My wife is a former teacher in the UK and she's aghast at how things are now. I've been reading about a lot of cultural learning stuff lately, just to promote it in the workplace beyond do x and...
My wife is a former teacher in the UK and she's aghast at how things are now. I've been reading about a lot of cultural learning stuff lately, just to promote it in the workplace beyond do x and slog through y for the people under me. The same kind of free-workshop approach to learning is actually really helpful for adults as well.
But I just want to pick a single bit out of this entire thing that made me raise an eyebrow...
But I suspect my memory has edited out the most typical work I did. Either that, or elementary schools have taken a drastic plunge in quality from the 1980s. My wife and I homeschool now, but before the pandemic, we sent our kids to our local public school, and whenever we volunteered in the classroom, we were horrified.
What a grotesque ignorant twat of a human being. They know it's worse, but it's written SO profoundly "I am better than THOSE state schools people send their kids to" in attitude. It really put me off the entire article (with its difficult to follow, 'this justifies my thinking' writing style.
I'd be keen to read the actual book and have a discussion. But this person has some weird, SEO-forced writing style that's both hard to read, and ignorant as hell at the same time.
I don’t see what you’re disagreeing with in that quote. There’s no detail, but they don’t sound ignorant about their own children or the classroom where they volunteered. And it sounds like your...
I don’t see what you’re disagreeing with in that quote. There’s no detail, but they don’t sound ignorant about their own children or the classroom where they volunteered. And it sounds like your wife also has a negative impression, so what are you disagreeing with? Is it that you don’t like home schooling?
It's the attitude, "It can't possibly have gotten that bad can it?" Yes. It can. The author knows it's bad and references it in a paragraph or two down. It's faux-humility in the face of an...
It's the attitude, "It can't possibly have gotten that bad can it?"
Yes. It can. The author knows it's bad and references it in a paragraph or two down. It's faux-humility in the face of an overwhelmingly shit thing that's happening.
It'd be like someone in the UK being ignorant of inflationary pressure of the poor right now.
Tastes in writing style differ, I suppose. I think I'd prefer that an author assume the reader is a bit out of touch than write with the "knowing" attitude that assumes everyone should already...
Tastes in writing style differ, I suppose. I think I'd prefer that an author assume the reader is a bit out of touch than write with the "knowing" attitude that assumes everyone should already know what's going on.
Not knowing what's going on in schools seems pretty normal if you haven't been in the school system for a while. Also, schools vary quite a bit.
Some parts of the article go the other way, though; the author assumes the reader is familiar with Scott Alexander's writing and rationalist writing in general.
Honestly? No. If it was actual, hones to god not realising then so be it. But the author makes the smart arsed remark about "They can't have got that bad" and then a paragraph or two later says...
Honestly? No.
If it was actual, hones to god not realising then so be it. But the author makes the smart arsed remark about "They can't have got that bad" and then a paragraph or two later says how they're "upset" whenever they go near an elementary school now.
They know the problems. They know the issues. They've chosen to take a moral high ground that doesn't exist so they can feel better about their life choices to home school.
Im not critiquing their decision on schooling. It's the attitude that stinks and is patently undefendable when we know there are so many problems that need fixing across the world that are common knowledge.
No? It's nothing about homeschooling that I'm critiquing, they can do what they want. It's the use of language that I think is astonishingly insulting to the audience and to anyone who has to have...
No? It's nothing about homeschooling that I'm critiquing, they can do what they want.
It's the use of language that I think is astonishingly insulting to the audience and to anyone who has to have their kids go to state schools.
But I suspect my memory has edited out the most typical work I did. Either that, or elementary schools have taken a drastic plunge in quality from the 1980s.
They know this. Everyone knows this. I've got childfree friends (like my wife and I) who aren't even remotely connected to the educational system and guess what? They know that as well.
As I said in a previous comment, it's like someone going "Oh my God, poor people are getting slammed because of inflationary pressure? Why didn't anyone tell me?!" when it's in the news, in popular discussion and in actual life on the regular basis.
Someone's message is important. In this article the author waffles a lot, uses SEO-heavy terms (eesh) and then makes remarks like this. I'd love to read the actual book (and probably will), but the article is just painful to read when there's remarks like these in it.
Could I summerise that you think the author is being tone deaf? The problem here is that, as you can see, you are getting quite some pushback and incomprehension from the rest of the community...
