RoR: Forum

The discussion was interesting, as well, a reflection of the issues underneath the article.

I watched a video on equations and did a problem in trig.
It seems to work OK.
http://www.khanacademy.org/

Post 1

Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 4:16pm

I was impressed with the courses. I went to the Khan Academy home page and scrolled down, looking at all of the offerings. I saw an entire set of lectures on the Housing Bubble and went through them all. The explanations on Mortgage Backed Securities, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and Credit Default Swaps were excellent! And that's a tough area to make clear.

I didn't agree fully with some of the other lectures, and I wish he had included the following things, some of which are critical to understanding the bubble:

In some parts of some states the supply-demand ratio for land/houses was dramatically changed by various land restriction legislation - before any other part of the bubble came into play, and then this artificial reduction in supply continued in parallel with the bubble mechanism's work (the artificial increase in demand).
The CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) wasn't discussed,
The role HUD (Housing and Urban Development department) played in pressuring lenders to achieve 'social justice' goals (reduced lending standards),
The progressive changes that strengthened the CRA over the years,
The pressures placed on lenders by bank ratings threats from the government, and by thug-like threats by community organizers (like ACORN)
The connection between the GSE's who pulled money from the FED to buy the mortgages,
The role of the FED in making more and more money and keeping the interest rates low.

That article had a long comment from an educator that was very critical of the 'drill on the mechanics' method of learning versus a creative version where a structured learning environment will encourage children/people to arrive at the underlying principles and broader concepts on their own. I've always thought that the basic skills have to be learned by rote drill to give a person the needed tools, then you use the tools, like reading, to study more abstract theories, then you learn some critical thinking skills (by rote drill), and now you can apply the logic to theory you couldn't be doing without the reading skills. They are like sequential building blocks. There has to be some drill to move a skill to the subconscious - to automate it - so you can free the mind to work on the next level. At the end of that thread you can be applying logic to theories of learning and understand why you need layers of boring, rote drill.

Post 2

Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 5:59pm

I've been to this site many times and it suits my learning style to a "T".

Throughout al my engineering studies I was frustrated by the lectures. I was subconsciously shouting out "Give me an example, for Christ's sake." So, I attended lectures to get the general drift of what the subject and terminology was about and know what home work we were supposed to do. Then I'd go home, look at the Schaum's Outline problems and solutions, then go back to the text and study the theory. In this way I had context of what I was learning. This is probably an inefficient way of doing things for those that can do it otherwise but for me it was the only way.

Anyway, for those like me, it would have been a boon to have the Khan facility available. Kudos to Bill Gates for funding this enterprise. I've just finished "I am John Galt" in which Gates is lauded as an Ayn Rand hero, and in this case he is, but I'm not so sure about some of his other philanthropic ventures with Warren Buffett.

...and if some students advance far beyond their grade level, the whole system may break down.

That is truly deplorable.

Sam

Post 3

Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 6:10pm

SW wrote:

I've always thought that the basic skills have to be learned by rote drill to give a person the needed tools, then you use the tools, like reading, to study more abstract theories, then you learn some critical thinking skills (by rote drill), and now you can apply the logic to theory you couldn't be doing without the reading skills.

This is one of my hot buttons. I hated those drills. When I say hate, I mean the "Norman Bates' mother hates dirty little whores" kind of hate. What kinds of drills?

1. Write the same word 10 god-damned times.
2. Write the god-damned definition.
3. Use the word in a god-damned sentence.

Did I mention that I hated those drills?

I read plenty already as a child. When I encountered a word in a Nancy Drew novel I did not know, I either guessed accurately from context or I consulted a dictionary. I could have taken those spelling tests before the fact and passed at 100% easily. Those were merely "busy work" exercises that chewed time while delivering nothing of value for me. I still feel a sense of rage against that system and the teachers who delivered and enforced it.

The math is another matter and I plainly needed the drills for those.

My point is that the "one size fits all" system is horribly wasteful. Breakthroughs like Khan Academy can change that. Too bad so many people have a vested interest in the status quo.

Post 4

Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 6:28pm

SW: "That article had a long comment from an educator that was very critical of the 'drill on the mechanics' method of learning versus a creative version where ...

Right. You mean the first comment from fnoschese that cited doctoral dissertatuions. The subsequent posts pretty much chewed him up and spit him out.
From Tsu Dho Ninh: "Dude ... your professional insecurity is showing. "

Criticism is easy. I am happy that this was done.

I agree with Luke. To alleviate the boredom, I used to turn the paper sideways to write spelling words five times each. But I agree, also, that I needed the drill for math ... even into calculus ... At some level, you have to know that the integral of sin(x)dx is negative cos(x) and know it by heart, even if, of necessity, you work it through for "why" before memorizing it.

All in all, Khan is good.

