change for the payment.  Players get points when they count out the correct change.  Students in Mr. Pai's class would play this game and compete to see who could get the highest score.  This is one of the many games they used to improve their math skills.

The reason that these games are so successful at teaching is that they are engaging.  A typical classroom lecture is boring, especially to 3rd graders.  With usually only one hour per day and a class of 30 students, a teacher can only devote 2 minutes of personal time per student, assuming that no lecture is given.  A 30 minute lecture leaves only 1 minute per student.  This is not enough time for meaningful one on one time with all of the students that need it.  Engaging games encourage the students to learn on their own.  This leaves more time for the teacher to spend with students that really need help.  Mr. Pai also found that this eliminates the need for homework, giving the students more free time outside of class (though, nearly every study on the subject has found that more than 15 minutes per day of homework has no discernible benefits anyhow).  Some students would even play some of the online games they used in class at home after school, for entertainment.

In summary, there is plenty of evidence that gamefication is superior to everything else that we have tried for improving our education system.  The most effective learning games are not necessarily those designed specifically for learning.  Games that are engaging help keep the interest of students.  What we really need to do is find or make a bunch of games that are engaging and also happen to be educational, then use these game in our schools to teach our children.  Based on the results of people like Ananth Pai, and Salman Khan of Khan Academy, our educational system could easily and quickly become one of the best in the world, instead of one of the worst, if we would embrace gamefication, instead of treating it like an absurd joke.

Lord Rybec

Video Game Stigma

In a speech, on August 8th, 1983, Ronald Regan said, "I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets."  Typically when a U.S. President says something, the people listen.  In this case, however, they did not.  Most Americans, even those who play them regularly, still see video games as valueless time wasters that are nothing more than meaningless entertainment.  The hand eye coordination benefits of playing video games are the butt of many jokes.  What researchers did not know when Regan made this statement, and what a vast majority of Americans still do not know, is that video games have far more benefits than just coordination.

Five or six years ago, I read an article in either Scientific American or Discover magazine.  I cannot find a reference for the article because neither of those magazines' websites have decent search capability, and there are so many articles on the subject that even Google is no help.  The author of this article was working on a research project on sensory benefits of certain sensory disabilities.  It has been known for some time that people who are blind or deaf tend to have heightened ability in the other senses.  This researcher wanted to find exactly how far these sensory benefits went, so he made some computer programs to test things like reflexes and coordination.  He found that people with sensory disabilities performed significantly better on all of his tests than people without any sensory disabilities.  Then one day, he decided to try the tests himself.  He scored off the charts.  His scores beat both the normal test subjects and the disabled ones, by a wide margin.  After testing the other researchers he worked with, along with some other people, he found that the link was computer games.  People who regularly played computer games consistently scored much higher than even people with sensory disabilities.  This researcher ended up changing his research to find the effects of video games on the human brain.  In his article, he compares playing video games to working out for the brain.  Further research found that video games can improve social skills, mathematical skills, quick decision making skills, risk assessment skills, spatial memory skills, reflexes, physical and mental coordination, as well as any number of different types of problem solving skills, and many other skills.

Other recent research has found even more beneficial uses of games in general.  A Deseret News article I recently read advocated the use of games for improving family life.  The article cited research showing that playing games (including board and cards games, as well as video games) occupies the logical centers of our brains, which makes us less hesitant about discussing difficult subjects.  In family settings, this can help keep discussions on controversial topics more civil and more likely to occur in the first place.

Jane McGonigal, a gaming advocate, has given several TED talks on how video games can improve society.  Her focus is on family life improvement and building problem solving skills that will be useful for solving some of the world's most difficult problems.  She recommends playing no less than 20 hours of games a week.  She suggests that MMORPGs are especially good, because of the cooperative social interaction, but says that multiplayer games in person are even better.  Ideally, she says that cooperative in-person games are the best, because they build teamwork skills and strengthen relationships.  In one TED talk, she also explains and shows how turning a difficult task into a game can make it much easier, or at least less tedious and more engaging.

I also have some personal experience with the benefits of video games.  Many years ago, I attended a youth group, where we played volleyball weekly.  I noticed that most people who joined our games were not very coordinated when they started and often took many months to improve their skill.  There were some people, however, that were very coordinated and could play well, without any prior experience.  There were a few differences between those who could play well right off and those who could not.  People with prior experience in other sports tended to be fairly good right off.  There were some people though, that were good right off, but that had no real athletic experience.  Most of these people were actually not very physically fit either.  This was because they spent a lot of time playing video games.  Somehow, they could play as well as some people with prior vollyball experience, even though they were unathletic, with no real experience in any sport.  The benefits to coordination, reflexes, and quick decision making from playing video games were very clear.

A lot of research showing the beneficial effects of games is not limited to video games.  Most games can have some beneficial effect, and different games have different beneficial effects.  For instance, Tetris is great for basic problem solving, reflexes, coordination, and fast decision making, while Dungeons and Dragons is great for cooperative social skills, relationship building, advanced problem solving, and even basic mathematical skills.  Video games tend to focus more on fast decision making, reflexes, coordination, while non-video games focus more on advanced problem solving, risk assessment, and social skills.  Obviously some games cross boundaries, but there are some skills that do not cross boundaries well.  In short, not all of the benefits of video games can be gained from non-video games, and not all of the benefits of non-video games can be gained from video games.  For the full benefits, a variety of games and game types are important.

