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Google and Gates-Backed Khan Academy Introduces "Grit"-Based Classroom Funding
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.
"grit" = stockholder profit potential
Just hire H1-B visa workers for pennies...
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.
some whiney blogger will be offended by it!
Makes more sense than actually eating grits, but not as much fun as pouring hot grits down your pants.
"Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled ..." What a terrible way to start your summary.
Two children enter the standardized testing center; one child leaves!
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.
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.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
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.
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.
I couldn't think of a better name myself. And did they misspell 'grift'? Sure looks like it, but it's hardly petty...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Cause i hate spunk.
PlanetVulkan.com
"There is no try. There is only do not."
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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 realize that employers used to have full time instructors of their own. It's all about cost externalization - they externalized employee training and are acting like the education system is failing them when it never did their job for them.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Education in the past got us all the successes of today. But that isn't perfect, the perfect little snowflakes are not to blame... we have to get 100% success with every child and if not, it is NEVER their parents fault or the society. So lets completely revamp education which worked so well because it's not perfect. It's similar to how they destroyed the UK Postal System (Royal Mail) with tons of waste and destruction just so they could improve the service by a few % to become perfect. Now they've completely privatized it - it's still far from perfect...but new money can now corrupt the system so perfect now won't matter...
I don't care if 40% can't read out of high school; send those people to another school targeted at their failure within the old system. The major steps forward were done by a minority of people who thrived in the old education model -- not everybody is a genius and whatever was done that let those people shine and deliver the progress we had should be left alone. Don't kill the golden goose people! You can experiment on the teenagers or children who fail but you should leave the successful ones alone! You can also not claim that somebody who did poorly (Einstein) did not benefit from the system; it is foolishly simplistic to measure success by short term simplistic metrics. In reality, human learning and development is far from understood - it is far more of a black box than people realize. (besides, learning to cope with failure is a huge lesson to learn properly. )
One size does not fit all. Policy makers are always obsessed with making universal policies. Utopia is an incredibly evil goal.
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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.
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.
What do you do with the kids who don't thrive in a competitive environment? That would be the vast majority of them.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Natalie Portman
Honestly, it just seems like "grit" was a poorly chosen word for Khan Academy's familiar concept of effort. The only things that are somewhat concerning are the school vs. school etc. aspects of the contest. One would hope that the contest is not structured in such a way that it mostly just serves to make more competitive schools feel good about how much more awesome they are than everyone else. This would happen if, for instance, mastery points are given as much or more weight than hustle points. I can't tell if this is the case from the FAQ.
I was a fairly intelligent child with low "grit". I blew off learning about things I was not interested in, and had trouble completing projects. I was a solid "B" student. It likely was genetic as my father was the same way. Only in my late 20's was a girlfriend I was living in with able to grill some grit into me. Now I am fairly accomplished and more of an "A-" player, but I feel that I could have done much more in my life if I got more grit at a younger age.
There was a TED talk on this recently: http://www.ted.com/talks/angel... This isn't necessarily about pitting kids against each other. This is about emphasizing an objective measure of potential.
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.)
He is promoted to Tactical School.
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).
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!!
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 teacher lecture them by route giving them some multiple choice scantron tests every quarter has been shown to not work.
Grit is besides the point. The students that are high functioning are being held back by the low functioning students. And the low functioning students can't get the remedial help they need because that wouldn't be appropriate for the class with the high functioning students. And the kids in the middle are subjected to something they don't need either.
And that is just ONE spectrum that shows how students can be in the wrong classrooms.
Now in a small town, you can't afford to have a million different class rooms for every kind of kid. But in big cities you can.
First, break schools up based on the sorts of kids that are going to them. It really might not even make sense to put the high functioning kids even in the same school as the low functioning kids. Some school districts already have schools like this... "magnet schools"... the idea being that you put the kids that are actually trying and are not horribly behind in one school and you keep the kids that are self destructing somewhere else.
Second, instead of just warehousing the kids that are falling behind, you need to get them back up to speed. And it has to be understood that because they're behind they're going to have to go FASTER to make up for lost time. That means MORE time in school. We keep hearing about how these kids have unstructured home lives and get into trouble after school. Easy solution. Keep them at school longer. Apparently there are some discipline issues. You can't beat the kids which was the traditional response to some brat challenging an adult in authority. But we can absolutely expel kids that are trouble makers. Not out of all the schools... but violent kids that are behind shouldn't frustrate the efforts of NORMAL kids that just happen to be behind from catching up. So put the violent kids somewhere that they're not going to interfere with anyone else.
Third, saving the really bad cases is going to be very hard. But if they're all concentrated as much as possible then maybe you can create a school program that actually gives them a chance because it is specifically designed to help them and no one else.
Fourth, the high functioning kids should be given every opportunity to go as far and as fast as they can. If they want to get their GED at ten then let them do that. People might cite social problems but that's unavoidable. If you're that much smarter than your peers and that driven then you're going to be very different period.
Beyond all of that, something should be done to permit various schools to try things, experiment, and have a certain amount of flexibility as to how they handle things. When everything is micromanaged from the school district's head quarters the principles become little more than minor managers or a larger franchise... instead of being the CEOs/presidents of the school... able to make big decisions or even little ones without getting permission from the school board every time.
I had a teacher that that raised money to build a new marque for the school. A big digital sign. The school board was taking FOREVER to approve it. So she just told the construction crew she had approval and they built it over one weekend.
Everyone came in the next day and she said "if you don't want a FREE marque, then I'll have it torn out of the ground. Otherwise, hook up the power because I'm over it."
These organizations are o
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
While I don't think the Learnstorm initiative is going to make huge changes in student motivation, the idea of Grit is definitely real. I really don't agree with the first linked article.
You should watch the Ted talk on Grit before commenting. http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en
Passion and perseverance for long term goals makes a big difference, regardless of social standing. I work with special education students and I sometimes see students who don't have as much 'ability' succeed more than average or above average students. The difference is how much the student's want to succeed and how hard they are willing to work to achieve their goals. I see students from all socioeconomic statuses display these traits as well as traits that work against their success. The key is figuring out how to connect with students and build passion, motivation and perseverance to achieve their goals. If students believe they can change their 'standing' then maybe they will.
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.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It's another word for perseverance. Rather than a bunch of lazy, passive, unmotivated people, I'd LOVE if my student developed this ever important character strength. Thanks for the innovation, Khan, and the funding, Gates and Google!