There would be a second organization, not embedded inside the school, verifying that in fact students know the things that the school was aiming for them to know, that year and at least several years afterwards.
How would this second organization go about verifying that?
I can’t tell you because I have absolutely no idea what skills and information elementary, middle, and high school students are intended to absorb in the current regime and why. No one does, by design. But an answer to how to verify such learning would come naturally to someone who had a specific reason for compelling children to learn about a subject, and thus knew what those children were supposed to be able to do by the end of the year with that knowledge.
As an example, one possible exception to my “current school curriculums are useless” brush is literacy. I see a case for compelling chiildren to learn that skill (as opposed to skills that are only personally beneficial, and which could be handled by school vouchers), because communication protocols have beneficial network effects. It’s obvious to everyone how a third party could verify literacy, since we know why kids should be able to read and under what circumstances they’d do that. It would work to give children grade-level appropriate manuals, mall maps, technical documentation, essays, etc. - things they might like to read in real life—and just then ask them questions.
Notice that you could say to a tutor “teach this kid how to read” and there’s not much confusion with regard to what the child is supposed to be able to do, because it’s common knowledge what that means and there’s an obvious reason why you want the child to be able to do it.
On the other hand, if I tell the tutor “teach this kid about ancient egypt”, the test could be fucking anything because there’s actually no economic justification for compelling children to do so. I would have to write eight more paragraphs either specifying exactly what information I was going to need the kid to memorize by the end of the semester, or drop hints to the tutor as to what was going to be on the test, in order for the tutor to feel comfortable staking his professional reputation on successfully teaching the child.
Why are economic justifications the important justifications? If I give an instruction of “teach this kid about separation of powers”, the civic justifications are quite clear, while the economic justifications would be quite nebolous and I think the criteria would not be that up in the air.
Also a list of memorized facts is not the main way you would enable a citizen to reject goverment overreach. I am a bit surprised that the teacher would be scared of a low outcome. I guess it makes somewhat sense if it is a PvP ranking game among students and among teachers. But for building actual capabilities some is always in addition and very rarely backwards. I would also imagine that where egypt knowledge would actually be used in the actor would still actively fill in details they need in their specific function. Then it doesn’t matter so much whether you were teached A and had to pick up B or whether you were teached B and had to pick up A. And having feel and context for egypt is largely ambivalent about what specific things you know (so that when you encounter a timeline placing egypt, rome and america you are not completely bewildered and can relate).
Why are economic justifications the important justifications? If I give an instruction of “teach this kid about separation of powers”, the civic justifications are quite clear, while the economic justifications would be quite nebolous and I think the criteria would not be that up in the air.
If you say so. I hope you don’t mind if we also do a follow up survey to examine whether or not the kid remembers that information when he’s old enough to vote, and trial the class on a random half of the students to see whether or not it makes a difference on political opinions 10y down the line as well. I prefer economic justifications because all of the other types of justifications people make seem to be pulled out of thin air, and they don’t seem too enthusiastic about proving their existence, but if you’re one of the rare other people, sure, we can try out the civics classes with the goal of doing science to figure out if these benefits actually manifest themselves in practice.
I am a bit surprised that the teacher would be scared of a low outcome. I guess it makes somewhat sense if it is a PvP ranking game among students and among teachers.
I absolutely never said that. The tutor in my scenario simply wants to know what it is he is expected to teach and how such learning will be measured, just like any contractor. There’s no PvP dynamic here because student learning on an objective skill like “basic literacy” can be measured by a fixed bar. Everyone gets a ‘Pass’ on a literacy test if they are able to pass that bar, and the bar for such a test would not move up or down based on the increasing or decreasing aptitude of students.
Contrast this with the situation we have now, where schools that give students high marks on average are accused of “grade inflation” by the other schools, because grades are actually a PvP ranking game between students and are valued not as indicators of learning but as signals important in only relative terms for getting admitted to high ranking colleges.
Voting behaviour would very weakly test for that bit. I am imagining a test of hypotheticals and calssifying as “yes” or “no” on whether the scenario is consistent with the role. Voting against someone because of influence of hate adds is hard to separate from voting against somebody for transgressions against political organization.
Having solely economic justifications has the danger of narrowing education to only vocational education. But I guess having just some measure that does not get instantly warped doesn’t particularly care what flavour it is.
I know that some people have a mindset that everything should be measured but it is not intuitive to me why this would be universal. I get that there should not be disagreement on what is the performance and what would be a breach. But that it can always be understood as a quantity and never a duty or a quality is not immidietly obvious to me.
I know that other countries have high monetary involment in colleges and colleges are more used for class distinguishment which I understand if it boosts the signal side of it. To me it would be more natural for colleges to complain to high schools that the opening college courses need to be more extensive as the previous stage was slacking. That kind of dynamic does not particularly care about grade distribution among the students. But if it is about particular students getting to particular colleges then I understand that gets shadowed. It seems to me the role of “low end” tetriary education is somewhat different. Having a system where it makes sense to play even if you “lose” is very different from a game where if you “lose” then it is almost as good as if you did nothing.