We need to get over this social stigma of video games.  Admittedly, video games can be addictive, and like working out, if you do not use what you gain from it, it is worthless.  I think, however, that eliminating the social stigma around video games would solve part of this problem.  Many gamers feel isolated by this social stigma, so they spend most of their time playing video games, because at least on the games, they have friends who do not judge their hobby.  Ironically, these gamers tend to be smarter than the people who judge them, and recent research has shown that many of them even have better social skills, because they work with other people solving in-game problems regularly (many MMORPGs are more social than workplaces or even bars).  If our society did not push these gamers into isolation, they would probably spend less time playing games and more time working with other people to solve real world problems, and they would be extremely good at it, because of the problem solving skills gained playing games.  Also, if society stopped pushing gamers into isolation, maybe more people would play games, and the average intelligence of our society would improve.  If this happened, maybe all of these extremely difficult problems we are facing would not be so difficult anymore.

One thing we need to consider is what is really important in our society?  Many schools and colleges place emphasis on certain types of games.  These are sports, an athletic kind of game that does have some benefits in common with other types of games.  The primary benefit of sports are all physical though.  Sports improve our strength and endurance.  They can also improve coordination to some degree, but they do not improve our mental function as much as games that challenge the mind (there is strong evidence that physical exercise does improve cognitive function, but only on a general level).  This seems to indicate that our society values physical fitness more than mental fitness.  Ironically, much of our media supports this theory.  Also, ironically, the most important jobs are not ones where anyone cares about physical fitness.  Some of the best paying and highest demand jobs are engineering jobs, where mental fitness is the only qualifying factor.  Engineers are not muscular, skinny people with great bodies.  They are extremely smart people with well developed minds.  So, why are we not having more "sports" in schools and colleges that emphasize mental fitness?  Some colleges, including MIT, have StarCraft 2 teams, but most traditional colleges have at least football, basketball, and volleyball teams, and many also include baseball and softball, but nothing to challenge the mind.  These skills will be great for the fraction of a percent of students who become professional athletes, but for the rest of us the only benefit is better physical fitness, which could easily be achieved by walking or running to our classes instead of driving.

I would like to see more video games in schools.  I don't mind if they are educational games, since this is really the goal, but they should also be engaging games, otherwise students will not want to play them and will get far less benefits from them.  Also, while StarCraft 2 is a great competitive game and teaches a lot of useful skills, we need some cooperative games as well.  Jane McGonigal recommends 20 hours of games per week.  I do not think this should all occur in school (otherwise half of school time would be gaming), but even 2 or 3 hours a week would have beneficial effects.  In elementary school students typically get an hour of recess per day (usually 30 minutes at a time), and an hour of lunch that includes some recess time after eating.  This is more than enough physical activity to maintain good fitness (not to mention the PE classes that involve even more physical activity).  What if, two days a week, that hour of recess was spent playing games instead?  The students would still have the recess time during lunch for physical activity.  The game time could begin and end with restroom breaks, so the students are not sitting still for too long at a time.  If the games could be played in short intervals, they could be played during the normal 30 minute recess times, otherwise the school could schedule time differently for those days, to make the time 1 continuous hour.  Highschools and colleges could offer game class time or extracurricular game time much like they currently offer sports.  Note that I am not saying they should eliminate sports entirely, but I think that if sports are considered a valuable asset to students, games should be considered at least as valuable, since they offer more practical benefits than physical sports.

Also, games are usually cheaper than physical sports.  For a given sport, schools or students often end up paying hundreds of dollars per student for equipment.  Most schools already have a computer lab, and multiple students can use a computer if they are scheduled at different times (much like the same field can be used for multiple sports, as long as it is scheduled well), so computer costs are already covered.  The best games for this sort of thing do not cost more than $60 per copy, and most cost substantially less, so even if each student needs their own copy, the per student cost for student specific equipment is not more than $60 per sport (and, for account based games like StarCraft 2, many students will already have their own account).  Also, this is typically a one time cost, while physical sports often require new equipment regularly, as the old equipment wears out.  New computers will only be needed if new game courses are added that require better computers, or if there are too many students and there are not enough computers to go around.  Our society and our schools embrace extracurricular games that build skills that are not very relevant to our modern civilization, when they could be embracing games that build useful and relevant skills for much cheaper.

Focusing of physical sports and physical fitness is great if we are trying to raise a generation of construction workers, but what we really need are engineers and problem solvers.  Games can help give us these.  Games are to mental fitness as working out is to physical fitness.  Since our current civilization needs mentally fit people much more than physically fit people, our culture needs to embrace gaming as a means of improving and progressing.  If we can eliminate this video game stigma that our society has harbored for far too long, I believe that we can progress much faster and solve many of our most difficult problems much more easily.

