Recent Reviews of School

There were three essays submitted about schools to the “ACX Nonbook Review Contest”.

My post discusses schools in the abstract - the problems with schools and the ways to fix it. Schools lack enlightenment values, lack choice, strangely group people into grades by age, and don’t use effective methods or teach useful subjects. However AI can help improve education so kids can learn practical topics with better methods at their own pace and with more freedom. The essay wasn't a finalist, maybe since it needed more examples.

Speaking of examples, the first ACX review finalist discusses a school system, Alpha School, that actually implements many of these ideas. Instead of relying on the latest LLMs they rely on earlier personalized learning technology (such as IXL) to tailor the learning to each kid. The main learning only takes two hours of learning a day and they learn “2.6x faster” on average. See also the comments highlights.

Another ACX essay School was just published. The writer admits that some people can learn in two hours a day but: “Schools aren’t particularly efficient at facilitating learning. Schools are good at educating everyone at once.” They say tracked learning doesn’t really help much and personalized learning only helps 5-10% of people who are “no-structure learners”. They argue the main purpose of schools is to motivate kids to learn: “In the absence of one-on-one tutoring for every student, conformity is the best tool we have to create the motivation necessary for learning.”

I don’t think schools are that good at creating strong motivation but it’s true that they provide an overall structure that semi-forces many kids to learn something. However I think we’re at the point that we can offer the equivalent of one-on-one tutoring for every student. “Unstructured learners” can learn directly from books, but better personalized learning along with a supporting social structure can help everyone.

See also Zvi's recent post Childhood and Education #11: The Art of Learning, which says “Lack Of Tracking Hurts Actual Everyone”, especially “Those Who Are Struggling”.