5 ms·

> Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about? Have you considered that maybe this isn't a

by hmwhy 8y ago

> Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about? Have you considered that maybe this isn't a problem with the students but a problem with society and the very problem with the education institutions and teachers like you that are just basically feeding on them? It's far easier (and economically viable in a shortsighted way) to blame students for their shortcomings than to make the effort to help them. I hope you are not thinking that you're doing society a favour by failing them instead of making the effort to figure out what their strengths are and/or if the way your teach, or what your employer preaches, may actually terrible. Maybe you shouldn't go back to teaching the next time you get "dragged back into" it.

lucidone 8y ago
Have you ever worked in academia? The humanities are a day care and delayed adulthood for those who would be better suited doing anything else with their time aside from one or two students in every classroom of ~40. For context, I left to work in the private sector with people who give a damn.
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Shit, I was really hoping to leave the corporate life for academia; people who give a damn...
  - alexgmcm 8y ago
    Academia in Physics was pretty hardcore from what I see of my friends working in it. I left for CS after undergrad.
topmonk 8y ago
Armchair critic
ppseafield 8y ago
I don't agree 100% with the OP, but there are some students that are indeed just net negatives on the class and in general. My state used to pay 100% of your state college tuition if you maintained a 3.0 GPA. A lot of students in my freshman dorm stayed until the 30 hour re-evaluation period and then disappeared forever. They partied, never went to class, never studied, and withdrew from most of their classes. They'd regularly fall asleep in or oversleep for 11:00 classes. As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many of them have not been raised to be on their own, and college is the first time they're let "off the leash". They're unprepared to be independent adults. Additionally some students fail the same class over and over, then keep retaking the class with no improvement. They keep asking the same questions, slow down the class, and make it more difficult for everyone else to learn. As a teacher how do you handle these students? Maybe you've already failed them twice. Maybe you've had extensive study groups, office hours, extra credit materials for these people, but they continue to do poorly. Some of them you suspect have learning disabilities or other mental problems that may always interfere with their ability to take your class. (Later the state college system changed it to 80% tuition for 3.5 GPA, and at least my college mandated a maximum of 5 withdrawls, which cut down on the problem some.)
- stealthmodeclan 8y ago
  > As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many people don't believe in working hard today for having a better life tomorrow. They think they might as well get stuck by lightening and die. Should we blame them for this kind of thinking? This why the idea of a weflare state seems to saddle the ones who work with more work at the expense of those who are not willing to do anything. Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity's need and refuse to contribute. Maybe best system is one where everyone is left to fend for themselves and receive no help from government or society?
  - ppseafield 8y ago
    > Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity need and refuse to contribute. Look at the Panama Papers and all of the off shore banks, the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, etc. As a percentage of income per individual, these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies, bailouts, elaborate tax evasion schemes, government guaranteed student loans. This is the real "welfare state". People on food stamps don't even scratch the surface in comparison.
zdragnar 8y ago
I've found the same to be true for mentoring junior programmers. Those who treat it as just a job rarely advance their abilities. Those who are genuinely interested in learning grew. I've always disliked the verb "teach" because it implies that it is something I can do to you, when really all I can do is nurture, facilitate or provide a framework for you to learn.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I’m not a junior developer. By the time I started my first job, I had already been a hobbyist for ten years - since 6th grade and had a degree. By the time I started working, it was “just a job” and 20 years later, it still is. I study and “do well”, because I am highly motivated to stay employed and stay employable at market rates.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stealthmodeclan 8y ago
> Have you considered that maybe this isn't a problem with the students but a problem with society and the very problem with the education institutions and teachers like you that are just basically feeding on them? I've lots of experience in teaching mathematics to students of all age. I believe how well you can be taught exclusively depends on your genetics and the environment you are brought up in. Not everyone can succeed, not even majority of them can succeed. You can simply filter students at the lowest level to manipulate the propotion of students who are succeeding. Since then I've stopped teaching and went to start my own business. If you really want to help them, leave them to fend for themselves and let the evolution make them fit for survival. Anything done to screw with the nature will bite you back.
mikekchar 8y ago
> Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I taught EFL at a high school for 5 years. Being a good teacher takes a lot of experience, inspiration and hard work. It is a very, very difficult job. When I was doing it, I often thought how much easier it is to explain things to a computer compared to a person -- especially when the person is often doing everything they can to avoid listening to you ;-) I don't want to diminish the role of a teacher because there is a huge difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher. It's just that there comes a point where you have to realise that the best you can do is to create an environment where it is possible for the students to learn. Everything else is up to the student. The OP's point is very correct that of students who succeed, the vast majority would have succeeded even without the teacher. In those cases, the teacher may create a more pleasant environment, or may provide a convenient filtering of information. But there are very few disciplines where a good text book and a place to practice aren't enough. Where foreign languages are concerned, you don't even need the text book! I fairly quickly realised that my "value add" in the classroom was to help those people who were borderline. There are always some people who are eager to work, but are constantly at a loss about how to start. In my experience, this is a very small percentage of the class (maybe only 10%), but you can make a big difference as a teacher to these students. The real problem is where the teacher is placed in an environment where they are unable to concentrate on those students. For example, I often had classes of 42 students. For a language class, that's horrible. I can actually manage with 20, but if you get up over 30, it becomes impossible to spend enough time with the people who need it. Of course, just like high school (which is filled with students who don't want to be there), undergraduate courses have massive numbers of students who are hopelessly uninterested in studying. There was a time when "university" was aimed at a very small number of very keen students. You had lectures with less than 10 other students and had tutors who helped you work your way through the ridiculously large amount of material that you had to learn. But such organisations are never going to fund a proper football programme, and what is the poor NFL going to do to train their players? ;-) I mean your point is completely fair: society should take its share of the blame. However, consider who makes up society? The very people who think it is completely reasonable to drift from high school to university, take a bunch of random courses, and party every day. These same people whose career plans are to take their gold stamp for having sat through 4 years of boring lectures and exchange it for a "good job" (TM), which will bring them a very high salary but will have completely unspecified content. Although, contrary to my rant, one of the things I really like about code boot camps is that it allows people to "wake up" from their delusion. After getting a general degree in "business" with specialisation in making unnecessarily complicated Excel spreadsheets, and working as a drone in the financial industry for 2 years, suddenly some people think, "OMG! Programming is amazing. What the heck have I been doing with my life?". Some of the best people I've worked with recently have come a similar route. So it would be extremely great if we could help society get over this expectation of mediocrity and start making universities that are centres of higher learning. However, a teacher in a classroom is up to their ears wrestling with extremely unfortunate social dynamics and doesn't have very much time to change the world.
RobertRoberts 8y ago
>"Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about?" No, it's not. Higher education is not adult daycare. If I have half a class screwing off and playing video games _in class_, and the other half desperately trying to improve their lives. I used a very strict grading policy, if you don't turn in your assignment, you get a zero, period. All it takes is 41% of not turning in your assignments and your class doesn't apply to your degree. (ie, failure by default) Are you suggesting I commit fraud to let these students pass? I did not "fail" them, they failed themselves. Edit: Fyi, 100% of all my students that failed did so by not turning in assignments. 100% of them.