Lord Rybec

Home School

I may have mentioned this before, but we plan on homeschooling our children.  I have some experience with this, because I was homeschooled from 6th grade on.  My mom chose to take me out of public school because I was failing 6th grade.  Now, you might think this was because I was stupid or lazy.  I was in the Talented and Gifted program, so I was definitely not stupid.  I was not really lazy either (ok, maybe a little).  The problem was the system.  I learn very fast.  In a normal classroom, the teacher repeats a lot of stuff and then assigns homework intended partially to test knowledge, but mostly to reiterate everything taught.  The result is a teaching method that relies on repeatedly telling the students the same things until it sticks.  Well, for me it stuck the first time, and then I got bored.  I found that if I finished assignments early, I was given more work to do, because the teacher didn't know what else to do with me.  This made the boredom even worse.  Consequently, I just quit doing the work.  Halfway through 6th grade, I was in the Talented and Gifted program, but I was failing all of my classes miserably.  So, my mom pulled me out of public school, bought a 2 inch thick workbook that covered all of the material for 6th grade, and made me do it in less than half a school year.  It was hard.  I was doing 10 pages a day in that book that was designed for 3 to 5 pages a day.  I also really enjoyed it, because I could often get all of my 10 pages done by lunch time, and no one gave me more work to do.

We are not homeschooling our children so they will enjoy it, though I do hope that they will.  We are homeschooling our children because we believe that we can give them a superior education to what the public school system offers.  I recognize that this is not a claim that all parents can make.  Some are not educated enough themselves to teach others (or have forgotten too much and do not have an easy time remembering or relearning it).  Others just are not good teachers, regardless of education.  My wife and I are fairly well educated and experience with our three children indicates that we are fairly good at teaching as well.  Given this, I think that we will be successful at homeschooling our children.

Now, what I want to discuss is my goals for homeschooling our children, as well as some of the methods we intend to use to accomplish this.

First, I am working on teaching our 3 year old daughter to read.  If you have read studies on learning to read, you probably know that the absolute minimum recommended age for starting is 4 years old.  Potential consequences of starting too early include the child believing that reading is just too hard for them, which can make it very difficult to teach them to read when they are ready.  I have a decent solution to this problem though.  We are using the Distar method as presented in the book, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons."  The first lesson teaches the child to associate the letters "m" and "s" with their sounds (among a few other things).  Once a week, for maybe 15 minutes, I sit my daughter down, and we work on this.  We have not even made it past the first page, because she still has trouble remembering which sound goes with which letter.  We will continue to do this until she can consistently remember the sounds, then we will move ahead a little bit more.  Because the lessons are short, she does not get frustrated or bored.  Typically a lesson ends when she is no longer interested.  At 3 years old, a short attention span for this sort of learning is normal, and trying to overcome it is likely to harm the child's ability to learn (by making them hate learning).  The nice thing about this method is that now I don't have to try to judge when she is ready to learn to read.  As she becomes ready, she will start to catch on better and will be able to sit still and learn for longer.  These early short lessons are probably helping prepare her brain to read.  She has also become much better at pronouncing words correctly since we started this, so there are additional benefits.  (Note that this may not work for all children.  Different children do learn better with different learning techniques.  This is another reason we are homeschooling.  Public schools cannot tailor learning models to each individual student.  Parents can.)

Second, a major goal for our children's learning is problem solving.  I am a computer programmer, and problem solving is my job.  As a college student, I see a lot of other students have difficulty learning to program computers.  The main reason is that they have poor problem solving skills.  Instead of trying to find information on their own, they ask professors or other students, or they just struggle.  o Often the answers are obvious to me, even for questions that I have no experience with, but they don't have the self confidence to trust what they know, and they don't even consider that they can find it themselves without help.  Problem solving may seem like something that is only really useful for engineering fields.  In reality, problem solving is a skill that can be used everyday in normal life.  What happens when you realize that you don't have enough money to pay the bills this month?  Many people just default on some payment or other.  A lot of vehicles get repossessed because of this.  Try searching "can't afford my loan payments" on Google.  The first hit (that is not an advertisement) gives a long list of ways to handle student loans when you cannot afford them, including deferment and negotiating a better payment schedule.  If you replaced "loan" with "car" you would find information dealing specifically with car loans.  What you would learn is that no one wants to repossess your car or house.  They would much rather the money you owe them, and typically they are willing to work with you if you are having trouble with finances.  The most basic problem solving skill is admitting you have a problem and asking for help, and many people do not have this skill.  Better though, decent problem solving skills would enable people to make good budgeting decisions and come up with a financial plan to avoid this problem all together.  Truly good problem solving skills can help people to avoid unnecessary debt entirely and devise a financial plan to minimize the length and interest of necessary debt.  This kind of problem solving will make any employee a better employee, even in unskilled labor like fast food.  Of course, it is fairly obvious (given the massive failure of many large businesses in the last decade) that even CEOs and other business leaders could do with better problem solving skills.  I think that the two most important skills I can teach my children are reading and problem solving.  With these skills and decent internet access, they can learn anything else they will ever need.

That brings me to everything else.  First, for the problem solving skills, learning basic computer programming should really help with the basic problem solving.  If any of them are interested in more advanced programming, I will teach them, but I won't force them to learn beyond the basics.  This will probably be their first big problem solving training.  Their writing/English training will also involve problem solving, once they get to learning grammar.  My plan for this is to give them either a weekly or biweekly (once every two weeks) subject (typically of their choice, but I might sneak subjects like history into this if they don't choose them on their own) that they have to write a short paper on.  I will expect them to do the research on their own with minimal help (after some tutoring in using various resources, like the internet and the library).  Really, this will work with pretty much any research subject, including history, geography, sociology, and such.

