6 ms·

I disagree with you in one regard, I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. Take a look at i

I disagree with you in one regard, I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. Take a look at it from the perspective of a 30 or 40-something with some college or a degree in another domain looking to transition into CS. In this case, the fact that formal CS degrees are, I dare say, polluted, with irrelevant crap is a waste of time, money and brain power. For example, my son, who happens to be studying CS at a major university was forced to take a class on Marxism. The only word I can come-up to describe this is: Demented. I would prefer to see a system where degree programs focus on the material necessary to support the degree and nothing else. They could, as an aside, offer a parallel track where the student could take additional non-degree classes for general culture. These classes should not have any effect whatsoever on the degree. To continue with the example, if my son failed or dropped out of the Marxism class (he did not, he passed it with full marks) it should have no bearing on his overall standing in the CS degree. I also disagree with the concept of a fixed timescale being required in order to gain understanding of a topic. There's plenty of evidence in support of this. Companies complain that traditional CS grads don't know how to write code. Yet they spend four to six years in school getting BS or MS degrees. Frankly, going back to my son, if it weren't for the fact that we work on a number of real-world projects together his coding skills based on schoolwork would likely be substandard. There's a difference between learning to CS to pass tests and applying it in real-world environments. My argument might very well support the opposite conclusion: Get through schools as quickly as possible, one or two years for a BS in CS and go to work. Medicine has residency and internship as part of the process for that very reason. I would much rather hire someone who devoted a couple of intense years learning and two years full time directly applying and honing the craft than someone who takes four years to study and comes to me with no experience other than, perhaps, a few summers as an intern here and there.