Could I summerise that you think the author is being tone deaf?
The problem here is that, as you can see, you are getting quite some pushback and incomprehension from the rest of the community reguarding your position...
I'm not dennying that the author's word choice seem to have triggered you really bad... but most of us don't seem to have felt that way.
Consider this may reflects more about your view of the world than the author's? Maybe what you think is painfully obvious isn't so obvious to everyone, especially non US people.
I'll be honest. I couldn't care for the article and yeah, it's pretty spectacularly tone-deaf. But language is important, being pissed off when it's used hoighty-toighty ways to almost elevate...
I'm not dennying that the author's word choice seem to have triggered you really bad... but most of us don't seem to have felt that way.
is being tone deaf?
I'll be honest. I couldn't care for the article and yeah, it's pretty spectacularly tone-deaf.
But language is important, being pissed off when it's used hoighty-toighty ways to almost elevate ones self above others (Homeschooling vs Elementry School) is extremely problematic, and is a huge problem I see whenever I engage with a lot of American media or Articles.
The problem here is that, as you can see, you are getting quite some pushback and incomprehension from the rest of the community reguarding your position...
I disagree. There's more than enough votes around people either agreeing, or recommending that my remarks are valid / warranted / contributing to deny that this is what's happened.
I'd be more inclined to state that yourself and the other person are likely to be coming from a place where you can't seem to accept that there's a dissenting opinion.
I was baffled by one of your comments (Apologies, I do not retain author names) so had my wife read my remark, nothing there was confusing. It just feels like you guys / gals / whatnot didn't get that it's frustrating to read remarks like that in media.
Maybe what you think is painfully obvious isn't so obvious to everyone, especially non US people.
I am non-US people. I'm British.
I'm actually going to make a statement that always gets flak online these days. There's a huge problem WITH American media / articles that have language like this dotted throughout. They're condescending, derisive, designed to raise the author to a place where they're an authority or 'better' than the readers because they're educating. It's really problematic and endemic through a lot of how Americans do engage and converse with each other where the conversation isn't innocent, but a bit of a battleground of ideological viewpoints / conversation matters and points of contention / arguement (I work with Americans frequently, I do see this a lot.)
It gets exhausting to see it spouted constantly online and is probably half the problem with discourse and conversation online. The constant need to bludgeon your opponent with wits, argument, counter-retorts and grandstanding get's so bloody frustrating to read for anyone who gets exposed to it regularly.
Right. I hope I've cleared that up for you budski. I'm going to disengage entirely from this thread now as it'll probably end up in a slapfight from someone, somewhere.
It’s very clear that you didn’t like something about the article and that’s certainly your right. I don’t quite understand what you disliked, though, because your reasons for disliking it don’t...
It’s very clear that you didn’t like something about the article and that’s certainly your right. I don’t quite understand what you disliked, though, because your reasons for disliking it don’t really work for me.
What specifically is common knowledge about schools? Some schools are bad, sometimes? Which ones? Do we agree on the problems or how to fix them? I don’t know what’s going on in schools, but from what I’ve read, it seems like there are a lot of different ideas and little agreement. If there’s little consensus on something, can it really be common knowledge?
It can also be genuinely difficult to say whether things got worse or not, because our memories are often inaccurate. Did it snow more when I was a kid? Maybe things seemed different because I was a different person. (For example, shorter.) If it mattered, I wouldn’t trust my memory on that, I’d look at weather statistics. So when the author suggests that maybe they’re remembering things wrong, that seems pretty relatable to me.
I’m guessing the author and his wife sent their kids to a public school because, despite studying education, they really did assume it wasn’t so bad, at least at that school, and then they changed their minds because they learned something they didn’t know before. He’s describing their experience, a bit vaguely because people weren’t supposed to put identifying details into their contest entries. Sure, he knows more about what it’s like now, but also remembers not knowing that.
Also, whatever is weird about the writing style, it’s unlikely to be SEO. The author entered a book review contest. It would be optimizing for search traffic to someone else’s website. Why do that? The contest is judged by blog readers voting, not search engines.
But I can certainly believe they intended to win the contest. One strategy that probably helps is pandering to the blog’s audience a bit. There are signs. It’s also largely written in Q&A format, which is certainly a popular style, but it can get old.
