I agree that the social services model is simultaneously good and bad. The issue stems from schools having to contend with two very different problems:
How do they deal with children from poor backgrounds who don’t want to learn? How do they deal with idiots, special needs students, assholes, troublemakers, etc.?
How do schools deal with gifted children? How do they deal with students who are smarter or learn faster than their peers?
These kinds of students need very different kinds of environments to thrive.
Paul Graham is representative of 2., and so the social services model is pretty useless to him. But there are plenty of children who can benefit enormously from it.
Future posts go into the school-as-education model, which is more suited for students from group 2.
As for designing from the outside in, it’s a cool idea, and I’d love to read someone’s attempt. I decided to try it from the inside out because I’d never seen it done before in the modern age.
Thanks for the response!
I agree that the social services model is simultaneously good and bad. The issue stems from schools having to contend with two very different problems:
How do they deal with children from poor backgrounds who don’t want to learn? How do they deal with idiots, special needs students, assholes, troublemakers, etc.?
How do schools deal with gifted children? How do they deal with students who are smarter or learn faster than their peers?
These kinds of students need very different kinds of environments to thrive.
Paul Graham is representative of 2., and so the social services model is pretty useless to him. But there are plenty of children who can benefit enormously from it.
Future posts go into the school-as-education model, which is more suited for students from group 2.
As for designing from the outside in, it’s a cool idea, and I’d love to read someone’s attempt. I decided to try it from the inside out because I’d never seen it done before in the modern age.