The hottest Pedagogy Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top World Politics Topics

Earlywood: I Love Difficult Teachers

The American Peasant • 738 implied HN points • 02 Nov 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Difficult teachers can actually help students grow. They might seem tough, but their strictness often leads to better learning and skill development.
  2. Experiencing challenges in learning can make students better. When pushed to perform at a high level, students may realize their true potential over time.
  3. Feedback from teachers can sometimes feel harsh, but it's important for improvement. Learning to accept and understand this feedback is crucial in any craft.

the war on the talented and gifted

bad cattitude • 177 implied HN points • 14 Mar 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Public schools have moved to a lowest-common-denominator model that removed gifted programs and ability-based pacing, which warehouses students and crushes the curiosity of high-achievers.
  2. Structural choices—de-leveling, social promotion, centralized funding, rising behavior issues, weaker teacher pipelines, and shifting student demographics—create incentives that block real, high-quality instruction.
  3. The remedy is to restore ability tracking, discipline, ESL support, and true gifted options or adopt market solutions like vouchers, and fast-growing AI-based individualized learning will make alternatives irresistible if schools don’t adapt.

The Scholar vs. the Professional

In My Tribe • 759 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. There is a real tension between the leisurely, curiosity-driven scholar and the busy, goal-oriented professional, and universities are being pulled to serve both roles.
  2. The rise of the "professional scholar" — who chases grants, publications, and metrics — can distort true scholarship and weaken ties to the world outside academia.
  3. Trying to make students both scholars and builders at the same time risks short-changing each and causing burnout; sequencing dedicated periods for study and for professional immersion may work better.

How I Learned to Love Reading

The Honest Broker • 10838 implied HN points • 09 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Leisure reading among teens has collapsed in recent years, and that decline is alarming to teachers and parents.
  2. Loving reading matters more than any teaching method or test score; if a child doesn’t develop affection for books, instruction alone won’t stick.
  3. Warm early experiences—like being read to by a caring adult—can create a lasting love of books, so parents and educators should try to recreate those moments.

Education, Technology, and Controversy

In My Tribe • 227 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. The Alpha School reports unusually high student growth that suggests its practices might actually accelerate learning, but a randomized lottery study would be needed to be sure.
  2. Many miracle-school results can come from selection, unique funding, or unsustainable practices, so impressive outcomes aren’t automatically easy to replicate.
  3. Ed tech can harm motivation when it feels like wasted or punitive effort, but better tools or reward structures might help—and the overall causal link between digital adoption and falling scores is still uncertain.
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Should comparative economics still exist?

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1374 implied HN points • 25 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Some argue economics should focus only on today’s capitalism and drop comparative-system study because alternative systems no longer exist in practice.
  2. Teaching other systems like socialism reveals a very different logic of income distribution—politically set wages, mostly proportional taxes, transfers tied to age or family status, and little private capital income—which helps broaden how we think about inequality.
  3. Including a short unit on comparative systems costs little class time but may attract limited student interest, so teachers must decide whether to teach to meet demand or to broaden students’ horizons and create new interest.

Why Do Children Hate Music Lessons?

The Honest Broker • 17221 implied HN points • 06 Aug 25
🎶 Music Pedagogy
  1. Children often dislike music lessons because they feel boring and formal, unlike the fun of making music for joy. Switching the focus from 'lessons' to 'play' can change this experience.
  2. The pressure from parents and the educational system makes music feel like a chore, not a hobby. This can take away the excitement and fun of learning an instrument.
  3. Competitions and perfectionism in music lessons can ruin the enjoyment children get from playing music. It's important to create an environment where making music is fun and not just about being the best.

Further Progress on AI Teaching Assistant

In My Tribe • 288 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. The AI tutor tracks your skills and uses adaptive spaced repetition, showing items less often when you get them right and more often when you get them wrong, but it currently won't recognize you if you switch browsers.
  2. Building the tutor was fast with Claude, however the tool runs intensively so continuing development will require upgrading to a more expensive subscription.
  3. Universities suffer from too much professor autonomy and weak centralized leadership, which makes it hard to identify or reward instructors who teach AI-relevant skills and to reorganize the institution for the AI era.

