The concept of wealth is misleading, and the accounting for income/wealth is inferior.
1- Guaranteed income is not wealth, but even better than wealth for protecting you from future unpredictable events.
2- Individuals and Families accumulate wealth as a hedge against the unknown future.
3- Appearance of extreme wealth does have "status value" but also attracts human parasites and con men.
4- Wealth does provide some opportunities to fund what you support or believe in.
My objective has always been to avoid ending up as an old man under a bridge, and now that my planning horizon is only 7 years, I am reasonably sure that won't be an issue. A paid-off home and sufficient financial assets, along with well-educated children who are independent with their own zip codes and grandchildren with education savings accounts, create as much stability as possible in the later years. All these plans are counted as Wealth.
My brother-in-law's plan was an inflation-proof government employee pension plan. This guaranteed income stream was equivalent to over $3 million, but that's not wealth. His is a better plan with the inflation-proofing that I don't have. He could spend loans on his Hawaiian vacation and other homes without creating a risk.
Having viewed "inflation instability" up close and played Monopoly with real money (Brazil, early 60s), his cola makes his plan superior, but I didn't have his political connection to the taxpayers' pockets.
Statistically, I am wealthier, but so what? He was able to spend more on travel and vacations, but so what? The Dumb Luck component of all life can be the factor you can't avoid.
Excellent comment on the huge teacher load for mastery learning—which is why ai is needed for most of it. Even one-on-one tutoring is subject to poor or incompatible tutors with specific students. But even optimal teaching won’t raise IQ much.
Emil has a good chart suggesting IQ + Work Ethics + Mental Illness = Life Success (mostly). He explicitly excludes random factors, but I’m sure he’s wrong to do that, yet luck is definitionally indeterminant—the high IQ folk are lucky in having those IQs.
His talk about Big 5 personality totally avoids the Dark Triads, while correctly noting that others reporting on personality are more accurate than the too common self-reporting. He mentions smart lazy folk as having less success, but fails to note that “Laziness” is not a Big 5 trait, merely some unspecified correlate with Conscientiousness. Nor does he note that each of the 5 are already aggregates of different aspects, at least two each. Where is Honesty or Humility, or height, weight, facial beauty? He doesn’t want there to be some 100 other small influences, but the fact is that there are dozens of known variables with multiple studies relating that variable to success.
No one of them comes close to explaining / correlating to success as does IQ, as the test result proxy for g (general intelligence).
A high rated comment there notes that IQ distribution is not fair, and especially is unequal & unfair in racial aggregates. Most folk don’t like that.
Society needs to push more schooling resources towards improving behavior, and reducing mental illness, rather than failing to raise IQs.
That behavior modification requires more motivation—paying kids to behave well in school is likely among the reforms which would most cost effectively improve Life success.
The high IQ folk are lucky in even being born. In fact, we are all lucky that one specific sperm was able to make its way into that egg. So if you're so inclined, you can say everything is luck--and since no one "deserves" their luck, nothing you have or have achieved is legitimately yours, and can be taken away at any time with no moral scruples.
“If we get years-of-schooling data and salary data on a thousand individuals, and we find that 40 percent of the variation in salary across individuals can be explained by years of schooling, then we know that if we had better measures of education and income we would be able to explain even more of the variation.”
Maybe, but not necessarily.
Given how strong the signaling value of higher education is.
This "crowding" has a lot to do with conscious policy choices by governments and the Fed at all levels. We have created a world in which real wages are decreasing, but asset prices keep escalating. The recent "Lords of Easy Money" was very good on this topic as it relates to the Fed. But I think also the reason the Fed has been able to do this without political constraint is because so many state governments and the federal government need this policy to continue to avoid bankruptcy. Then you also have the consequence of the long-term policy success of inviting massive and continuous foreign capital inflows to the US that bolster asset prices.
If you are a rich guy in China, India, the UK, etc. you would be stupid not to invest in the US markets because your home market will expropriate you. You will want to finagle your way out of capital controls and get your money into US markets and probably US real estate as well. But that contributes to boosting asset prices in the US such that it becomes tougher and tougher to do business profitably here because all your employees have to pay $10,000 per month mortgages.
