[Plura-list] American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides
Cory Doctorow
doctorow at craphound.com
Tue Jan 16 13:33:32 EST 2024
Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/
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Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM:
https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
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I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, the sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by Wil Wheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:
http://thebezzle.org
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Today's links
* American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides: A common core, but no commons.
* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
* This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
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🧜🏿♂️ American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides
We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a *monster*.
We're a decade and a half into the "common core" experiment in educational standardization. The majority of the country has now signed up to a standardized and rigid curriculum that treats overworked teachers as untrustworthy slackers who need to be disciplined by measuring their output through standard lessons and evaluations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core
This system is rigid enough, but it gets even worse at the secondary level, especially when combined with the Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which adds another layer of inflexibile benchmarks to the highest-stakes, most anxiety-provoking classes in the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement
It is a system singularly lacking in grace. Ironically, this unforgiving system was sold as a way of correcting the injustice at the heart of the US public education system, which funds schools based on local taxation. That means that rich neighborhoods have better funded schools. Rather than equalizing public educational funding, the standardizers promised to ensure the quality of instruction at the worst-funded schools by measuring the educational outcomes with standard tools.
But the joke's on the middle-class families who backed standardized instruction over standardized funding. Their own kids need slack as much as anyone's, and a system that promises to put the nation's kids through the same benchmarks on the same timetable is bad for everyone:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/give-me-slack-2/
Undoing this is above my pay-grade. I've already got more causes to crusade on than I have time for. But there is a piece of tantalyzingly low-hanging fruit that is dangling right there, and even though I'm not gonna pick it, I can't get it out of my head, so I figured I'd write about it and hope I can lazyweb it into existence.
The thing is, there's a reason that standardization takes hold in so many domains. Agreeing on a common standard enables collaboration by many entities without any need for explicit agreements or coordination. The existence of the ANSI/SAE J563 standard automobile auxiliary power outlet (AKA "car cigarette lighter") didn't just allow many manufacturers to make replacement lighter plugs. The existence of a standardized receptacle delivering standardized voltage to standardized contacts let all *kinds* of gadgets be designed to fit in that socket.
Standards crystallize the space of all possible ways of solving a problem into a range of solutions. This inevitably has a downside, because the standardized range might not be optimal for all applications. Think of the EU's requirement for USB-C charger tips on all devices. There's a lot of reasons that manufacturers prefer different charger tips for different gadgets. Some of those reasons are bad (gouging you on replacement chargers), but some are good (unique form-factor, specific smart-charging needs). USB-C is a very flexible standard (indeed, it's so flexible that some people complain that it's not a standard at all!) but there are some applications where the optimal solution is outside its parameters.
And still, I think that the standardization on USB-C is a force for good. I have drawers full of gadgets that need proprietary charger tips, and other drawers full of chargers with proprietary tips, and damned if I can make half of them match up. We've continued our pandemic lockdown tradition of my wife cutting my hair in the back yard, and just tracking the three different charger tips for the three clippers she uses is an ongoing source of frustration. I'd happily trade slightly sub-optimal charging for just being able to plug any of those clippers into the same cable I charge my headphones, phone, tablet and laptop on.
The standardization of American education has produced all the downsides of standardization - a rigid, often suboptimal, one-size-fits-all system - without the benefits. With teachers across America teaching in lockstep, often from the same set texts (especially in the AP courses), there's a massive opportunity for a commons to go with the common core.
For example, the AP English and History classes my kid takes use standard texts that are often centuries old and hard to puzzle out. I watched my kid struggle with texts for learning about "persuasive rhetoric" like 17th century pamphlets that inspired anti-indigenous pogroms with fictional accounts of "Indian atrocities."
It's good for American schoolkids to learn about the use of these blood libels to excuse genocide, but these pamphlets are a *slog*. Even with glossaries in the textbooks, it's a slow, word-by-word matter to parse these out. I can't imagine anyone learning a single thing about how speech persuades people just by reading that text.
But there's nothing in the standardized curriculum that prevents teachers from *adding* more texts to the unit. We live in an unfortunate golden age for persuasive texts that inspire terrible deeds - for example, kids could also read core Pizzagate texts and connect the guy who shot up the pizza parlor to the racists who formed a 17th century lynchmob.