For math, I plan to use Khan Academy.  I may use Khan Academy for some other subjects as well (it does have a little bit of history and will probably have much more by the time my children are old enough to need it).  Khan Academy has a fairly complete set of mathematics learning tools for all math through high school and a bunch more college level math.  The videos make great lectures (that can be watched multiple times as needed; better than public school, where if you miss it the first time, you are out of luck), the exercises are very good, the coaching system will allow us to keep track of our children's progress and give individual tutoring where needed, and the reward system helps keep it fun for the students (and has encouraged certain 5th graders to become proficient at some of the college level math).

In addition to these, I think Freerice.com would be a good supplement for a number of subjects (not to mention that for each correctly answered question, they donate 10 grains of rice to feeding people in 3rd world countries, which may help teach charity to some degree).  Freerice.com covers some subjects that Khan Academy does not and that are not best taught in a classroom setting (vocabulary, for instance).

My ultimate hope is that we can teach our children to be capable of learning anything they need to, without needing the babysitting often found in public school classrooms.  I also hope that easy access to information will help them to be interested in (and study) a broad range of subjects, so they will have a well rounded education.  If my goals are met, they will have a better, more rounded education, than the average high school graduate and may even be more educated in a number of subjects than the average college graduate.

I have a good learning model and curriculum in mind.  I need to do a little bit more research on what subjects are good to start teaching when, before I document it.  I'll write an article outlining these once I have documented it.  One major part of it will be giving the student a lot of choice in what to learn and when.  What I am thinking is that I need to come up with a list of subjects for each grade, along with a number of "credits" needed in each subject to finish that grade.  The student then will submit a proposal for each credit, on what to learn to earn the credit.  So, for American History, one credit might be earned by studying and writing a report on the Civil War, and another might be earned by doing the same for the design and creation of the U.S. Constitution.  Of course, there will probably be a few specifics that are mandatory, but instead of scheduling them for a specific unit, we will leave it up to the student, so long as it gets done by whatever deadline it has (probably end of school year, or graduation).  Anyhow, more information on this when I have it documented.

Lord Rybec

Work Ethic in Post-secondary Education

I have complained about the U.S. grading system before.  I am going to do it again.  This time I want to discuss the practice of tying grades to work ethic.  Many college professors justify excessive homework loads by saying that they have a responsibility to either teach students a good work ethic, or that the students' grades should reflect their work ethic.  I believe that this is a lie.

First, I do not think that grading systems that imply a reflection of proficiency in a subject have any business reflecting anything but proficiency.  Grades have nothing to do with work ethic, and those who review grades either for employment decisions or Masters or PhD. programs naturally assume that grades reflect proficiency, not work ethic.

Second, it is impossible to entirely alienate work ethic from grades.  The average 12-14 credit semester load has around 20 hours of in-class time per week.  Most colleges recommend either 3 hours a week outside of class per credit, or 2 hours a week outside of class per hour in class.  My current load is 14 credits with 21 hours of class time.  My college recommends 2 hours per hour of class.  So, my weekly recommended workload is 63 hours.  Given the 40 hour work week, this is full-time work plus 23 hours of overtime.  If I can keep up with this and get good grades, without any extra busy work, then I have 1.5 times the work ethic required of the average 40 hour a week worker.  Adding additional work to this is not only unnecessary if work ethic is the justification, but it is practically criminal.  If I am working a traditional job, as an hourly worker, I cannot be required to work more than 40 hours a week, and if I refuse when asked, I am legally protected from any sort of retribution (they cannot fire me, cut my hours, or even treat me differently from someone who does agree to work overtime).  Now, I am not saying that education should be the same.  If we cut the "education work week" to 40 hours a week, we would be looking at 6 year degrees instead of 4 year degrees.  What I am saying is that getting decent grades already implies a superior work ethic to that required in the work place.  As such, work ethic is not a valid justification for excessive busy work in education.  I would submit that giving excessive workloads to students is entirely unethical.

I can also imagine some professors would say that their work is not excessive because it is needed for the students to learn the subject well.  If this is true, and if the workload required for effective learning is more than the recommended study time, then the class credits should be adjusted to more accurately reflect the workload.

As far as the theory that colleges have a responsibility to teach a good work ethic, I disagree.  A college has a responsibility to teach knowledge.  The student is paying for the education.  The student has the responsibility to have a good work ethic.  Students who do not have a good work ethic have no business going to college until they get their acts together.  College is not high school.  The professors are responsible for providing the means to learn.  The students are responsible for actually learning.  If the students do not take on this responsibility, it is the fault of the students, not the college or the professors.


I would like to suggest a solution to this.  Only assign graded homework that is intended to measure proficiency.  Other, non-graded homework may be assigned to improve proficiency, but this homework should not affect the class grade at all.  This ungraded homework should either be corrected by the professor or a grader (with feedback), or a solutions guide should be made available, so the students can correct their own work.  As it is ungraded, this homework should be entirely optional.

This system has several benefits.  The first is that it actually does accurately reflect work ethic in the grade.  If a student does not put in the work required to gain the required proficiency, that student will get a poor grade.  This is far more effective than excessive busy work, because it also measures initiative and judgment skills.  The second is that students who are already proficient do not have to struggle to keep up with a class designed to make them proficient in a subject that they are already proficient in.  Wise students could use this system to reduce their overall workload, by interspersing classes they are proficient in with those they are not, to give them more time to become proficient in subjects that they are not already proficient in.  Third, the grades will effectively represent proficiency, not work ethic.  The only time that work ethic would play a role is if a poor work ethic prevented a student from becoming proficient in the subject, in which case the grade still accurately represents proficiency and only indirectly represents work ethic.