How is teaching going?

In My Tribe • 364 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Seminar-style paper discussions don't fit less-prepared freshmen, so classes often turn into lectures; assigning core concepts and short written answers before class would establish a common baseline for discussion.
  2. AI can be used effectively for grading and feedback, as practice exams with AI grading matched instructor judgments; building an AI teaching assistant for intro courses is feasible but would take several months to a year of development.
  3. Student engagement is limited by competing commitments and time constraints, so active projects have produced mixed results and early morning classes reduce participation.

The Cool Professor: When Your "Student Centered" Classroom is All About You

Freddie deBoer • 12035 implied HN points • 24 Jul 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Teaching requires authority and responsibility, not just being liked. A good teacher needs to challenge students and maintain high standards.
  2. The 'Cool Professor' style can be misleading. It often disguises authority and creates confusion about expectations, which doesn't benefit student learning.
  3. Real teaching means being honest and helping students grow, even if it means being unpopular. Students thrive when they are pushed to meet their potential.

Stolen Youth at Sarah Lawrence

Disaffected Newsletter • 999 implied HN points • 06 Aug 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. A documentary called 'Stolen Youth' explores how a toxic adult created a harmful cult at Sarah Lawrence College.
  2. The college's approach to education is criticized for promoting extreme ideologies, which some believe contributed to the cult's formation.
  3. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding the effects of educational philosophies on students' lives.

Actually-existing UATX

In My Tribe • 744 implied HN points • 08 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Students are earnest, hardworking, and take initiative. Many land internships as freshmen, so the school suits motivated, practical learners.
  2. The school still struggles with poor coordination and frequent changes of plan that create avoidable snafus. It needs better formal communication and modest structure without turning into rigid bureaucracy.
  3. Teachers should give clearer road maps but are experimenting with AI tools like “vibe-coding,” “vibe-reading,” and “vibe-tutoring” to improve learning and writing. The plan is to have AI show suggested edits while leaving rewrites to the students so they learn.

Education Links, 1/30/2026

In My Tribe • 334 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Colleges should promise students real career experience, teach adaptable technical skills, and build the uniquely human strengths that machines can’t replicate before graduation.
  2. Research shows learning is faster when students study worked examples, explore open-ended problems, learn in spaced chunks with breaks, and automate basic skills so working memory can focus on higher‑order thinking.
  3. Large outside funding and DEI operations can influence campus culture and how discrimination complaints are handled, so universities need stronger transparency, oversight, and accountability.

Tyler Cowen's AI Campus

In My Tribe • 531 implied HN points • 16 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Higher education can be reshaped around AI: students pair with mentors while AI designs syllabi, lessons, and assessments, and a big part of current teaching should focus on learning how to work with AI during this fast-changing transition.
  2. Small, AI-built apps and free-form natural-language interfaces can replace clunky courseware, letting users ask plain questions like “When is my next paper due?” and get immediate answers, and these tools can be prototyped very quickly.
  3. Policy teaching should be comparative and skeptical: markets sometimes fail but governments also fail due to information limits and perverse incentives, so solutions should weigh Pigovian-style fixes against Coasean bargaining, community governance, and constitutional design.

The Stamina Gap

The Ruffian • 768 implied HN points • 10 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Deep, sustained focus — cognitive endurance or mental stamina — is becoming a scarce and valuable skill because modern life mostly rewards short, fast mental tasks.
  2. Less advantaged people often have lower stamina and therefore fall behind as tasks drag on, but quiet, independent practice (even via cognitive games) can build endurance and improve outcomes, and classroom norms and policies strongly affect who gets that practice.
  3. AI and other convenience tools can speed up thinking but also replace the effort that trains slow, deep thinking, so over-reliance risks eroding the very capacity needed for hard, complex work.