mulderc 7y ago
How was he forced to take a class on Marx? I have never seen that as a required course at any university.
- robomartin 7y ago
  That was the only class available for several terms that would satisfy the degree requirement. Interestingly enough, that was the only class that was available every term while the others were not. Even more interesting, they never mentioned Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his work, The Gulag Archipelago. Everything was painted through rose colored glasses. Pretty disgusting. Thankfully we have a home where education is deemed important. My son had already read many of the classics before going through college and was well equipped to deal with an ideologically biased situation. He also read some of Gulag Archipelago and knew the history of that work. I recommended he be practical about this class. He did the work, wrote a bullshit paper, got an A and then proceeded to vomit. No harm done.
tapatio 7y ago
Wait, so you only want him to learn about successful political ideologies?
- robomartin 7y ago
  That is not what I said. No, of course not. But if you ONLY teach Marxism and NOTHING ELSE you are doing the world a huge disservice. Marxism and other ideologies should be taught. Definitely. And they should teach the good, the bad and the ugly. If you want to know what that means, read The Gulag Archipelago for perspective. Education should not be about indoctrination. Sadly there's a lot of that going on. I am not some crazy right wing guy, not even close. I'm just sick of what our universities have turned into. Someone goes to school to study computer science and they are treated to a solid dose of rosy-glasses Marxism. Those who go into humanities are in for full-on indoctrination. This is a horrible disservice to humanity. Again, someone please tell me where the intersection between Marxism and Computer Science exists. I've been in CS/Engineering for over 30 years and can't find it. Why aren't kids reading the Greek philosophers? Plato's Republic is a BRILLIANT piece of work. Aristotle, Socrates. Move forward from that, read Descartes, Kant, Adams and others. So much to learn. So much perspective to acquire. But no, we force kids into immersion in some of the most destructive ideologies known to man. And for what? Not go off on a tangent, but this is also what is happening now with the whole Climate Change mess. That poor girl from Sweden is being used in vile ways. One of the worst example of indoctrination I have seen in my life. The only thing I that comes to mind that is worse than that are kids indoctrinated into terrorism and hatred. What depths has society sunk to? Before someone jumps on me. Yes, of course Climate Change is real. Nobody is saying it isn't. And yes, of course we added 100 ppm of CO2 in the last ~1000 years. The issue is, no, we are not all going to die in 12 years and, no, none of what they want to do will help anyone for tens of thousands of years. This is a mess and using children in pursuit of political objectives is a horrific ugly thing.
  - tombert 7y ago
    > Education should not be about indoctrination. Sadly there's a lot of that going on. I am not some crazy right wing guy, not even close. I'm just sick of what our universities have turned into. Someone goes to school to study computer science and they are treated to a solid dose of rosy-glasses Marxism. Those who go into humanities are in for full-on indoctrination. This is a horrible disservice to humanity. I seriously don't know what university you're talking about. Florida State University's economics classes (which I was required to take) as of 2011 mostly talked about Milton Friedman's invisible hand and how communism doesn't work. I know it's the narrative on Fox News and chain emails that colleges have become this safe space for SJW snowflakes or whatever, but that really wasn't (and isn't) the case for me. I live in New York right now, and go to a New York public college, with New York typically regarded as a left-leaning state, and it's not like that filled my mathematics degree with a bunch of stuff about gender studies and race relations. My math degree is, unsurprisingly, still basically math. > Why aren't kids reading the Greek philosophers? Plato's Republic is a BRILLIANT piece of work. Aristotle, Socrates. Move forward from that, read Descartes, Kant, Adams and others. So much to learn. So much perspective to acquire. But no, we force kids into immersion in some of the most destructive ideologies known to man. And for what? My philosophy class in a public college actually went through all those philosophers, and in that order. The required philosophy class. Your take on climate change is so ill-informed that I don't know that it needs a rebuttal.
pgcj_poster 7y ago
Karl Marx was notably a philosopher who wrote about the alienation of labor which resulted from a highly specialized capitalist economy. He saw that workers were increasingly separated from the things they produced, and that people who would have once tended for the flock, shorn the sheep, spun the whool, and wove it into clothing were instead spending 16 hours at a machine, isolated from the final creation. He thought this converted people in mere cogs in a machine rather than fully realized creative individuals. If you think that universities should just teach students tools that they need for some specific job, perhaps you would benefit from a course in Marxism, even if many of his ideas are today known to be wrong.
- robomartin 7y ago
  I know quite a bit about Marxism and modern incarnations of his ideologies. Have you ever lived in a Socialist/Marxist society? The only people who think this ideology is good are those who have never lived within the grips of such evil. Well, I have, and I have friends who lived in the USSR who did as well. When anyone talks about Marxism and Socialism everyone shakes their heads in disbelief. For a bit of context, research and read The Gulag Archipelago. If you are truly interested, here's a intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84uRYq0Uc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84uRYq0Uc8 BTW, as a matter of principle I never down-vote anyone on HN or elsewhere. I firmly believe in open discourse and free speech, which means I have to give particular care to opinions with which I might not agree. If you are getting down-votes, it isn't me. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone disagreeing with me so long as the exchange is respectful and intellectually honest.
