Comments on: Extraordinary Educators

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 15:00:40 +0000

“You speak like Spanish cow — but here in Southwest France we all do!”

By: Grasspunk

Grasspunk — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 14:35:40 +0000

I thought of that post the other week when I started my eldest in weekly 1:1 French lessons. Early returns are great. It is like that cheap education idea where you hire in expert tutors but in her case it is supplementing public school rather than homeschooling.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 13:47:59 +0000

Yes, I've written about the massive benefits of one-on-one teaching — which earned the odd name of Bloom's two-sigma problem. I think the reason that these teachers can show such amazing teaching ability is not that their subjects are soft, but that they're outside the core curriculum. The students have thousands of hours of experience in reading, writing, and math, but only dozens of hours of experience in these extracurriculars, so a single inspiring teacher can have an outsize effect.

By: Grasspunk

Grasspunk — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 07:24:44 +0000

Purple Tiger Bot has it right. Where are the factors of the great math, physics, chem, stats teachers?

This also makes me think of Aretae. Given the range of abilities of students in a class, for whom do these factors optimize? Didn’t you post something (Isegoria) on the massive benefits of 1:1 teaching?

By: Purple Tiger Bot

Purple Tiger Bot — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 13:57:02 +0000

Unfortunately this sort of result isn’t very instructive at all, as the “Extraordinary Educators” were teachers of soft, subjective subjects: a speech and drama teacher, a girls’ basketball coach, a choral music teacher, an art teacher. I would imagine motivating a dull student to perform in a subject that is tedious and difficult à la mathematics or physics is much more onerous and complicated than any soft class with weaker, subjective standards.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:49:14 +0000

High expectations, responsibility?….sounds like micro-aggression. This would be sure to create a new university terrorist group if implemented today.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 17:31:48 +0000

Only works if the student wants to learn.

You can coerce a student to stay, but they’ll acquire an aversion response to learning. It will only make it more difficult for them to be responsible and disciplined in the long term. Without strong long-term habits, their excellence will deliquesce and dribble out their ears, as per the many studies showing these effects last maybe a year.

By: Slovenian Guest

Slovenian Guest — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 16:33:46 +0000

The study is from 1988. I guess its findings were ignored, and rightly so. Perfectionism, discipline, responsibility even? That’s way too fascistic for today’s passionate classroom. Hell, it’s one step away from spouting off about “a sound mind in a sound body” and singing forward, forward, blare the bright fanfares!