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I call this "Too smart to fail". When I was a below average student, I used to have a lot less stress. The expectation was so much lower. Once I started getti
by 1971genocide 11y ago
I call this "Too smart to fail".
When I was a below average student, I used to have a lot less stress. The expectation was so much lower.
Once I started getting As across the board I started panicking.
The problem is we have essentially "privatized" learning.
What that means is once we started attaching money to learning via the university industrial complex and cheap credit. Your knowledge became a store of wealth like your house ( which itself is a terrible idea ).
Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.
If you get As you get to go to Stanford and be 10X in debt as someone who went to a Community College.
It reminds me of the argument by Louise CK, where loans are much easier to get when you have liquidity already.
This has lead to a situation of "Too smart to fail" among students who get good grades, when in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit, and not celebrate grades so heavily, but celebrate when that education leads to value in society.
- daemin 11y agoWell there's something to be said about helping people up to a certain level, but there's also the point that we should be encouraging people to kick ass at what they are good at. So instead of having a bunch of average people we can have a bunch of people that excel at different specialised tasks and so we are better off for it.
- hoopd 11y ago> Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities. What? If you want to be an engineer you can go to a state school, work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year for 1/4 the price of a private school. Half of the top ten engineering schools are public: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... The top ten liberal arts schools are all private: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
- avn2109 11y ago>> "...work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year..." Mostly agreed, except that as someone who studied drastically, overwhelmingly too much for the FE exam (which turned out to be super easy) that if you have to "work hard" to pass the FE your education has been gravely deficient.
- bsder 11y ago> if you have to "work hard" to pass the FE your education has been gravely deficient. Easier for Mechanical and Civil engineering students since more of the sections are a basic part of their curriculum. As an electrical engineer, the EE sections were laughably easy while I had to study quite hard to get enough points in the dynamics, thermodynamics, and materials sections to pass. I did well, but I really had to work my ass off for sections that I never used again. Whereas practically all of the other engineering disciplines simply blow off the EE section as you can pass without getting any points at all in it.
- walshemj 11y agoDepends where do you want to work as an engineer high end RnD (ie real world leading stuff) does place a lot of emphasis on University, grade and who your supervisor was in some cases.
- aianus 11y agoI don't know about the US, but at the same public government-subsidized university in Canada, Engineering/CS costs 3x more than humanities.
- MagnumOpus 11y ago> in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit Why? Turning good engineers into great engineers is arguably a much more marginally efficient use of social resources than turning average telephone sanitisers, estate agents or PR managers into good or even great ones. The engineers (or software architects, biotech researchers, Wall Street quants etc) are the ones that create innovations and companies that build on them - whereas the marginal improvement of spending the same money on weaker students is - at the very best - them not ending up in jail or doing a job well that should have been automated in the first place.
- VLM 11y agoWhich works better depends on if you're in a class based authoritarian society or a democracy. Clearly we're headed back to the middle ages as fast as we can, in general, at least economically. Is it better to pretend otherwise hoping we'll change direction or at least the lies will pacify the general public, or knowingly step on the gas to get the suffering related to the transition over as quickly as possible or hoping the general public will rise up?
- yummyfajitas 11y agoSuppose we have a democracy, or perhaps a freedom preserving autocracy of some sort (e.g. Singapore). How does it benefit anyone to turn a good street sweeper into a great one who vaguely half remembers Shakespeare? Could you lay out the mechanics in concrete terms? (I.e., no vague platitudes like "a knowledge citizenry is necessary in a democracy", but instead concrete steps like "vague memory of hating shakespeare => recognizing that bushbama is lying with higher probability => voting better". Critical thinking rather than slogans.)
- Retra 11y agoIf you don't see the relevance in understanding Shakespeare for making decisions in your life, then you weren't properly taught Shakespeare.