LastWeekTonight
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2017–2025
18:02 · 16M views · May 4, 2015
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on standardized testing in American schools. It covers how tests drive school funding, the achievement gap, and the testing industry around companies like Pearson.
Cited as a go-to reference in HN discussions about education and teaching to the test.
3 comments from Hacker News
Well, I read the article. It's not that great. Why? Because it's a mix 'n match of quotes, bits and pieces and observations cobbled together to support the thesis that digital technology will disrupt how information - and therefore our thinking about the world - is controlled. It's not that he's factually wrong about what he's saying. Rather, it's that the article lacks any references to a foundational understanding of historical dynamics and current affairs regarding economics, politics or economics. Everything he discusses has a historical context steeped in competing ideological, economical and political theories that have shaped the world since World War 1. And yet, he makes no mention that background whatsoever. On the contrary. For instance. > Like a fish in water, we’re unaware of the integration between our education system, the corporate structure, and our media environment. Uh. No. There's very much awareness about this among those who have participated in this debate and who are extremely worried about the state of education in America. And it's a debate about investing in public infrastructure, the advantages and drawbacks of free market dynamics in education and the long term impact on future generations. For instance, Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities and former president of the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa, wrote in the Washington Post back in 2016: > Public higher education is at a tipping point in the
What portions of that link are relevant? All I see is a link dump. "Signaling"? As in virtue signaling? Is that your site? I approve of lesswrong, Brookings Institute, the Atlantic... And reviewing your comment history, I'm going to gamble on the hope that you're persuadable. You kinda "sound" like a libertarian, so you might enjoy this publication from criticalthinking.org: [LINK] First hit when I google "fads in education". Result! The intro is better than I could have said it: "The history of education is also the history of educational panaceas, the comings and goings of quick fixes for deep-seated educational problems. This old problem is dramatically on the increase. The result is intensifying fragmentation of energy and effort in the schools, together with a significant waste of time and money. Many teachers become increasingly cynical and jaded. It is time to recognize that education will never be improved by educational fads, and that the manner in which educational trends are marketed guarantees that they will be transformed into fads. Fads by their nature are fated to self-destruction. Parents, educators, and citizen activists need to understand the problem of educational fads so that they can effectively distinguish substantive efforts at educational reform from superficial ones. Hence the motivation for this guide." It includes many fads I hadn't heard of. Its also about 10 years old, and it focuses on the classroom, so it doesn't include more recent nonsense lik
> It's already easy enough to just throw the test material into the LLM and get a bunch of flash cards on relevant content and memorize that LLM summarisation is broken, so I wouldn't expect them to get very far with this (see this comment on lobste.rs: [LINK] ) Also, memorizing flashcards is actually, to some point, learning the material. There's a reason why Anki is popular for students. Ultimately, however, this comes down to the 20th+21st century problem of "students learning only for the test", which we can see has critical problems that are well-known: [LINK] this video