Laoshu was the worst language teacher on youtube. #Laoshu505000

we have a really deep cultural
assumption in the modern english-speaking western world that education is not a commodity is not a consumer product and should not be questioned in terms of its outcomes when people talk about the quality of education you'd think they were talking about a profound philosophical religious intangible concept they never talk about the quality of education the same way they talk about the quality of a car or the same way they talk about the quality of plastic surgery such as a nose job or a boob job in plain english i did not like the way that they looked the implants were you could see the line the full circle of the implant they were just very round looking on my chest and very slowly i began to just dislike the way i was looking in tops and things like that i kind of realized like oh these really don't look natural at all so fast forward a little bit and things just started to get worse and worse with the way that they were looking and the way that they were feeling i kind of noticed they were feeling tighter on my chest so then i started doing a little bit of research and i come to find that i did not know this that a capsule is created in your body around the implant to sort of protect your body from the implant because it is a foreign object silicone that is placed inside of your body so the body's natural instinct is to form this scar tissue around it that they call a capsule if you are considering getting a particular procedure in plastic surgery one of the first things you're going to look up it's not customer satisfaction in some nebulous sense not customer satisfaction in terms of like five days after people had the surgery you interview them and say how did it go no after somebody got a bloop job what percentage of them had to get another surgery to correct it one year later two years later five years later 10 years later what percentage of them regretted it five years later 10 years later what were the measurable outcomes within the first six months the silicone begins to break down into your body i also learned that you have to replace them vicariously through your life so that would be several surgeries in my lifetime and i just knew in my heart i wanted them out and even if even if only 10 percent of people had really negative outcomes right where they regretted they had the operation at all or maybe they had to have two or three other surgeries to correct something wrong if it's only ten percent you would still sit there and take that very seriously is this the right decision for me because i could be in that 10 the failure rate on university education is much much higher than 10 the failure rate in language education i.e people who pay to learn a language and never learn it never get the desired outcomes is much much higher than 10 and the cost the cost in money and the cost in time to learn a language is much much higher than the cost of plastic surgery to get a nose job or a boob job for the vast majority of people who pay to get those procedures if you buy a car that particular model of car how many of them are still on the road are still working five years later how many of them have had a serious problem and had to be recalled to the factory how many of them just plain broke down and had to get fixed up at a garage how many of them had to have expensive components replaced within five years culturally we have a problem we have an encumbrance because we refuse to think of education as a consumer product now i'm not going to end this video to just leave you wondering what's the solution to the riddle and no i'm going to destroy the mystery right here and now and it's twofold one outcome evaluation what none of these people are doing is evaluating outcomes right if we really wanted to know which method was more effective efficient which had better outcomes we'd have to measure the input and the output we'd have to actually keep track of how many students from laoshu's program achieved what level and how much time with how much effort with how much money let's contrast this to the world of diet and exercise it may seem like there are very fundamental differences between what different diet gurus tell you to do in the first six months or different gym coaches tell you to do in the first six months but you know what with the exception of a few insane crackpots all of them are based on counting the number of calories counting the number of grams of protein counting the number of grams of fat lifting weight progressively heavier weights there are broad outlines here that are very fundamentally similar with different coaches for health and weight loss we could definitely draw out the scientific outlines of what almost all diet and exercise advice has in common and what we find with language learning is that there is no such common ground they're fundamentally and profoundly different from one another and the world of university teaching the methods used there in the classroom is profoundly different again so something's wrong here i have sat in classrooms face-to-face with the university dean the head of the department and the head language teacher pushing universities on that issue why is it that you're not evaluating how much chinese these students actually learn when they spend like twenty thousand dollars in four years to learn chinese from you and the outcomes are they can barely put a sentence together unless you know the professor is cheating because in that same meeting where i met with the professor and the head of the department stuff they were like oh but this girl mimi can speak chinese so well that's because mimi's mom is chinese she grew up speaking chinese in her living room and singing chinese karaoke it doesn't count you can't use students who came into the program already you know halfway fluent or growing up with the language of their family but they they really did reach that kind of thing which is like look you know i notice you guys are not measuring outcomes you're not measuring the actual degree of ability that you achieve by using terrible methods like having 40 students sit in a classroom listen to an audio cd that the professor presses play on and then doing a multiple multiple choice checklist style test in class every day gee remarkably after four years and twenty thousand dollars it seems like those students speak way less chinese than i managed to learn in seven months living in kunming china using really intensive methods that i'm not going to now describe by contrast outcome evaluation measuring the outcomes would be crucial to backing up the claim that laoshu's method is more effective than luca's method or that luca's method is more effective than university methods or that one university's methods are more effective than another so on and so forth in canada we had a series of high court decisions between 2012 and 2017 that established for the first time that the relationship between student and university is indeed the relationship between a consumer and a service provider this hasn't happened in the united states of america yet the most recent court decision united states comes out of michigan it's very interesting case and if you read it i think it's quite misleading in the way it has been interpreted and applied but the united states has yet to take the step of saying clearly students are consumers when they pay for a service they can sue their professors and they can sue the university in the same way that you if you get surgery can sue the doctor and can sue the hospital for malpractice or just because the outcomes were not what was advertised were not what was promised failing to deliver the outcomes that were advertised that were promised that's a very clear concept i know we have a reluctance especially if you're on the left wing we have a reluctance to look at education with the cold calculating i of a consumer and say i am paying for certain outcomes and i need you to prove to me that you can deliver in the world of diet and health advice it's one thing to boast that you have satisfied customers you may do those interviews the same day people sign up for the service or the day the seminar ends it's one thing to boast you have ten thousand satisfied customers and it's another thing to prove here was their body weight before they signed up for the program here was their body weight at the end of the camp they went to to lose weight and then here was their body weight six months later one year later two years later five years later i think it's quite possible for everyone in the audience to imagine there may be some weight loss programs that people really enjoy attending they really enjoy the lectures they really enjoy going to say a two-day camp or a two-week camp some kind of intensive fitness section and they give all kinds of testimonies here on youtube or on the internet saying they had a great time they're so happy they paid for this package but they don't actually lose much weight they don't actually get the results and then two years later or five years later they've gained back the little bit of weight they lost or maybe they've they've gained even more and you can then imagine a very different health and weight loss program and maybe when you interview people the day after they finish they're miserable they hate it they say this was awful maybe they even say they regret signing up for it it was horrible to endure but they got the results they lost weight and maybe two years later and five years later a very large percentage of them have actually learned the skills have gained the discipline to keep that weight off to have positive outcomes not just in the short term but forever and then you get to ask yourself if you want to lose weight maybe you've got a heart condition or high blood pressure which path are you going to choose the one that's maybe easy and entertaining and uplifting or the one that gets results so long as people here on youtube or just playing this popularity game the type of language learning advice that you are going to see that's going to get millions of views that's going to be popular that's going to be influential is always going to be the most entertaining and the least effective it is only only when we bring outcome evaluation into the picture when we start asking and answering what level of language ability did people have before they entered this program what level did they have at the end and what level of real ability do they have two years later and five years later it's then and only then that the [ __ ] will stop my sling is editorial explicit material briefcase show live and stereo flow fill me