r/education

While browsing Reddit this AM I came across this post with the headline claim that "college students are testing at the level of 10-year-olds", and it perked my interest. I read the article and it seemed to be more of the generic complaints about young people not being up to snuff academically.

As it turns out people test out at different levels under different circumstances- whether that's meaningful or not isn't my point here.

I flashed back to a discussion I had some years ago with an older brother. It was this very same lack-of-academic-proficiency topic, and I brought up what was to me a fairly new thought - around 1900 one could learn all the known physics math within months or maybe a year. Nowadays it takes multiple years just to be up to date with very narrow areas such as particle point vs quantum gravity.

The amount of gained and retained knowledge has expanded exponentially as the means to collect, collate, and disperse information have grown in size and use from the Guttenberg press to today's literal world wide web of interconnected communications.

But we're still asking children and pre-adults (as well as alleged adults such as you and I) to be able to absorb a timeline of information - a timeline that has become more full and subject to subtleties - the world they're being asked to grow in to.

Not trying to be original, just thinking out loud.

Submission statement: this is a personal project I built myself, not monetized, sharing it here transparently to get real feedback, not to promote anything.

I spent time mentoring students in math before, mostly one-on-one, working through the stuff that's hard to get from a textbook or a lecture: seeing how a distribution actually shifts, why a vector operation does what it does, that kind of thing. Following up on a post I made here a few days ago about whether animated visuals can do some of that same work.

I built a small YouTube channel to test it directly, turning the concepts I used to walk students through by hand into fully animated lessons, from basic statistics up through linear algebra and neural networks. Search MathUnlockedYT on YouTube if you want to see what it actually looks like.

The open question for me is the same one I had when I was mentoring in person: does a student actually get it faster when they can see the concept move, or does a good explanation on paper do the same job if it's written well? I don't think animation is automatically better, I think it depends on the concept.

If you've taught or tutored these subjects, I'd like to know which specific concepts you found genuinely needed a visual to click versus the ones where a clear explanation was always enough.

Okay so I took bio, chem, Psychology, urdu as my alevel subjects Honestly I hate chem its has fucked my mental health sm apart from that our college make us have composites MJ 2027 I am in A2 now, Should I switch Chem with sociology or just drop chemistry and have the rest subjects Honestly I don't know how can I study sociology in less then 11 months from scratch Please anyone could help or give me a better advice? Its July already :( (I always had a STEM background)

I stumbled upon their playlist, which is very neat and organized. I was wondering if it’d be a great, balanced source to learn.

I’m looking for a simple but highly effective way of learning history and political theory. Just wondering if Crash Course is a great option.

Just a Friday evening random question

Maybe in 10-20-30-40 years this question and answers will become interesting topic.

Do you think minimal start age of education will increase or decrease? For example high school- college - uni 16-17-18-19-20-21-22 can turn into 27-28-29-30?

Do you thin AI will make minimal education age lower or higher? Will AI develop or be blocked at some point on purpose to promote human development?

I’ve been experimenting with a system that turns math topics into animated visual explanations instead of static slides or talking-head lessons.

The idea is simple: concepts like averages, distributions, functions, and probability become easier when students can see the movement instead of only reading formulas.

For teachers or students here: do you think this type of animated explanation is actually useful in education, or does it just look nice without improving understanding?

I’m especially curious where visuals help most: math, statistics, finance, science, or something else.

I'm an archivist currently researching the original Letter People kindergarten and first-grade program. (1968-1996) I'm fascinated by its educational legacy and cultural impact, and I'm working to preserve it as much as possible. I also run a digital archive and YouTube channel where I share my findings with the public. (Hyperlinks contain teaching materials)

If you have any personal experiences, old materials (like cassettes, VHS's, books, classroom kits, etc.), or know of anyone who was involved with the program--whether as a student or teacher--I’d love to hear from you. Any leads would be incredibly helpful to this project. Thanks.

Something I've noticed after a few years of teaching: the kids who ace my class aren't always the ones who get the material. They're just really good at doing exactly what's asked, on time, formatted correctly.

Meanwhile some of my strongest thinkers tank their grade because they turned something in late or skipped a formatting requirement, even though they clearly understood the content better than half the class.

Started separating "did you understand this" from "did you follow the process" in my own grading last semester. Revisions allowed, less weight on deadlines, more weight on whether they could actually explain or apply the concept. Mixed results honestly, some of it just meant more work for me without much payoff.

