Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/28/2013 02:59 PM Report

The question is: is algebra the largest single academic reason why students don't complete high school.

It is a national disgrace that 25 percent of our ninth graders don't make it through to a diploma. So what role does algebra have?

"Algebra is a much greater boulder to push up a hill than let's say reading "To Kill a Mockingbird." In all event, what is happening is that we're wasting a tremendous amount of talent because people are not finishing high school, not finishing community colleges, even not graduating from college because of math requirements. And I suggest -- I'm suggesting we rethink this compulsorily required subject. But maybe make it an elective."

Andrew Hacker is professor emeritus of political science at Queens College of New York.

TRANSCRIPT FROM NPR DISCUSSION, Diane Rehm Show:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-08-29/algebra-necessary/transcript

Four million 14-year-olds in this country. Every single one of them is required, expected to take this subject called Algebra.

" . . . I'm really believing more and more that the kind of thinking skills that math encourage are really constrictive because there's a very cold logic to math, whereas if you study anthropology you'll discover there are much more variation in the world."

"Toyota made an arrangement with the community college which now teaches -- are you ready -- machine tool mathematics for Toyota. Okay. We can do that for those people who need it."

Here's what I'd suggest, that mathematics departments both at high school and college offer alternatives, for example, a course in the history of mathematics. At DePaul University in Chicago, to pass a math requirement, you can take a course in history of math. Or the philosophy of mathematics. Galileo said, mathematics is the language of nature. Let's think about that. Let's have that taught. It's beautiful.

"All I'm asking, Diane, is that we rethink this requirement that we impose on everyone. Ask ourselves, can we not think of some alternative to algebra?"

StandupPhilosopher  02/28/2013 02:06 PM Report

Although Khan's analogy between an algebra coach and math teacher is a bit simplistic, it is still a very valuable insight into how academic teachers can be more effective if they change the traditional teacher-student relationship to one that uses a coaching model.

It seems as if Khan not only has a lot to teach students, he can also provide some insights that will help teachers be even more effective.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/28/2013 03:48 AM Report

Kahn oversimplified the Algebra Teacher and the Coach story—algebra is boring and sports are exciting. Sports are more engaging--moving, yelling, body shape changing. Algebra is sleep inducing--especially in a warm room after lunch with a Teacher whose voice is soft and sweet.

A better comparison would have been Algebra compared to PE. Even then dressing for PE and actually moving is much different than learning Algebra.

Algebra while walking on treadmills, and the Teacher engaging you via the computer screen in the treadmill, now we are talking.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/28/2013 03:40 AM Report

Charlie, how many thousands of hours of programming do you offer online?

What are the requirements for a Charlie Rose degree?

We can tell you right now it is much more valuable than Algebra.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/28/2013 03:25 AM Report

Indeed, let us go to Fareed:

KHAN: Let everyone learn at their own pace. Only move on to a concept once they've gotten to a certain level of proficiency or certain level of mastery on a base concept so that their took kit is really strong for that more advanced thing.

ZAKARIA: But if we let students learn at their own pace, what does that do to the traditional classroom model? It's turned upside down. Which is exactly what we need to do.

Last fall (2011), Los Altos, California, agreed to use Khan Academy in five classrooms.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Show me what that looks like as a number.

ZAKARIA: Kami Thordarson allowed her students to experiment with the program to see what it could offer.

KAMI THORDARSON, TEACHER, LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA: We saw kids exploring areas that we didn't know they could. I mean, it was -- it was surprising to them and to us that the levels that they were reaching and it was fascinating just to watch them be free, to have that freedom to explore on their own.

ZAKARIA: One crucial discovery Thordarson made was that it made a lot of sense for students to watch the videos at home.

THORDARSON: Victory.

ZAKARIA: It is the reverse of the current system where students spend valuable class time simply getting the basic information from the teacher. Copying notes.

KHAN: Now they're able to do the problems, which are really the most important part of the learning process, they're able to do the problems with other people around them. With the teacher around them. With their peers around them. They can actually tutor each other.

ZAKARIA: When her students get stuck, Thordarson tells them to right their name on the board. Another student soon comes to the rescue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Add this to it.

ZAKARIA: The classroom buzzes with little tutors who are learning themselves through the act of teaching. And if a particularly gifted student gets bored, she can race ahead and try calculus if she wants.

THORDARSON: If you look at people who work in a workplace and are creative and are engineers, I mean, they don't sit all the time at their desk and just work by themselves. They meet and they talk and they bounce ideas off each other. And we need to develop that skill in our students because it's such an important skill for where they're headed in the future.

ZAKARIA: What's more, Thordarson's students can't goof off because she has the ultimate tool to keep tabs on them. Khan Academy's intricately detailed tracking software. She can check how many units each student has passed.

KHAN: Nineteen total minutes spent on videos.

ZAKARIA: How many times he's watched a video.

