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In today's Times, Larry Summers weighs in on the question of what college students ought to learn in college.
Larry's answer: not too much, because the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog!
Larry bases his novel and highly original thesis (to wit: "factual mastery will become less and less important") on "what we now understand about how people learn."
(Does Harvard have node chairs, I wonder? Sounds like no.)
OK, I'm going to go look up calculus on the internet. I've always been interested in calculus, so now that I've received a mobile device for Christmas, I'm going to look it up. Then I'm going to collaborate with some friends who also looked up calculus on the internet to figure out what to do about the 21st century global world meltdown.
I'm going to do this because I've noticed that economists use calculus in their collaborative group papers.
[pause]
There is a reason why students must commit content to memory as opposed to looking it up on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog.
That reason has to do with working memory.
More anon.
What You (Really) Need to Know by Lawrence A. Summers
update: Why students have to memorize things
and see: Extremely fast learning & extended working memory
AND SEE:
The founder, chair, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea
Barry Eichengreen has a really bad idea
President Obama has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
David Brooks has a really good idea
The Daily has a really bad idea
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31 comments:
Larrry is none too keen on the study of history:
Courses of study will place much more emphasis on the analysis of data. Gen. George Marshall famously told a Princeton commencement audience that it was impossible to think seriously about the future of postwar Europe without giving close attention to Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War. Of course, we’ll always learn from history. But the capacity for analysis beyond simple reflection has greatly increased
Yes, indeed!
Data will save us.
We've seen that.
And the discipline of history is accurately characterized as "simple reflection."
This from a man who, according to the people interviewed by Ron Suskind, thinks of himself as the smartest person in any room.
Once you have mobile devices, you don't have to actually know anything about history or about "how people learn" in order to recommend scrapping the entire disciplinary structure of knowledge and reorganizing every college and university in the country around the twin principles of group projects and moveable furniture.
And with mobile devices that convert text to speech and vice versa, no one will have to learn how to read! Think of the hours and hours of schooling that could be freed up for analysis and other sorts of "higher-level" thinking!
Talking to Ed - he says "Good thing Harvard got rid of the guy and replaced him with a historian."
I may have to corral Ed to write a post...because I can't really do it.
But, essentially, Summers' argument is simple 19th century positivism (I think it's 19th century - but since I don't know history, maybe I should look it up on the internet...)
Back on topic: Summers' argument is simple, centuries-old positivism: there are facts, it is possible to collect all the facts, and the facts speak for themselves -- or, in Summers' version, the facts speak for themselves when subjected to statistical, 'analysis.'
This is wrong.
Also: history is a discipline.
It has a set of principles for collecting and analyzing evidence and for drawing conclusions and making arguments.
Think of the hours and hours of schooling that could be freed up for analysis and other sorts of "higher-level" thinking!
There is nothing students enjoy more than 6 hours a day of higher-level thinking!
Higher-level thinking about the 3 to 5 discrete items they are able to hold in working memory at one time!
Good-bye, ma!
I'm off to school to think about 3 things!
Catherine,
This is a big part of Common Core. The idea that access to information in a database makes it unnecessary to know it. It's ridiculous to those of us who are in knowledge based professions. My kids are always amazed their lawyer mom who is technologically inept is so good with online searches. For those with an ed degree it can make perfect sense. Those who don't know do not recognize what is missing.
I cam over here though to point up this link:
http://www.filamentgames.com/
Filament is working with MIT to create massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) that are said to align with Common Core and the new Science Standards because of the emphasis on tasks. Got a $3 million Gates grant last week.
When you go to the site, the bottom of the page says games are implementing Understanding by Design. From our previous discussion.
Student of History
And Georgia Tech will continue to run about 75% foreign students in their CS graduate program.
Because we can just look up how to program and how to analyze programs and protocols on the internet.
It is as if we have some senior policy influencers who *want* most of the skilled techie jobs to be held by foreigners.
I'm quite confident that the same basic idea holds true for verbal fields (like law and medicine and business and ...), but it is *REALLY* clear in tech. We've had the ability to "look stuff up" for 10-15 years now. You can't get your job done if you are spending all your time looking up the basics (but you also won't *have* the job, so this isn't really a problem).
-Mark Roulo
This is the link to the story on using online gaming to "teach" science.
http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/mmog-stem-development.html
"unique opportunities to display mastery of the relevant topics and skills".
Yes. So unique that most of us would not agree. But at least they will be engaged. And more technology will have to be sold to run the MMOGs.
