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Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for te

• tptacek 10y ago
  There's been a YC RFS for Education for a long time; it's #7 on the list. YC has had some success in the space with companies like Clever, and for awhile had a sister-program dedicated solely to K-12 startups.
  • adamnemecek 10y ago
    While nice, neither of these strikes me as truly disruptive. The downside is that to achieve the best educational environment, you'd have to open a school which doesn't scale nicely unless you plug into existing "world APIs". I guess you could start by opening a co-working space with a supervising adult (not teacher, this adult will be there to ensure that the kids aren't killing each other). There would be teachers accessible via video calls but most of the time would be spent reading or doing work, not passively listening/watching. If you pool these teachers together, you will be able to teach even the most obscure subjects. In this system, everyone is literally going at their pace. I think that fundamentally the main objection to this system is that some people learn better in a classroom setting, to which I reply: 21st century education needs to make a transition to turn graduates into self-learners. This can only be achieved with a system that fosters self-learning from very early on. It's not like you can create self-learners by making students go through a process that's fundamentally as anti-self-learning as possible. This will also make switching schools extremely painless. You will transition to a new desk. It's like a gym membership, you can totally have two if that's convenient for you for whatever reason.
    • jpereira 10y ago
      I think you're exactly right in that the "world APIs" for education are the limiting factor. The major issue is that the assessment process is directly tied to the learning process within a single institution, leading to both being done incredibly inoptimally. It leads to the necessity of standardized tests and exams, and accredited institutions, which limits the potential learning opportunities available to the very few that are recognized on national or global scale. If a "global assessment API" was decoupled from learning institutions it could capture educational experience as generated by any environment, from standard public schools to non-traditional schools, and we'd see a much more diverse set of educational experiences arise and be able to coexist fairly, meaning that individuals could better shape their individual academic paths without compromise and still be able to operate in the greater academic network. A universal assessment system can exist in a very scalable way if its built upon social consensus. It would be absolutely impossible given our current models of assessment, especially the ones used on a national or international level. They are just simply far too expensive to begin to capture the breadth or depth of potential experience in academics in a meaningful way. Today though we have the technology (i.e Ethereum and other decentralized technologies) to (relatively) easily design and deploy incentivized _secure_ systems for social consensus. It would enable systems like the one you're talking about to actually enable not just the teaching of the most obscure subject, but the _recognition_ of them too. This is something I have been working on building for a while now. I truly believe its the answer to the flaws in our (global, not just American) education system and will be necessary for a truly effective, and universal, one.
      • adamnemecek 10y ago
        > The major issue is that the assessment process is directly tied to the learning process within a single institution, leading to both being done incredibly inoptimally. Very good point. There are no feedback looks between the two subsystems which makes them both suck. One point I'd like to raise though is that I'm not sure if it's really optimal have 'assessments'. I have some fundamental issues with assigning numerical values to things that are sometimes hard to judge numerically. I think that a much better system would be that each student's work is stored in the cloud where it's accessible and everyone can judge for himself. And I think that we should move away from test to projects that are largely designed by the student under the guidance of teachers.
  • thowar2 10y ago
    Good point. But I think its worth bringing up again as it is seemingly at the root of all the issues surfaced by the Trump presidency, which is the main driver of this new RFS
• adamnemecek 10y ago
  I agree 100%. Let's talk about how to get there.
• geniium 10y ago
  Yeah education is the root of our future. It's importance is often undervalued.
• bduerst 10y ago
  Agreed - we're in the middle of an education bubble, as the growth in student loan debt has fast outstripped the growth in income for graduates. As technological automation continues, there is demand for a system that is capable of retraining displaced workers, and doesn't create modern indentured servants in the process.
• shafyy 10y ago
  As others said, education was already on an earlier RFS. But it's still important, maybe more than ever. As you stated, I also believe that education it's the root of most problems. Today, almost everyone learns the same way as they did 100 years ago: A teacher going through a non-customized textbook that was written by a small number people. It's a linear learning path and highly ineffective. It's also inefficient, as teacher to student ratios are mostly around 1-to-20 (I am talking about K-12, not college or MOOCs). I believe that we can overcome a lot of problems of education by applying technology. More concretely, we should be able to provide more customized, higher quality content for people at young and old age. This, while creating more genuine excitement for science and scientific thinking. This means, we have to rethink the current teacher/student paradigm. And I don't mean by merely providing tools to teachers or copy/pasting textbooks to online videos. I mean by curating content that excites, using some ML to create an optimal and dynamic learning path per student and making it fit to the busy daily lives of people who don't have time to watch 1 hour lectures every week when they get home from work. This might seem like advertising, by I am working on exactly such a project and thought it would be ok to mention it here, because it is relevant for the discussion and other startups were mentioned in the comments, too. It's called Humbot (humbot.io) and I am happy to hear your comments and start a discussion on what the radical improvements in education must be over the next decade.