These quotes are not entirely unrelated? The importance of IQ, however mysterious that which it measures; and what Louis-Klein calls “Jewish difference”.
I can’t be sure - he may simply mean “attitude of others toward Jews”.
If he alludes to real difference, perhaps it comes down to, as so often, “who had the kids”. Muslims knocked over 2 skyscrapers in the capital not of America but of *the world* and had no need of forgiveness. Vengeance was sought, of course, as was only natural; but Muslims were strenuously, almost comically relieved of culpability, as if children. The world happily awaits the birth of another Muslim ethnostate, or pretends to. I can only think it’s because they have so obviously devolved away from their period of brilliance. They went dysgenic. Maybe in a thousand years, Jews may follow a similar path - we’re told I think that Arabs and Jews are on the same branch* of Middle Eastern people? - and will no longer be that outgroup marked by their remarkable intelligence in multiple domains, perhaps especially as the complicating threat of Christianity/Paul wanes.
And then perhaps they will be allowed to keep their ethnostate as all others are.
Surely even America will eventually be an ethnostate, though I’m not sure whose, and its skyscrapers allowed to stand. There has been or at least for a short time, an America difference too, after all.
*Change can happen fast.**
**And all that matters is a respect for life and the preservation of wildlife and the idea of wilderness.
It's absolutely true that people who have a low opinion of Israel, but not an even lower opinion of most Arab states, are exhibiting an outrageous bias.
On a related note, everyone needs to grow up and recognize that a "free" Palestine would be just another tyrannical Arab ethnostate in the region. It would be a better life for West Bank Palestinians, but not all that much better.
I say all this as a critic of the current war and a committed two stater.
“It would be a better life for West Bank Palestinians, but not all that much better.”
We ain’t gonna know any time soon, but imo it is unlikely that West Bank Palestinians would be better off in an independent Palestine than they are under the *relatively* ordered, *relatively* prosperous conditions they live under now.
Gazans, of course, would almost surely be better off.
Probably if you are a militant Palestinian male, you are right.
Possibly if you are an average straight Muslim Palestinian male you might be.
If you are female, if you are gay, if you are atheist, if you are any other religion, you’re probably not.
But it’s easy for we rich Westerners to proclaim that we know. The point is neither is a great choice, and probably neither is even a good choice.
But I will effectively restate when I point out that the average safety-preferring poor Palestinian in the West Bank is probably better off than the average poor person elsewhere in the region.
I have no opinion of either Israel or Palestine. If asked, I could not provide a satisfactory answer regarding the origins of the conflict and the victim vs. the aggressor. I imagine that I’m not alone in this honest self assessment, which is to say that most of the hot takes that I read probably have more to do with tribal affiliations over everything else.
The reader of your Mastery Learning post writes: "I think the reason adoption is so low is that there is far more demand/workload on the teacher compared to running a normal classroom."
Yes, but we can—and should—add much more to this explanation. Not only does effective teaching (and learning) require more work, it also demands more from both the teacher and the students in many other ways.
The teacher (and students) must be enthusiastic—because without enthusiasm, the teacher will lack industriousness: an eagerness to work hard and carefully plan each minute of the lesson, week, and semester. Time is of immense value. Students and teacher should want to get the most out of their class time.
The teacher must also have deep knowledge of the subject matter and the skill to teach it effectively. Without deep knowledge and skill, students will not respect the teacher. Respect is of the utmost importance in teaching, and it must be mutual. Students must want to attend this particular school and be motivated to learn from this particular teacher. Likewise, the teacher must be motivated to teach these particular students. If student attitude is poor, it will be difficult to teach and learn. Recruiting the right kind of students is just as important as recruiting talented students. Students with poor character habits can destroy classroom productivity.
Teaching should focus on fundamentals through explanation, demonstration, imitation, and correction. This process requires patience, hard work, and firmness. The teacher must be willing and eager to correct student mistakes. Criticism should provide students with information—to correct and prevent errors—without humiliation, personal attacks, and emotionalism. Students (with the help of their parents) must learn to accept and benefit from criticism. Criticism is positive because it provides the student with accurate information. (Of course, there should also be sincere praise when appropriate.) The inability to handle criticism is probably a major reason why this approach is not more widely adopted.
