It's so sad. The phone is the ultimate know-it-all, so why learn. It reminds everyone of what to do, so why try to remember anything. Brain cells left to atrophy. I sure hope that people like you and others find a solution. Will teachers even be able to get through the gen-z stare?
What's your view of the role the humanities will play in this landscape? They're obviously central to historical "aristocratic tutoring" but struggling today. Rather than "malaise," it seems like many in the humanities are in denial. D. Graham Burnett's piece in the New Yorker is an exception.
The finding about educators' lack of pedagogical knowledge makes me wonder about a different study: How many academics in history, philosophy, and literature are among the best at practicing the Socratic method? If a decent way was worked out to measure this (a big if), I don't think the number would be low, but I'm not sure it would be high either. Seems like some of the fundamentals have been lost amidst the "malaise."
Yes, it is great. Very crunchy. I was planning on writing a review here of it, and specifically what parts of the science of learning they implement come naturally through 1:1 tutoring (thus, explaining its success). But then Math Academy got what felt like a ton of attention and it seemed unnecessary. Yet, now, there is still no actual good review! So I may still do one in the future.
Yes, it's definitely worth reading The Math Academy Way book, as it brings together in one place pretty much all the thinking and research that's going into Math Academy and similar systems (e.g., PhysicsGraph). If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I wrote a summary of it as part of my overall initial Math Academy review: https://frankhecker.com/2025/02/08/math-academy-part-1/
"AI and ed-tech eats education from the bottom up" — yes, for sure. In my years of teaching college, the hardest thing to deal with (among many hard things!) was admin pushing edtech onto us. Now I'm working on an essay that historicizes and critiques the paradigm of "instructional design," which isn't much more than a façade for big tech's siege on higher ed.
The "adaptive curriculum" phenomenon, like "instructional design," is an artifact of "student-centered learning," a concept that crystallized in the 1990s — not coincidentally at the same time that computers started filling classrooms. Individualized attention is great, we need more of it, but it's been so deeply entangled with technologization that I'm afraid we've lost the plot.
The way to promote individualized attention is simple: train teachers more effectively, hire more of them, and pay them enough so that they can have a better quality of life, and thus more bandwidth for working with students.
I was educated at a Friends school and I can't imagine a better education. The values imparted on kids from a very early age are quite simple: you are your own person. Everyone else is their own person, too. You have strengths and weaknesses in the classroom, but that doesn't mean you aren't able to approach all subjects with curiosity. Teachers have first names, just like students, and when you skip out on class, you skip out on the community, and everyone suffers because of it. Very little of what I learned would've scored well in the STEM system, but learning how to become a kind, creative, respectful, and curious adults was quite the education. The tragedy, of course, is that Friends School and Montessori-style education is rarely affordable these days. But there will always be rebels who understand that true education is about imparting love and wisdom. In this age of information, what’s important when it comes to knowledge becomes a very different question.
It's so sad. The phone is the ultimate know-it-all, so why learn. It reminds everyone of what to do, so why try to remember anything. Brain cells left to atrophy. I sure hope that people like you and others find a solution. Will teachers even be able to get through the gen-z stare?
What's your view of the role the humanities will play in this landscape? They're obviously central to historical "aristocratic tutoring" but struggling today. Rather than "malaise," it seems like many in the humanities are in denial. D. Graham Burnett's piece in the New Yorker is an exception.
The finding about educators' lack of pedagogical knowledge makes me wonder about a different study: How many academics in history, philosophy, and literature are among the best at practicing the Socratic method? If a decent way was worked out to measure this (a big if), I don't think the number would be low, but I'm not sure it would be high either. Seems like some of the fundamentals have been lost amidst the "malaise."
For someone who has read all your previous AT essays (and also the ACX review of Alpha School), is it worth reading the Math Academy PDF?
Yes, it is great. Very crunchy. I was planning on writing a review here of it, and specifically what parts of the science of learning they implement come naturally through 1:1 tutoring (thus, explaining its success). But then Math Academy got what felt like a ton of attention and it seemed unnecessary. Yet, now, there is still no actual good review! So I may still do one in the future.
Yes, it's definitely worth reading The Math Academy Way book, as it brings together in one place pretty much all the thinking and research that's going into Math Academy and similar systems (e.g., PhysicsGraph). If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I wrote a summary of it as part of my overall initial Math Academy review: https://frankhecker.com/2025/02/08/math-academy-part-1/
"AI and ed-tech eats education from the bottom up" — yes, for sure. In my years of teaching college, the hardest thing to deal with (among many hard things!) was admin pushing edtech onto us. Now I'm working on an essay that historicizes and critiques the paradigm of "instructional design," which isn't much more than a façade for big tech's siege on higher ed.
The "adaptive curriculum" phenomenon, like "instructional design," is an artifact of "student-centered learning," a concept that crystallized in the 1990s — not coincidentally at the same time that computers started filling classrooms. Individualized attention is great, we need more of it, but it's been so deeply entangled with technologization that I'm afraid we've lost the plot.
The way to promote individualized attention is simple: train teachers more effectively, hire more of them, and pay them enough so that they can have a better quality of life, and thus more bandwidth for working with students.
I was educated at a Friends school and I can't imagine a better education. The values imparted on kids from a very early age are quite simple: you are your own person. Everyone else is their own person, too. You have strengths and weaknesses in the classroom, but that doesn't mean you aren't able to approach all subjects with curiosity. Teachers have first names, just like students, and when you skip out on class, you skip out on the community, and everyone suffers because of it. Very little of what I learned would've scored well in the STEM system, but learning how to become a kind, creative, respectful, and curious adults was quite the education. The tragedy, of course, is that Friends School and Montessori-style education is rarely affordable these days. But there will always be rebels who understand that true education is about imparting love and wisdom. In this age of information, what’s important when it comes to knowledge becomes a very different question.