by hmwhy 8y ago

lucidone 8y ago

Have you ever worked in academia? The humanities are a day care and delayed adulthood for those who would be better suited doing anything else with their time aside from one or two students in every classroom of ~40. For context, I left to work in the private sector with people who give a damn.

EADGBE 8y ago
Shit, I was really hoping to leave the corporate life for academia; people who give a damn...
- alexgmcm 8y ago
  Academia in Physics was pretty hardcore from what I see of my friends working in it. I left for CS after undergrad.

topmonk 8y ago

Armchair critic

ppseafield 8y ago

I don't agree 100% with the OP, but there are some students that are indeed just net negatives on the class and in general. My state used to pay 100% of your state college tuition if you maintained a 3.0 GPA. A lot of students in my freshman dorm stayed until the 30 hour re-evaluation period and then disappeared forever. They partied, never went to class, never studied, and withdrew from most of their classes. They'd regularly fall asleep in or oversleep for 11:00 classes. As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many of them have not been raised to be on their own, and college is the first time they're let "off the leash". They're unprepared to be independent adults. Additionally some students fail the same class over and over, then keep retaking the class with no improvement. They keep asking the same questions, slow down the class, and make it more difficult for everyone else to learn. As a teacher how do you handle these students? Maybe you've already failed them twice. Maybe you've had extensive study groups, office hours, extra credit materials for these people, but they continue to do poorly. Some of them you suspect have learning disabilities or other mental problems that may always interfere with their ability to take your class. (Later the state college system changed it to 80% tuition for 3.5 GPA, and at least my college mandated a maximum of 5 withdrawls, which cut down on the problem some.)

stealthmodeclan 8y ago
> As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many people don't believe in working hard today for having a better life tomorrow. They think they might as well get stuck by lightening and die. Should we blame them for this kind of thinking? This why the idea of a weflare state seems to saddle the ones who work with more work at the expense of those who are not willing to do anything. Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity's need and refuse to contribute. Maybe best system is one where everyone is left to fend for themselves and receive no help from government or society?
- ppseafield 8y ago
  > Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity need and refuse to contribute. Look at the Panama Papers and all of the off shore banks, the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, etc. As a percentage of income per individual, these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies, bailouts, elaborate tax evasion schemes, government guaranteed student loans. This is the real "welfare state". People on food stamps don't even scratch the surface in comparison.

