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This article seems to be a good argument for a school that's 3/4 project based learning and 1/4 classroom instruction. The author then tries very hard to preten

This article seems to be a good argument for a school that's 3/4 project based learning and 1/4 classroom instruction. The author then tries very hard to pretend that Alpha school does not follow that model, and is instead something else - a boogeyman of blitzing through lessons without any opportunity for application or reflection, as opposed to the reality of a mix of classroom instruction and project-based learning to struggle with the concepts learned. > And some readers may ask: if schools like Alpha accelerate the basics and then give students space to explore—what’s wrong with that? > The problem isn’t the intention—it’s the architecture. You can’t optimize one part of a child and expect the rest to unfold naturally. Learning isn’t modular. Once efficiency takes hold, it doesn’t stay in its lane. It reshapes what matters. The argument, if I'm following it, is that the Alpha model is going to do well, and therefore the model will change to remove the current 3/4 of the curriculum used for exploration, which will make the model worse. But Alpha won't care, because teaching students worse in the name of efficiency is the natural end point. I am not convinced. I think the article would have done a much better job starting with Asian cram school culture and how AI tutoring is being "fueled by state incentives and parental anxiety", instead of having that as a throwaway thought in the middle of an article otherwise focused on Alpha school.

NervousRing 1y ago
There are a lot of things in the article that I find a bit wishy-washy. > It’s a signpost for a broader trend—one that treats friction as failure, learning as delivery, and formation as a plug-in. I think building something provides a lot more friction (and learning opportunities) than reading books. We had computer classes for at least 7 years in school and beyond some loops and recursion, I didn't really think I understood computers. One month of trying to build an app and that worked. Similarly, hundreds of hours of YC (and other) video content paled in comparison to trying to salvage a startup that was going bankrupt. > And what’s the real tragedy of this model? It’s not that it fails—it’s that it succeeds. Brilliantly. But at the wrong task: a perfect system solving for performance, not presence. I don't know why this line feels like it's written by ChatGPT. Maybe because it has that tone of trying to say something deep in a verbatim manner that is the signature style of ChatGPT. > Training children to outperform machines may win the game, but it misses the point: Machines don’t need meaning. We do. And I haven't found more aimless people than those coming out of current highschools. They then go to the universities their peers go to, get the job their peers do and try to fill their weekends with entertainment. No judgement, but I don't think AI will reduce any of that.
- diamond559 1y ago
  Everyone should just invent new products, new fields of employment then? So easy to you, what have you invented? What new, innovative job do you do that nobody else does?

NervousRing 1y ago

There are a lot of things in the article that I find a bit wishy-washy. > It’s a signpost for a broader trend—one that treats friction as failure, learning as delivery, and formation as a plug-in. I think building something provides a lot more friction (and learning opportunities) than reading books. We had computer classes for at least 7 years in school and beyond some loops and recursion, I didn't really think I understood computers. One month of trying to build an app and that worked. Similarly, hundreds of hours of YC (and other) video content paled in comparison to trying to salvage a startup that was going bankrupt. > And what’s the real tragedy of this model? It’s not that it fails—it’s that it succeeds. Brilliantly. But at the wrong task: a perfect system solving for performance, not presence. I don't know why this line feels like it's written by ChatGPT. Maybe because it has that tone of trying to say something deep in a verbatim manner that is the signature style of ChatGPT. > Training children to outperform machines may win the game, but it misses the point: Machines don’t need meaning. We do. And I haven't found more aimless people than those coming out of current highschools. They then go to the universities their peers go to, get the job their peers do and try to fill their weekends with entertainment. No judgement, but I don't think AI will reduce any of that.

diamond559 1y ago
Everyone should just invent new products, new fields of employment then? So easy to you, what have you invented? What new, innovative job do you do that nobody else does?