Anyone else run into this gap between what grades measure and what students actually know? Would be interested to hear if anyone found a system that held up outside a small experiment.

Was it student behavior, unrealistic expectations, lack of administrative support, constant new initiatives, parent interactions, workload, or something else?

I'm researching an upcoming podcast episode about teacher burnout and would love to hear your experiences. I'm especially interested in the moment you realized something had changed—not just what burned you out, but when you knew it.

There's been a lot of conversation lately about students using AI for homework and assignments, but I keep wondering if we're focusing too much on the tool itself and not enough on what's driving students toward it in the first place.

When I think back to struggling through a tough subject, the temptation was always to find the path of least resistance. Copying from a friend, finding a shortcut online, whatever worked. AI just makes that easier and faster. But the underlying issue, students feeling overwhelmed or disengaged, was always there.

My question for this community is whether teachers and educators are seeing a genuine shift in how students engage with hard material, or whether AI is mostly replacing older shortcuts. Are students actually thinking less critically, or are we in a moral panic similar to when calculators were introduced in math classes?

I'm also curious whether anyone has seen schools or teachers find genuinely creative ways to use AI as part of the learning process rather than just banning it outright. Some subjects seem like they could benefit from it as a thinking partner rather than an answer machine.

Would love to hear perspectives from teachers, students, and parents on what's actually changing in classrooms right now.

This is my second year in public schools and I am instructional coach, I spent 15 years in the classroom. I have known good leaders, bad leaders, and apathetic leaders. The elements of maintains a strong school is not a mystery, the research out there and demonstrated by many schools. Leadership that ignore teacher requests for support or ignore student behavior until someone gets hurt are allowing their schools to run amok. Schools like this have their state testing get impacted and while a test should not dictate the overall grade of a school, it does anyways. There is a trickle down effect from that.

My school did not meet its goals, so everyone’s evaluation went down even the teachers whose student showed distinguished skills. Great teachers don’t want to be yoked to a school that will continually evaluate them downwards when the rest of the school isn’t measuring up. They end up leaving and making the school that much weaker. Test scores go down and real estate web sites mark the school down because of that. New families don’t intend to move into those neighborhoods because they want a better school. The real estate of those neighborhoods go down and investment into that community goes down with it.

Principals have way more of impact than they realize. They look at a situation and think “oh well, he threw his desk at the teacher, he’s not going to do it again” are ruining communities. They should be brought before a town hall meeting to explain themselves. I don’t care if it deters people from the job, these people operate without accountability and it is not fixing the problem.

If you could fix one thing about today's education system, what would it be?

I'm curious whether people think the biggest issue is things like large class sizes, standardized testing, lack of individual attention, career guidance, or something else entirely.

What are the biggest challenges right now, in your opinion?

Our daughter is still very young (3), but she started speaking extremely early and is now almost fully bilingual (French and English), which has been surprising for us. A few months ago, we consulted a specialist to better understand her development and cognitive profile, and she was identified as GATE.

Following the recommendation of her care, we’ve chosen to homeschool her with private tutoring during her preschool years. We’re now starting to think ahead about what kind of schooling environment might be best for her when the time comes. For those who have experience with GATE programs (either as parents or as former GATE students) how was your experience? What worked well? What didn’t? And if you had to do it again, would you choose the same path?

I’d really appreciate any insights or perspectives. Thank you 🙂

An AI workforce transition needs more than retraining. P-TECH shows how education, employers and credentials can connect workers to jobs reshaped by AI.

Submission statement for the link:

Rashid Ferrod Davis, founding principal of P-TECH and a nationally recognized leader in career-connected education, argues that AI requires a workforce transition system that connects education directly to jobs. Drawing on P-TECH’s experience, he contends that sustained partnerships among schools, employers and government can prepare workers for an AI-driven economy while expanding opportunity.

Link to the original post here.

I have been trying to improve my grades lately, so I started testing different ways to study outside of just reading notes over and over.

One tool I found recently is wesolveapp.com, and honestly it has been pretty useful for me. I can turn my notes into quizzes, listen to podcast style study content on the bus, and go through practice questions with my friends. That part has helped a lot because studying feels less boring and more like we are actually checking what we know.

The website also feels clean and practical, not overloaded with random features. It feels like it was built around how students actually study.

I am not saying it is some magic fix, but I did feel more prepared for my recent exams after using it for a while. A few of my friends tried it too and they liked the quiz part the most.

Do you guys use any apps or websites that genuinely helped you study better? I would like to compare a few more tools, but this one has been one of the better ones I found so far.