6 ms·

Parents, teachers, and students are so focused on "education" as a pedigree and job pipeline that if they don't see an immediate connection between a topic and

Parents, teachers, and students are so focused on "education" as a pedigree and job pipeline that if they don't see an immediate connection between a topic and a paycheck they're like "Who cares?! Why are you wasting my kid's time on that?" When the whole thing is an exercise in competitive pedigreeing, of course it's going to be gamed. If it were more about human development, we'd be focusing on the deltas instead, and they'd be harder to fudge.

gnaritas 9y ago
They're not wrong to worry about that, it's a rough world out there and getting a good job is vastly more important to most people than "human development". Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. Only the rich have the luxury of being concerned about something other than a job.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  some people get to work in a creative job (I think being successful in STEM is more creative than people generally account for). in which case all that human development is pretty important.
- oDot 9y ago
  They are wrong to worry about that. The world is dynamic, and human development, the way I interpret it, will help the students deal with the world they go out to. Better people will deal with what comes their way. Maybe today it's a job, but tomorrow it'll be something else. Students who were only thought how to build software, will have a hard time dealing with life when robots starts building software instead of them. First have better people, then let better people be better and bring themselves to prosperity.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    Again, all easy things to worry about when you're not trying to just survive as most people are. Most people are worried about far more practical things that being "better people".
  - nine_k 9y ago
    If "being better" means better communication, better critical thinking, better learning skills, better time management skills, better understanding of oneself — yes, please! These are the universal skills important most everywhere. These are also skills that are hard to teach as a specific subject; they mostly come with experience in some other, more practical subject. Some of these, like critical thinking, can go against the modern prevailing religion (political correctness), which makes teaching them harder still.
- banach 9y ago
  On the contrary. The less you have, the more you stand to benefit from appreciating other things than possessions.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    That can be obtained in a much more cost effective manner.
  - bpodgursky 9y ago
    Yes, I'm sure a generation trying to save for a house under burden of student loans appreciates your sage bullshit advice. Must really appreciate the lack of affordable health care and never being able to afford a family. But at least you can appreciate it!
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - banach 9y ago
      Philosophies of life like Buddhism and Stoicism came about in times that were much less comfy than even the sad reality we have to endure. I am not saying people shouldn't demand things of society (quite the opposite, I think the level of organizing among the poor is the root of many of the issues we are seeing today), but I am saying that they can benefit from separating their happiness from the fulfillment of those demands.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    No one said anything about possessions, you're projecting. We're talking about survival here, not consumerism.
    - jstewartmobile 9y ago
      That's probably a little over-dramatic. In the west, survival is a pretty low bar. That, and "human development" in terms of an actual broad education will probably get you further in the long run than circling up around the latest job credential. I remember reading somewhere about how learning certain instruments makes changes to the brain's surface that are large enough to see with the naked eye. From many accounts, playing the violin was no small part of Einstein's life and research. Who knows if he'd have been as productive if he'd just been all-physics-all-the-time? It could have served as a sort of "backpropagation" to his theoretical work. From my own experience, many of these seemingly unrelated intellectual pursuits open so many doors, and from this article it isn't just my own experience: https://medium.com/personal-growth/einsteins-violin-the-hidden-connections-between-scientific-breakthroughs-and-art-f67a67ce8240 https://medium.com/personal-growth/einsteins-violin-the-hidd...
- mmirate 9y ago
  > Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. That's correct, yes, but it's not the whole story. (Some of) us students hold the same opinions, regardless of whether or not our parents do. Indeed, I would gladly shed any of the "good person" parts of my personality, if doing so gave me better aptitude in the field that I'm studying. (Sadly, genetic engineering is still a pipe dream, and won't work on already-living humans anyway.)
- fasquoika 9y ago
  I think the real issue here is that our schools are somewhere between liberal arts and vocational, so they do a pretty shitty job at both
- ThomPete 9y ago
  But the jobs to come have much less to do with your education as they will more and be be about talent and uniqueness, the exact opposite of what education does to people. There is a world of difference between being educated and getting an education.
jamescostian 9y ago