When life is a metaphor

SPARC '24 JC Blog • 199 implied HN points • 27 Aug 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Stepping out of your comfort zone can lead to personal growth. Trying new activities and meeting different people helps you learn more about yourself.
  2. Learning can happen in unexpected ways. Sometimes, you realize you've grown just by reflecting on your experiences rather than actively studying something new.
  3. Creating a supportive social group can inspire creativity and curiosity. Surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals makes it easier to explore new ideas and develop your passions.

Down the Rabbit Hole (On Purpose)

Gad’s Newsletter • 97 implied HN points • 23 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Learning has three layers: domain knowledge (the what), methods (the how), and mindsets/wisdom (the why). Facts fade and methods need practice, but mindsets and wisdom endure and shape long-term judgment.
  2. AI will make domain knowledge and many techniques cheap and widely available, so educational time should be reinvested in mentorship, judgment, and mindset cultivation. AI can simulate scenarios to practice decision-making, but it can’t replace lived experience and human feedback.
  3. Durable learning requires spaced retrieval, varied practice, reflection, and apprenticeship, not just one-off content delivery. Classroom detours or 'rabbit holes' are often deliberate ways to build transferable judgment and help students learn when to trust a model and when to rely on intuition.

Not the Right Kind of Provocation

Freddie deBoer • 5971 implied HN points • 02 Dec 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. In education, there's a big debate about the best way to teach reading. Some say phonics is better, but it's not as clear cut as people think.
  2. Many believe that teaching methods can completely change students' success, but individual talent and background often play a bigger role in how well they do.
  3. The media and education discussions often ignore important questions about ability differences among students, focusing instead on minor teaching method fights.

Fun, Not Fear: Rebuilding University Assessment for the Machine-Learning Era, & Going Beyond to Modes of Research-Analytical Practice

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 222 implied HN points • 29 Dec 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Use outside-the-class work plus short face-to-face interviews or check-ins to assess students, because oral exams stress-test real understanding and make grading fair even when students have powerful ML tools at hand.
  2. Teach students to use modern advanced machine-learning models as intellectual force multipliers by training them in the seven labors—survey, identify live issues, hone questions, research, analyze, store, and persuade—and by emphasizing provenance, triangulation, and small analytic scaffolds so tools accelerate thinking without replacing it.
  3. Recenter higher education on play and craft: make learning fun and practical by practicing prompting, debugging, oral explanation, and producing reusable artifacts, and budget the extra instructor time needed to do this well.

Learning to Be Human

New World Same Humans • 32 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Before deciding how to teach, we must decide what kind of humans we want to create and what qualities we value.
  2. AI can produce fluent answers that only look like understanding, so young children should have minimal AI exposure and lots of human interaction to learn attention, listening, and real judgment.
  3. The arrival of powerful AI makes it urgent to redesign education to protect human freedom, wisdom, and the things that remain distinctively human.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #14

Faster, Please! • 274 implied HN points • 06 Dec 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. AI can be a great tool for learning, but we need to be careful how we use it. If schools just add AI to their old ways of teaching, it might lead to shallow learning instead of deeper thinking.
  2. Using technology in classrooms should not mean just giving kids devices without guidance. Schools should teach students how to think critically rather than distracting them with screens.
  3. Some teachers are going back to simple methods, like writing and discussions, to help kids engage more deeply. The goal is to use AI to boost thinking skills, not just for quick answers.

On Earning Trust: The Case for the Social Sciences

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 199 implied HN points • 13 Dec 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Universities must earn public trust by being institutionally trustworthy: fix internal monocultures and focus teaching on real, demonstrable skills that give students access to useful knowledge.
  2. The true ‘super‑intelligence’ is the five‑millennia corpus of human ideas, and modern text‑processing systems are valuable mainly as translators or front ends to curated knowledge rather than infallible oracles.
  3. Education should train people to connect to, interpret, and extend the collective human mind by teaching durable methods, literacies, Popperian testability, and epistemic humility while updating practical skills for new media.