• basch 10y ago
  Education and News are two sides of the same coin. At some point the majority of the adult population makes the decision to learn about the world from entertainment companies. We should reanalyze what news and continuing education mean, relative to each other. https://theconversation.com/ https://theconversation.com/ and http://www.worldcrunch.com/ http://www.worldcrunch.com/ make good starts, as do aggregators like http://www.aldaily.com/ http://www.aldaily.com/ and https://redef.com/ https://redef.com/ As far as pure education companies, we need more software platforms for building curriculums collaboratively, some combination of wikia, github, wirecutter, and khanacademy.org. You may be thrown by my inclusion of wirecutter, but concensus based consumer reports type information, leading to populations making better decisions, helps cut through the paradox of choice. It also teaches people HOW to make decisions, and how to evaluate choices. It should be easy for anyone to fork, remix, contribute, or request corrections. Even collaborative documentary editing software, or the ability to sift through ALL the worlds lectures on a topic, and assessable the best bits. As long as teams of strangers can collaborate and fork, the world will have more shoulder standing giants, and less reinventing of the wheel.
  • germinalphrase 10y ago
    As a teacher, I would kill for a collaborative curriculum and assessment tool. A "backend" service for creating, managing, and personalizing curriculum materials would go a long way to mitigate the absolutely astounding amount of redundant labor that goes on in schools (you're really creating a comprehension quiz for To Kill a Mockingbird from scratch?). Contrary to popular belief - even here on HN - teachers are chronically making known sub-optimal instructional tradeoffs because they lack the time to complete tasks as they should ideally be completed. Very little seems to be done to create tools to improve the instructional process (that doesn't involve removing the teacher from that very process - e.g. MOOCs, Khan Academy, Knewton, etc.). Those digital alternative absolutely have a place, but there's a lot of opportunity to fundamentally improve the instructional work being done by teachers in classrooms every day. Your suggestions are a great place to start: - network instructional materials and lessons so they can be accessed in their entirety by other teachers - network assessment materials that are tied (on the question/answer level) to standards and common goals (e.g. comprehension quip above). Email is in profile if anyone would like to continue this discussion in a more detailed manner outside the thread.
• EGreg 10y ago
  I have a very specific vision for how to reform education. Would be happy to partner up with people who feel similarly: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 I have a platform that can be used to build it all but could use a good business partner and extra JS/Mobile developers can't hurt. The business partner would help make pilots in schools and colleges. Just maybe a class here or there at first, then prove it out. Please see http://qbix.com/blog http://qbix.com/blog for how we could partner together. If you are interested to talk, see my HN profile. I agree with Bernie that college should be free but disagree that it should be free in its current state. It can b made much cheaper if you flip the classroom in the way I indicated above. That is what should be made free (ie paid for by the government). In Primary School (everything up to High School) we need to reform the terrible top-down dynamics. I know about them secondhand because my mom is a teacher. School is a daycare center for parents who work. Kids are overdiagnosed with ADHD. Paul Graham wrote about school being a veritable prison back in 2003 (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) Things only got worse in the last 20 years.