College professors that are required to follow a specific curriculum can improve this situation by adjusting course grades based on the proficiency that students show at the end of the course.  I think I have mentioned this before, but my first physics professor had a grading policy where the course grade was either the composite grade of all of the assignments and tests, or just the grade of the final exam, whichever was higher.  This system really only works if the final exam is comprehensive, but in those cases, it is one of the most fair grading systems, as it does effectively reflect proficiency.  A student who struggles though the first half of a class with only Cs, but then manages to overcome the difficulties, catches up, and gains a very high level of proficiency by the end should not receive a B grade.  If we give this student a B grade, then we are basing the grade on the rate at which the student learns, not on whether the student is proficient in the subject when the class ends.  This student may have a much better understanding of the subject than a student who got an A, but the grades imply the opposite.  Not only is this entirely unfair to the B student, it is also misleading to potential employers and reviewers for post-graduate programs.  This problem can be reduced by professors who keep track of proficiency of students, instead of basing everything on letter grades of homework and tests.  When the course grade needs to be decided, the professor can then look over the proficiency levels of student and adjust grades to more accurately reflect proficiency.

Ideally, courses would be changed so that the course grades would naturally reflect proficiency accurately.  When this cannot be done, I think that college professors have a moral responsibility to adjust course grades to reflect proficiency more accurately.  The hoop jumping system that is the U.S. grading system is one of the biggest problems with U.S. education.  Colleges and professors need to step up and do everything they can to make sure that grades reflect proficiency, not work ethic, or rate of learning.  Trying to alter the workload to reflect work ethic in grades, or to "instill" a better work ethic in students is overkill and is ultimately harmful to students.  College is already hard enough that students with a poor work ethic will not make it through, even without extra busy work.  Adding extra busy work is only really harmful to the students that already have a good work ethic.  Colleges can fix this by implementing policies that discourage unnecessary busy work, encouraging ungraded optional work intended to improve learning, and requiring that only proficiency measuring work be required and graded.  Professors can fix this by using good judgment when assigning course grades, instead of just assigning composite grades from coursework without any concern for accurate representation of proficiency.  These problems can be fixed, but it is going to require an improved work ethic in our educators and educational institutions more than anyone.

Lord Rybec

Poor Public Education

Ok, so I have mentioned these ideas before, but I think they bear repeating.

Our public education system sucks.  I am not just talking about the US education system, which is one of the worst in the world.  All of our educations systems suck.  Japan has one of the best education systems in the world, and it sucks.

Long ago, we had universities that actually cared about learning.  They did not have classes, grades, or degrees.  People came to these universities because they wanted to learn.  They were not looking for diplomas certifying that they knew things.  They wanted knowledge.  Instead of classes, these universities had lectures and forums.  The lectures were open to all students who wanted to attend.  A professor (literally, one who professes) would give a lecture on accepted theories, which were attended by fairly new students, or on new theories he or others had concocted.  The forums were open discussions that any student could attend (there were also sometimes closed forums limited to specific disciplines or specific people).  A forum would have a topic which would be discussed in depth.  Students who had difficulties understanding a topic would attend these forums and ask questions to improve their understanding.  The goal of these institutions was to spread knowledge and gain new knowledge.  Many of the students conducted research in new fields to improve their knowledge of that field and to contribute to others studying the same things.

Now, we have very formalized educational systems.  We have each subject divided up into a number of classes.  Each class runs for a limited duration.  We assign grades based on students' ability to learn the required material within the allotted time.  Classes are sometimes all lecture and other times part lecture part forum.  The time given for a single class period is usually fairly short.  Students are required to learn 4 to 8 subjects at the same time, attending several very short classes each day.  Each class hands out homework or other assignments, often with little regard for the limited time each student has to do all of the assigned work.  If a student fails to grasp a concept, they are left behind.  Sometimes tutors are available, or professors are willing to work with the student, but if the student needs even a week to grasp a new concept, the class leaves him behind.  Students that already have proficiency in a subject must still slog through all of the work at the slow relative pace of the class.  The result is that there is no class that even satisfies the needs of the majority of students, let alone all of them.

This highly formalized education is failing.  It has been failing for several decades, and still we cling to it.  Our government had introduced legislation with the hope of improving the situation, but instead they have further alienated the students who are struggling.  New educational requirements force teachers to try to teach subjects that some students find very difficult in even less time than before.  Many students in public school hate learning because our educational system makes effective learning impossible for them.  Most students in college care more about getting passing grades than actually learning the materials.  Some even feel compelled to cheat to relieve some of the absurdly difficult tasks set before them.  Was this our goal?  Do we really want surgeons, politicians, and mechanics that got through school only learning 75% (a grade of C) of the material, or who felt forced to cheat to get through?  An education system that rewards cheating is a very poor system indeed.  (Right, there is no reward when they get caught, but do you seriously believe that most cheaters get caught?)