Reading, Writing, and Racism: The Three R’s of Philly Public Schools

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1270 implied HN points • 10 Jun 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Philadelphia's public schools have a history curriculum that encourages students to think critically about oppression. This may simplify complex historical events into a clear 'oppressed versus oppressor' narrative.
  2. One part of the curriculum asks students to consider what it takes to overthrow oppression, but it doesn't explore all the details from the historical period it covers.
  3. Teachers have some freedom to choose whether or not to follow this curriculum, but the existence of such a framework raises concerns about how history is being taught in schools.

A Missing Textbook Diagram

Bet On It • 166 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. A simple diagram that maps benefits against costs would be a handy teaching tool for intro and intermediate economics and public policy classes. It makes tradeoffs easy to see at a glance.
  2. Adding extreme categories like “Sky High” benefits and “Rock Bottom” costs shows why some policies remain sensible even when critics point to large costs — very large benefits can outweigh high costs.
  3. The idea is intuitive and practical and, despite parallels in business teaching, feels like a fresh, useful addition that textbooks should include.

First, Do Not Suck: A Video Presentation on Which Writing Advice to Take (and Which Not To) for Subscribers

Freddie deBoer • 2908 implied HN points • 16 Dec 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Not all writing advice is helpful; some common tips can actually hinder writers. It's important to find advice that really benefits your style and needs.
  2. Tools like pronouns and the passive voice can be useful in writing, contrary to popular belief. Embracing different writing styles can enhance your work.
  3. Improving as a writer involves a lot of practice and feedback. It's normal to struggle with gaining an audience or making money, even if you see your writing getting better.

Part 2, Breaking the bureaucratic mold of instruction

Unsafe Science • 42 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Universities often proclaim values like critical thinking and open debate, but growing surveillance and tight classroom controls can quietly undermine those ideals.
  2. Students and institutional pressures push education toward measurable outcomes, detailed rubrics, and atomized syllabi, turning learning into scorekeeping instead of exploration.
  3. Instructors can push back by leaving room in the syllabus, encouraging student initiative and struggle, and treating knowledge as testable hypotheses rather than demanding one cookbook solution.

CROSSPOST: DAVID DEMING: Using generative AI to learn is like Odysseus untying himself from the mast

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 38 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Generative AI frees learners to explore ideas actively, like Odysseus untying himself from the mast. It lets people test, iterate, and learn by doing instead of just passively consuming information.
  2. Real progress in economic history comes when we stop treating the past as isolated anecdotes and instead treat it as a measurable, modelable system. Measuring, modeling, and running counterfactuals reveals how historical forces worked and why outcomes happened.
  3. Combining generative AI with system-focused methods promises new ways to analyze and experiment with historical and economic questions. That mix could let researchers and learners poke at counterfactuals and build richer, testable theories.

This week in the science of learning, August 25, 2024

The Bell Ringer • 19 implied HN points • 25 Aug 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Teaching reading is a mix of art and science. Teachers need to use research but also rely on their own experience to help students learn.
  2. Meaningful knowledge helps students connect what they learn to related ideas. This makes learning more useful and encourages deeper understanding.
  3. Building strong relationships between teachers and parents can help support students. Parents should talk to their kids about learning and current events to strengthen this connection.

What it's like being a political communication professor right now

The Future, Now and Then • 234 implied HN points • 19 Aug 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Being a political communication professor is a unique job where you get paid to think deeply. It's a special opportunity, especially as such positions are becoming rare.
  2. The impact of technology like ChatGPT on education may not be huge in some classrooms. Engaging students in meaningful discussions still remains crucial.
  3. Current political issues and a shift towards authoritarianism make teaching political communication more challenging. Professors have to adapt to these changes and modify their teaching strategies.

