Erik Hoel remarks on the unsettling findings of educational research … or research on education, if you detest ambiguity. After discarding a lot of traditional approaches to excellence in education, he gets to the meat of the matter:
Many have taken this null effect of schools to be a sign of genetic determinism, wherein some innate ability, like IQ, is all that matters, and education is, at best, just the delivery of a repository of facts.
I don’t think this is the case. For paradoxically there exists an agreed-upon and specific answer to the single best way to educate children, a way that has clear, obvious, and strong effects. The problem is that this answer is unacceptable. The superior method of education is deeply unfair and privileges those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder. It’s an answer that was well-known historically, and is also observed by education researchers today: tutoring.
Fascinating stuff, although the definition of a literary leading light is either unmemorable or utterly dispensed with. And while I think I see some acknowledgments of context changes, they’re not explored in any detail. On the other hand, this is part of a series, so perhaps he better accounts for context changes, and even what it means to be a ‘genius’, in the parts I have not read.
This is useful as a collection of links to studies of how useful various approaches to learning augmentation appear to be, and to triggering your own thoughts on the subject.
