Google and Gates-Backed Khan Academy Introduces "Grit"-Based Classroom Funding 119
theodp writes: Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled by Google and Khan Academy's recently-concluded LearnStorm initiative, which pitted kids-against-kids, schools-against-schools, and cities-against-cities in a 3-month learning challenge for prizes based not only on students' mastery of math skills on Khan Academy, but also their perceived 'hustle' (aka 'grit'). "Points are earned by mastering math skills and also for taking on challenging new concepts and persevering," explained a Khan Academy FAQ. A blog entry further explained, "They've earned points and prizes not only for mastering math skills but also for showing 'hustle,' a metric we created to measure grit, perseverance, and growth. They competed over 200,000 hours of learning and 13.6 million standards-aligned math problems. In addition, thanks to the generosity of Google.org, DonorsChoose.org, and Comcast's Internet Essentials, 34 underserved schools unlocked new devices for their classrooms and free home internet service for eligible families, increasing student access to online learning tools like Khan Academy." Apparently funded by a $2 million Google grant, the Google, Khan Academy, and DonorsChoose grit-based classroom funding comes on the heels of the same organizations' gender-based classroom funding initiative. Supported by some of the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations, Khan Academy's Board members include a Google Board member (Diane Green), spouse of a Google Board member (Ann Doerr), and the Managing Partner of Bill Gates' bgC3 (Larry Cohen); former Board members include Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
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I love how as soon as anything gets mentioned about effort, perserverance, difficult, the push-button generation gets all cranky and wants to call it "evil", "mean", "exploitive" (Waaah! I want my free lunch - and I want it 5 minutes ago!)
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Basically. It's all about finding the suckers willing to sweat the most for the masters above them. But don't worry, if you're really lucky and you know the right people and have a penchant for manipulating people into doing your bidding you, too, can be a master.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically. It's all about finding the suckers willing to sweat the most for the masters above them.
I'm certain you back up your sentiment by living "off the economic grid", but my, it's amazing how many others followed this sentiment with "and I should still be able to get all the neat stuff that everyone else sweats for..."
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It's about sharing the spoils, spreading the rewards of what is gained so they don't just go to those at the top which is what's happening.
To suggest that his requires "living off the economic grid" is a straw man argument.
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This story of two minds variety. Whilst it might seem very much like corporations driving competition between minors by throwing them at each other, there is also a flip side. Basically the sport side, where this is already happening and promoted every where.
So this competition pushes learning to the fore and emphasises the geek/nerd ahead of the jock strap douche bag (you can easily tell where my biases lay). So a good thing possibly done in a harmful way?
Possible improvements, focus upon cooperation
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It's about sharing the spoils
You are talking about more equitable distribution when you *do* sweat, something I have quite some sympathy for. That is completely different from your original post.
(As an aside, perhaps because I would never risk my time or my money for a sliver-thin chance of success, I have very little difficulty with those entrepreneurs who do make it big being heavily rewarded for their risk.)
turtles all the way down (Score:2)
And then if I point to those under them who are sweating, then you'll say that they're undeservingly lazy too... and on and on... until you've singlehandedly determined that nobody is sweating (working hard) but yourself.
That's the problem with Lefties - for them, it's "turtles all the way down" - everyone is labeled an exploiter by the Lefties except the Lefties themselves (which is the diametric opposite of reality.)
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I don't know any Google executives in person, but I have to say that all the executives I have met, including the ones who managed in ways I *dramatically* disagreed with, worked very hard indeed.
I am also well aware that not everyone who works hard obtains a corresponding reward. There are many who work harder than I ever will for far more meager returns simply because they never had the educational opportunities that I was blessed with or faced racial/cultural/language challenges that I never will (which
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"grit" = stockholder profit potential
Many geeks lack the social awareness to distinguish genuine feelings from emotional subterfuge, aka friendship vs. politicking.
Non-technical managers (and other "bosses", including PMs) often manipulate naive techies into sacrificing their personal lives for absurdly low pay and frivolities like ping pong and soda pop. Additionally, many geeks don't have deep and extensive social networks (aka friends and significant others) and so often don't have much incentive to value their own personal lives over work.
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It's called the "free market" - if you don't like how you're being treated somewhere, then go someplace else. Don't expect the rest of the world to dumb itself down to your level.
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Why educate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just hire H1-B visa workers for pennies...