Not like Gates cares about the amount of technology sold.
Because we can just look up how to program and how to analyze programs and protocols on the internet.
Hey!
Maybe I'll look that up, too!
While I'm looking up calculus!
Who says multi-tasking is impossible?
I'm quite confident that the same basic idea holds true for verbal fields (like law and medicine and business and ...), but it is *REALLY* clear in tech.
There is actually a terrifically simple, empirical way to test this proposition: what do actual experts do?
Do they look stuff up?
Well, yes, but every expert I've ever met -- and I've met quite a few in part because of our kids' autism -- has a HUGE store of knowledge inside long-term memory.
Not only do real experts have a huge store of knowledge stored inside long-term memory, but experts are able to access it instantly.
We've had a coupe of intakes with our kids, where we were meeting with world-renowned experts in autism.
The knowledge level is blinding. Vast stores of facts, concepts, observations, and plausible hypotheses simply 'pop up' on their inner screens, fully organized, coherent, and ready to go.
You never, ever, meet a world-class expert in autism who says, "Autism and brain size. Hmmm. I bet there's something about that in the Library of Congress."
Not like Gates cares about the amount of technology sold.
Yeah, well, Apple's in there kicking.
THANKS TO APPLE, OUR KIDS CAN HAVE INTERACTIVE TEXTBOOKS!!!!!!
I guess no one ever thought of interactive textbooks before.
Thank God we've got Larry Summers to think it up for us.
Larry Summers sounds as if he lives in a cell in a dungeon. Doesn't he even have hobbies? no one who has a serious hobby thinks that you can do it without mastering a huge amount of information and skills in manipulating the information. Jeez.
You know, I just had a thought (as I sit here grading tests and contemplating whether I chose the wrong field)...I have next to me a Latin Composition Book from 1906, and on the first page are a set of instructions. I reproduce them here (and beg pardon for the wall-o'-text):
- Do not use an English-to-Latin dictionary at all; for, in the first place, none is required; and, in the second, none in existence will give the words needed.
- Let the text of Cicero furnish the vocabulary.
- Follow Cicero's form of expression as closely as the English will allow.
- Translate thoughts, not words.
- Beware of translating English words by the Latin words from which they are derived, and vice versa. Occasionally the meanings may coincide, but in a large majority of cases our English words are derived from the Low Latin, in which the original meanings had for the most part disappeared - "honestus" can never be rendered by honest, etc...
I sit here and look at this and think to myself: "There's a TON of critical thinking that is required here, and NONE of it would be possible unless the students KNEW Latin cold. As in FACTUALLY K.N.E.W. the Latin. Probably fewer than a half-dozen of my students right now could do this exercise, and even I have to stop and reflect regularly on how best to render the thoughts. And we call what we have today progress?"
"This essay is based on a speech Dr. Summers gave at The New York Times’s Schools for Tomorrow conference."
It figures. Tell them what they want to hear. I wonder how much he got paid?
It's really not deep thinking. It's a throw-together speech. He probably did it the night before. He probably Googled a bunch of stuff in the last second. So, does technology help us work harder, or does it just make us procrastinators?
What do you need data for when you have a really good thought experiment ... like the one about how "the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization."
He must be one of those high level concept guys on the managerial track.
Question: If Summers is correct, why do we need people like him? Surely it's good enough to just look stuff up on your mobile device? What can an expert add?
You know, I just had a thought (as I sit here grading tests and contemplating whether I chose the wrong field
I'm laughing!
Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be writing a syllabus.
Along with a bunch of other stuff....
One of the funniest lines has to do with an investment bank (yes! I want our schools to function so as to meet the requirements and philosophy of investment banks!) ...
...anyway, he cites an investment bank where in order to be hired a candidate has to be interviewed by 60 different partners --- none of whom are looking at GMAT scores or grades.
Instead they're all looking for a person who can work with other people.
Larry Summers is famous for being a person who does not work well with other people. Famous.
Filament is working with MIT to create massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) that are said to align with Common Core and the new Science Standards because of the emphasis on tasks.
that is certainly exciting
that's another thing .... I have a mobile device
it has Learning Apps on it
am I using them?
If Summers is correct, why do we need people like him?
Well, he'd probably say that people with high IQ will analyze the 3 things they looked up on the internet & are capable of thinking about at one time better than people with lower IQ.
He could be right, but it's still just 3 things.
