5 ms·

I worked for 5 years as a high school teacher. In my observation, the "smartest kid in class" could be left in the dust by a "dumb kid" who decided to work hard

by alexc05 10y ago

I worked for 5 years as a high school teacher. In my observation, the "smartest kid in class" could be left in the dust by a "dumb kid" who decided to work hard. I use quotes because it does raise the question of who is really the smart one there. In this case, I do mean that the smart kid was the one who immediately showed an understanding of the material and could demonstrate proficiency sometimes beyond the course material... but was too lazy to actually hand in his work. The other kid needed massive amounts of extra attention, came in every day at lunch to see if he could just put a bit more time in, handed in the work six times with improvements each time... he crushed it. If anything, `grit` would be underrated in measuring student success if we pegged it at 100% of the variance. That said, "student success" is only one measure and is, in a number of ways, wildly artificial. There was an adage to the effect of "you only learn what you pay attention to", but in this case we might also say "you're only graded on what you do" If student success is measured in grades, and you're only graded on what you do, then doing work (aka: grit) is the only thing that matters.

lintiness 10y ago
"I worked for 5 years as a high school teacher. In my observation, the "smartest kid in class" could be left in the dust by a "dumb kid" who decided to work hard." my experience as a student at top 5 ugrad was similar: kids with top hs grades and work ethic destroyed the truly brilliant students (with top test scores) in terms of academic performance.
- Joof 10y ago
  It's not that surprising considering the metrics that school uses.
- emp_zealoth 10y ago
  I crushed HS. Admitted to top Polish technical uni, dropped out due to health/mental issues I fail at uni hard. But in part it is because how terrible the whole process is. I spend more time trying to find relevant-to-exam-information than actually learning stuff. You literally sit for hours on end, listening to someone drone on. The exams themselves aren't particularly relevant either. I usually get passing grades, maybe a B+. The hard workers get A's...but when you ask them to explain anything they just derp hard. I will ace almost any actual project. I've signed up for a Rover Challenge team and learned so much more already... I constantly regret that my knowledge is rather rickety/shallow But at the same time it's rather wide-encompassing The point is, "academic achievement" is rather moot, IMO. You pick up tools, a soldering iron and suddenly learn there is much more to it
stillworks 10y ago
The same ideas are reflected in "Talent is Overrated" but that deals with topics outside of academics mostly.
- gadders 10y ago
  Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
Retric 10y ago
HS and collage are both very low hanging fruit. The real question is how much of this do they maintain after 15 years and that's more complex. Some collage seniors forget basic algebra skills if they don't use them regularly.
fiatmoney 10y ago
High school is not particularly G-loaded, it rewards conscientiousness far more. That says more about how high school is set up (busywork, non-time-bounded effort signalling games via extracurriculars, rewarding reaching thresholds rather than exceeding them, rewarding generalism rather than specialization, etc), than the general usefulness of intelligence vs conscientiousness.
Kapura 10y ago
As somebody who was that "smart kid" I know that I personally felt that the easy-yet-time-consuming work was just boring. It wasn't until finding classes where I was adequately challenged that I began to care about the assignments, and it took years to develop the sort of persistence and drive that wasn't required of me in school. Would I have been more successful at university and after graduating if I had more "grit?" I think so. But I didn't need it, so I didn't have it. What can be done to prevent this? The obvious theoretical answer is to reduce class sizes, so that students can do coursework with other students who learn at a similar rate. If only America would adequately fund education...
- progressive_dad 10y ago
  How about creating federal guidelines under which churches may receive federal and local education funding for using their space as a school 5 days a week. This would EMPHATICALLY not be vouchers. The funds would only be available to churches that do not currently run a private school. Get more religious nut jobs out of my child's secular public schools. Reduce class size. Create more teaching jobs. Everyone's happy.
frickinLasers 10y ago
As the "smart kid" I was never able to grasp why all this busy work was important. I thought the point of homework was to prepare the student to pass tests. If I could already pass, why should I be forced to perform countless hours of pointless labor? Fortunately I still have a work ethic when it makes sense to do work, but fifteen years after high school my lack of study skills is hampering attempts to further my education.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Yeah, it's a real problem that if you spend your entire education far ahead of the material with no real effort it teaches some very bad habits. Students need to be adequately stretched to remain engaged.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Fantastic. But how is the teacher supposed to know that you are just that smart? There was likely ~25 kids in the class, and the teacher had no way of knowing that you cheated on the tests or got really lucky. The HW acted as a bulwark against the luck and cheating hypotheses that a teacher should entertain for each of the ~25 students in one of their ~6 classes (~150 students total). So what if you are a just that smart as a teenager? We all knew we were smarter than everyone at that age too. You have to prove that to the teacher in terms of consistent work at a consistent level (Sorta, things happen, Granpas die, parents get in accidents, etc. and teachers know that). 1 person out of ~150 showing up and acing a test tells a teacher nothing. And for the pay levels they get these days, the teachers are there because they want to be.