KHAN: Each bar here is a different student --

ZAKARIA: And even how long he's been watching, down to the minute. All of the information can be seen in real time on Thordarson's iPad.

THORDARSON: Being able to walk around and just pull that instant data up on a child and be able to sit down and say, oh, I just saw you were struggling with this particular problem, it's fabulous.

("The classroom buzzes with little tutors who are learning themselves through the act of teaching." Charlie, there is the story.)

Max83  02/27/2013 11:33 PM Report

Great conversation and great work Salman Khan is doing. Thank you.

This video below is the Resistance to good education. I don't know if I should laugh or cry about this?

''Elois Zeanah: Obama Plans to Indoctrinate Children Through Common Core''

Video Link:

''Published on Feb 25, 2013

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alabama-gop-official-warns-obama-plans-indoctrinate-children

Alabama Republican Party official Elois Zeanah warns "this is not a novel like '1994' [sic], it's Common Core"''

tabs  02/27/2013 07:49 PM Report

The following is the pertient part of an e-mail sent on 11/28/12 to CNBC while Mr Buffett was on air.

"Third, the US education system over the decades has become Bureaucratized and thus Industrialized in the sense that it has become an assembly line process as if we are turning out Widgets instead of productive human beings. This type of system does not recognizes nor foster the unique nature of every person and thus to be able to unleash their potential. Throwing money at the system only further bureaucratizes the system." TABS

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/27/2013 07:23 PM Report

In humans, atropa belladonna's anticholinergic properties will cause the disruption of cognitive capacities, such as memory and learning.[20]

(Sounds like a possible neuroscience research project to study memory and learning pathways and how to improve them.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/27/2013 04:27 PM Report

Charlie, you are not asking the correct forward looking questions:

What are the pros and cons of a Google brain implant?

http://io9.com/359932/the-pros-and-cons-of-a-google-brain-implant

Will Siri evolve to be my personal teacher?

Ellen_Dibble  02/27/2013 02:23 PM Report

I came away with the idea that you could attend university and spend your entire "seat time" engaged in conversation, challenging one another, directed somewhat by the professor, whose lecture could have been packaged and distributed by the Khan academy. The role of the professor would fundamentally shift and be bumped up to post-graduate level, where if I understand correctly, students basically teach themselves, and use the professors' time for interaction. "How about 100 percent of the time interactive," I recall hearing. And I'm not sure whether that was about 100 percent of the students' time online being interactive, in that it is certainly all controlled to some extent by the person at the computer, or 100 percent of class time. My two cents' worth? I believe the American education system is such that the powers of students to educate themselves has barely been mined at all. Perhaps teachers have always been a little afraid they can't keep up with students unchained, which I can certainly appreciate. If a student is self-directed, self-motivated, it is pretty much guaranteed he/she will "take agency," as Khan expressed it, and "own" the knowledge, make it a functional part of his working knowledge. The initiator of the learning probably has adequate reasons. I suppose the "system" then has to be flexible enough to allow for students then RE-directing, finding even better directions to go in, and having to spend time in consultation with educators about those shifts. Presently, short of dropping a course, there isn't much chance for self-direction, meaning that shifts almost inevitably suggests themselves. Either you adapt to what it was decided in Austria 150 years ago (something like that) must be taught now, or taught next, or you are out of luck.

REMant  02/27/2013 12:44 PM Report

Certainly education is something in which large savings can be made. Taking kids out of the classroom would also keep them from being bullied and shot at.

These folks should just bypass the "credit" part and ask professional groups to certify their students. But eventually employers will do the job for them. I'm happy to see more and more colleges allowing students to participate in their online courses free of charge, which will just accelerate the process. It shouldn't matter when, where, or how ppl learn things - schools shouldn't be in the grading business - only that they know them.

Sorry to say college kids don't accumulate the seat-time anyway. I would say, too, that a great part of the problem is that American kids see a surer route to fame and fortune excelling in sports and other extracurricular activities than in math, something we have Dale Carnegie to thank for, as much as, LeBron James.

Altho Jefferson may be credited for starting the sorting machine (following Hume, as did Madison), educators are not alone to blame for it. The fact that compulsory education couldn't be enacted until parents began to clamor for formal schooling indicates it was the status it conferred rather than the "larning" they were interested in.

And the fact that we're still sorting, illustrates that no matter how much teachers may say they want to teach kids to think, it's training they provide, leaving them no option but to evaluate this dimension by the seat of their skirts. Federalists saw habituation as desirable for monarchy, so they didn't mind a bit.

Similarly, the Committee of Ten sought not just to define the curriculum as a collection of technical topics which modernizers had been pushing for nearly a century, but to establish that it be taught to all, in part to relieve themselves of the burden of remedial measures, but clearly self-serving overall. Ironically, the classical curriculum they sought to supplant, for all its faults, came much much closer to the desired objective.