• Kluny 10y ago
  We can start moving toward an education system that works once we agree on some core values. Someone else said that the goal of education is to produce factory workers. I disagree. I think the goal of education is to allow one teacher to effectively babysit up to 30 children at once. With both parents working, it simply isn't possible for them to give kids the attention they need to keep them healty and sane, let alone educate them on how to be part of society. Schools are supposed to do this instead, but the primary goal is training the children to be manageable at a ratio of 30 to 1. Before we can do anything else, we have to acknowledge that the first goal is getting the kids out of their parents hair. This is the fundamental truth that everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge when they're debating policy. After that, we can make other decisions that make more sense. The lecture-hall format really only makes sense when the number of students is unmanageable for a single adult. If was only 10 kids per teacher, they would actually have time for more useful activities, applying knowledge, giving guidance to students who are ready to strike out on their own. Tripling the number of teachers is going to cost some money, and application-type lessons costs more than lecture-type lessons. Some ways to deal with this - as a society, acknowledge that creating educated, well informed citizens is not a fuzzy, feel-good liberal goal, but a necessary factor for everyone's safety, including the permanently child-free. I think most people agree with that already, but since many people voting are full grown adults who still aren't properly educated, not everyone will come to the same conclusion, and therefore a massive infusion of public money for this idea isn't likely to happen. So I think a successful, disruptive idea will be one that gets around the cost problem of a much lower student-to-teacher ratio. I don't think remote teaching is going to be the answer here.
  • DougN7 10y ago
    I've rewritten my comment three times so far ... My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky. So from my perspective, having both parents working is the root issue. It's an economic necessity for probably 80+% of the country, which I suppose is really the root issue. Ultimately it all boils down to resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around. I don't have an answer for that :(
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  For sure, but it's not like all other projects are being auto-rejected, I think YC will always be interested in forward-looking educational proposals. One other thing to bear in mind that educational is a multi-generational undertaking; every little helps, but short-term thinking brings you cheap PCs in schools one year and iPads the next. Long-term thinking requires a vision going out 25 years into the future and a plan to respond to and either incorporate or resist outside criticism, depending on how well founded it is.
• AdamFernandez 10y ago
  Education is a great long-term solution, but we need a PSA/Marketing solution for rational thought today. Similar to the TRUTH anti-tobacco campaign. Make it 'cool' to use logic and base your decisions on rational thought. I'm not advocating any particular policy issues, but a lot of problems can arise if people can't tell the difference between real and fake news, and don't bother to. They don't bother because thinking rationally is not something we encourage.
  • Neliquat 10y ago
    TRUTH make me, quit for 10 years now, want to light up. That kind of half-truth fearmongering to kids is the posterchild of ineffectiveness. Moreover is sows distrust of the very channels to use to provide valuable public info. Calling it 'truth' was just the hypocritical icing on the cake.
• Cleisthenes 10y ago
  Using public education for any form of job training is one of the gravest mistakes that has put us in the current position. The reason for public education is to have an informed citizenry able to participate fully in society. Using it as job training is just corporate welfare, that is using tax money to pay for something businesses should do themselves. There is often overlap in the skills needed in an informed citizenry and employees (e.g. reading, computer skills, etc.), but not always. Trying to chase what business or the marketplace wants is a fools journey that create citizens poorly prepared to be fully empowered citizens with a solid understanding of the world. I suspect entrepreneurial skills would be well covered by this approach as it should emphasis skills of leadership, self-reliance, consensus, and creative thinking.
  • sealthedeal 10y ago
    agreed
  • hackuser 10y ago
    Thanks for saying that; it's essential to reframe the discussion. A few thoughts: 1) The Obama administration's college rankings (I don't know if they are still around) at one point were using the earnings of graduates as a basis. 2) Often you hear people evaluating college based on their first job. Not only are employment skills not the goal, as you point out, but consider the absurdity of valuing education based on what is probably the least important, worst paying job you'll ever get, with a payoff of probably 1-2 years. 3) Looking at the shocking political and environmental problems in 'advanced' countries right now, perhaps more education in the non-vocational fields of liberal arts, including history, political science, and literary criticism, and in the sciences, providing an understanding of nature and scientific method, is more important than ever. 4) A useful way of looking at it: [0] "The Yale Report of 1828" -- an influential document written by Jeremiah Day (who was at the time president of Yale), one of his trustees, and a committee of faculty -- distinguished between "the discipline" and "the furniture" of the mind. Mastering a specific body of knowledge -- acquiring "the furniture" -- is of little permanent value in a rapidly changing world. Students who aspire to be leaders in business. medicine, law, government, or academia need "the discipline" of mind -- the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve problems. I'd add that it's not just leaders, but everyone who needs these skills. ---- [0] Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, in "Top of the Class: The Rise of Asia's Universities" https://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/china/2010-05-01/top-class https://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/china/2010-05-01/top...