The teacher must also help students see the bigger picture. For each lesson, students should (eventually, if not immediately) come to understand how it benefits them in the long term. The class should see themselves as a learning team in which selfishness, disrespectful behavior, and showmanship are detrimental to learning. Students should spirited without clowning. The teacher should compliment students for positive personal qualities—not just for high scores and good grades.
The teacher must nurture a learning environment that seeks balance in three types of fitness: mental, moral, and physical. Getting the most out of life requires balanced fitness. The key to life and happiness is balance. Too often, a particular school or teacher will overemphasize one area to the detriment of the others.
What is a technical term for this type of balance? I would analogize it to designing a lens using merit function optimization, in which the designer makes trade-offs between merit variables in pursuit of image quality, manufacturing feasibility, and business goals. Of course, in life we often don't know what is best; hence, we must respect evolution and emergent order in addition to top-down and designed orders.
Lessons should also be compelling. What makes a lesson compelling depends on the students, the topic, and the goals. Fun is almost always a good ingredient to add. Shared experiences through singing, competition, or physical work are other possibilities. Variety is also important. There should be enough repetition and review to develop automaticity while avoiding monotony. Lessons should be layered—drills should vary—approaching a particular skill or combination of skills from multiple perspectives and situations. Lessons should be tailored to the students. While certain fundamentals should always be present, we must understand that there is no one-size-fits-all "best philosophy" for teaching. To believe otherwise is to believe one can defeat the Null Hypothesis (a term coined by Arnold Kling).
We can—and should—add more to this explanation. And we shouldn’t be satisfied with monocausal explanations for why Mastery Learning—or effective learning in general—isn’t more widely adopted. Our world is a deeply complex place.
Thanks always for the thought provoking posts Arnold.
Perhaps this is unfair, but you made me think of an old Doonesbury cartoon. Zonker Harris, the free-spirited hippie, is describing the job he wants. For several panels, he describes wonderful things. Finally, in the last panel, his friend says, "So you don't want a job."
I was in the business for many years as a teacher, and I got royally sick of unrealistic ideas and expectations. I am now allergic to such thought. The education you describe might be possible for super-humans but not for us poor Homo sapiens.
Perhaps you don't mean this as something that can actually be achieved. It is just a goal to be constantly striven for but never reached. "Shoot for the stars, because even if you fail, you'll reach the moon." No, more likely you'll never get close to escape velocity and burn up as you fall back to earth.
This isn’t unfair. Let me explain. What I’m describing here is based on John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, which in turn, is based on a much broader philosophy. An important aspect of this philosophy is his definition of success. Success is peace of mind that comes from the self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the best of your abilities and resources.
If you gave your best effort, then don’t hang your head.
Part of this philosophy is Sowell’s Law: There are no solutions; only tradeoffs, but why not aim for poise and confidence by giving your best effort while trying to balance all the tradeoffs inherent to life? What’s the alternative? Why not optimize?
So is this some hippie philosophy? It seems rather American to me, echoing the ideals of the Founding. Perhaps it’s more similar to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Latter-Day Saints, but not being a believer in the supernatural, I’m more inclined to side with John Wooden and his 10 NCAA basketball championships. Important qualities of this philosophy are optimism, discovery, freedom, entrepreneurship, and creativity.
I don’t find hippies to be serious thinkers, but I believe John Wooden was, and some Christians are.
Can perfection be obtained? No, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk and write about perfection, and what might go into creating perfection. Our ideals inform us of what we might strive for. I’m an engineer, a parent, and a husband. Everyday I face tradeoffs, but in the distant background I can’t help but want balanced perfection.
How different is this philosophy from the Good Enough Teacher or the Good Enough Parent? If we define our best effort as Good Enough, then perhaps they are quite similar.
What’s your philosophy for success, for life, and things that are important to you? Do you have one?