I don’t know how much of that is conscious. I think that as writers, we’re influenced by what we read. Someone who has read a lot of Twitter or Reddit has learned writing patterns, jargon, and memes, and may start assuming everyone knows them. Someone who’s read a lot of Rationalist writing will be influenced by that too, and maybe you’re picking up on that?
(Or, possibly, this trips over some UK class distinction that US readers miss?)
Here's the winning entry from Scott Alexander's 2023 book review contest. The book being reviewed is The Educated Mind by Kieran Egan. From the article: It's a very long article, but here's a...
Here's the winning entry from Scott Alexander's 2023 book review contest. The book being reviewed is The Educated Mind by Kieran Egan.
From the article:
Kieran Egan was born in Ireland, raised in England, and got his PhD in America (at Stanford and Cornell). He lived for the next five decades in British Columbia, where he taught at Simon Fraser University.
As a young man, he became a novice at a Franciscan monastery. By the time he died, he was an atheist, but — he would make clear — a Catholic atheist. His output was prodigious — fifteen books on education, one book on building a Zen garden, and, near the end of his life, two books of poetry, and a mystery novel!
He was whimsical and energetic, a Tigger of an educational philosopher. He was devoted to the dream that (as his obituary put it) “schooling could enrich the lives of children, enabling them to reach their full potential”.
He traveled the world, sharing his approach to education. He gained a devoted following of teachers and educational thinkers, and (from an outsider’s vantage point, at least) seemed perpetually on the edge of breaking through to a larger audience, and getting his approach in general practice: he won the Grawmeyer Award — perhaps educational theory’s highest prize. His books were blurbed by some of education’s biggest names (Howard Gardner, Nel Noddings); Michael Pollan even blurbed his Zen gardening book.
He died last year. I think it’s a particularly good moment to take a clear look at his theory.
It's a very long article, but here's a capsule summary:
Egan argues that schools don’t work because they ignore the tools that have worked for hundreds (and thousands) of years — things like humor, emotion, stories, metaphors, extremes, gossip, idealism, general schemes, finding one’s place in the world, and the lure of certainty.
(Which if you put it that way, can't be entirely true, but for more, read the review. It's rather more exuberant than I've described here.)
I’m slightly bitter about that one winning, it’s an absurdly long review. I had a crisis of faith about whether book reviews even make sense as a genre from reading this. But I think it’s a really...
I’m slightly bitter about that one winning, it’s an absurdly long review. I had a crisis of faith about whether book reviews even make sense as a genre from reading this. But I think it’s a really compelling topic for some people, so good share!
Sometimes reviewing a book is an excuse to write whatever the author chooses about some subject. I’m reminded of the New York Review of Books, where reviewers write articles about all sorts of...
Sometimes reviewing a book is an excuse to write whatever the author chooses about some subject. I’m reminded of the New York Review of Books, where reviewers write articles about all sorts of things.
It seems like a different genre from the book reviews that are mostly a pointer to an interesting book you might like to read.
Thanks for posting this, @skybrian. It was not how I expected to spend my Sunday morning, but it is genuinely something new for me. I think it was worth the read even if the review itself is a bit...
Thanks for posting this, @skybrian. It was not how I expected to spend my Sunday morning, but it is genuinely something new for me. I think it was worth the read even if the review itself is a bit of a slog.
One of the interesting things is that I find the description of the elementary education part pretty aligned with my experience with Montessori elementary education. I could write a tome about my opinions on the benefits of Montessori at an early age, but let's leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, if you thought the Egan stuff was good, you might find Montessori preschools and elementary schools a good fit. (For context, I am a product of Montessori through the second grade, and my daughter is in the third grade in Montessori now.)
However, my general sense is that the effectiveness of Montessori "peters out" as the children get older. Most Montessori programs are elementary, there are a few middle schools (US terminology)‚ and almost no high schools. It's not clear to me exactly why this is, but I have a couple of (unconfirmed) theories:
maybe the method fails as the children age because something different is needed (Egan seems to support this)
maybe there are cultural pressures toward conventional schooling that cannibalize the potential Montessori student population in the US, or 3) maybe the increasing academic rigors of higher age curricula mean that the method doesn't scale because we don't have enough teachers that can implement the method at that level.
I'm interested in Egan's framework to think about what to focus in with my daughter in the coming middle school years. Super useful.
