While what you point out is worth reading and it is definitely a real phenomena, the following quote from the link:
Understanding the causes of the racial achievement gap in American education—and then addressing it with effective programs—is one of the most urgent problems communities and educators face.
Sends bad signals about the author to me. Far too much ink has already been and is being spilled and far too much effort wasted on the same ineffectual tactics and the same recycled few theories.
No friends. Closing The Gap is not the most important issue which educators should worry about. While its perfectly possible I’ve been reading too much Steve Sailer or was too impressed with Murray’sReal Education, what isn’t possible is that Closing The Gap is low hanging fruit. And there is low hanging fruit in education.
What is further more unlikely is that we haven’t yet hit diminishing or perhaps even negative returns with the current approaches. And don’t think for a moment anyone’s actually come up with anything new in the last decade or so, the only new thing is a fresh mix of applause lights and false rationalizations as to why it “works” and even these are more and more just reruns. The last 20 years in particular have seen schemes that have provided ever greater incentives for fraud on a massive scale in schools (don’t think the schools haven’t responded) and cooking up various tests like the SAT to try and Close The Gap as much as possible on paper without sacrificing too much of their predictive value.
For many years, the most popular explanation for the achievement gap has been the “oppositional culture theory” the idea that black students underperform in secondary schools because of a group culture that devalues learning and sees academic effort as “acting white.” Despite lack of evidence for this belief, classroom teachers accept it, with predictable self-fulfilling results. In a careful quantitative assessment of the oppositional culture hypothesis, Angel L. Harris tested its empirical implications systematically and broadened his analysis to include data from British schools. From every conceivable angle of examination, the oppositional culture theory fell flat.
Despite achieving less in school, black students value schooling more than their white counterparts do. Black kids perform badly in high school not because they don’t want to succeed but because they enter without the necessary skills. Harris finds that the achievement gap starts to open up in preadolescence—when cumulating socioeconomic and health disadvantages inhibit skills development and when students start to feel the impact of lowered teacher expectations.
Kids Don’t Want to Fail is must reading for teachers, academics, policy makers, and anyone interested in understanding the intersection of race and education.
We have been on this merry go round before. So. Many. Times.
I can’t even muster the will to try and RP what Charlie Sheen would say.
No friends. Closing The Gap is not the most important issue to which educators should worry about, while its perfectly possible I’ve been reading too much Steve Sailer or was too impressed with Murray’s Real Education, what isn’t possible is that Closing the Gap is low hanging fruit. And there is low hanging fruit in education.
Upvoted for this. There are just so many counter indications in so many countries both developed and developing for such a long period of time that we should have realized that closing the gap is hard and additional increases in spending cognitive capital to try and solve it rather than manage it uneconomical. People who want to do good things for children should try and figure out how they can learn more or learn the same amount with less stress, how all the kids can do better, rather than stress that some kids are doing so much better than others.
Massive investments in the tried approaches due to egalitarian concerns are pure moral posturing and signalling at best, and very bad entrenched science at worst. For anyone who has the stomach to shut up and multiply the opportunity costs paid for this are simply staggering. Because signalling matters and this provides a neat source of makework for educators (keeping them fed, employed and feeling they are productive) I’m ok with not scaling down, but any additional effort has so much greater pay off’s elsewhere that I simply have to speak up.
Maybe I should have just posted my first paragraph—the most Less Wrongian aspect may have been a person snapping into much more rationality as a result of encountering a pretty ordinary kind of of thinking more clearly. Is there anything which can be done (behind just making rationality, even of the most ordinary sort) more common, to improve the odds of it registering as a clue?
On the other hand, after he’s spent some decades with that mental habit, perhaps what he’s thought could be worth noting.
On yet another hand, one of the interesting bits from the interview was a mention that black kids go into first grade enthusiastic about school, and aren’t enthusiastic a few years later. A similar pattern has been noticed in white kids, even if it doesn’t cause as much damage. This is part of what fueled the home schooling movement.
People who want to do good things for children should try and figure out how they can learn more or learn the same amount with less stress, how all the kids can do better, rather than stress that some kids are doing so much better than others.
Agreed. The Khan Academy would be one starting point.
the most Less Wrongian aspect may have been a person snapping into much more rationality as a result of encountering a pretty ordinary kind of of thinking more clearly. Is there anything which can be done (behind just making rationality, even of the most ordinary sort) more common, to improve the odds of it registering as a clue?
Yes, that’s why I think the title was a good one “Rationalist click”. I think its just basically being forced to recognize that the map dosen’t match the territory no matter how pretty the map. Getting the territory intrude directly on your senses seems a pretty strong potential trigger of this. Maybe strong enough to even dispel belief in belief at some times (some religious de-conversions seem to follow this pattern as well).
And I think the encounter probably did shift him closer to reality. The reason why the example has caught an underwhelming response so far is that many LWers (like me) probably wanted to get out of the way many of the other stuff he seems to signal that he’s obviously getting wrong or pretending to get wrong because of self-interest in order to not inadvertently promote them to LWers who may not be familiar with the subject (and don’t think this couldn’t happen first solution to a problem someone hears has clear privileges, mere exposure effect, halo effect, ect.).
On yet another hand, one of the interesting bits from the interview was a mention that black kids go into first grade enthusiastic about school, and aren’t enthusiastic a few years later. A similar pattern has been noticed in white kids, even if it doesn’t cause as much damage. This is part of what fueled the home schooling movement.
Indeed.
Agreed. The Khan Academy would be one starting point.