What's my philosophy? I try to do the best I can. I try to make things better for the people around me. I hope to leave the world better than I found it. I value truth but often hold myself because the truth can hurt. Mostly, I muddle through.
I may be pathetically naive, but I tend towards believing that all that stuff (all of it good stuff) you note would be accomplished by paying teachers that want to do that stuff more. Like, a lot more.
You could pay teachers a million dollars a year tax free and all that good stuff still wouldn't be accomplished, any more than a lot of grant dollars will discover a way to economically turn lead into gold.
Coincidentally, Texas just released its annual grades for its public schools.
I wonder what you think might be possible from a teaching perspective in a k-6 school where 70% of the school population can’t natively read or speak English and 92% live in poverty and 20% are chronically absent?
Is it any wonder that the school received an F? But is it really the schools fault?
I just glanced at a Reddit thread about an Austin middle school, which local parents don’t want to see closed, as it performs its social or community function well enough in their view, though it has gotten an “F” 3 times now. You’ve got former students weighing in about the prevalence of drugs, fights, and foreign-born students not merely without English, but illiterate - unable to read - in their own tongue, never having attended school. There is the repeated suggestion that kids are scarcely at a third or 4th grade level upon beginning middle school.
What if what tests measure is how interested a population is in learning what was in the test?
I’m sure you could find people who would teach in the school for six figures. The question is whether you could get them to keep teaching there, if they did all the “everything” - and gotten no markedly different results.
This is 90% true: good students make good schools; good schools don't make good students.
You could switch the students at Harvard and Bridgewater State: the BSU students get the Harvard professors and curriculum and physical plant, and the Harvard students get what's down in Bridgewater. The formerly Harvard students would still do much better than the formerly Bridgewater ones.
We like to believe that, while this may be true after high school, it is not true before. In fact, we believe (because we so want it to be true) that in elementary school, we can effect big change. Alas, we cannot.
I mostly blame the parents who have demonstrated that they are economically and socially incapable of raising kids. Second, I blame the open borders policies that allowed these people to come here and mooch off of taxpayer funds.
No, I'm saying that you'll never get all that wonderfulness together. You phrased it all as "must" and "should" and that's just ridiculously impossible in this fallen world of ours.
Any serious thinking about education or schooling can't be an exercise in fantasy. It has to consider the myriad constraints and trade-offs of reality.
I didn't phrase anything in the manner you describe. You must be one of those internet arguing types.
The competent teachers I know all work in private and/or elite high schools in rich neighborhoods. I ask them why they work there. They say it's because they get paid a lot more.
Oops! I thought I was replying to Scott Gibb, who started the thread. I'm in the wrong. I'm sorry.
I think I got confused because you said, "I tend towards believing that all that stuff (all of it good stuff) you note would be accomplished by paying teachers that want to do that stuff more." I was trying to say that you are never going to get "all that stuff" no matter how much you pay. You can get more of some, especially if you also have a selective admissions policy, a realistic disciplinary policy, and a good school culture.
Basically true. Teaching is a performance job. Most akin to acting, about which it can equally be said that "no amount of skill, training, intent, or money can make a difference."
Also, that entire list of stuff Scott posted was nonsense. As are all the comments about Mastery Learning being a thing. Also bullshit, that original comment in the first post about schools not requiring memorization of math facts, though, so really this is all just pissing into the wind.
Anyone who runs an SAT prep school should use principal instead of principle for the passage above.
The concept of wealth is misleading, and the accounting for income/wealth is inferior.
1- Guaranteed income is not wealth, but even better than wealth for protecting you from future unpredictable events.
2- Individuals and Families accumulate wealth as a hedge against the unknown future.
3- Appearance of extreme wealth does have "status value" but also attracts human parasites and con men.
4- Wealth does provide some opportunities to fund what you support or believe in.
My objective has always been to avoid ending up as an old man under a bridge, and now that my planning horizon is only 7 years, I am reasonably sure that won't be an issue. A paid-off home and sufficient financial assets, along with well-educated children who are independent with their own zip codes and grandchildren with education savings accounts, create as much stability as possible in the later years. All these plans are counted as Wealth.
