Selected Blog Posts About the State of Math Education

by Justin Skycak (@justinskycak) on

Specific areas of friction that cause students to struggle with math. What needs to be done to remove friction from the learning process. Why friction remains so prevalent.

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Specific areas of friction that cause students to struggle with math:


What needs to be done to remove friction from the learning process:


Why friction remains so prevalent:

  • Lots of People in Education Disagree with the Premise of Maximizing Learning -- But in talent development, the optimization problem is clear: an individual's performance is to be maximized, so the methods used during practice are those that most efficiently convert effort into performance improvements.
  • Accountability and Incentives are Necessary but Absent in Education -- Students and teachers are often not aligned with the goal of maximizing learning, which means that in the absence of accountability and incentives, classrooms are pulled towards a state of mediocrity. Accountability and incentives are typically absent in education, which leads to a "tragedy of the commons" situation where students pass courses (often with high grades) despite severely lacking knowledge of the content.
  • Leveraging Cognitive Learning Strategies Requires Technology -- While there is plenty of room for teachers to make better use of cognitive learning strategies in the classroom, teachers are victims of circumstance in a profession lacking effective accountability and incentive structures, and the end result is that students continue to receive mediocre educational experiences. Given a sufficient degree of accountability and incentives, there is no law of physics preventing a teacher from putting forth the work needed to deliver an optimal learning experience to a single student. However, in the absence of technology, it is impossible for a single human teacher to deliver an optimal learning experience to a classroom of many students with heterogeneous knowledge profiles, each of whom needs to work on different types of problems and receive immediate feedback on each of their attempts. This is why technology is necessary.


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