We need a system where the natural consequences of cheating are bad, not good.  We need a less formal system that is flexible enough for both fast learners and slow learners.  We need a system that is flexible enough for students that learn some things quickly and other things slowly.  Most students have difficulties with some parts of a subject but not others.  This means that most students during the course of a typical class will have some parts where the pace of the class is too fast and others where the pace is too slow.  The problem with the class model is that few students find the same parts easy and the same parts hard.  A class design that gives more time for a topic that some students have difficulty with and less time for topics that those same students find easy will be much more difficult or even impossible for the majority of the students.

Grades are a major problem.  Grades are one of the things that encourage cheating.  Students on financial aid, or scholarships may even be more inclined to cheat in difficult classes, because their financial stability depends on their grades.  Grades encourage students without these problems to be lazy.  Why work hard to learn something you don't care much about when you can get by only learning 75% to 80% (C to B- in most schools) of the material?  Even if you do care about it, if you are taking another class that is especially difficult, why not slack on the easier class so you have more time to get that minimum passing grade in the hard one?  In addition, while grades are intended to be a measure of proficiency, they are often misused as a measure of how compliant a student is with the professor's policies.  Some professors give tons of meaningless homework intended to improve proficiency, but then they grade based on how well the student did on that homework.  If the homework is intended to improve proficiency, then shouldn't the measure be taken after the homework, not during or before?  Further, if a student is already proficient, should that student really be penalized because they did not need to do the homework?  How is how much time you have for pointless busy work a valid measure of proficiency in a subject?  I recognize that there must be some measure, but professors should not force students to waste their lives doing absurd amounts of unnecessary homework to get that measure.

We need mechanics that will allow students who can demonstrate proficiency in a subject to skip the work that is intended to give them that proficiency.  You might say that most colleges already have test out mechanics in place that do this, and you would be right.  There are a few problems that this does not not cover though.  Students in the public school system do not have this option.  No matter how good I was at algebra, I did not have to option to test out of high school algebra.  Worse though, while most colleges have a test out option for many classes, they still charge full price for taking the class.  This is extremely dishonest.  If I test out, I am not using the full services of the professor.  I am not using the facilities of the college for an entire semester.  Really, the most I could be using is an hour or two of the professor's time to make and grade the test, if that, and for a subject that requires a computer, I might use the computer lab for a couple hours.  If the lab fee is $50 a semester (I have not seen more than $20), a couple hours should not cost more than 6 cents ($50/4 months/30 days/4 hours * 2 hours; assuming the average student uses the lab 4 hours a day).  A class that costs $500 a semester should come out to $20, presuming that the class meets for an hour, 3 days a week, and that the professor does not spend any out of class time for grading or preparing (if he does, the time is less valuable, and thus the cost should be decreased).  So, an average 3 credit class that meets 3 times a week for an hour, over the entire semester, that normally costs $500 (colleges that I have seen that charge on a per credit basis do not usually charge more than this) should cost no more than $20.06 to test out.  More prestigious colleges may have higher per credit charges, but even at $2,000 for a 3 credit class, this should not be more than $80.24.  Instead, US colleges penalize students who have the sense to study what they are interested in before they go to college.

This is as much an ethical issue as anything else.  Many schools (public schools and colleges) don't actually care about education.  A friend in Washington State recently discovered that a local school was intentionally doing a poor job, because it would get them more funding.   Now, I recognize that this is a flaw in the funding system, but dishonesty is wrong regardless of the money involved.  Do you want your children taught by educators who care more about money than how well they educate your children?

With modern technology, we can go back to the old ways, but still have means of measuring proficiency.  Instead of classes, we could have lectures and forums.  Neither the lectures nor the forums would have any assignments or requirements associated with them.  Any student could attend either (if seats are limited, students might be required to sign up for specific times; some forums might be limited in size as well, to facilitate good discussion).  Instead of typical class assignments and home work, the school would have study exercises on the internet.  Anyone wanting (or needing) credit for a specific topic of a subject (see my Milestones article) would work on these exercises, attend lectures and forums as needed, and when they felt comfortable with the material, the would take some kind of test.  This might be a written essay, a multiple choice test, or an oral examination (or a combination), that would be intended to determine the proficiency of the student.  This would not be graded; it would be pass/fail.  If the student fails, there is no penalty, besides maybe an amount of time that must pass before trying again.  Once the student passes a specific proficiency, they can move on to more difficult material in that field (proficiency tests might require that proficiency in a previous subject already be established).  When a student established proficiency in certain collections of subjects, they can receive a degree in that subject.  There would be no limits on what a student could get a degree in.  For instance, where I currently go to college, I cannot use the same classes for a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degree, even though there is a huge overlap.  In the system I am suggesting, this would not be the case.  If I could demonstrate proficiency in all of the subjects required for an Electrical Engineering degree, it would make no difference that I had already used some of those same proficiencies for my Computer Science degree.  The idea here is that my degrees indicate what I am proficient in.  There would be no rules restricting what degrees I can obtain based on what other degrees I already have.