  - qb45 10y ago
    > But how is the teacher supposed to know that you are just that smart? For starters, notice that some kids are doing whole lesson's worth of material in the first 15 minutes and figure out that they have no reason to be at this lesson. The hard question, to which I don't claim to know a silver bullet answer, is where should they be instead. Recognizing who is wasting their time at school isn't that difficult if you spend several hours per week with those kids.
NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
Your comment reads like a parody of public education. If the smartest kid "failed" because he "didn't hand in his work"... this is a plain and unambiguous confession that your job wasn't to educate, but to make the poodles jump through hoops.
- theorique 10y ago
  How can you assess a student who doesn't participate in assessment? It's not a moral judgment of the kid, but an observation that he didn't do the work that was going to be graded. Or should the teacher award a subjective grade based on "well, this student's actually 'smarter', even though this other student worked a lot harder and completed the assigned work better"?
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
    You don't even ask the right questions. Tests, exams, and quizzes are assessments. Homework is, nominally, an attempt to coerce the student into enough practice that they succeed at the real assessment. Most practice will inevitably result in wrong answers and bad scores... if you could complete the practice perfectly you wouldn't need to practice or even take exams. If a student does poorly at homework and gets a 98 on an exam, only the exam should count towards a grade. Their poor scores on homework only indicate initial practice which served its purpose and allowed them to do better on their second (or third, or tenth) attempt which was the exam. However, less logical human instincts prevail. Teachers who see this improvement don't think "hey that practice paid off" despite that being the most likely explanation (and the only good faith explanation). So, they recursively turn homework into its own assessment. Surely if they cheated to get the 98% on the exam, then using their homework scores will expose the lie. More tests are added, more homework is added, all in the instinctive hope that they surely can't cheat all the time and the predicted inconsistency will prove a guilt that was only theorized due to unfounded suspicion and a moral need for the children to be too stupid to succeed. After all, if these children could do that well, why would they even need teachers at all? How many public school teachers did you have that demanded that you "show your work" and gave you bad grades for failure to do that? How does that even serve the purpose of assessment? They watched you do the math right there, at your desk. Were you pulling a calculator out of your rectum every time they turned their head, stuffing it back in before they spotted it? If the answers were right, if you did it there in their presence, then this didn't serve the purpose of assessment. But all this goes even deeper. They simply don't know what to assess. They're too incompetent, too unintellectual to be able to assess any student. They rely on these bad measurements to they can maintain the pretense of assessing a student's education. It's nothing of the sort. They make the poodles jump through hoops, because that's what the show is. > Or should the teacher award a subjective grade This particular phrase is so whacked-out, I don't even know where to begin. Are grades "awards"? If they are awards, what can they be awards for, other than behavior? You don't award someone a prize for having blue eyes, or any other quality of their being. Why would you award one for them being educated? Why would you give them a grade, some arbitrary number, a score? "Look, my education penis is bigger than yours!". How could it ever be anything other than subjective? When they do a double-blind medical study, they're not saying "this pill is 68% effective for Tim Johnson, but 92% effective for John Timson!". That's because the score just doesn't mean much other than in the aggregate. Tim's 68% doesn't mean it was ineffective for him. Too many confounding factors were possible. It doesn't mean that John did better... he might have been healthier at the start of the study. And if those aren't a measure of the pill, how can that individual number be measure of the patient? Could Tim's 68% have been higher if he had just followed the protocols more diligently? Wouldn't you find it absurd if someone suggested that? But with teachers and their grades, if the student gets an F it's a measure of the student's failure and not the teacher's. Teachers' unions fight tooth and nail to prevent that public perception from becoming the norm. Let's not even get into whether John's 92% pill effectiveness grade means he will live longer or be more healthy or any of the other desired effects of the medicine. Have you ever even thought about any of this? Or did you just keep your head down close to the desk as you slowly scribbled out answers you hoped the poodle master would like? Have you shrugged off every criticism like this your entire life?
metaphorm 10y ago
some food for thought. why did the "smart kid" not hand in her work? why did the "dumb kid? work more diligently? what kind of environment is required to get the "smart kid" to work diligently on a consistent basis?
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  Recipe to help someone else: 1. Provide challenges near the edge of ability. 2. Ask tons of questions to help the child achieve the goal. 3. Congratulate. 4. Ask tons of critical questions. 5. Go to 1.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    good advice. is it possible to do in the context of American high school classes?
    - jeffdavis 10y ago
      High school is a resource if you already know how to learn. Otherwise, it's a day care.

