#6, Part 3 – Learning Debt and Skill Insolvency

January 28

51 mins

Episode Description

What we covered:

The dangers of accumulating learning debt: the gap between what you can do and what you need to be able to do.
If you miss building up your foundational skills in school or sports, you can get by for a while. You develop some compensatory strategies, like favoring your forehand over your backhand, or using ChatGPT to write all your school essays.
But learning debt is like any other kind of debt: it accrues interest and eventually comes due. Over time, the workarounds become more complex. The cognitive load increases. You start avoiding situations that expose the gap, and this is where you hit your ceiling. You can’t pursue an engineering degree if you can’t do algebra. You can’t be competitive in tennis if you can’t hit with your backhand.
Learning debt often begins because of a lack of oversight by adults. Parents, teachers, and even coaches sometimes think they’re being nice not telling you that you need to work on your weaker side, or you need to stop using a calculator on your math problems. It feels like nagging, and it can create conflict between adults and learners. So they let it slide.
But this failure to hold the line early on inhibits students’ future potential. And when it occurs across many students across many schools, it degrades the whole educational system – leading to the current situation in which many students are totally unprepared for the rigors of college.

Outline:

0:00 - Introduction

2:04 - Course phases: instruction, final review, final exam, remediation if needed

5:25 - Generating full-length SAT exams for our prep course

6:53 - Loosening up the gravity throttle for high-performing students

14:59 - Aptitude is measured by accuracy rate

18:07 - Accuracy correlates first with aptitude, second with conscientiousness

21:35 - Assessment vs. non-assessment accuracies

23:43 - Propagating accuracy through the knowledge graph

24:27 - Hidden skill gaps force bad compensations

25:27 - Sports make skill deficits and bad compensations obvious

33:38 - The Math Academy system holds you accountable for every skill

34:18 - Completing the square: a common skill deficit with temporary workarounds

36:15 - Reliance on Desmos undermines students’ ability to graph functions

37:38 - You need to know your multiplication facts for factoring

38:13 - Foundational deficits are usually caused by lack of adult oversight

38:52 - Shoring up foundations is effortful but has huge ROI

40:40 - Filling in missing foundations makes kids so much more confident

41:12 - Missing foundations stall learning and drive cheating

42:12 - Faking competence backfires downstream

45:33 - The truth hurts but is the kindest thing in the long run

46:26 - Learning debt eventually comes due, with students paying the biggest price

47:12 - Kicking the can down the road in education

49:46 - The cost of a broken education system

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