• deleted 10y ago
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• randomdata 10y ago
  I have found the current education methods to amazingly effective. I can literally sit down and choose any subject of interest and become well versed in it with not much more than a time commitment. And since you can get up to speed on a whim, you can stay as current for job market purposes as necessary. In fact, my current educational interest of the past several months, which wasn't even career motivated, has already generated one completely unsolicited job offer. I'm a bit jealous of the younger generations, as these methods were primitive/not available when I was younger. I could have learned so much when I had more time to learn it. The old school system I grew up with was quite ineffective, but thankfully we've improved the options well beyond those days.
  • adamsea 10y ago
    Not everyone is proactive as you are, and having skilled professional teachers who can engage students to motivate them to learn something they may not on their own, is a collective good. Uneducated people (and I am distinguishing education from intelligence; uneducated most emphatically does not mean unintelligent) are bad for society. Witness climate change denial, Trump and his ilk, etc.
    • randomdata 10y ago
      I'm not sure it needs to be mutually exclusive. While it is true that teachers are not strictly necessary to utilize our modern educational methods, there is no reason a professional cannot motivate a needing student in using the same tools to the same end.
  • thowar2 10y ago
    Access to knowledge is not at all the problem. Lack of "soft skills" is the problem. We are taught or force fed knowledge, but not taught how to be well adjusted people. You were lucky, for some reason you came to understand the value of personal development and self education. This is something that needs to be taught to everyone. In the world.
• ThomPete 10y ago
  Education which help creating people ready for the future is not education but to educate yourself dare I say in almost anything as long as you become really good at it. The last thing we need is a bunch of people who have learned the same things, references the same books and inspirations. (yes there are obvious exceptions but even within those the landscape is normally so vast. The first thing we need is people to start taking education on by themselves in todays world there is no excuse.
• clarkmoody 10y ago
  As long as education is controlled by government, directional decisions will be made politically. Try bringing up the idea of shrinking class sizes by eliminating the football program at your next town-hall and see what happens. The only lasting solution will be to allow true market competition for education to replace the centralized top-down system we have. Yes, it's a libertarian pipe dream. No, I don't want to hear about how "poor people will not be educated" by such a system. You cannot know what a free market in education would look like, because we've never tried.
  • realusername 10y ago
    We've never tried what? Private schools? I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well.
    • clarkmoody 10y ago
      Private schools are required to compete with "free" public schools. > I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well. That's why in my comment I said I don't want to hear this comeback. It's as predictable as sunset that every time someone mentions a free market in education, someone else can't imagine it working for educating the poor. How well does the current system educate the poor?
      • realusername 10y ago
        So you don't want to hear about this argument but you have nothing else against it than "we never tried it"? It's does not seem to be very convincing. It's already difficult for the working class with a free school so I can't imagine it would be better with a non-free one, the alternative to no public schools is simply no schooling at all for some people > How well does the current system educate the poor? You need to ask the US government for that, most public school systems are working well in western Europe so the US must be doing something wrong somewhere.
• deleted 10y ago
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• panic 10y ago
  To fix education, our first priority should be to empower teachers. They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning and know the best how to make it happen. Teaching shouldn't be a low-paying, low-status profession. I'm not sure how you could change that with a YC startup.
  • clarkmoody 10y ago
    Why not empower the people who pay for the product? The consumer? (students / parents) > They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning Sad that some parents care less than their teachers, but that's probably the root of 75% of education problems.
    • panic 10y ago
      For the same reason patients aren't empowered to make their own medical diagnoses. Trained teachers can be much more effective than untrained parents.
• saalweachter 10y ago
  See, I hear techies grumble about education constantly. Our education system is teaching the wrong skills or not challenging students or just an elaborate babysitting racket. I hear teachers, on the other hand, complain that after decades of trying everything they can, they've realized that they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives. It's easy to say we should introduce children to programming early, even easy to do. It is easy to complain about critical thinking skills and kids these days. It is easy to see that overtesting schools and overreacting to those test scores wastes resources and the time of children and teachers. It's hard to find a way to ensure one in six children in the US subject to food insecurity always get three good meals a day. It is hard to figure out how to provide stability in a single family, let alone all families. It is hard to say a child shouldn't drop out of school and work whatever job they can when their parents have been unable or unwilling to provide for them. We have been talking about and trying to fix "education" my entire life; maybe we should try fixing some of the underlying problems first, even if they are hard.