The approach of Khan Academy does do a lot to help with what you tried to point out with your example. It lets kids catch up on knowledge that they missed in the past (and the data does show that some do indeed do this in a way we don’t see in more traditional mass schooling).
I think its just basically being forced to recognize that the map dosen’t match the territory no matter how pretty the map.
The thing was, he wasn’t forced—somehow, the little bit of input met his internal state in a way that worked. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been criticized as a child without being given specifics, so the idea of breaking “bad boy” down into evidence and then allowing evaluation as a separate process wasn’t just abstract for him, but I’m guessing.
Good point, he didn’t impact the hard ground of reality, he was hit by a pebble that should have been easy to rationalize.
While calling it a breach of compartments is just giving it another name, and isn’t in itself an explanation, do you think the terminology is descriptively accurate and could be used (to keep our terminology consistent and as simple as possible)?
I think you’ve got a concept there which should have a name, but I’m not sure “breach of compartments” is quite it. My connotations are of a ship which has compartments for very good reasons.
“Widened context” seems closer, but not quite there. “Spontaneous context expansion” is closer, but doesn’t give your sense of why such things don’t happen more often.
While what you point out is worth reading and it is definitely a real phenomena, the following quote from the link:
Sends bad signals about the author to me. Far too much ink has already been and is being spilled and far too much effort wasted on the same ineffectual tactics and the same recycled few theories.
No friends. Closing The Gap is not the most important issue which educators should worry about. While its perfectly possible I’ve been reading too much Steve Sailer or was too impressed with Murray’s Real Education, what isn’t possible is that Closing The Gap is low hanging fruit. And there is low hanging fruit in education.
What is further more unlikely is that we haven’t yet hit diminishing or perhaps even negative returns with the current approaches. And don’t think for a moment anyone’s actually come up with anything new in the last decade or so, the only new thing is a fresh mix of applause lights and false rationalizations as to why it “works” and even these are more and more just reruns. The last 20 years in particular have seen schemes that have provided ever greater incentives for fraud on a massive scale in schools (don’t think the schools haven’t responded) and cooking up various tests like the SAT to try and Close The Gap as much as possible on paper without sacrificing too much of their predictive value.
We have been on this merry go round before. So. Many. Times.
I can’t even muster the will to try and RP what Charlie Sheen would say.
Upvoted for this. There are just so many counter indications in so many countries both developed and developing for such a long period of time that we should have realized that closing the gap is hard and additional increases in spending cognitive capital to try and solve it rather than manage it uneconomical. People who want to do good things for children should try and figure out how they can learn more or learn the same amount with less stress, how all the kids can do better, rather than stress that some kids are doing so much better than others.
Massive investments in the tried approaches due to egalitarian concerns are pure moral posturing and signalling at best, and very bad entrenched science at worst. For anyone who has the stomach to shut up and multiply the opportunity costs paid for this are simply staggering. Because signalling matters and this provides a neat source of makework for educators (keeping them fed, employed and feeling they are productive) I’m ok with not scaling down, but any additional effort has so much greater pay off’s elsewhere that I simply have to speak up.
Maybe I should have just posted my first paragraph—the most Less Wrongian aspect may have been a person snapping into much more rationality as a result of encountering a pretty ordinary kind of of thinking more clearly. Is there anything which can be done (behind just making rationality, even of the most ordinary sort) more common, to improve the odds of it registering as a clue?
On the other hand, after he’s spent some decades with that mental habit, perhaps what he’s thought could be worth noting.
On yet another hand, one of the interesting bits from the interview was a mention that black kids go into first grade enthusiastic about school, and aren’t enthusiastic a few years later. A similar pattern has been noticed in white kids, even if it doesn’t cause as much damage. This is part of what fueled the home schooling movement.
Agreed. The Khan Academy would be one starting point.
Yes, that’s why I think the title was a good one “Rationalist click”. I think its just basically being forced to recognize that the map dosen’t match the territory no matter how pretty the map. Getting the territory intrude directly on your senses seems a pretty strong potential trigger of this. Maybe strong enough to even dispel belief in belief at some times (some religious de-conversions seem to follow this pattern as well).
And I think the encounter probably did shift him closer to reality. The reason why the example has caught an underwhelming response so far is that many LWers (like me) probably wanted to get out of the way many of the other stuff he seems to signal that he’s obviously getting wrong or pretending to get wrong because of self-interest in order to not inadvertently promote them to LWers who may not be familiar with the subject (and don’t think this couldn’t happen first solution to a problem someone hears has clear privileges, mere exposure effect, halo effect, ect.).
Indeed.
The approach of Khan Academy does do a lot to help with what you tried to point out with your example. It lets kids catch up on knowledge that they missed in the past (and the data does show that some do indeed do this in a way we don’t see in more traditional mass schooling).
The thing was, he wasn’t forced—somehow, the little bit of input met his internal state in a way that worked. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been criticized as a child without being given specifics, so the idea of breaking “bad boy” down into evidence and then allowing evaluation as a separate process wasn’t just abstract for him, but I’m guessing.
Good point, he didn’t impact the hard ground of reality, he was hit by a pebble that should have been easy to rationalize.
While calling it a breach of compartments is just giving it another name, and isn’t in itself an explanation, do you think the terminology is descriptively accurate and could be used (to keep our terminology consistent and as simple as possible)?
I think you’ve got a concept there which should have a name, but I’m not sure “breach of compartments” is quite it. My connotations are of a ship which has compartments for very good reasons.
“Widened context” seems closer, but not quite there. “Spontaneous context expansion” is closer, but doesn’t give your sense of why such things don’t happen more often.