As a student, I agree with many of the words you said but for different reasons. I've had a middle school teacher who told us about her own sex life during class. I've had a high school teacher who droned on and on about her divorce (to the point that everyone learned so little, almost no one passed the AP exams she was supposed to prepare us for) and put down religions - again, during class. College isn't a whole lot better, and elementary probably had similar stories that I can't remember. We (students) all hated those teachers who wasted our time with things that wouldn't help us get further in the job pipeline. I'd like a little more gamification, because I'm in college and still dealing with too many profs who teach less and less about what people need to do their jobs and more and more stuff no one asked for. There doesn't have to be an immediate connection between what a teacher says and the subject they are supposed to teach. Many fantastic teachers have inspired me and made me who I am by giving little pieces of unrelated advice. But the advice of a teacher is really, well, just the advice of some teacher. They aren't gods. Plenty of them give really bad advice. I just care about students learning to learn and developing critical thinking. Students can read literature for opinions on things unrelated to school subjects, and ponder on their own. They can watch movies, listen to songs, google things, or even talk to other students. But I don't think teachers should go even further out of class discussions than they already do.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  Like you said, most people know who's done them a service and who hasn't. If only that was what they were selling! Just pretend to care while they're rattling on about their kids and their sex lives, meticulously regurgitate their opinions--verbatim--on the test, and watch the circle of life remain unbroken as one generation of over-credentialed under-performers passes the torch to the next. I mean, hell, it's only four years of your life. Who's going to miss that?
  - jamescostian 9y ago
    AMEN
- oldandtired 9y ago
  Having been a student with good and bad teachers, I can see your point. However, many of the things that you are being taught (at least I hope this is still the case) that don't appear to be needed for the "job" are actually important because they are needed for the understanding of the background for why and how the "job". The failure of teachers that we faced as students was that the reasons for learning something were often not explained and only became obvious when learning about other subjects in later years. Having the relevance of the knowledge explained to us would have made it easier for us to learn. One of my favourite examples was the subject of Karnaugh maps (or K-maps) which is used in logic circuit minimisation for small circuits. We learned all about and didn't use it again for the rest of my engineering undergraduate days. However, a number of years working with a colleague on trying to solve a particularly pernicious software problem, I asked him why he hadn't used the concept of "don't cares" in short-circuiting the logic mess that was required to solve the software dilemma we were facing. He had never heard of the concept as he had never been taught about K-maps in his undergraduate programming course. One he understood the concept and it didn't take him long, he was able to write 5 lines that solved the problem, instead of the hundred's that he had already had written (with many more to follow) to test for the problem throughout the program. I have been surprised at how often over the years, where theoretical knowledge or other knowledge has come to the rescue in finding a solution for specific real-world problems, even though it has (on the surface) no relevance to the job at hand. I have worked with some very smart people over the years (much smarter than me) who have been stuck for a solution because they didn't have that "irrelevant" piece of knowledge from their undergraduate days, but I did and so a problem was solved. The one piece of advice I will give you is to learn as widely as you can so that you basic knowledge base will be broad enough for you to keep adding to as the years go by.
ajuc 9y ago
> If it were more about human development, we'd be focusing on the deltas instead, and they'd be harder to fudge. If you were scored based on delta, gaming it would be laughably easy. Just completely fail your first exam, and then steadily "improve" to your real skill level. That's basically incentivizing students to do what Intel does with processors :)
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  Your thinking here is still in job-credential-land. If the goal is still some kind of 3rd-party pedigree, that is going to be infinitely gameable no matter how you measure it--but that wasn't what I argued! I'm not talking about getting graded USDA Prime so I can fetch the best price in the meat case. I'm talking about personal development. When you go to a personal trainer, you're not going to fudge your delta because you can't fudge your delta--the degree is your body, and everyone will know if you passed or failed.
  - ajuc 9y ago
    But if you want personal development then gaming isn't an issue (why lie to yourself?), and even if you do - changing the metric isn't going to stop you. And grading in absolute values is still more useful to asses your performance than deltas anyway: "you can lift X kg today" is more useful than "you can lift 2 kg more today"?
    - jstewartmobile 9y ago
      If we're trying to assess the training instead of the trainee, which is what the article was touching on, I wouldn't be so sure. You've got to take the long game into account. If we keep with the lifting analogy, I know a lot of guys who could lift some serious weights in high school--but with terrible form. Ten years later they're all messed up with joint and muscle problems due to bad training. They've dropped out of the fitness lifestyle, and aren't about to recommend their HS football coach for anything. But then you look at guys like Arnold or Scooby who've maintained a high level of fitness throughout their lives without a debilitating injury, people tend to take them more seriously. Of course, then we're talking more about integrals--which would be even harder to fudge than deltas. I think the worst part of the whole sorry situation is that our modern economy is becoming so detached from reality that the credential has more value than actual performance. I've seen so many nutritionists who are fat and tired and will probably not live that long, but they bought a certification from state U, so now they have a job and people listen to them. Or hairdressers! So many can't even give a decent haircut or keep their tools clean, but they got their state cert, so they can go out and charge for haircuts while mom can't. Or even people with 4.0 GPAs and a masters in CS. I can't tell you how many of those I've had to let go because a high schooler ran circles around them. Computing is one of the few fields, like music or acting, where you can still just go out there, perform, and get paid for it. I wonder how long that will remain the case...