learc83 7y ago
What college was this that required a "course on Marxism" for a CS degree, and what was the course?
- robomartin 7y ago
  It would not be good form to post this.
  - tombert 7y ago
    How would this be bad form? If this is from a "major university" like you claimed, and if Marxism is bad, isn't it good to tell us this university so we aren't blindsided by it when we enroll our kids in it? It's not like you'd be posting forbidden knowledge; most universities publish their required curriculum.
    - robomartin 7y ago
      I am not going to be baited into bashing specific people or universities. Feel free to arrive at whatever conclusion satisfies your thinking. I don’t care.
      - learc83 7y ago
        No one is trying to bait you into anything. But when you make an extraordinary claim, you need to provide some supporting evidence. Obviously you care whether or not people believe what you wrote to some extent, otherwise why did you take the time to write it at all? Who do you think you're going to harm? The University doesn't think there's anything wrong with what they did, because I guarantee the course requirements are publicly available.
        robomartin 7y ago
        > No one is trying to bait you into anything OK, I retract "baiting". Still not going to publish anything more. > you need to provide some supporting evidence I don't. > Obviously you care whether or not people believe what you wrote to some extent I do, but... > Who do you think you're going to harm? My son. > I guarantee the course requirements are publicly available. Likely true. However the dynamics that lead to having no option but to take such a class without any balancing context --within the class or through a second class-- can only be had by experiencing the journey. I realize what I going to say is a personal perspective and as such it is deeply biased: To me, as a classically trained entrepreneur, neutral student of history and descendant of genocide survivors, teaching a distorted benevolent version of Marxism to kids while not teaching any of the massive downfalls, pain, suffering and death the utterly failed ideology produced is equivalent to, as an atheist, forcing religious dogma to atheists. There is nothing wrong with learning about both Marxism and religion. We should absolutely teach them, but they should be taught without distortion and in the context of other relevant knowledge. If the goal is to indoctrinate, you exclude everything outside of the preferred ideology. If, on the other hand, the objective is to educate, you present as much of the human experience as possible, without favor for one or the other, teach students to reason critically and let them be. As I suggested in my other response, if you are interested in a perspective on what has been going on in academia and how it happened, please watch this interview with an Oxford/Stanford/Harvard professor who chose to expose some of these issues and paid the price for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ
tombert 7y ago
> I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. I went to college for almost two years, and re-enrolled in college late last year doing night classes. I also worked as a research scientist at New York University for around a year (2015-2016), though this was admittedly more in the working world than the educational world. My wife is doing college full-time. This seems like a weirdly dismissive response to me. > For example, my son, who happens to be studying CS at a major university was forced to take a class on Marxism I have never heard of this outside of stuff like the Drudge Report or Fox News; before I dropped out of Florida State University, I never saw Marxism as one of the required classes, and I changed my major from CompSci, to Physics, to Mathematics. Maybe your school is different, but I have seriously never heard of "Marxism" being a required class in any university. > To continue with the example, if my son failed or dropped out of the Marxism class (he did not, he passed it with full marks) it should have no bearing on his overall standing in the CS degree. Did you not actually read the comment you are responding to? I said pretty unambiguously that the classes that seem "useless" often end up informing your perspective in different ways. That was literally the whole point, and it seems like you kind of missed it. To go with your example, it's entirely possible that the Marxism class would give a higher understanding of political theory and philosophy. While your son may not want to be a politician, him having a decent grasp of philosophical reasoning is probably a good thing. >I also disagree with the concept of a fixed timescale being required in order to gain understanding of a topic. There's plenty of evidence in support of this. Companies complain that traditional CS grads don't know how to write code. Yet they spend four to six years in school getting BS or MS degrees. > Frankly, going back to my son, if it weren't for the fact that we work on a number of real-world projects together his coding skills based on schoolwork would likely be substandard. There's a difference between learning to CS to pass tests and applying it in real-world environments. I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear, but no one should go to college thinking that it is sufficient for being a decent engineer, just like having a skeleton is insufficient for having a body, or having an oven is sufficient for having dinner. There is a lot of self-learning you have to do. College is about building fundamentals, and teaching you how to teach yourself. > I would much rather hire someone who devoted a couple of intense years learning and two years full time directly applying and honing the craft than someone who takes four years to study and comes to me with no experience other than, perhaps, a few summers as an intern here and there. And I'm glad people have this mentality...it's kept me employed, but when I've had to hire people, a vast majority of dropouts who work on experience (though not all) have a weak understanding of fundamentals, and while that's not a problem for some domains, it is a problem for mine.