But teachers are incredibly time-constrained. For one thing, at least a third of the AP classroom time seems to be taken up with detailed instructions for writing stilted, stylized "essays" for the AP tests (these are *terrible* writing, but they're easy to grade in a standardized way).
That's where standardization could actually deliver some benefits. If just *one* teacher could produce some supplemental materials and accompanying curriculum, the existence of standards means that every other teacher could use it. What's more, any adaptations that teachers make to that unit to make them suited to their kids would *also* work for the other teachers in the USA. And because the instruction is so rigidly standardized, all of these materials could be keyed to metadata that precisely identified the units they belonged to.
The closest thing we have to this are "marketplaces" where teachers can sell each other their supplementary materials. As far as I can tell, the only people making real money from these marketplaces are the grifters who built them and convinced teachers to paywall the instructional materials that could otherwise form a commons.
Like I said, I've got a completely overfull plate, but if I found myself at loose ends, trying to find a project to devote the rest of my life to, I'd be pitching funders on building a national, open access portal to build an educational commons.
It may be a lot to expect teachers to master the intricacies of peer-based co-production tools like Git, but there's already a system like this that K-8 teachers across the country have mastered: Scratch. Scratch is a graphic programming environment for kids, and starting with 2019's Scratch 3.0, the primary way to access it is via an in-browser version that's hosted at scratch.mit.edu.
Scratch's online version is basically a kid- (and teacher-)friendly version of Github. Find a project you like, make a copy in your own workspace, and then mod it to suit your own needs. The system keeps track of the lineage of different projects and makes it easy for Scratch users to find, adapt, and share their own projects. The wild popularity of this system tells us that this model for a managed digital commons for an educational audience is eminently achievable.
So when students are being asked to study the rhythm of text by counting the numbers of words in the sentences of important speeches, they could supplement that very boring exercise by listening to and analyzing contemporary election speeches, or rap lyrics, or viral influencer videos. Different teachers could fork these units to swap in locally appropriate comparitors - and so could students!
Students could be given extra credit for identifying additional materials that slot into existing curricular projects - Tiktok videos, new chart-topping songs, passages from hot YA novels. These, too, could go into the commons.
This would enlist students in developing and thinking critically about their curriculum, whereas today, these activities are often off-limits to students. For example, my kid's math teachers don't hand back their quizzes after they're graded. The teachers only have one set of quizzes per unit, and letting the kids hold onto them would leak an answer-key for the next batch of test-takers.
I can't *imagine* learning math this way. "You got three questions wrong but I won't let you see them" is no way to help a student focus on the right areas to improve their understanding.
But there's no reason that math teachers in a commons built around the (unfortunately) rigid procession of concepts and testing couldn't generate *procedural* quizzes, specified with a simple programming language. These tests could even be automatically graded, and produce classroom stats on which concepts the whole class is struggling with. Each quiz would be different, but cover the same ground.
When I help my kid with her homework, we often find disorganized and scattered elements of this system - a teacher might post extensive notes on teaching a specific unit. A publisher might produce a classroom guide that connects a book to specific parts of the common core. But these are scattered across the web, and they aren't keyed to the specific, standard components of common core and AP.
This is a standardized system that is all costs, no benefits. It has no "architecture of participation" that lets teachers, students, parents, practitioners and even commercial publishers collaborate to produce a commons that all may share and improve upon.
In an ideal world, we'd get rid of standardization in education, pay teachers well, give them the additional time they needed to prepare exciting and relevant curriculum, and fund all our schools based on need, not parents' income.
But in the meanwhile, we could be making lemonade of out lemons. If we're going to have standardization, we should at least have the collaboration standards enable.
