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fubarobfusco comments on Stupid Questions January 2015 - Less Wrong
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I have a developing opinion that I'm not quite sure how to word.
It seems that schools all over the world are teaching the same lessons, but are all trying to recreate the wheel. I sense that it'd be more efficient if a bunch of effort and resources went in to each lesson, and that lesson was made available for everyone.
Elon Musk gave a good analogy (paraphrasing)
I sense that there is some sort of economic logic/terminology that applies here and that better articulates what I'm trying to say.
My attempt at explaining it a bit more formally. Consider a lesson on mitosis. Say you have 100 classrooms you need to teach this lesson to. And say you have 100 employees. I think it'd be more efficient for those 100 employees to work at creating an optimal lesson, and then providing that lesson (via a website or something) to students. Given that the lesson can (largely) be delivered via software, it's non-rivalrous (my consumption doesn't take anything away from your consumption), and thus can be distributed to everyone at no marginal cost.
Anyway, I hope I did a good enough job explaining such that someone can recognize what I'm trying to say. I'd be really happy if anyone was able to help me further my understanding.
It might be worthwhile to distinguish between lesson content and the student experience.
For instance, if a million students watch the same video lecture on mitosis, have all of them had the same experience? Of course not. Different students have had different backgrounds. Some understand particular analogies that the lecturer makes better than others do. Some are colorblind and have more difficulty understanding a particular animation that is used.
And then there is the context in which that lecture is presented —
Ten of those million students are watching the lecture in a seminar classroom; and when one student gets confused, they pause the video and discuss it. Another ten students are watching the lecture in a different classroom; and when one student gets confused and looks out the window, he or she is punished for being inattentive.
Some students are watching at home on their laptops, and pausing the video to look things up on Wikipedia. Some are listening to the lecture as they drive to work or mow the lawn.
Five other students don't watch the lecture at all. They agree to read the Wikipedia article on mitosis and whichever linked articles or sources they think might be interesting. Then they meet at a coffee shop and discuss it.
True, but I don't see how that relates to the central point. Do you think that individual differences are large enough such that the gains to be made from specialization aren't large enough to justify the investment I'm proposing?
I wasn't refuting something or even disagreeing; I was elaborating on something else that is worth attending to in order to meet (what I suspect to be) your goal. This isn't a refutation; it's a "yes, and also ..."
Part of what schools all over the world are doing is not just re-creating lesson plans, but providing specific student experiences. They may sometimes be doing this by deliberate design, and sometimes by following rules that are not terribly good, and sometimes pretty much winging it.
And just as some lessons might be better than others for learning (and thus, worth replicating rather than reinventing), some student experiences might be better than others for learning as well.
Oh ok.