My wife is a former teacher in the UK and she's aghast at how things are now. I've been reading about a lot of cultural learning stuff lately, just to promote it in the workplace beyond do x and slog through y for the people under me. The same kind of free-workshop approach to learning is actually really helpful for adults as well.
But I just want to pick a single bit out of this entire thing that made me raise an eyebrow...
What a grotesque ignorant twat of a human being. They know it's worse, but it's written SO profoundly "I am better than THOSE state schools people send their kids to" in attitude. It really put me off the entire article (with its difficult to follow, 'this justifies my thinking' writing style.
I'd be keen to read the actual book and have a discussion. But this person has some weird, SEO-forced writing style that's both hard to read, and ignorant as hell at the same time.
I don’t see what you’re disagreeing with in that quote. There’s no detail, but they don’t sound ignorant about their own children or the classroom where they volunteered. And it sounds like your wife also has a negative impression, so what are you disagreeing with? Is it that you don’t like home schooling?
It's the attitude, "It can't possibly have gotten that bad can it?"
Yes. It can. The author knows it's bad and references it in a paragraph or two down. It's faux-humility in the face of an overwhelmingly shit thing that's happening.
It'd be like someone in the UK being ignorant of inflationary pressure of the poor right now.
Tastes in writing style differ, I suppose. I think I'd prefer that an author assume the reader is a bit out of touch than write with the "knowing" attitude that assumes everyone should already know what's going on.
Not knowing what's going on in schools seems pretty normal if you haven't been in the school system for a while. Also, schools vary quite a bit.
Some parts of the article go the other way, though; the author assumes the reader is familiar with Scott Alexander's writing and rationalist writing in general.
Honestly? No.
If it was actual, hones to god not realising then so be it. But the author makes the smart arsed remark about "They can't have got that bad" and then a paragraph or two later says how they're "upset" whenever they go near an elementary school now.
They know the problems. They know the issues. They've chosen to take a moral high ground that doesn't exist so they can feel better about their life choices to home school.
Im not critiquing their decision on schooling. It's the attitude that stinks and is patently undefendable when we know there are so many problems that need fixing across the world that are common knowledge.
I have troubles understanding your point. Are you saying that the justification they use to homeschool is wrong?
No? It's nothing about homeschooling that I'm critiquing, they can do what they want.
It's the use of language that I think is astonishingly insulting to the audience and to anyone who has to have their kids go to state schools.
They know this. Everyone knows this. I've got childfree friends (like my wife and I) who aren't even remotely connected to the educational system and guess what? They know that as well.
As I said in a previous comment, it's like someone going "Oh my God, poor people are getting slammed because of inflationary pressure? Why didn't anyone tell me?!" when it's in the news, in popular discussion and in actual life on the regular basis.
Someone's message is important. In this article the author waffles a lot, uses SEO-heavy terms (eesh) and then makes remarks like this. I'd love to read the actual book (and probably will), but the article is just painful to read when there's remarks like these in it.
Could I summerise that you think the author is being tone deaf?
The problem here is that, as you can see, you are getting quite some pushback and incomprehension from the rest of the community reguarding your position...
I'm not dennying that the author's word choice seem to have triggered you really bad... but most of us don't seem to have felt that way.
Consider this may reflects more about your view of the world than the author's? Maybe what you think is painfully obvious isn't so obvious to everyone, especially non US people.
I'll be honest. I couldn't care for the article and yeah, it's pretty spectacularly tone-deaf.
But language is important, being pissed off when it's used hoighty-toighty ways to almost elevate ones self above others (Homeschooling vs Elementry School) is extremely problematic, and is a huge problem I see whenever I engage with a lot of American media or Articles.
I disagree. There's more than enough votes around people either agreeing, or recommending that my remarks are valid / warranted / contributing to deny that this is what's happened.
I'd be more inclined to state that yourself and the other person are likely to be coming from a place where you can't seem to accept that there's a dissenting opinion.
I was baffled by one of your comments (Apologies, I do not retain author names) so had my wife read my remark, nothing there was confusing. It just feels like you guys / gals / whatnot didn't get that it's frustrating to read remarks like that in media.
I am non-US people. I'm British.