Post 5

Saturday, August 6, 2011 - 8:42pm

One of the really good things about Khan is that he does drill, but it is one-on-one so the student doesn't have to do a single drill more than they need. They can do as many or as few examples as they want. If it is a good system it lets people test periodically and then they can go back and drill more if they find something that didn't stick.

Those of us who were significantly above average in intelligence were tortured with the boredom of more drills than we needed, with drills that were poorly done, and clumsily pushed out. The greater your natural hunger to learn, the more painful the unnecessary or bad drills.

If I understand the relation between basic skills type of drills and mastery of the skills, then all of us who can read and comprehend accurately, but also with enjoyment, have already mastered the mental drill phase - otherwise they couldn't be reading that well. Children of below average intelligence, that are taught in a class that aims at the average kid and there is no one-on-one teaching, those less intelligent kids might not get enough drill.

Good teachers, working one on one, motivate their student so they aren't drowning in boredom or hating the subject. They do a good job of drilling enough to get the kid to a high skill level, and no more drilling then needed. They only use drills for basic skills and then go creative encouragement where the kid decides what to do with the skills.

Good teachers understand that drilling for basic skills doesn't replace or contradict critical thinking, or expression of creative choices. They are all needed.
----------------

The problem of the current system is the government. No competition between methods and forcibly entrenched mediocrity in teachers and methods. Government schools choose the 'one-size-fits-all' method and the method will either leave out drills altogether (bad) or not do enough to the below average student (bad) or do too many for the intelligent student (bad).

Post 6

Sunday, August 7, 2011 - 2:10am

SW: If it is a good system it lets people test periodically and then they can go back and drill more if they find something that didn't stick. ... Those of us who were significantly above average in intelligence were tortured with the boredom of ...

Well, the problem of illusory superiority aside, in the original article, the kid doing the trigonometry problems was just having fun playing a game. We might even guess that he was avoiding work that was harder. In order to do an "inverse trig problem" you need to know the concepts. If sin(x) = 0.5 then x = 30 degrees or pi/6 (also what? 210 or 7pi/6? - top of my head; didn't look it up.) So, he sits there most likely running through what probably are the easy half dozen, sin, sec, tan, etc, of 30, 60, 45 ... in different quadrants. It's drill and if assigned as a paper page to be filled out, he might balk. (You would, I guess.) But as a video game with an abstract reward, he is engaged.

As far as I remember, I never learned to spell any word by repetitiously listing it. I learned spelling by context - "phonics" - English orthography being chaotic.

I am not sure that less intelligent kids need more drill - or that it does them any good. Elizabeth Montessori worked out her theories and practices with children designated "retarded."

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/07, 2:12am)

Post 7

Sunday, August 7, 2011 - 9:56am

Michael, "drill" is anything that you have to do in a repetitiveness fashion till it is automated - like learning the multiplication tables. It would include things like hand-writing, typing, learning to sound out words (phonetics), playing a musical instrument, etc.

It is "drill" if it is assigned by a teacher or done on your own initiative. It is referred to as "mindless" drill because it doesn't involve discovery, or creativity, it doesn't involve new concepts being learned. It is about perfecting a low level skill.

You couldn't read, write or do arithmetic unless you had "drilled" - it wouldn't be possible. The question is only what is the best kind of drill and what individual differences exist and how best to facilitate or teach that element of learning. It can be done in many different forms - it is not necessarily writing a word many, many times to learn to spell. It could be a spelling bee that fires kids up to study lists of words on their own in whatever form of "drill" they come up with (like looking at a word on a list, closing their eyes, visualizing it, and spelling it).

Where Khan and others create a game to facilitate drill, like the software that teaches typing by having the student shoot down aliens with the right keystrokes, that changes the goal of the student (enjoyment instead of just a required task to be completed to avoid being harassed), and it motivates, but it is still "drill".

You are mistakenly thinking that it is only drill if it is assigned and it is very tedious. You seem to think that if the kid is enjoying it - maybe because it has been made into a game - then it can't be called a drill, which isn't so.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 8/07, 10:58am)

Post 8

Sunday, August 7, 2011 - 1:50pm

I will defend the MIT OpenCourseWare video lectures on physics by Walter Lewin because he always illustrates concepts and principles with actual physical demonstrations. Those are incredibly helpful. But I understand their shortcomings in other courses.

Post 9

Sunday, August 7, 2011 - 6:44pm

Steve, we seem to be talking past each other in areas where we agree.

Luke, I often say that in 100 years we have gone from the steamship to the spaceship, but education still consists of a person in front of a board, lecturing to a passive array of listeners. In other words, liberated from public funding, education would enjoy an epistemologic revolution. Be that as it may, there seem to be only two ways to learn anything: either you figure it out for yourself; or else someone tells you. So, there is nothing like a good lecture.

Post 10

Sunday, August 7, 2011 - 7:52pm