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Homework and spanking are both things that exist for reasons other than efficacy. They're cultural shibboleths seen as separating out the moral from the immoral

Homework and spanking are both things that exist for reasons other than efficacy. They're cultural shibboleths seen as separating out the moral from the immoral.

whatshisface 8y ago
That's a bit of a stretch. They assign homework in college for good reason - seriously, you have a zero percent chance of learning anything math related just by listening to the lecture. The alternative would be to turn one-hour lectures in to eight-hour study sessions, and frankly it's nicer to do it at home. The same would apply in highschool if it wasn't so dystopian in its implementation of normal things.
- curioussavage 8y ago
  Taking this at face value all it means to me is the lecture model for teaching math is crap. I’m glad all those “world class”. It doesn’t seem like there is any push to change the status quo either.
- ams6110 8y ago
  There's a better balance though. In college you're not sitting in class from 8:00 to 3:00 every day. Half that would be a pretty busy day for actual classes. Or you load up on Mon-Wed-Fri and have no classes Tues-Thu.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Right, the real problem with highschool is that it twists every normal thing about college into a dystopian parody of itself. I don't know why.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >you have a zero percent chance of learning anything math related just by listening to the lecture Most students will never really learn anything math related beyond basic arithmetic - they'll just about fake it for the exams, then promptly forget it. The actual numeracy skills of the general population (even college graduates (even STEM graduates)) is so woefully inadequate that it'd be entirely reasonable to argue that we should just stop bothering with mandatory math education after 8th grade. IMO the fundamental problem with education is the assumption that it works. The handful of RCTs we have suggest that it's mostly placebo.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    The bargan is, as I have heard it, that we force everyone through math because we don't know in advance which ones will get to use it. We can't afford to cripple the 1% of people who become engineers. They do so much for our country that forcing all of the non-engineers to suffer through elementary engineering training is worth it.

Homework and spanking are both things that exist for reasons other than efficacy. They're cultural shibboleths seen as separating out the moral from the immoral.

whatshisface 8y ago

That's a bit of a stretch. They assign homework in college for good reason - seriously, you have a zero percent chance of learning anything math related just by listening to the lecture. The alternative would be to turn one-hour lectures in to eight-hour study sessions, and frankly it's nicer to do it at home. The same would apply in highschool if it wasn't so dystopian in its implementation of normal things.

curioussavage 8y ago
Taking this at face value all it means to me is the lecture model for teaching math is crap. I’m glad all those “world class”. It doesn’t seem like there is any push to change the status quo either.
ams6110 8y ago
There's a better balance though. In college you're not sitting in class from 8:00 to 3:00 every day. Half that would be a pretty busy day for actual classes. Or you load up on Mon-Wed-Fri and have no classes Tues-Thu.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Right, the real problem with highschool is that it twists every normal thing about college into a dystopian parody of itself. I don't know why.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 8y ago
>you have a zero percent chance of learning anything math related just by listening to the lecture Most students will never really learn anything math related beyond basic arithmetic - they'll just about fake it for the exams, then promptly forget it. The actual numeracy skills of the general population (even college graduates (even STEM graduates)) is so woefully inadequate that it'd be entirely reasonable to argue that we should just stop bothering with mandatory math education after 8th grade. IMO the fundamental problem with education is the assumption that it works. The handful of RCTs we have suggest that it's mostly placebo.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  The bargan is, as I have heard it, that we force everyone through math because we don't know in advance which ones will get to use it. We can't afford to cripple the 1% of people who become engineers. They do so much for our country that forcing all of the non-engineers to suffer through elementary engineering training is worth it.