How would this second organization go about verifying that?
I can’t tell you because I have absolutely no idea what skills and information elementary, middle, and high school students are intended to absorb in the current regime and why. No one does, by design. But an answer to how to verify such learning would come naturally to someone who had a specific reason for compelling children to learn about a subject, and thus knew what those children were supposed to be able to do by the end of the year with that knowledge.
As an example, one possible exception to my “current school curriculums are useless” brush is literacy. I see a case for compelling chiildren to learn that skill (as opposed to skills that are only personally beneficial, and which could be handled by school vouchers), because communication protocols have beneficial network effects. It’s obvious to everyone how a third party could verify literacy, since we know why kids should be able to read and under what circumstances they’d do that. It would work to give children grade-level appropriate manuals, mall maps, technical documentation, essays, etc. - things they might like to read in real life—and just then ask them questions.
Notice that you could say to a tutor “teach this kid how to read” and there’s not much confusion with regard to what the child is supposed to be able to do, because it’s common knowledge what that means and there’s an obvious reason why you want the child to be able to do it.
On the other hand, if I tell the tutor “teach this kid about ancient egypt”, the test could be fucking anything because there’s actually no economic justification for compelling children to do so. I would have to write eight more paragraphs either specifying exactly what information I was going to need the kid to memorize by the end of the semester, or drop hints to the tutor as to what was going to be on the test, in order for the tutor to feel comfortable staking his professional reputation on successfully teaching the child.
Why are economic justifications the important justifications? If I give an instruction of “teach this kid about separation of powers”, the civic justifications are quite clear, while the economic justifications would be quite nebolous and I think the criteria would not be that up in the air.
Also a list of memorized facts is not the main way you would enable a citizen to reject goverment overreach. I am a bit surprised that the teacher would be scared of a low outcome. I guess it makes somewhat sense if it is a PvP ranking game among students and among teachers. But for building actual capabilities some is always in addition and very rarely backwards. I would also imagine that where egypt knowledge would actually be used in the actor would still actively fill in details they need in their specific function. Then it doesn’t matter so much whether you were teached A and had to pick up B or whether you were teached B and had to pick up A. And having feel and context for egypt is largely ambivalent about what specific things you know (so that when you encounter a timeline placing egypt, rome and america you are not completely bewildered and can relate).
If you say so. I hope you don’t mind if we also do a follow up survey to examine whether or not the kid remembers that information when he’s old enough to vote, and trial the class on a random half of the students to see whether or not it makes a difference on political opinions 10y down the line as well. I prefer economic justifications because all of the other types of justifications people make seem to be pulled out of thin air, and they don’t seem too enthusiastic about proving their existence, but if you’re one of the rare other people, sure, we can try out the civics classes with the goal of doing science to figure out if these benefits actually manifest themselves in practice.
I absolutely never said that. The tutor in my scenario simply wants to know what it is he is expected to teach and how such learning will be measured, just like any contractor. There’s no PvP dynamic here because student learning on an objective skill like “basic literacy” can be measured by a fixed bar. Everyone gets a ‘Pass’ on a literacy test if they are able to pass that bar, and the bar for such a test would not move up or down based on the increasing or decreasing aptitude of students.
Contrast this with the situation we have now, where schools that give students high marks on average are accused of “grade inflation” by the other schools, because grades are actually a PvP ranking game between students and are valued not as indicators of learning but as signals important in only relative terms for getting admitted to high ranking colleges.
Voting behaviour would very weakly test for that bit. I am imagining a test of hypotheticals and calssifying as “yes” or “no” on whether the scenario is consistent with the role. Voting against someone because of influence of hate adds is hard to separate from voting against somebody for transgressions against political organization.
Having solely economic justifications has the danger of narrowing education to only vocational education. But I guess having just some measure that does not get instantly warped doesn’t particularly care what flavour it is.
I know that some people have a mindset that everything should be measured but it is not intuitive to me why this would be universal. I get that there should not be disagreement on what is the performance and what would be a breach. But that it can always be understood as a quantity and never a duty or a quality is not immidietly obvious to me.
I know that other countries have high monetary involment in colleges and colleges are more used for class distinguishment which I understand if it boosts the signal side of it. To me it would be more natural for colleges to complain to high schools that the opening college courses need to be more extensive as the previous stage was slacking. That kind of dynamic does not particularly care about grade distribution among the students. But if it is about particular students getting to particular colleges then I understand that gets shadowed. It seems to me the role of “low end” tetriary education is somewhat different. Having a system where it makes sense to play even if you “lose” is very different from a game where if you “lose” then it is almost as good as if you did nothing.