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🧜🏿♂️ Hey look at this
* Among Linguists, the Word of the Year Is More of a Vibe https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html
* The FTC Just Blocked Four Mergers in a Month. Here’s How Its Latest Win Fits Into the Broader Campaign to Revive Antitrust https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/
* The charges against Binance https://blog.mollywhite.net/binance-script/
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🧜🏿♂️ This day in history
#20yrsago Developing nations shouldn’t respect US copyright unless farm subsidies end https://www.wired.com/2004/01/a-taste-of-our-own-poison/
#20yrsago Self-parking Prius https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/look-no-hands-car-parks-itself-1134918.php
#20yrsago Disney selling off Celebration, FL https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/16/us/disney-is-selling-a-town-it-built-to-reflect-the-past.html
#15yrsago Zimbabwean $100 trillion note https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/01/16/zimbawe.currency/index.html
#15yrsago UK MPs to hide their expenses from Freedom of Information requests https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jan/15/freedom-of-information-expenses
#10yrsago Building a fully open, transparent laptop https://makezine.com/article/maker-news/building-an-open-source-laptop/
#10yrsago Why the sum of all positive integers is -1/12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww
#10yrsago NSA harvests 200M of SMSes every day with untargeted, global “Dishfire” program https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep
#10yrsago Congress calls on Schneier to give it answers that the NSA won’t https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/today_i_briefed.html
#10yrsago How to have a healthy relationship with technology https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/16/digital-failures-software
#10yrsago What’s the most profitable price for an ebook? https://blog.luzme.com/2014/01/10-things-may-know-ebook-prices/
#10yrsago Copyright troll dodging disbarment by resigning from the bar? https://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2014/01/15/how-to-avoid-disbarment-disbar-yourself/
#10yrsago The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, a graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/15/the-encyclopedia-of-early-earth-a-graphic-novel-by-isabel-greenberg/
#10yrsago Leaked: environmental chapter of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty https://wikileaks.org/tpp-enviro/
#10yrsago Booth babes are bad for business https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/
#10yrsago Blackphone: a privacy-oriented, high-end, unlocked phone https://web.archive.org/web/20140115183757/https://www.blackphone.ch/
#10yrsago HEADWATER: NSA program for sabotaging Huawei routers over the Internet https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/headwater_nsa_e.html
#10yrsago Judge rules TSA no-fly procedures unconstitutional https://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/01/judge-rules-for-plaintiff-in-no-fly-case.html
#10yrsago Dirty secrets of America’s most notorious patent troll https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/mphj-exposed-the-real-dirt-notorious-scanner-troll
#10yrsago UK consultation on orphan works https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/copyright-uk-orphan-works-licensing-scheme
#5yrsago Even the rightsholders think Europe’s Article 13 is a mess, call for an immediate halt in negotiations https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/even-rightsholders-think-europes-article-13-mess-call-immediate-halt-negotiations
#5yrsago AOC’s debut speech on the Congressional floor: “It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-No5ClLS1W8
#5yrsago Vermont official fact-checks mobile carriers’ coverage maps, proves they’re lying like crazy https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2019-01-16/state-official-went-roaming-around-vermont-to-test-cell-coverage-claims
#5yrsago The glass is half-full (of bile over Facebook’s business-model) https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/17/18186045/facebook-pew-research-ad-targeting-consumers-quitting
#5yrsago Privatized energy utilities are burning down their states, but antitrust can make them stop https://www.wired.com/story/to-prevent-wildfires-treat-utilities-like-railroad-barons/
#5yrsago Trump’s FCC chairman won’t do anything about your cellular company selling your location to bountyhunters because shutdown https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/ajit-pai-gives-carriers-free-pass-on-privacy-violations-during-fcc-shutdown/
#5yrsago Shutdowns don’t get bad linearly; they get bad exponentially https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/the-shutdown-s-bad-buckle-up-because-it-could-get-much-worse
#5yrsago Tory voters: are you happy with your purchase? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae5t1CZFCU8
#5yrsago Largest dump in history: 2.7 billion records; 773 million of them unique; 140 million never seen before https://www.wired.com/story/collection-one-breach-email-accounts-passwords/"
#1yrago 1,000,000 stranded Southwest passengers deserved better from Pete Buttigieg https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for-petes-sake/#unfair-and-deceptive
#1yrago Normalize Dark Corners! https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/15/normalize-dark-corners/
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🧜🏿♂️ Colophon
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: The Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton (excerpt) https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/14/the-bezzle-read-by-wil-wheaton-excerpt/
Upcoming appearances:
* Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics)
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YsKONp5zRgeF6SVuIOb6hQ#/registration
* Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22
https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
* Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29
https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024
* The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html
Recent appearances:
* The Lost Cause (The Writer's Voice)
https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/
* What the Future will Bring (Homeless Romantic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I
* Talking "The Lost Cause" with Warren Mosler (MMT Podcast)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955
Latest books:
* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books:
* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024
* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
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