zdragnar 8y ago

I've found the same to be true for mentoring junior programmers. Those who treat it as just a job rarely advance their abilities. Those who are genuinely interested in learning grew. I've always disliked the verb "teach" because it implies that it is something I can do to you, when really all I can do is nurture, facilitate or provide a framework for you to learn.

scarface74 8y ago
I’m not a junior developer. By the time I started my first job, I had already been a hobbyist for ten years - since 6th grade and had a degree. By the time I started working, it was “just a job” and 20 years later, it still is. I study and “do well”, because I am highly motivated to stay employed and stay employable at market rates.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

stealthmodeclan 8y ago

> Have you considered that maybe this isn't a problem with the students but a problem with society and the very problem with the education institutions and teachers like you that are just basically feeding on them? I've lots of experience in teaching mathematics to students of all age. I believe how well you can be taught exclusively depends on your genetics and the environment you are brought up in. Not everyone can succeed, not even majority of them can succeed. You can simply filter students at the lowest level to manipulate the propotion of students who are succeeding. Since then I've stopped teaching and went to start my own business. If you really want to help them, leave them to fend for themselves and let the evolution make them fit for survival. Anything done to screw with the nature will bite you back.

mikekchar 8y ago

> Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I taught EFL at a high school for 5 years. Being a good teacher takes a lot of experience, inspiration and hard work. It is a very, very difficult job. When I was doing it, I often thought how much easier it is to explain things to a computer compared to a person -- especially when the person is often doing everything they can to avoid listening to you ;-) I don't want to diminish the role of a teacher because there is a huge difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher. It's just that there comes a point where you have to realise that the best you can do is to create an environment where it is possible for the students to learn. Everything else is up to the student. The OP's point is very correct that of students who succeed, the vast majority would have succeeded even without the teacher. In those cases, the teacher may create a more pleasant environment, or may provide a convenient filtering of information. But there are very few disciplines where a good text book and a place to practice aren't enough. Where foreign languages are concerned, you don't even need the text book! I fairly quickly realised that my "value add" in the classroom was to help those people who were borderline. There are always some people who are eager to work, but are constantly at a loss about how to start. In my experience, this is a very small percentage of the class (maybe only 10%), but you can make a big difference as a teacher to these students. The real problem is where the teacher is placed in an environment where they are unable to concentrate on those students. For example, I often had classes of 42 students. For a language class, that's horrible. I can actually manage with 20, but if you get up over 30, it becomes impossible to spend enough time with the people who need it. Of course, just like high school (which is filled with students who don't want to be there), undergraduate courses have massive numbers of students who are hopelessly uninterested in studying. There was a time when "university" was aimed at a very small number of very keen students. You had lectures with less than 10 other students and had tutors who helped you work your way through the ridiculously large amount of material that you had to learn. But such organisations are never going to fund a proper football programme, and what is the poor NFL going to do to train their players? ;-) I mean your point is completely fair: society should take its share of the blame. However, consider who makes up society? The very people who think it is completely reasonable to drift from high school to university, take a bunch of random courses, and party every day. These same people whose career plans are to take their gold stamp for having sat through 4 years of boring lectures and exchange it for a "good job" (TM), which will bring them a very high salary but will have completely unspecified content. Although, contrary to my rant, one of the things I really like about code boot camps is that it allows people to "wake up" from their delusion. After getting a general degree in "business" with specialisation in making unnecessarily complicated Excel spreadsheets, and working as a drone in the financial industry for 2 years, suddenly some people think, "OMG! Programming is amazing. What the heck have I been doing with my life?". Some of the best people I've worked with recently have come a similar route. So it would be extremely great if we could help society get over this expectation of mediocrity and start making universities that are centres of higher learning. However, a teacher in a classroom is up to their ears wrestling with extremely unfortunate social dynamics and doesn't have very much time to change the world.

RobertRoberts 8y ago

>"Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about?" No, it's not. Higher education is not adult daycare. If I have half a class screwing off and playing video games _in class_, and the other half desperately trying to improve their lives. I used a very strict grading policy, if you don't turn in your assignment, you get a zero, period. All it takes is 41% of not turning in your assignments and your class doesn't apply to your degree. (ie, failure by default) Are you suggesting I commit fraud to let these students pass? I did not "fail" them, they failed themselves. Edit: Fyi, 100% of all my students that failed did so by not turning in assignments. 100% of them.