The Intensive Margin

David Friedman’s Substack • 260 implied HN points • 29 Jul 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Many economics courses focus too much on math, making it less about real economic concepts. This can turn students away who expect more practical learning.
  2. Doing new research on topics that have been studied for a long time is tough because it's hard to say something fresh. It's often easier to use new math tools on old problems.
  3. To make meaningful contributions in economics, it's better to apply existing ideas to new areas rather than just trying to add more math to classic studies.

Notebook: (2) Classroom Libraries

Book Post • 314 implied HN points • 14 Jan 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. New legislation is being introduced to protect library collections from political interference.
  2. Efforts are being made to provide free books and support for restricted books through private initiatives.
  3. There is a debate over teaching methods in early childhood education, with concerns about prioritizing 'Science of Reading' and its impact on student-directed reading and diverse classroom libraries.

Unlocked: Teaching math with John Mighton

The Bell Ringer • 79 implied HN points • 31 May 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. John Mighton emphasizes the importance of understanding math concepts rather than just memorizing formulas. This helps students develop deeper problem-solving skills.
  2. Focusing on problem-solving in math education encourages critical thinking and creativity in students.
  3. Teaching math should be about making connections and understanding rather than just practicing procedures. This approach can make learning more enjoyable.

From ChatGPT Back to Clay & Cuneiform: A Start at Rethinking Pedagogy for the Age of "AI"

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 322 implied HN points • 31 May 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Education needs to focus on what students should remember and be able to do, rather than just what they can get from AI like chatbots.
  2. Instead of banning AI, we should find ways to use it in learning, just like we adapted to calculators in math classes.
  3. Understanding the basics behind complex tools like AI is important, as all tools have limitations and can miss important details.

Teaching math with John Mighton

The Bell Ringer • 99 implied HN points • 10 May 24
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Kids can get confused easily when we push them too hard with complex ideas. It's important to teach in a way that builds understanding step by step.
  2. Real learning happens when we focus on what students can grasp, not just on covering a lot of content. It's better to let them understand the basics well.
  3. Using evidence from research helps improve how we teach math. This can help solve the ongoing debates about the best ways to learn math.

Academia & MAMLMs: The Seven Labors of the Academic East-African Plains Ape

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 215 implied HN points • 01 Jul 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Higher education has always aimed to help people become effective thinkers and communicators. This means teaching students how to research, analyze, and share their knowledge.
  2. New technologies like AI are not a threat to education but rather another change in how we learn. History has shown that every new tool can enhance our learning process instead of replacing it.
  3. The main focus in education should remain on guiding students through the learning process while adapting to new teaching tools. This can lead to a more engaging and fun learning experience.

So Near and yet So Far

In My Tribe • 182 implied HN points • 09 Jun 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. The project aims to create an interactive seminar experience, but it's currently more like reading a textbook with an AI assistant. It’s not quite the same feel as a real seminar.
  2. Using AI can help shape effective dialogue, but it requires careful prompting to get the right tone and perspective, especially if it needs to reflect a specific viewpoint.
  3. The goal is to develop structured and authentic discussions in educational content, which could fill a gap by balancing sterile lectures and chaotic forums.

Accessing the Bonus Content in Your Curriculum

Mathworlds • 196 implied HN points • 18 May 23
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Teachers find ways to access bonus content in the curriculum, going beyond what's expected.
  2. Good curriculum lets teachers offer bonus content to students through ingenuity and pedagogy.
  3. In engaging classrooms, students' ideas and thinking become the focus, essentially becoming the curriculum.

In Data Science for Non-STEM Majors, Is Learning-by-Watching Live Calculating Possible? Likely? Reasonable to Expect?

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 238 implied HN points • 28 Jan 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy
  1. Students today need basic data science skills to succeed after graduation. It's like letting them leave school without knowing how to read or write.
  2. Teaching data science can be tricky because students have different backgrounds. Some find it confusing, while others think it's too basic.
  3. It's important to keep trying to teach data science. Finding the right way to do it is necessary for better education and understanding.