mulderc 7y ago

How was he forced to take a class on Marx? I have never seen that as a required course at any university.

robomartin 7y ago
That was the only class available for several terms that would satisfy the degree requirement. Interestingly enough, that was the only class that was available every term while the others were not. Even more interesting, they never mentioned Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his work, The Gulag Archipelago. Everything was painted through rose colored glasses. Pretty disgusting. Thankfully we have a home where education is deemed important. My son had already read many of the classics before going through college and was well equipped to deal with an ideologically biased situation. He also read some of Gulag Archipelago and knew the history of that work. I recommended he be practical about this class. He did the work, wrote a bullshit paper, got an A and then proceeded to vomit. No harm done.

tapatio 7y ago

Wait, so you only want him to learn about successful political ideologies?

robomartin 7y ago
That is not what I said. No, of course not. But if you ONLY teach Marxism and NOTHING ELSE you are doing the world a huge disservice. Marxism and other ideologies should be taught. Definitely. And they should teach the good, the bad and the ugly. If you want to know what that means, read The Gulag Archipelago for perspective. Education should not be about indoctrination. Sadly there's a lot of that going on. I am not some crazy right wing guy, not even close. I'm just sick of what our universities have turned into. Someone goes to school to study computer science and they are treated to a solid dose of rosy-glasses Marxism. Those who go into humanities are in for full-on indoctrination. This is a horrible disservice to humanity. Again, someone please tell me where the intersection between Marxism and Computer Science exists. I've been in CS/Engineering for over 30 years and can't find it. Why aren't kids reading the Greek philosophers? Plato's Republic is a BRILLIANT piece of work. Aristotle, Socrates. Move forward from that, read Descartes, Kant, Adams and others. So much to learn. So much perspective to acquire. But no, we force kids into immersion in some of the most destructive ideologies known to man. And for what? Not go off on a tangent, but this is also what is happening now with the whole Climate Change mess. That poor girl from Sweden is being used in vile ways. One of the worst example of indoctrination I have seen in my life. The only thing I that comes to mind that is worse than that are kids indoctrinated into terrorism and hatred. What depths has society sunk to? Before someone jumps on me. Yes, of course Climate Change is real. Nobody is saying it isn't. And yes, of course we added 100 ppm of CO2 in the last ~1000 years. The issue is, no, we are not all going to die in 12 years and, no, none of what they want to do will help anyone for tens of thousands of years. This is a mess and using children in pursuit of political objectives is a horrific ugly thing.
- tombert 7y ago
  > Education should not be about indoctrination. Sadly there's a lot of that going on. I am not some crazy right wing guy, not even close. I'm just sick of what our universities have turned into. Someone goes to school to study computer science and they are treated to a solid dose of rosy-glasses Marxism. Those who go into humanities are in for full-on indoctrination. This is a horrible disservice to humanity. I seriously don't know what university you're talking about. Florida State University's economics classes (which I was required to take) as of 2011 mostly talked about Milton Friedman's invisible hand and how communism doesn't work. I know it's the narrative on Fox News and chain emails that colleges have become this safe space for SJW snowflakes or whatever, but that really wasn't (and isn't) the case for me. I live in New York right now, and go to a New York public college, with New York typically regarded as a left-leaning state, and it's not like that filled my mathematics degree with a bunch of stuff about gender studies and race relations. My math degree is, unsurprisingly, still basically math. > Why aren't kids reading the Greek philosophers? Plato's Republic is a BRILLIANT piece of work. Aristotle, Socrates. Move forward from that, read Descartes, Kant, Adams and others. So much to learn. So much perspective to acquire. But no, we force kids into immersion in some of the most destructive ideologies known to man. And for what? My philosophy class in a public college actually went through all those philosophers, and in that order. The required philosophy class. Your take on climate change is so ill-informed that I don't know that it needs a rebuttal.

pgcj_poster 7y ago

Karl Marx was notably a philosopher who wrote about the alienation of labor which resulted from a highly specialized capitalist economy. He saw that workers were increasingly separated from the things they produced, and that people who would have once tended for the flock, shorn the sheep, spun the whool, and wove it into clothing were instead spending 16 hours at a machine, isolated from the final creation. He thought this converted people in mere cogs in a machine rather than fully realized creative individuals. If you think that universities should just teach students tools that they need for some specific job, perhaps you would benefit from a course in Marxism, even if many of his ideas are today known to be wrong.

robomartin 7y ago
I know quite a bit about Marxism and modern incarnations of his ideologies. Have you ever lived in a Socialist/Marxist society? The only people who think this ideology is good are those who have never lived within the grips of such evil. Well, I have, and I have friends who lived in the USSR who did as well. When anyone talks about Marxism and Socialism everyone shakes their heads in disbelief. For a bit of context, research and read The Gulag Archipelago. If you are truly interested, here's a intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84uRYq0Uc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84uRYq0Uc8 BTW, as a matter of principle I never down-vote anyone on HN or elsewhere. I firmly believe in open discourse and free speech, which means I have to give particular care to opinions with which I might not agree. If you are getting down-votes, it isn't me. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone disagreeing with me so long as the exchange is respectful and intellectually honest.