This system would encourage students to learn what they want to learn.  There would need to be no declared majors.  Really, employers might even look at specific proficiencies not related to a specific degree in hiring, when trying to hire people with very specific skill sets.  A person might not even need to officially graduate, or have a degree to get a good job, if they have the specific proficiencies that an employer needs.  This means that school could be much more streamlined for people that need it and more complete for others who need or prefer that.  Instead of being job training centers that require a bunch of extra unrelated things (generals), they would be true centers of learning.  Those who want and can afford well rounded scholarly educations would be able to obtain them, while those who only want (or only can afford) marketable job skills can obtain them there as well.  It would be easy for those who want continued education, but who work full time jobs, to continue learning.  For those on any kind of financial aid, there might be requirements of progression, for instance, they might be required to maintain a specific average number of proficiencies gained per semester to continue to receive aid.  For those paying their own way, there might be no restrictions at all.  For instance, I might have a well paying job and have no reason to get credit for additional proficiencies, but I could still benefit personally from attending lectures and forums in my free time, without ever needing to do skill building exercises (the equivalent of home work) or take proficiency tests.  This system is very conducive to continued education.  For people who want higher degrees, this would also give them a means of doing it as they have time and resources.  It might take them 10 or 20 years of spare time to develop the levels of proficiency required for a Masters degree in a subject, but it would be possible, even with a large family or a demanding job.

I don't know if this system is perfect.  In my mind, it works very well, and it would be hard for any system of education to be worse than what we are doing right now.  I think this system would be more likely to train people in what they enjoy and what they are good at.  For many people, it would result in more rounded educations, even if they did not ever pass the proficiency tests for some of the subjects that they attended lectures and forums for.  This open, casual system would result in many, of not most, students progressing through college in much shorter time than our current system.  We would not have so many students who graduate with only 75% of the needed knowledge learned.  Without graded homework, or even traditional grades, we would not have so many people cheating (if the proficiency tests were well proctored, cheating would be reduced to almost nothing, since no other school work is graded).  We would not have surgeons who cheated their way through school, or who passed with only a C.  Those who could not demonstrate true proficiency in a subject would not get a degree in it.  This is dramatically better than what we currently have, and I urge those with the power to affect change to push government and institutions of education to at least try this system.

Lord Rybec

Grading Systems

I have a beef with the common grading systems in US education. My smallest issue is that we are continuously allowing it to slip. Originally, the grade of a C represented a satisfactory understanding of a subject, while grades of B or A represented an exceptional understanding of a subject. In oriental countries, this is still true, but not in the US. If you perform only to the expectations of a class in the US, you get an A. To get a C, you must perform well below expectations. Recent "reforms" in education have made the situation worse. Teachers in public schools now must advance poorly performing students, even if they barely understand the subject at all. This is destroying the already poor reputation of the US public education system. My primary problem though makes this one pale in comparison.

Would I be wrong to say that the intent of grading is to represent the proficiency a student has in a particular subject? When you apply for a major in a college, especially when that major is for a post graduate degree, they look at your previous transcript. If the major is especially competitive, they look at your grades in specific classes related to that major. A student attempting to enter a post graduate math program might have a strict review of grades in previous college math classes. The reviewers make the assumption that the grades listed on the transcript represent the student's proficiency in those areas of math and in math in general. This is the same for any subject. There is, however, a problem with how our education system gives grades and how it interprets them.

While it is assumed, when looking at a grade, that it represents proficiency, it is not actually true. Teachers and professors may take any number of things into account when giving grades. Class grades are generally composite grades from all of the assignments given throughout the course of a class. This means that a student that takes an extra two weeks to understand something which is taught, but then catches up, will have a poorer class grade than a student who has identical proficiency at the end of the semester, but who did not have difficulty early on. A student who has some special circumstances which cause homework to be late, but who understands the material quite well will end up with a class grade that under-represents proficiency. A professor might burden a student with excessive, unnecessary busy work that the student does not have time for, which would also cause the class grade to misrepresent proficiency. In addition, some college professors like to give assignments which are not related to the subject at all, but which may help some students learn better. Again, missing these assignments may not affect a student's proficiency, but the student will still be given a grade that indicates a lower proficiency than actually exists.

I have dealt with many of these situations. I once took a physics class that required weekly workbook assignments, in addition to regular homework. The workbook assignments were generally ten pages or more and often took two hours a day, five days a week to complete. The weekly homework required only two to three hours a week. The workbook assignments were excessive and unnecessary, especially given that this was my second time taking physics (the first class did not transfer, but I had gotten an A). I was also taking several other quite difficult classes, so I chose to forgo the workbook assignments so that I would have time to study the other subjects, which I was not so proficient in. Ultimately, I got a class grade of C in the physics class. When you look at my assignment grades for the class though, it is obvious that a C did not accurately represent my proficiency in the subject. I had many scores of zero, where I had not turned in assignments, however, regularly interspersed between the zeros were grades between 93 and 100. There were no grades lower than 90 for anything I had completed. As I had missed only a very few homework assignments, and the tests and homework assignments were fairly comprehensive, my proficiency in the subject was quite well represented by the grades of the assignments that I had completed, but my class grade indicated that my proficiency was similar to that of a person that had learned only a little over half of the material.

My first two physics classes were very different. My professor gave final grades either as composites of all assignments including tests, or only the grade of the final, which was comprehensive. He would choose whichever grade was higher. The reason he chose to grade this way is that it more accurately represents the proficiency of a student than just the composite grade. When he explained this, he also pointed out that the occurrence of a final grade higher than a composite grade was very rare. My second semester of physics, my composite grade before the final was a B. During the last two tests, I had kept careful track of the things that I did not know well, and spent extra time studying them. I scored a full 100% on the final, showing high proficiency. Instead of getting a B, or B+, which would have indicated only moderate proficiency, my class grade was an A, which accurately represented my proficiency in the subject.