I'm actually going to make a statement that always gets flak online these days. There's a huge problem WITH American media / articles that have language like this dotted throughout. They're condescending, derisive, designed to raise the author to a place where they're an authority or 'better' than the readers because they're educating. It's really problematic and endemic through a lot of how Americans do engage and converse with each other where the conversation isn't innocent, but a bit of a battleground of ideological viewpoints / conversation matters and points of contention / arguement (I work with Americans frequently, I do see this a lot.)
It gets exhausting to see it spouted constantly online and is probably half the problem with discourse and conversation online. The constant need to bludgeon your opponent with wits, argument, counter-retorts and grandstanding get's so bloody frustrating to read for anyone who gets exposed to it regularly.
Right. I hope I've cleared that up for you budski. I'm going to disengage entirely from this thread now as it'll probably end up in a slapfight from someone, somewhere.
It’s very clear that you didn’t like something about the article and that’s certainly your right. I don’t quite understand what you disliked, though, because your reasons for disliking it don’t really work for me.
What specifically is common knowledge about schools? Some schools are bad, sometimes? Which ones? Do we agree on the problems or how to fix them? I don’t know what’s going on in schools, but from what I’ve read, it seems like there are a lot of different ideas and little agreement. If there’s little consensus on something, can it really be common knowledge?
It can also be genuinely difficult to say whether things got worse or not, because our memories are often inaccurate. Did it snow more when I was a kid? Maybe things seemed different because I was a different person. (For example, shorter.) If it mattered, I wouldn’t trust my memory on that, I’d look at weather statistics. So when the author suggests that maybe they’re remembering things wrong, that seems pretty relatable to me.
I’m guessing the author and his wife sent their kids to a public school because, despite studying education, they really did assume it wasn’t so bad, at least at that school, and then they changed their minds because they learned something they didn’t know before. He’s describing their experience, a bit vaguely because people weren’t supposed to put identifying details into their contest entries. Sure, he knows more about what it’s like now, but also remembers not knowing that.
Also, whatever is weird about the writing style, it’s unlikely to be SEO. The author entered a book review contest. It would be optimizing for search traffic to someone else’s website. Why do that? The contest is judged by blog readers voting, not search engines.
But I can certainly believe they intended to win the contest. One strategy that probably helps is pandering to the blog’s audience a bit. There are signs. It’s also largely written in Q&A format, which is certainly a popular style, but it can get old.
I don’t know how much of that is conscious. I think that as writers, we’re influenced by what we read. Someone who has read a lot of Twitter or Reddit has learned writing patterns, jargon, and memes, and may start assuming everyone knows them. Someone who’s read a lot of Rationalist writing will be influenced by that too, and maybe you’re picking up on that?
(Or, possibly, this trips over some UK class distinction that US readers miss?)
Here's the winning entry from Scott Alexander's 2023 book review contest. The book being reviewed is The Educated Mind by Kieran Egan.
From the article:
It's a very long article, but here's a capsule summary:
(Which if you put it that way, can't be entirely true, but for more, read the review. It's rather more exuberant than I've described here.)
I’m slightly bitter about that one winning, it’s an absurdly long review. I had a crisis of faith about whether book reviews even make sense as a genre from reading this. But I think it’s a really compelling topic for some people, so good share!
Sometimes reviewing a book is an excuse to write whatever the author chooses about some subject. I’m reminded of the New York Review of Books, where reviewers write articles about all sorts of things.
It seems like a different genre from the book reviews that are mostly a pointer to an interesting book you might like to read.
Thanks for posting this, @skybrian. It was not how I expected to spend my Sunday morning, but it is genuinely something new for me. I think it was worth the read even if the review itself is a bit of a slog.
One of the interesting things is that I find the description of the elementary education part pretty aligned with my experience with Montessori elementary education. I could write a tome about my opinions on the benefits of Montessori at an early age, but let's leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, if you thought the Egan stuff was good, you might find Montessori preschools and elementary schools a good fit. (For context, I am a product of Montessori through the second grade, and my daughter is in the third grade in Montessori now.)
However, my general sense is that the effectiveness of Montessori "peters out" as the children get older. Most Montessori programs are elementary, there are a few middle schools (US terminology)‚ and almost no high schools. It's not clear to me exactly why this is, but I have a couple of (unconfirmed) theories:
I'm interested in Egan's framework to think about what to focus in with my daughter in the coming middle school years. Super useful.