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Don't they? School is one of the more difficult environments for time management: students have half a dozen (or more) different bosses, all of whom reguarly i

Don't they? School is one of the more difficult environments for time management: students have half a dozen (or more) different bosses, all of whom reguarly impose hard deadlines, and have a tendency of imposing major deadlines at a simmilar time to each other. The social environment is probably one of the most diverse that many people will see in their entire lifetimes (not nessasarily along racial lines), with some of the most difficult to deal with people (children) many will face in their lifetime. Granted, schools often take a trial by fire approach to these lessons (I should know, I burned out during highschool), but I don't see how you can get through school without learning them.

civicsquid 7y ago
I don't think school teaches time management. Sure, there are plenty of people who learn time management due to the constraints of school, but I don't think they are the majority. The people in my major usually either put all of their effort into something, or they put nothing into it. Only extremes. Personally, I burned out in high school then again in college. I went 100% in everything related to academics and did exceptionally well, and yet I never realized until the end of college that the only reason I was so successful is because I sacrificed everything to be good at one thing. I'm still figuring out how to get that balance down and having some sort of more formal education in that area would have been beneficial for me.
afarrell 7y ago
There is a difference between teaching some skill and imposing stress on people who lack that skill. To illustrate this, Think about the difference between giving an 8-year-old swimming lessons and tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Imposing a problem is one way of teaching a solution - it may not be the best way, or a way that you like, but it is a way.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    No, its one way of motivating a student to re-invent (and thereby learn) or to apply (and thereby learn) a solution. But if the student doesn’t ever get the solution, they don’t ever learn it. It is possible for someone to face a problem for decades, to care* deeply about it, for others to succeed at it, and for them to not know how to find a workable answer. For me, happens for “obvious” problems like “how do I learn to how to estimate how long software takes to write?” or “How do I write a first draft of a letter to a friend?” where the answer people have is “just do it” or “just do it and multiply by 2”. ——— * By “care” about it, I mean feel the emotion of wanting a solution. Some people define “care” such that if someone fails at something it means they didn’t care about it. I’m not using that definition.
rjf72 7y ago
A couple of big differences I can think of there. The first is the quality of your peers. I imagine like most people on this site, I excelled at school with literally 0 effort. In my opinion burnout is largely driven by excessive exertion for a task that seems ultimately pointless, often paired with minimal reward for such. In school people of the mindset who end up getting into STEM are generally going to have excelled with near 0 exertion while also reaping the various rewards for such. As the quality of your peers increases so too does the required exertion to rise above. To test this hypothesis I'd expect we'd see much higher rates of young burnout at elite/preparatory schools, which is certainly true. The second is that there aren't really any short term consequences for failure in school. Maybe you get a bad grade but it doesn't really have any immediate impact. In the absolute extreme case, you have to repeat a grade, which isn't a particularly big deal. Once you enter real life, if you don't come up with $x,xxx per month - you're homeless. This shift in consequences radically reshapes people's approach to the game. Imagine playing a video game; now imagine playing that same video game where if you score below average - your home and entire livelihood is put in jeopardy. And you're only playing against other people who are also, at worst, decent at the game. To test that latter hypothesis we could try to determine rates of burnout compared to the independent wealth of individuals. And on that front, I've no idea.
fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
Can you tell a teacher that the demands they have of you do not match up to what they are providing in return? Obviously not and that is the very skill that needs to be learned.

civicsquid 7y ago

I don't think school teaches time management. Sure, there are plenty of people who learn time management due to the constraints of school, but I don't think they are the majority. The people in my major usually either put all of their effort into something, or they put nothing into it. Only extremes. Personally, I burned out in high school then again in college. I went 100% in everything related to academics and did exceptionally well, and yet I never realized until the end of college that the only reason I was so successful is because I sacrificed everything to be good at one thing. I'm still figuring out how to get that balance down and having some sort of more formal education in that area would have been beneficial for me.

afarrell 7y ago

There is a difference between teaching some skill and imposing stress on people who lack that skill. To illustrate this, Think about the difference between giving an 8-year-old swimming lessons and tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat.

OJFord 7y ago
Imposing a problem is one way of teaching a solution - it may not be the best way, or a way that you like, but it is a way.
- afarrell 7y ago
  No, its one way of motivating a student to re-invent (and thereby learn) or to apply (and thereby learn) a solution. But if the student doesn’t ever get the solution, they don’t ever learn it. It is possible for someone to face a problem for decades, to care* deeply about it, for others to succeed at it, and for them to not know how to find a workable answer. For me, happens for “obvious” problems like “how do I learn to how to estimate how long software takes to write?” or “How do I write a first draft of a letter to a friend?” where the answer people have is “just do it” or “just do it and multiply by 2”. ——— * By “care” about it, I mean feel the emotion of wanting a solution. Some people define “care” such that if someone fails at something it means they didn’t care about it. I’m not using that definition.

rjf72 7y ago

A couple of big differences I can think of there. The first is the quality of your peers. I imagine like most people on this site, I excelled at school with literally 0 effort. In my opinion burnout is largely driven by excessive exertion for a task that seems ultimately pointless, often paired with minimal reward for such. In school people of the mindset who end up getting into STEM are generally going to have excelled with near 0 exertion while also reaping the various rewards for such. As the quality of your peers increases so too does the required exertion to rise above. To test this hypothesis I'd expect we'd see much higher rates of young burnout at elite/preparatory schools, which is certainly true. The second is that there aren't really any short term consequences for failure in school. Maybe you get a bad grade but it doesn't really have any immediate impact. In the absolute extreme case, you have to repeat a grade, which isn't a particularly big deal. Once you enter real life, if you don't come up with $x,xxx per month - you're homeless. This shift in consequences radically reshapes people's approach to the game. Imagine playing a video game; now imagine playing that same video game where if you score below average - your home and entire livelihood is put in jeopardy. And you're only playing against other people who are also, at worst, decent at the game. To test that latter hypothesis we could try to determine rates of burnout compared to the independent wealth of individuals. And on that front, I've no idea.

fuzz4lyfe 7y ago

Can you tell a teacher that the demands they have of you do not match up to what they are providing in return? Obviously not and that is the very skill that needs to be learned.