  • patmcguire 10y ago
    You can aim at other models that aren't trying to improve the 18-year batch model. The great stratification that happens at the end of that, where you're either raised to the great meritocracy in the sky or cast into the abyss, would probably still be unconscionable if it were done fairly, and it's not. So focus on the parts that happen once you're an adult. MOOCs aren't a panacea but you don't have to miss a class because your shift moved. If the objection is they aren't taken seriously by employers, my objection is that's still playing the old prestige and rank game, and there is always going to be someone at the bottom of that anyway. So make them useful to themselves if employers don't want them. (I believe fixing childhood poverty involves the US Government doing things it's not going to do soon, and that private business isn't going to do it. We must cultivate our garden.)
  • ethbro 10y ago
    > they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives As someone from a teaching family, this is absolutely true. That said, the underlying problems can only be fixed by a combination of economic improvement and education. Education empowers in the future, but economic status empowers educational opportunities in the present. And when it comes down to it, the government can't afford to replace the future wealth created by an educated citizenry.
• sebleon 10y ago
  Agreed, education is probably the most high leverage investment out there for society. That being said, I'm highly skeptical that it will be fixed by a profit-driven, venture-backed business. Much like healthcare, education's goals dont fit capitalisms mold.
• matt4077 10y ago
  I believe the curriculum has always been based on the ideal of the "well-rounded citizen" aka a liberal arts education. That includes the sciences, math, philosophy, government, history, languages, art, and sports. None of those subjects are particularly relevant for factory work. Even at the height of manufacturing, high schools were geared towards universities – because 10 is not the age where you want to make the decision that someone has or doesn't have the potential to be a judge/chemist/artist. Calls to more closely align education with the perceived needs of the future economy seems misguided: - You don't actually know what will be needed 15 to 20 years in advance (including the time it takes to develop a curriculum and teach teachers) - It reduces citizens to their role in the economy - It doesn't work. History is at least somewhat exciting. Teaching the filing of tax returns (a staple of such discussions) is completely removed from a 16-years reality. When it becomes relevant after college, it will be completely forgotten and possibly obsolete. The current system is very much geared towards teaching modes of thinking, learning and similar meta-skills. History and philosophy, for example, are possibly the most important to understand current affair (but have often been decimated by a drive towards the sciences). Throw in a bit of statistics and you'll also have a good foundation for entrepreneurs.
• intended 10y ago
  No! education should definitely not be on this list. Education is a red herring, and the first thing people reach for. But education is always misunderstood, and all research shows that there is vast amount of variability in things ranging from understanding to retention. For example 1) Level of nutrition impacts grade outcomes 2) Level of food consumed on that particular day impacts retention/learning 3) Level of reading of parents impacts student scores 4) Level of grand parent nutrition impacts student health and nutrtion 5) Race and discrimination impacts educational outcomes Leave aside things like bullying, student interest, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, learning style and so on. And this may or MAY not impact job and future outcomes either. Education is NOT an easy fix, and a tool which magically does fix this is a tool too powerful to create because if it were misused it would be an indoctrination tool beyond any other ever developed. Education must be solved with other efforts
• bambax 10y ago
  > The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. Does it? Many people with a college degree hold political beliefs one would consider unwieldy; Bannon went to Harvard. It seems startups themselves are part of the problem, so one can doubt they will bring the solution. "Disruption" is another word for tearing society apart, ignoring legal norms designed to protect citizens from corporations. The shift to online shopping -- actually, to online everything -- let people do most things from the comfort of their homes without ever meeting anyone. "Fake news" were never a problem before Facebook and the bubble economy, where money is made by keeping people in a safe environment. A better request would be: how to make people quit Facebook and stop using smartphones.
  • thowar2 10y ago
    I wouldn't consider college to be effective education. It's a credential factory, and the bar is low. Bannon is the leader, not the follower. He takes advantage of those who are less informed and less likely to accurately judge fact from fiction. If they were effectively educated, they would 1) be less susceptible to propaganda, 2) have better economic prospects and not be so pissed off.
• Alex_Butters 10y ago
  When I gave my first college lecture, I actually started wandering off half way through in my head wondering how this model of me talking, them listening ever worked or even lasted. By the end of the semester, I was "flipping"lectures and trying to engage my students more instead of just me talking. The current model doesn't need to be destroyed and rebuilt, just remodeled as you said for a different future