It's a ruse... and a bad one (Score:1)
With the needed tax on Wall Street transactions and commissions, they will pull out all the stops to kill any attempt. Do not trust these people. They are dangerous.
No matter what you do these days... (Score:1, Insightful)
some whiney blogger will be offended by it!
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That's because it's bullshit! They are only trying to pacify the call to tax Wall Street. You know, the people who are stealing our pensions and strangling the legitimate economy? Fuck them. They are thieves!
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You gotta play to win. They already Godwin-ed the debate [telegraph.co.uk].
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Calling a president Hitler is obligatory.
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That is exactly what should have happened.
What a terrible way to start your summary (Score:4, Insightful)
"Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled ..." What a terrible way to start your summary.
Welcome to EduThunderDome! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Welcome to Battle School (Score:2)
He is promoted to Tactical School.
We 'must' compete (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm currently doing voluntary work in schools in the UK and the 'push' coming from Google, Microsoft 'partners' etc. is extrordinary. One would be mad to believe that any of this is altruistic, it's just a big, stable, undemanding [I deal with crap computers and software during the volunteering gigs] market.
Sorry that this sounds so ranty, unusual for me, but I don't trust them, don't trust their motives.
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Can't you read? "Their intentions are no doubt good"
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Re: We 'must' compete (Score:1)
Losers tend to complain about winnings learning to be winners. News flash; not all kids are winners, infact most of them turn out to be losers. Stop feeding the everybody's a winner line to your loser kids and maybe they'll strive to be winners. Or continue to lie to them, I need someone to sweep my streets.
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Re: We 'must' compete (Score:2, Insightful)
The world is about competition. Even non-profit organizations are about competition. It might make you feel better to teach kids what you call "cooperation", but since you think cooperation is the opposite of competition, then you should be kept away from teaching children anything about life. People like you have heavily influenced education for 3 or 4 decades, and as a result we are churning out people who have no idea how the world works, and especially how markets work (to enable efficient cooperation).
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I think you read my comment too fast or something.
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Cute. You think he read your comment.
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Right. I forgot about how there is no competition in open source software. What Linux distribution do you run, by the way?
The world organizes itself by competition. It's not always monetary competition. But it is competition.
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I didn't talk at all about monetization. I would continue explaining, but it is clear that you cannot allow yourself to understand, probably due to worry that your long-held worldview might come into question. Best wishes.
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Re: We 'must' compete (Score:2)
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No that pretty much means you lose that game. Although you can cheat of course, there are numerous cases of men working in fertility clinics that fathered hundreds of children [telegraph.co.uk], how's that for a life hack.
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This is a very limited view on competition. Competition creates organization and cooperation without a central plan. Your view is too limited because it ignores that resources are much more plentiful in competitive markets.
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Peer-to-peer communication... Like prices? This is just getting funny. You keep insisting you have some novel perspective and all you do is make an argument for why free and competitive markets are the utopia you seek. You are an example of what I see so frequently, which is someone who understands markets very well as far as what needs to exist to function well, yet has no idea that markets actually provide all those requirements already, if left alone.
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Your attempts at convincing yourself you're highly intelligent are incredibly boring and I have lost interest.
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"Cooperative" as in less competitive than other forms of value add. Without competition, there would be no reason to work unless you thought work was fun.
Ummm... no. Someone who doesn't pull his weight isn't cooperating. Cooperate -- from "co-" (with, together) and "operate" (perform intelligent work"). Your "commies are lazy" strawman is getting a bit worn looking.
New markets (Score:3)
The education market is largely untapped and trillions are there to be won in this new "industry" by creating a marketplace from what was a public service with altruistic motives.
Their agenda is to foster a market and transition education into an industry from which great profits can be had for training worker drones who are specifically tailored to the job market. Employers no longer want to train employees - the numbers on that are so low that most people do not even think about employer training or real
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Their agenda is to foster a market and transition education into an industry from which great profits can be had for training worker drones who are specifically tailored to the job market.
Don't be so quick to judge people's intentions so harshly. Many people genuinely believe that what they're doing is for the best, and attacking their intentions rather than criticising their methods won't get us anywhere. The Tories cling to the belief that publuc services are intrinsically inefficient, and when they privatise contracts to their friends, it's because they know that they friends have good intentions too. And when they leave politics and take up directorships, it's because they've proven that
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Re:We 'must' compete (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition (meaning a race between two or more people, although this also applies to the economic meaning of the word) is healthy and good, and it is a powerful way to push people to excel. And recognizing effort helps disadvantaged children, they get bonus points for persevering where the advantaged kids "got everything handed to them on a silver platter" without having to try very hard, as one critic in that article puts it.