My brother-in-law's plan was an inflation-proof government employee pension plan. This guaranteed income stream was equivalent to over $3 million, but that's not wealth. His is a better plan with the inflation-proofing that I don't have. He could spend loans on his Hawaiian vacation and other homes without creating a risk.
Having viewed "inflation instability" up close and played Monopoly with real money (Brazil, early 60s), his cola makes his plan superior, but I didn't have his political connection to the taxpayers' pockets.
Statistically, I am wealthier, but so what? He was able to spend more on travel and vacations, but so what? The Dumb Luck component of all life can be the factor you can't avoid.
I don't know if Israel having an "ethnostate" troubles many people, but OF COURSE we are going to expect better of Israel on multiple dimensions.
Excellent comment on the huge teacher load for mastery learning—which is why ai is needed for most of it. Even one-on-one tutoring is subject to poor or incompatible tutors with specific students. But even optimal teaching won’t raise IQ much.
Emil has a good chart suggesting IQ + Work Ethics + Mental Illness = Life Success (mostly). He explicitly excludes random factors, but I’m sure he’s wrong to do that, yet luck is definitionally indeterminant—the high IQ folk are lucky in having those IQs.
His talk about Big 5 personality totally avoids the Dark Triads, while correctly noting that others reporting on personality are more accurate than the too common self-reporting. He mentions smart lazy folk as having less success, but fails to note that “Laziness” is not a Big 5 trait, merely some unspecified correlate with Conscientiousness. Nor does he note that each of the 5 are already aggregates of different aspects, at least two each. Where is Honesty or Humility, or height, weight, facial beauty? He doesn’t want there to be some 100 other small influences, but the fact is that there are dozens of known variables with multiple studies relating that variable to success.
No one of them comes close to explaining / correlating to success as does IQ, as the test result proxy for g (general intelligence).
A high rated comment there notes that IQ distribution is not fair, and especially is unequal & unfair in racial aggregates. Most folk don’t like that.
Society needs to push more schooling resources towards improving behavior, and reducing mental illness, rather than failing to raise IQs.
That behavior modification requires more motivation—paying kids to behave well in school is likely among the reforms which would most cost effectively improve Life success.
"the high IQ folk are lucky in having those IQs."
The high IQ folk are lucky in even being born. In fact, we are all lucky that one specific sperm was able to make its way into that egg. So if you're so inclined, you can say everything is luck--and since no one "deserves" their luck, nothing you have or have achieved is legitimately yours, and can be taken away at any time with no moral scruples.
Typical nonsense from a wealth management executive; the scam biz as many call.
Lot of words but nothing really said.
“If we get years-of-schooling data and salary data on a thousand individuals, and we find that 40 percent of the variation in salary across individuals can be explained by years of schooling, then we know that if we had better measures of education and income we would be able to explain even more of the variation.”
Maybe, but not necessarily.
Given how strong the signaling value of higher education is.
It doesn't matter, when the 2025 Humanoid Robot Sports Competition has shown us we're all superfluous anyway.
https://substack.com/redirect/75fc0614-d156-4ba9-9de5-1990306b241a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjg2Zmt3In0.tEnleokpnpl5rK9THKJ8ZgpFU8vKEDmAxqVN7Jl4p_I
Re: Wealth Levels
This "crowding" has a lot to do with conscious policy choices by governments and the Fed at all levels. We have created a world in which real wages are decreasing, but asset prices keep escalating. The recent "Lords of Easy Money" was very good on this topic as it relates to the Fed. But I think also the reason the Fed has been able to do this without political constraint is because so many state governments and the federal government need this policy to continue to avoid bankruptcy. Then you also have the consequence of the long-term policy success of inviting massive and continuous foreign capital inflows to the US that bolster asset prices.
If you are a rich guy in China, India, the UK, etc. you would be stupid not to invest in the US markets because your home market will expropriate you. You will want to finagle your way out of capital controls and get your money into US markets and probably US real estate as well. But that contributes to boosting asset prices in the US such that it becomes tougher and tougher to do business profitably here because all your employees have to pay $10,000 per month mortgages.