Now, I am not saying that all classes should be graded like my first physics professor chose to grade. That system also has its flaws, though not nearly as bad. First, I think that teachers and professors need to carefully consider how to grade so that the grades accurately represent proficiency, with as few taints as possible. I realize that it is impossible to grade entirely accurately, but some effort should be expended to minimize inaccuracies. If a school feels that it is important to also keep track of a student's dedication, work ethic, and punctuality, then maybe a second grade should be given and tracked, but this should not be allowed to taint the representation of proficiency of the class grades.

I propose, however, a system that makes such changes entirely obsolete. A less formal milestone based system would far more accurately represent proficiency than a class based system. Instead of collecting letter grades and then using them to compose a GPA, progress could be tracked more directly. Each subject would be divided into a collection of significant milestones. The subjects of a single class would be divided into at least 5 milestones, though some classes might be divided into 10 or more milestones. Instead of using a GPA for gauging progress, progress would be determined as a function of milestones over time. A full time student might be expected to complete at least 25 milestones in the time of a normal semester, or 50 milestones a year. There might be a requirement that a certain number of those milestones be related to the student's major, or other required classes. A student could exceed that number by any amount. Using milestones, letter grades would be meaningless. Each milestone test would be pass or fail. A failed milestone test would not show up on a transcript, because the lack of a passed milestone test already indicates a lack of proficiency. Accurate grading is not the only benefit of a milestone based system.

A milestone based system allows students to work at their own pace. A milestone system does not even need regular semesters. A milestone system would be ideal for those with jobs, who do not have time to attend school full time. A milestone system would also dramatically benefit people like myself, who are already quite proficient in the subject of their major. I could easily finish all of the milestones associated with the first two years of my major, in only a few months. This would reduce the cost of my schooling by nearly half. I am sure there are plenty of others in a similar situation. A milestone system would also help those who have difficulty with certain subjects, since they would have longer to study and would be able to spend more time on the parts they find difficult and less on the parts they find easier.

A milestone system would also be easier on teachers and professors. Instead of regular classroom sized lectures on a series of subjects in succession, ignoring the needs of the students, professors could give lectures to larger groups, spending more time on subjects that need attention. Instead of a class schedule, professors would have lecture schedules. Any student could sign up for a lecture and attend, and if there was room, additional students could attend without signing up. If no students signed up for a specific lecture, the professor could instead do a question and answer session. Since professors would be doing larger lectures less often, they would have more time for one on one work with students who need it. Also, in a milestone based system, students would be more responsible for their own learning. This means that there would be almost no graded homework. Students could ask a professor for feedback or help on a specific assignment, but automated systems could be used for basic feedback. The only real graded work would be milestone tests, which could be graded by paid graders, leaving professors more time for helping students who need it. This would allow professors to have much more time for teaching by reducing the task of grading and placing what is left on less skilled workers, who do not need the expertise of the professors to grade.

I believe this sort of system would dramatically improve the performance of our educational systems. It would reduce the workload of teachers, giving them more time to do their primary job, teaching. It would remove the inherent discrimination against slow learners and the learning impaired that exists in an arbitrarily timed class based system. It would also remove the discrimination against fast learners and those who are already self educated, by allowing them to complete milestones at as fast a pace as they desire. In addition, it would overhaul our current grading system to accurately represent proficiency in each subject, because each milestone would be verified for each student. I also believe that it would dramatically improve education, because no student would graduate without having passed each individual milestone required for their major. No student could get by just barely.

The primary argument I have heard against this sort of system is professors who say that because they had to work through the current system, everyone else should have to. This is a lie. By this argument, I can show that those very professors should be doing hard labor in the fields of a farm for the own survival (or even hunting and gathering naturally occurring foods), without any modern tools or other conveniences. Those who claim that the next generation should have to work just as hard as they did do not deserve the conveniences of modern technology and medicine. The progression of the human race requires advances in education. Even very specialized fields require more knowledge than the average human can learn in only 4 or even 8 years of schooling. As technology and science continue to advance, this will only increase. If we do not find ways of increasing the speed and efficiency of learning, we will find that technology and science advance ever more slowly. Eventually, learning enough to continue to advance will take a lifetime, and at this threshold, humans will no longer be able to continue advancing, because people will die before they have learned enough to advance further. Computers have already expanded that threshold, but the advancement of computers itself is subject to that threshold. If we do not improve education, the human race will eventually reach a technology cap, and cease to progress any further. Improving education, even a little, may allow us to create technology that further extends that threshold, and may even allow us to extend it indefinitely. If we choose not to improve education, because "it was good enough for us, so it is good enough for them," then we are taking an enormous risk. Let us not lie to ourselves. The current US eduction system is terrible. It does not fulfill its purposes. A milestone based system would allow students to prove their merit by their rate of learning, instead of being forced to conform to a rate of learning that is optimized only for the most average student, and that makes fast learners hate school for the boredom and slow learners hate school because they can never learn fast enough to understand anything.

Eventually some country is going to adopt this system. That country will very quickly begin to excel in technology and science at rates never seen in human history. We are already behind nearly every other 1st world nation. Shall we allow Japan, or China to beat us to the punch, and become the new greatest power in the world, or will we do it first, and reclaim our dominance in technology and science?