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Maybe the world is getting fat because we're teaching kids that sports is a competition, that they're in it to win it. Inevitably, most kids find that they're not winning, so they learn that sports isn't for them. If we teach kids that science and technology is a competition too, what do you think will happen?
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If the little people start cooperating, doing stuff, changing the world, that's really, really bad. So we must compete, win prizes given by the big people, follow their agenda. Hence, also, attempts to buy into or hijack open-source, communism and altruism on the hoof, cannot be allowed, everything must be monetised.
Seriously? You think all competition is bad?
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Generally speaking though, there's a large argument going on in human society/societies about where and how we balance the two. Part of this is because the advance of technology/science/learning/etc, we no longer need to savagely compete for basic resources in a kill or be killed sort of way (at least in most of the world). At the same time, a lot of the arguments and norms based on this have been around for
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Generally speaking though, there's a large argument going on in human society/societies about where and how we balance the two
How about this......you let people compete when they want to, and stop trying to 'engineer' or 'manipulate' society. I don't like your manipulations.
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What you're missing is that we have already agreed to limit competition, as a society. We've decided that someone isn't allowed come over to your house, shoot you, and take your stuff. Society imposes strict penalties on someone if they do that (or if they try to do that), and for good reason, because unmitigated unrestricted competition is very, VER
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Like how they're competing over in Syria and Iraq? I've been there, I've seen that kind of competition, and I'm quite happy NOT to have to engage in it here.
Heh, so now it's escalated from 'doing better in school' to 'killing each other in Syria and Iraq?' Sounds like you have a clear sense of proportion there.
Seriously, I don't want you doing social engineering. You don't understand life or society well enough.
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Student: Wouldn't you agree, Professor Strawson that everything is relative?
Professor Strawson: Absolutely!
In other news, please try not to put words into other people's mouths. It never ends really well.
Some will be troubled (Score:3)
The current education system doesn't work, and some will be troubled as we attempt various other ways that might work. Some will be troubled as we displace people who currently operate the system that doesn't work.
As for the linked complaint about grit implying that poor kids are poor because they don't try hard, who cares what it implies? I don't care if it hurts someone's feelings to misinterpret what this may or may not imply. I don't care if poor kids are poor because of external reasons. What does it matter? Should we spend our time explaining to them that they are victims of a system and have no hope, or should we teach them how to work hard? Perhaps grit is even more important for poor kids who have to work even harder to get out from where they started?
Politically correct jerks can be offended all they want. That doesn't help kids achieve.
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If you don't like it, don't use it.
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Nothing wrong with encouraging kids to work hard, but are you comfortable with Google and Khan Academy using (presumably) tax-free money and their mysterious "grit algorithm" to determine education haves and have-nots? Btw, one of the schools whose grit "unlocked new devices [Google Chrome laptops] for their classrooms and free home internet service for eligible families, increasing student access to online learning tools like Khan Academy" was coincidentally already a Khan Academy Case Study [khanacademy.org], which one mig
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> Nothing wrong with encouraging kids to work hard, but are you comfortable with Google and Khan Academy using (presumably) tax-free money and their mysterious "grit algorithm" to determine education haves and have-nots?
Yes. I am comfortable trying a bunch of things to see what works. Many people are comfortable continuing what we know doesn't work. I am not.
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I don't know whether their definition of grit is right and I don't know if their magic algorithm is right. I do know that our schools do not teach grit. I do know that our schools have you do 40 copies of the same math problem for homework. I share concerns about the gamification of education, but the particular issue you bring up was it created by educational games.
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This is completely off-topic. I can handle to the down-mod if needed. I feel it is worth sharing due to your comment.
I once had an altercation with a man who was behaving in a violent and unacceptable way in a modern society. In this altercation I broke their jaw and ended up in the county jail but only after I was grabbed by someone and hit them - not breaking anything but it was a police officer who did NOT identify themselves, thus that was dismissed and I was charged with a simple assault but, due to th
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I think you have the wrong idea of what it means to work hard. It doesn't mean be inefficient at a task. It means be persistent as you identify growth opportunities and worthy calculated risks. Many people do not do that and look for a "safe" 9-5 job where thry operate in a well defined box and don't have surprises or expectations of upward mobility (except s cost of living raise).