These quotes are not entirely unrelated? The importance of IQ, however mysterious that which it measures; and what Louis-Klein calls “Jewish difference”.
I can’t be sure - he may simply mean “attitude of others toward Jews”.
If he alludes to real difference, perhaps it comes down to, as so often, “who had the kids”. Muslims knocked over 2 skyscrapers in the capital not of America but of *the world* and had no need of forgiveness. Vengeance was sought, of course, as was only natural; but Muslims were strenuously, almost comically relieved of culpability, as if children. The world happily awaits the birth of another Muslim ethnostate, or pretends to. I can only think it’s because they have so obviously devolved away from their period of brilliance. They went dysgenic. Maybe in a thousand years, Jews may follow a similar path - we’re told I think that Arabs and Jews are on the same branch* of Middle Eastern people? - and will no longer be that outgroup marked by their remarkable intelligence in multiple domains, perhaps especially as the complicating threat of Christianity/Paul wanes.
And then perhaps they will be allowed to keep their ethnostate as all others are.
Surely even America will eventually be an ethnostate, though I’m not sure whose, and its skyscrapers allowed to stand. There has been or at least for a short time, an America difference too, after all.
*Change can happen fast.**
**And all that matters is a respect for life and the preservation of wildlife and the idea of wilderness.
It's absolutely true that people who have a low opinion of Israel, but not an even lower opinion of most Arab states, are exhibiting an outrageous bias.
On a related note, everyone needs to grow up and recognize that a "free" Palestine would be just another tyrannical Arab ethnostate in the region. It would be a better life for West Bank Palestinians, but not all that much better.
I say all this as a critic of the current war and a committed two stater.
“It would be a better life for West Bank Palestinians, but not all that much better.”
We ain’t gonna know any time soon, but imo it is unlikely that West Bank Palestinians would be better off in an independent Palestine than they are under the *relatively* ordered, *relatively* prosperous conditions they live under now.
Gazans, of course, would almost surely be better off.
I don't know, when the order takes the form of strip searching you at will, more ordered conditions aren't necessarily better conditions
Probably if you are a militant Palestinian male, you are right.
Possibly if you are an average straight Muslim Palestinian male you might be.
If you are female, if you are gay, if you are atheist, if you are any other religion, you’re probably not.
But it’s easy for we rich Westerners to proclaim that we know. The point is neither is a great choice, and probably neither is even a good choice.
But I will effectively restate when I point out that the average safety-preferring poor Palestinian in the West Bank is probably better off than the average poor person elsewhere in the region.
I have no opinion of either Israel or Palestine. If asked, I could not provide a satisfactory answer regarding the origins of the conflict and the victim vs. the aggressor. I imagine that I’m not alone in this honest self assessment, which is to say that most of the hot takes that I read probably have more to do with tribal affiliations over everything else.
The reader of your Mastery Learning post writes: "I think the reason adoption is so low is that there is far more demand/workload on the teacher compared to running a normal classroom."
Yes, but we can—and should—add much more to this explanation. Not only does effective teaching (and learning) require more work, it also demands more from both the teacher and the students in many other ways.
The teacher (and students) must be enthusiastic—because without enthusiasm, the teacher will lack industriousness: an eagerness to work hard and carefully plan each minute of the lesson, week, and semester. Time is of immense value. Students and teacher should want to get the most out of their class time.
The teacher must also have deep knowledge of the subject matter and the skill to teach it effectively. Without deep knowledge and skill, students will not respect the teacher. Respect is of the utmost importance in teaching, and it must be mutual. Students must want to attend this particular school and be motivated to learn from this particular teacher. Likewise, the teacher must be motivated to teach these particular students. If student attitude is poor, it will be difficult to teach and learn. Recruiting the right kind of students is just as important as recruiting talented students. Students with poor character habits can destroy classroom productivity.
Teaching should focus on fundamentals through explanation, demonstration, imitation, and correction. This process requires patience, hard work, and firmness. The teacher must be willing and eager to correct student mistakes. Criticism should provide students with information—to correct and prevent errors—without humiliation, personal attacks, and emotionalism. Students (with the help of their parents) must learn to accept and benefit from criticism. Criticism is positive because it provides the student with accurate information. (Of course, there should also be sincere praise when appropriate.) The inability to handle criticism is probably a major reason why this approach is not more widely adopted.