by alexc05 10y ago

lintiness 10y ago

"I worked for 5 years as a high school teacher. In my observation, the "smartest kid in class" could be left in the dust by a "dumb kid" who decided to work hard." my experience as a student at top 5 ugrad was similar: kids with top hs grades and work ethic destroyed the truly brilliant students (with top test scores) in terms of academic performance.

Joof 10y ago
It's not that surprising considering the metrics that school uses.
emp_zealoth 10y ago
I crushed HS. Admitted to top Polish technical uni, dropped out due to health/mental issues I fail at uni hard. But in part it is because how terrible the whole process is. I spend more time trying to find relevant-to-exam-information than actually learning stuff. You literally sit for hours on end, listening to someone drone on. The exams themselves aren't particularly relevant either. I usually get passing grades, maybe a B+. The hard workers get A's...but when you ask them to explain anything they just derp hard. I will ace almost any actual project. I've signed up for a Rover Challenge team and learned so much more already... I constantly regret that my knowledge is rather rickety/shallow But at the same time it's rather wide-encompassing The point is, "academic achievement" is rather moot, IMO. You pick up tools, a soldering iron and suddenly learn there is much more to it

stillworks 10y ago

The same ideas are reflected in "Talent is Overrated" but that deals with topics outside of academics mostly.

gadders 10y ago
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

Retric 10y ago

HS and collage are both very low hanging fruit. The real question is how much of this do they maintain after 15 years and that's more complex. Some collage seniors forget basic algebra skills if they don't use them regularly.

fiatmoney 10y ago

High school is not particularly G-loaded, it rewards conscientiousness far more. That says more about how high school is set up (busywork, non-time-bounded effort signalling games via extracurriculars, rewarding reaching thresholds rather than exceeding them, rewarding generalism rather than specialization, etc), than the general usefulness of intelligence vs conscientiousness.

Kapura 10y ago

As somebody who was that "smart kid" I know that I personally felt that the easy-yet-time-consuming work was just boring. It wasn't until finding classes where I was adequately challenged that I began to care about the assignments, and it took years to develop the sort of persistence and drive that wasn't required of me in school. Would I have been more successful at university and after graduating if I had more "grit?" I think so. But I didn't need it, so I didn't have it. What can be done to prevent this? The obvious theoretical answer is to reduce class sizes, so that students can do coursework with other students who learn at a similar rate. If only America would adequately fund education...

progressive_dad 10y ago
How about creating federal guidelines under which churches may receive federal and local education funding for using their space as a school 5 days a week. This would EMPHATICALLY not be vouchers. The funds would only be available to churches that do not currently run a private school. Get more religious nut jobs out of my child's secular public schools. Reduce class size. Create more teaching jobs. Everyone's happy.

frickinLasers 10y ago

As the "smart kid" I was never able to grasp why all this busy work was important. I thought the point of homework was to prepare the student to pass tests. If I could already pass, why should I be forced to perform countless hours of pointless labor? Fortunately I still have a work ethic when it makes sense to do work, but fifteen years after high school my lack of study skills is hampering attempts to further my education.

pjc50 10y ago
Yeah, it's a real problem that if you spend your entire education far ahead of the material with no real effort it teaches some very bad habits. Students need to be adequately stretched to remain engaged.
Balgair 10y ago
Fantastic. But how is the teacher supposed to know that you are just that smart? There was likely ~25 kids in the class, and the teacher had no way of knowing that you cheated on the tests or got really lucky. The HW acted as a bulwark against the luck and cheating hypotheses that a teacher should entertain for each of the ~25 students in one of their ~6 classes (~150 students total). So what if you are a just that smart as a teenager? We all knew we were smarter than everyone at that age too. You have to prove that to the teacher in terms of consistent work at a consistent level (Sorta, things happen, Granpas die, parents get in accidents, etc. and teachers know that). 1 person out of ~150 showing up and acing a test tells a teacher nothing. And for the pay levels they get these days, the teachers are there because they want to be.
- qb45 10y ago
  > But how is the teacher supposed to know that you are just that smart? For starters, notice that some kids are doing whole lesson's worth of material in the first 15 minutes and figure out that they have no reason to be at this lesson. The hard question, to which I don't claim to know a silver bullet answer, is where should they be instead. Recognizing who is wasting their time at school isn't that difficult if you spend several hours per week with those kids.

NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago

Your comment reads like a parody of public education. If the smartest kid "failed" because he "didn't hand in his work"... this is a plain and unambiguous confession that your job wasn't to educate, but to make the poodles jump through hoops.

theorique 10y ago
How can you assess a student who doesn't participate in assessment? It's not a moral judgment of the kid, but an observation that he didn't do the work that was going to be graded. Or should the teacher award a subjective grade based on "well, this student's actually 'smarter', even though this other student worked a lot harder and completed the assigned work better"?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
  You don't even ask the right questions. Tests, exams, and quizzes are assessments. Homework is, nominally, an attempt to coerce the student into enough practice that they succeed at the real assessment. Most practice will inevitably result in wrong answers and bad scores... if you could complete the practice perfectly you wouldn't need to practice or even take exams. If a student does poorly at homework and gets a 98 on an exam, only the exam should count towards a grade. Their poor scores on homework only indicate initial practice which served its purpose and allowed them to do better on their second (or third, or tenth) attempt which was the exam. However, less logical human instincts prevail. Teachers who see this improvement don't think "hey that practice paid off" despite that being the most likely explanation (and the only good faith explanation). So, they recursively turn homework into its own assessment. Surely if they cheated to get the 98% on the exam, then using their homework scores will expose the lie. More tests are added, more homework is added, all in the instinctive hope that they surely can't cheat all the time and the predicted inconsistency will prove a guilt that was only theorized due to unfounded suspicion and a moral need for the children to be too stupid to succeed. After all, if these children could do that well, why would they even need teachers at all? How many public school teachers did you have that demanded that you "show your work" and gave you bad grades for failure to do that? How does that even serve the purpose of assessment? They watched you do the math right there, at your desk. Were you pulling a calculator out of your rectum every time they turned their head, stuffing it back in before they spotted it? If the answers were right, if you did it there in their presence, then this didn't serve the purpose of assessment. But all this goes even deeper. They simply don't know what to assess. They're too incompetent, too unintellectual to be able to assess any student. They rely on these bad measurements to they can maintain the pretense of assessing a student's education. It's nothing of the sort. They make the poodles jump through hoops, because that's what the show is. > Or should the teacher award a subjective grade This particular phrase is so whacked-out, I don't even know where to begin. Are grades "awards"? If they are awards, what can they be awards for, other than behavior? You don't award someone a prize for having blue eyes, or any other quality of their being. Why would you award one for them being educated? Why would you give them a grade, some arbitrary number, a score? "Look, my education penis is bigger than yours!". How could it ever be anything other than subjective? When they do a double-blind medical study, they're not saying "this pill is 68% effective for Tim Johnson, but 92% effective for John Timson!". That's because the score just doesn't mean much other than in the aggregate. Tim's 68% doesn't mean it was ineffective for him. Too many confounding factors were possible. It doesn't mean that John did better... he might have been healthier at the start of the study. And if those aren't a measure of the pill, how can that individual number be measure of the patient? Could Tim's 68% have been higher if he had just followed the protocols more diligently? Wouldn't you find it absurd if someone suggested that? But with teachers and their grades, if the student gets an F it's a measure of the student's failure and not the teacher's. Teachers' unions fight tooth and nail to prevent that public perception from becoming the norm. Let's not even get into whether John's 92% pill effectiveness grade means he will live longer or be more healthy or any of the other desired effects of the medicine. Have you ever even thought about any of this? Or did you just keep your head down close to the desk as you slowly scribbled out answers you hoped the poodle master would like? Have you shrugged off every criticism like this your entire life?

metaphorm 10y ago

some food for thought. why did the "smart kid" not hand in her work? why did the "dumb kid? work more diligently? what kind of environment is required to get the "smart kid" to work diligently on a consistent basis?

jeffdavis 10y ago
Recipe to help someone else: 1. Provide challenges near the edge of ability. 2. Ask tons of questions to help the child achieve the goal. 3. Congratulate. 4. Ask tons of critical questions. 5. Go to 1.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  good advice. is it possible to do in the context of American high school classes?
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    High school is a resource if you already know how to learn. Otherwise, it's a day care.