So we thought about it (Score:2, Insightful)
It turns out standardized testing was not the solution to bring everyone's educational standards up to par.
So, we have decided the only alternative is to turn it into the Hunger Games.
That is all.
hustle (Score:1)
I couldn't think of a better name myself. And did they misspell 'grift'? Sure looks like it, but it's hardly petty...
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Does grit = spunk? (Score:1)
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I hate it, too. It's almost impossible to get out of your hair and it ruins your clothes. I just plain stay out of the stallion barn to avoid it.
They did not create that metric (Score:2)
The hustle has been a metric of drive and growth and determination for the under-privileged urban youth for at LEAST 4 decades.
For Khan Academy and Google to say they created this 'metric' is bullshit.
Flawed (Score:3)
The whole learnstorm thing was fundamentally flawed. You earned points in the competition by completing "mastery" challenges, of which there are a limited number. However, if you had completed most or all of the available mastery challenges before the competition had started then you were at a distinct disadvantage during the competition.
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However, if you had completed most or all of the available mastery challenges before the competition had started then you were at a distinct disadvantage during the competition.
That's ok. The students who were further ahead learned the advanced principle that competition doesn't matter.
Sounds like another nerd "Hunger Games" to me (Score:1)
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Okay, the kids won't be killed, but only those that jump through the hoops of the all powerful Google will be given the prizes. I thought the miracle of the Internet that everyone could enjoy the fun. But somehow GOOG is turning it into a brutal, knock-down, no-holds-barred competition.
You need to concern yourself with the "competitions" where everyone gets a trophy. Don't forget to bring the Orange slices. The little darlings need to hydrate, even though we try to keep themselves from getting too exertion.
Simple question (Score:2)
What do you do with the kids who don't thrive in a competitive environment? That would be the vast majority of them.
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What do you do with the kids who don't thrive in a competitive environment? That would be the vast majority of them.
Then they don't need to compete.
Seems pretty simple to me. Problem is, uncompetitive people don't rule the world, so you don't build a world where they control what happens.
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Doesn't sound like a conspiracy to me (Score:1)
Actual, real research behind this (Score:4, Informative)
Kahn's Academy (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, so I went to Khan's Academy, and actually tried it. It took me several weeks, but eventually I was able to "prove" that I could do fourth and fifth grade math. I nearly finished sixth grade math, but burnt out and didn't return.
Keep in mind that I have a minor in Mathematics, and actually like Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability, Statistics, etc. The level of the material wasn't the problem, it was the course.
All I can say is that many of the "lessons" on Khan's are so dry and mundane that basically you have to have a will of iron to work through them. Some of the material is poorly tested, such that when you miss a question it isn't always clear why. The concept of practice till you die makes all the topics tedious. Doesn't matter if you can answer correctly 16 times out of 20, because you need five correct in a row! And if you keep pulling up something that you swear has a wrong answer, you're back at the first of five correct.
The entire process takes all the fun out of math. If this is the future, we can expect much worse than what we have now (although I can see how we will save money on teachers, as we can hire ones that don't need to know how to teach because we'll have the website teach worse than any trained teacher would).
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Yesterday there were three major motor sports races. I imagine if the three winners where to attend a high school drivers education class they might decide that it was tedious and no fun. Repetition is for boneheads to make sure they remember, not for people who are already experts.
The majority of people do not think math is fun. They will not willingly do it. For others it's writing, or science, and for others, PE. For a balanced education students must understand that learning is necessary work, even if i
Do what works (Score:1)
Break people up by ability, inclination, learning style, etc.
Fracture the classroom so that the teachers are dealing with as uniform a student as possible each class. Make sure the teacher knows what they've been given, and then make sure the teacher is trained in how best to educate those students in whatever subject is being taught.
That works. It has been shown to work repeatedly.
Throwing a random collection of people of varying abilities, backgrounds, ambitions, etc into a class room, and then having the
An alternative to Khan Academy (Score:2)
Why does everything related to education have a price tag on it? What is wrong with education in a field simply for the joy of becoming a guru in that field?
I follow coursera.org courses, and I do it for the joy of learning and putting to practice what I learned.