The teacher must also help students see the bigger picture. For each lesson, students should (eventually, if not immediately) come to understand how it benefits them in the long term. The class should see themselves as a learning team in which selfishness, disrespectful behavior, and showmanship are detrimental to learning. Students should spirited without clowning. The teacher should compliment students for positive personal qualities—not just for high scores and good grades.
The teacher must nurture a learning environment that seeks balance in three types of fitness: mental, moral, and physical. Getting the most out of life requires balanced fitness. The key to life and happiness is balance. Too often, a particular school or teacher will overemphasize one area to the detriment of the others.
What is a technical term for this type of balance? I would analogize it to designing a lens using merit function optimization, in which the designer makes trade-offs between merit variables in pursuit of image quality, manufacturing feasibility, and business goals. Of course, in life we often don't know what is best; hence, we must respect evolution and emergent order in addition to top-down and designed orders.
Lessons should also be compelling. What makes a lesson compelling depends on the students, the topic, and the goals. Fun is almost always a good ingredient to add. Shared experiences through singing, competition, or physical work are other possibilities. Variety is also important. There should be enough repetition and review to develop automaticity while avoiding monotony. Lessons should be layered—drills should vary—approaching a particular skill or combination of skills from multiple perspectives and situations. Lessons should be tailored to the students. While certain fundamentals should always be present, we must understand that there is no one-size-fits-all "best philosophy" for teaching. To believe otherwise is to believe one can defeat the Null Hypothesis (a term coined by Arnold Kling).
We can—and should—add more to this explanation. And we shouldn’t be satisfied with monocausal explanations for why Mastery Learning—or effective learning in general—isn’t more widely adopted. Our world is a deeply complex place.
Thanks always for the thought provoking posts Arnold.
Perhaps this is unfair, but you made me think of an old Doonesbury cartoon. Zonker Harris, the free-spirited hippie, is describing the job he wants. For several panels, he describes wonderful things. Finally, in the last panel, his friend says, "So you don't want a job."
I was in the business for many years as a teacher, and I got royally sick of unrealistic ideas and expectations. I am now allergic to such thought. The education you describe might be possible for super-humans but not for us poor Homo sapiens.
Perhaps you don't mean this as something that can actually be achieved. It is just a goal to be constantly striven for but never reached. "Shoot for the stars, because even if you fail, you'll reach the moon." No, more likely you'll never get close to escape velocity and burn up as you fall back to earth.
This isn’t unfair. Let me explain. What I’m describing here is based on John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, which in turn, is based on a much broader philosophy. An important aspect of this philosophy is his definition of success. Success is peace of mind that comes from the self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the best of your abilities and resources.
If you gave your best effort, then don’t hang your head.
Part of this philosophy is Sowell’s Law: There are no solutions; only tradeoffs, but why not aim for poise and confidence by giving your best effort while trying to balance all the tradeoffs inherent to life? What’s the alternative? Why not optimize?
So is this some hippie philosophy? It seems rather American to me, echoing the ideals of the Founding. Perhaps it’s more similar to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Latter-Day Saints, but not being a believer in the supernatural, I’m more inclined to side with John Wooden and his 10 NCAA basketball championships. Important qualities of this philosophy are optimism, discovery, freedom, entrepreneurship, and creativity.
I don’t find hippies to be serious thinkers, but I believe John Wooden was, and some Christians are.
Can perfection be obtained? No, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk and write about perfection, and what might go into creating perfection. Our ideals inform us of what we might strive for. I’m an engineer, a parent, and a husband. Everyday I face tradeoffs, but in the distant background I can’t help but want balanced perfection.
How different is this philosophy from the Good Enough Teacher or the Good Enough Parent? If we define our best effort as Good Enough, then perhaps they are quite similar.
What’s your philosophy for success, for life, and things that are important to you? Do you have one?