gnaritas 9y ago

They're not wrong to worry about that, it's a rough world out there and getting a good job is vastly more important to most people than "human development". Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. Only the rich have the luxury of being concerned about something other than a job.

convolvatron 9y ago
some people get to work in a creative job (I think being successful in STEM is more creative than people generally account for). in which case all that human development is pretty important.
oDot 9y ago
They are wrong to worry about that. The world is dynamic, and human development, the way I interpret it, will help the students deal with the world they go out to. Better people will deal with what comes their way. Maybe today it's a job, but tomorrow it'll be something else. Students who were only thought how to build software, will have a hard time dealing with life when robots starts building software instead of them. First have better people, then let better people be better and bring themselves to prosperity.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  Again, all easy things to worry about when you're not trying to just survive as most people are. Most people are worried about far more practical things that being "better people".
- nine_k 9y ago
  If "being better" means better communication, better critical thinking, better learning skills, better time management skills, better understanding of oneself — yes, please! These are the universal skills important most everywhere. These are also skills that are hard to teach as a specific subject; they mostly come with experience in some other, more practical subject. Some of these, like critical thinking, can go against the modern prevailing religion (political correctness), which makes teaching them harder still.
banach 9y ago
On the contrary. The less you have, the more you stand to benefit from appreciating other things than possessions.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  That can be obtained in a much more cost effective manner.
- bpodgursky 9y ago
  Yes, I'm sure a generation trying to save for a house under burden of student loans appreciates your sage bullshit advice. Must really appreciate the lack of affordable health care and never being able to afford a family. But at least you can appreciate it!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - banach 9y ago
    Philosophies of life like Buddhism and Stoicism came about in times that were much less comfy than even the sad reality we have to endure. I am not saying people shouldn't demand things of society (quite the opposite, I think the level of organizing among the poor is the root of many of the issues we are seeing today), but I am saying that they can benefit from separating their happiness from the fulfillment of those demands.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  No one said anything about possessions, you're projecting. We're talking about survival here, not consumerism.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    That's probably a little over-dramatic. In the west, survival is a pretty low bar. That, and "human development" in terms of an actual broad education will probably get you further in the long run than circling up around the latest job credential. I remember reading somewhere about how learning certain instruments makes changes to the brain's surface that are large enough to see with the naked eye. From many accounts, playing the violin was no small part of Einstein's life and research. Who knows if he'd have been as productive if he'd just been all-physics-all-the-time? It could have served as a sort of "backpropagation" to his theoretical work. From my own experience, many of these seemingly unrelated intellectual pursuits open so many doors, and from this article it isn't just my own experience: https://medium.com/personal-growth/einsteins-violin-the-hidden-connections-between-scientific-breakthroughs-and-art-f67a67ce8240 https://medium.com/personal-growth/einsteins-violin-the-hidd...
mmirate 9y ago
> Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. That's correct, yes, but it's not the whole story. (Some of) us students hold the same opinions, regardless of whether or not our parents do. Indeed, I would gladly shed any of the "good person" parts of my personality, if doing so gave me better aptitude in the field that I'm studying. (Sadly, genetic engineering is still a pipe dream, and won't work on already-living humans anyway.)
fasquoika 9y ago
I think the real issue here is that our schools are somewhere between liberal arts and vocational, so they do a pretty shitty job at both
ThomPete 9y ago
But the jobs to come have much less to do with your education as they will more and be be about talent and uniqueness, the exact opposite of what education does to people. There is a world of difference between being educated and getting an education.

