[FRIAM] My plan to disrupt education

[Russ Abbott]

Thanks, Glen. Great questions.

Having taught for 40 years (at a state university), my sense is that the
struggle is how to get the less motivated 75% of the class to commit.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 8:47 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm a bit surprised nobody has replied to this. I can't contribute much,
> being ill-suited to formal education. But that raises a point. If we divide
> causation into 2 types, which I'll call "push" and "pull", structuring a
> school like what you seem to be doing will require canalization. Your
> purpose is to put in place a (complex) estuary, as it were, that balances
> the student's natural pull (desire, curiosity, etc.) against some set of
> heuristics you want to push, to instill ... the topology of the estuary.
>
> There are similar schools in various places, I suppose mostly liberal arts
> schools. And, in my travels, I've run across people who have *still* not
> found a path through the tangled canals that were "pushed", no matter how
> accommodating. Similarly, I've found people (like a couple of old roommates
> at aTm) who simply want someone to tell them what to learn so they can move
> on, get a job, have kids, and retire.
>
> So ... admittedly having only barely guessed at your plans ... how do you
> plan to balance the push and pull? Must all your students be super
> go-getters? Or will you plan to knead the lazy and shiftless ones, too?
> Will you use classifiers like Myers-Briggs to route some into the arts and
> some into STEM canals? Or rely exclusively on implicit self-classification?
> And since you plan to facilitate both poor and wealthy students, how do you
> plan to handle some in-group/tribal influences like the draw some of our
> poor get towards gang membership or even working the family farm?
>
>
> On 10/27/21 11:25 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > The public education system in South Africa is largely broken. For those
> who can afford it, we have very good schools, but the majority cannot and
> the education options for them are bleak.
> >
> > I plan to do something about it.
> >
> > This is my second attempt. About three years ago I started a school as a
> proof of concept with a radical model to have very high quality yet very
> low cost education and it failed miserably. (I managed to make plans for
> the kids and I don't believe any suffered from the experience - I pulled
> the plug before too much harm was done). I've thought, and discussed it a
> lot, and I'm ready to roll out my second, very different attempt.
> >
> > The basis of this is that there are plenty of resources available for
> free, and provided you manage the environment properly, kids can and will
> teach themselves.
> >
> > My plan is a model with two legs, both legs offering very high quality
> education, but the first leg is relatively expensive and has "bells and
> whistles" to attract the wealthy and the second is bare bones to make it
> affordable for those kids whose parents can't pay.
> >
> > The profit from first leg schools then cross-subsidise the costs of the
> second leg schools.
> >
> > The concept for both legs are copied from https://www.khanlabschool.org/
> <https://www.khanlabschool.org/> , adapted for local conditions of
> course. The second leg schools will just be a low cost version, but the
> education offered will still be world class.
> >
> > Our academic year starts in January. I'm working flat out to have my
> first school of the first leg open in January 2022. Then to have the first
> school of the second leg open in January 2023. Then to learn from the
> experience, adapt and roll it out so that every child in South Africa has
> access to world class education in five years time.
>
>
> --
> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
>
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