The extremely poor quality of his reasoning and evidence in this essay is a perfect example of what a high-IQ person comes up with when he is engaging in "higher-order thinking" outside his field of expertise.
--- I have to point this out ----
The claim that the 60 partners interviewing candidates for a big investment bank don't care about GMATs or grades----
I find it extraordinary that Larry Summers, who is reportedly so competitive over his brilliance that he has to be the smartest person in every room, would fail to notice the flaw in the logic here
By the time a candidate gets to the point of interviewing with all 60 partners, his GMATs and grades have been vetted, for C****** sake.
What do you need data for when you have a really good thought experiment ... like the one about how "the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization."
That IS based on data. It's not a thought experiment; it's a scientifically reasonable hypothesis based on repeated empirical measurements. Like Galileo, he discovered that, in a fundamentalist environment like the academy, certain hypotheses may not even be suggested, regardless of empirical evidence.
I was gratified and surprised to see that at least most of the comments to his piece were very critical of it.
"The extremely poor quality of his reasoning and evidence in this essay is a perfect example of what a high-IQ person comes up with when he is engaging in "higher-order thinking" outside his field of expertise."
That is a very good point.
"That IS based on data. It's not a thought experiment.."
Let me put it differently. The data or variables are not conclusive, so rather than presenting a hypothesis, he was presenting a provocation. His purpose was not scientific. It got the expected result, but it didn't change much of anything. It was about him and not the problem or the data. He may claim the bully pulpit, but did it work?
From the conclusion of Summers' infamaous remarks at the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce:
"Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said. But I think we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can."
Did Summers achieve this aim? Probably not-- at least not yet. (Glen is correct when he writes that, in Academia--and not just in Ed Schools--"certain hypotheses may not even be suggested, regardless of empirical evidence").
Instead, Summers got fired. Times columnist John Tierney as speculated, though, that that may have had more to do with Summers attempting to get Harvard faculty to teach basic survey courses (a.k.a. "core knowledge")--ironic, given his stance in this latest speech.
Let me put it differently. The data or variables are not conclusive...
Hypotheses don't require conclusive data, only suggestive data. Thank goodness for that because, otherwise, there would be no hypotheses at all in cognitive science, sociology, economics, finance....
Math professors are statistical outliers. Given two populations with equal means but different variances, you expect more outliers from the population with more variance. Most studies of math ability among post-pubertal boys and girls have found the boys to have greater variance. How much more variance depends on the study (as expected), but the pattern in the data strongly suggests greater variance among males, and greater variance suggests more outliers (almost by definition), and professors are drawn from the pool of outliers.
So, is some sort of natural tendency spread out, not to be better but just to vary more, a major contributor to the imbalance? It's a reasonable hypothesis suggested by the data.
But are the data "conclusive"? What does that mean? Were the data conclusive that no particle could travel faster than the speed of light? People conclude; non-exhaustive data can only suggest.
The data suggest that males are more varied somehow, which would be expected to show up as an imbalance at the extremes---where math professors live.
"...so rather than presenting a hypothesis, he was presenting a provocation."
In a discussion of how to solve a problem, mentioning a possibility that is strongly suggested by the data is only a provocation to those whose theories are threatened by the evidence and who care more about dogma than data.
It was a lunch-time talk.
"In a discussion of how to solve a problem, mentioning a possibility that is strongly suggested by the data is only a provocation to those whose theories are threatened by the evidence and who care more about dogma than data."
Which problem is it, trying to get more women (or not) into scientific career paths, or attacking the problem of dogma in colleges? That he did not expect the response he got suggests that he was quite naive (or arrogant) about the issue.
What, exactly, is the problem being addressed? Are too many resources being put into increasing the balance of men and women in science? What about the absolute number of individuals going into STEM careers, not just the balance between the two sexes? Have they hit the genetic aptitude cutoff point? Has the money spent already dealt with the "lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination?" Does the data give us that information? Does the data tell us what the (male/female) percentage difference should be? Does the data give us enough details for a specific course of action? How will this data be used? Just because the data might show a correlation, it doesn't tell us how to use it.
Why not talk about race/IQ data. There are those who like to point to that data to claim what? That everything is OK? That the academic gap between high and low SES towns is normal? But what is the magnitude of correlation? How does that correlation translate into policy that affects individuals?
The problem with data is that people will use it to support an agenda even though the data doesn't say very much. People will use statistics to create policy that treats individuals as statistics.
Larry Summers is both arrogant and naive. This is what would have provoked me, not the data. How you do things is often more important that what you do.
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