jamescostian 9y ago

As a student, I agree with many of the words you said but for different reasons. I've had a middle school teacher who told us about her own sex life during class. I've had a high school teacher who droned on and on about her divorce (to the point that everyone learned so little, almost no one passed the AP exams she was supposed to prepare us for) and put down religions - again, during class. College isn't a whole lot better, and elementary probably had similar stories that I can't remember. We (students) all hated those teachers who wasted our time with things that wouldn't help us get further in the job pipeline. I'd like a little more gamification, because I'm in college and still dealing with too many profs who teach less and less about what people need to do their jobs and more and more stuff no one asked for. There doesn't have to be an immediate connection between what a teacher says and the subject they are supposed to teach. Many fantastic teachers have inspired me and made me who I am by giving little pieces of unrelated advice. But the advice of a teacher is really, well, just the advice of some teacher. They aren't gods. Plenty of them give really bad advice. I just care about students learning to learn and developing critical thinking. Students can read literature for opinions on things unrelated to school subjects, and ponder on their own. They can watch movies, listen to songs, google things, or even talk to other students. But I don't think teachers should go even further out of class discussions than they already do.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
Like you said, most people know who's done them a service and who hasn't. If only that was what they were selling! Just pretend to care while they're rattling on about their kids and their sex lives, meticulously regurgitate their opinions--verbatim--on the test, and watch the circle of life remain unbroken as one generation of over-credentialed under-performers passes the torch to the next. I mean, hell, it's only four years of your life. Who's going to miss that?
- jamescostian 9y ago
  AMEN
oldandtired 9y ago
Having been a student with good and bad teachers, I can see your point. However, many of the things that you are being taught (at least I hope this is still the case) that don't appear to be needed for the "job" are actually important because they are needed for the understanding of the background for why and how the "job". The failure of teachers that we faced as students was that the reasons for learning something were often not explained and only became obvious when learning about other subjects in later years. Having the relevance of the knowledge explained to us would have made it easier for us to learn. One of my favourite examples was the subject of Karnaugh maps (or K-maps) which is used in logic circuit minimisation for small circuits. We learned all about and didn't use it again for the rest of my engineering undergraduate days. However, a number of years working with a colleague on trying to solve a particularly pernicious software problem, I asked him why he hadn't used the concept of "don't cares" in short-circuiting the logic mess that was required to solve the software dilemma we were facing. He had never heard of the concept as he had never been taught about K-maps in his undergraduate programming course. One he understood the concept and it didn't take him long, he was able to write 5 lines that solved the problem, instead of the hundred's that he had already had written (with many more to follow) to test for the problem throughout the program. I have been surprised at how often over the years, where theoretical knowledge or other knowledge has come to the rescue in finding a solution for specific real-world problems, even though it has (on the surface) no relevance to the job at hand. I have worked with some very smart people over the years (much smarter than me) who have been stuck for a solution because they didn't have that "irrelevant" piece of knowledge from their undergraduate days, but I did and so a problem was solved. The one piece of advice I will give you is to learn as widely as you can so that you basic knowledge base will be broad enough for you to keep adding to as the years go by.

ajuc 9y ago

> If it were more about human development, we'd be focusing on the deltas instead, and they'd be harder to fudge. If you were scored based on delta, gaming it would be laughably easy. Just completely fail your first exam, and then steadily "improve" to your real skill level. That's basically incentivizing students to do what Intel does with processors :)

jstewartmobile 9y ago
Your thinking here is still in job-credential-land. If the goal is still some kind of 3rd-party pedigree, that is going to be infinitely gameable no matter how you measure it--but that wasn't what I argued! I'm not talking about getting graded USDA Prime so I can fetch the best price in the meat case. I'm talking about personal development. When you go to a personal trainer, you're not going to fudge your delta because you can't fudge your delta--the degree is your body, and everyone will know if you passed or failed.
- ajuc 9y ago
  But if you want personal development then gaming isn't an issue (why lie to yourself?), and even if you do - changing the metric isn't going to stop you. And grading in absolute values is still more useful to asses your performance than deltas anyway: "you can lift X kg today" is more useful than "you can lift 2 kg more today"?
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    If we're trying to assess the training instead of the trainee, which is what the article was touching on, I wouldn't be so sure. You've got to take the long game into account. If we keep with the lifting analogy, I know a lot of guys who could lift some serious weights in high school--but with terrible form. Ten years later they're all messed up with joint and muscle problems due to bad training. They've dropped out of the fitness lifestyle, and aren't about to recommend their HS football coach for anything. But then you look at guys like Arnold or Scooby who've maintained a high level of fitness throughout their lives without a debilitating injury, people tend to take them more seriously. Of course, then we're talking more about integrals--which would be even harder to fudge than deltas. I think the worst part of the whole sorry situation is that our modern economy is becoming so detached from reality that the credential has more value than actual performance. I've seen so many nutritionists who are fat and tired and will probably not live that long, but they bought a certification from state U, so now they have a job and people listen to them. Or hairdressers! So many can't even give a decent haircut or keep their tools clean, but they got their state cert, so they can go out and charge for haircuts while mom can't. Or even people with 4.0 GPAs and a masters in CS. I can't tell you how many of those I've had to let go because a high schooler ran circles around them. Computing is one of the few fields, like music or acting, where you can still just go out there, perform, and get paid for it. I wonder how long that will remain the case...