What's my philosophy? I try to do the best I can. I try to make things better for the people around me. I hope to leave the world better than I found it. I value truth but often hold myself because the truth can hurt. Mostly, I muddle through.
That’s a good start.
I may be pathetically naive, but I tend towards believing that all that stuff (all of it good stuff) you note would be accomplished by paying teachers that want to do that stuff more. Like, a lot more.
I understand a lot of folks disagree with that.
You could pay teachers a million dollars a year tax free and all that good stuff still wouldn't be accomplished, any more than a lot of grant dollars will discover a way to economically turn lead into gold.
The LHC - sorry, just teasing - the Large Hadron Collider just did that, for a fraction of second, and a few dollars more!
Which is why I added the modifier "economically" :)
I passed over that. Wasn’t sure if you might not have seen this interesting clickbait.
So, we're insisting all teaching is impossible and no amount of skill, training, intent, or money can make a difference.
Right. Makes perfect sense.
Coincidentally, Texas just released its annual grades for its public schools.
I wonder what you think might be possible from a teaching perspective in a k-6 school where 70% of the school population can’t natively read or speak English and 92% live in poverty and 20% are chronically absent?
Is it any wonder that the school received an F? But is it really the schools fault?
https://txschools.gov/?view=school&id=220901160&tab=overview&lng=en
I just glanced at a Reddit thread about an Austin middle school, which local parents don’t want to see closed, as it performs its social or community function well enough in their view, though it has gotten an “F” 3 times now. You’ve got former students weighing in about the prevalence of drugs, fights, and foreign-born students not merely without English, but illiterate - unable to read - in their own tongue, never having attended school. There is the repeated suggestion that kids are scarcely at a third or 4th grade level upon beginning middle school.
What if what tests measure is how interested a population is in learning what was in the test?
I’m sure you could find people who would teach in the school for six figures. The question is whether you could get them to keep teaching there, if they did all the “everything” - and gotten no markedly different results.
This is 90% true: good students make good schools; good schools don't make good students.
You could switch the students at Harvard and Bridgewater State: the BSU students get the Harvard professors and curriculum and physical plant, and the Harvard students get what's down in Bridgewater. The formerly Harvard students would still do much better than the formerly Bridgewater ones.
We like to believe that, while this may be true after high school, it is not true before. In fact, we believe (because we so want it to be true) that in elementary school, we can effect big change. Alas, we cannot.
It's everyone's fault. One Trumpy thing I was (sort of) in agreement with was shutting down the DOE. The entire system is a mess.
I don’t particularly feel at fault.
I mostly blame the parents who have demonstrated that they are economically and socially incapable of raising kids. Second, I blame the open borders policies that allowed these people to come here and mooch off of taxpayer funds.
All the DoE does is write checks for laws that will exist whether or not the DoE does.
No, I'm saying that you'll never get all that wonderfulness together. You phrased it all as "must" and "should" and that's just ridiculously impossible in this fallen world of ours.
Any serious thinking about education or schooling can't be an exercise in fantasy. It has to consider the myriad constraints and trade-offs of reality.
I didn't phrase anything in the manner you describe. You must be one of those internet arguing types.
The competent teachers I know all work in private and/or elite high schools in rich neighborhoods. I ask them why they work there. They say it's because they get paid a lot more.
Oops! I thought I was replying to Scott Gibb, who started the thread. I'm in the wrong. I'm sorry.
I think I got confused because you said, "I tend towards believing that all that stuff (all of it good stuff) you note would be accomplished by paying teachers that want to do that stuff more." I was trying to say that you are never going to get "all that stuff" no matter how much you pay. You can get more of some, especially if you also have a selective admissions policy, a realistic disciplinary policy, and a good school culture.
Basically true. Teaching is a performance job. Most akin to acting, about which it can equally be said that "no amount of skill, training, intent, or money can make a difference."
Teachers get paid a lot now.
Also, that entire list of stuff Scott posted was nonsense. As are all the comments about Mastery Learning being a thing. Also bullshit, that original comment in the first post about schools not requiring memorization of math facts, though, so really this is all just pissing into the wind.
I agree.