Ask HN: What is the new role for schools?

2 points by Trusteando 8 hours ago|1 comments

Four forces: 1) Books like "Why Johnny Can't Read" (1955) and "Why Johnny Can't Add" (1973), 2) emotional intelligence, like in Goleman, 3) kids creating new social structures, a little further than Postman World Makers, 4) letting kids learn at different paces.

I think the people in HN are like in such a school, they will to live in a world in which entry levels are not required but you need to learn the basic to understand where the complexity is, and at the same time, there is the need to exploit all the power that automation provides but without imagination other will, in the long term, take the lead.

I don't know whether kids will have the possibility to adapt or if they will just live accepting whatever the dynamic of the AI imposes on them, but perhaps we have a small window to suggest some useful ideas for our schools, so how are we going to rethink schools?

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cheekygeeky 7 hours ago

U.S.-centric reply here. Word mean things. So I think it would we wise to separate the terms "school" and "education". It has long been accepted that school is where one receives (or obtains) an education. However, schools have also introduced roadblocks to education. For example, students are often reticent to raise their hand to participate or ask questions because they are afraid it will make them look dumb or uncool ("brown-noser", etc.). I think we would all agree that both vocalization and question-asking are necessary to accelerate learning/education. So schools have LONG been non-optimal for real education and this is just one of the reasons that more and more parents have opted for homeschooling. And that is before we get into other issues like teacher to class size ratios, safety, bullying, sexual harassment and other things that come with today's schools.

The biggest problem with homeschooling has been unqualified teachers/parents, both in their ability to provide proper oversight of learning and lacking the qualifications of knowledge in the areas they are supposed to be teaching.

If you believe the maxim that "Education is not about filling a bucket, but rather about starting a fire" for learning, then self-directed learning with Ai could be the biggest boon for education POSSIBLE. All one must do is inculcate curiosity in the student and teach them how to think critically and evaluate sources and then set them loose on answering the questions that naturally come from that curiosity (or are supplemented by more questions to lead them farther down the road to knowledge or expertise on that subject).

An argument could be made that we are entering a post-school period of education. Except that the Public School system in the U.S. has become the biggest taxpayer-funded daycare center possible for school-aged children.

And that's why few really care about what happens in a school. They are a necessary evil and there is a belief that they promote social skills and a chance for athletics, if nothing else.