learc83 7y ago

What college was this that required a "course on Marxism" for a CS degree, and what was the course?

robomartin 7y ago
It would not be good form to post this.
- tombert 7y ago
  How would this be bad form? If this is from a "major university" like you claimed, and if Marxism is bad, isn't it good to tell us this university so we aren't blindsided by it when we enroll our kids in it? It's not like you'd be posting forbidden knowledge; most universities publish their required curriculum.
  - robomartin 7y ago
    I am not going to be baited into bashing specific people or universities. Feel free to arrive at whatever conclusion satisfies your thinking. I don’t care.
    - learc83 7y ago
      No one is trying to bait you into anything. But when you make an extraordinary claim, you need to provide some supporting evidence. Obviously you care whether or not people believe what you wrote to some extent, otherwise why did you take the time to write it at all? Who do you think you're going to harm? The University doesn't think there's anything wrong with what they did, because I guarantee the course requirements are publicly available.
      - robomartin 7y ago
        > No one is trying to bait you into anything OK, I retract "baiting". Still not going to publish anything more. > you need to provide some supporting evidence I don't. > Obviously you care whether or not people believe what you wrote to some extent I do, but... > Who do you think you're going to harm? My son. > I guarantee the course requirements are publicly available. Likely true. However the dynamics that lead to having no option but to take such a class without any balancing context --within the class or through a second class-- can only be had by experiencing the journey. I realize what I going to say is a personal perspective and as such it is deeply biased: To me, as a classically trained entrepreneur, neutral student of history and descendant of genocide survivors, teaching a distorted benevolent version of Marxism to kids while not teaching any of the massive downfalls, pain, suffering and death the utterly failed ideology produced is equivalent to, as an atheist, forcing religious dogma to atheists. There is nothing wrong with learning about both Marxism and religion. We should absolutely teach them, but they should be taught without distortion and in the context of other relevant knowledge. If the goal is to indoctrinate, you exclude everything outside of the preferred ideology. If, on the other hand, the objective is to educate, you present as much of the human experience as possible, without favor for one or the other, teach students to reason critically and let them be. As I suggested in my other response, if you are interested in a perspective on what has been going on in academia and how it happened, please watch this interview with an Oxford/Stanford/Harvard professor who chose to expose some of these issues and paid the price for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ

tombert 7y ago

> I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. I went to college for almost two years, and re-enrolled in college late last year doing night classes. I also worked as a research scientist at New York University for around a year (2015-2016), though this was admittedly more in the working world than the educational world. My wife is doing college full-time. This seems like a weirdly dismissive response to me. > For example, my son, who happens to be studying CS at a major university was forced to take a class on Marxism I have never heard of this outside of stuff like the Drudge Report or Fox News; before I dropped out of Florida State University, I never saw Marxism as one of the required classes, and I changed my major from CompSci, to Physics, to Mathematics. Maybe your school is different, but I have seriously never heard of "Marxism" being a required class in any university. > To continue with the example, if my son failed or dropped out of the Marxism class (he did not, he passed it with full marks) it should have no bearing on his overall standing in the CS degree. Did you not actually read the comment you are responding to? I said pretty unambiguously that the classes that seem "useless" often end up informing your perspective in different ways. That was literally the whole point, and it seems like you kind of missed it. To go with your example, it's entirely possible that the Marxism class would give a higher understanding of political theory and philosophy. While your son may not want to be a politician, him having a decent grasp of philosophical reasoning is probably a good thing. >I also disagree with the concept of a fixed timescale being required in order to gain understanding of a topic. There's plenty of evidence in support of this. Companies complain that traditional CS grads don't know how to write code. Yet they spend four to six years in school getting BS or MS degrees. > Frankly, going back to my son, if it weren't for the fact that we work on a number of real-world projects together his coding skills based on schoolwork would likely be substandard. There's a difference between learning to CS to pass tests and applying it in real-world environments. I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear, but no one should go to college thinking that it is sufficient for being a decent engineer, just like having a skeleton is insufficient for having a body, or having an oven is sufficient for having dinner. There is a lot of self-learning you have to do. College is about building fundamentals, and teaching you how to teach yourself. > I would much rather hire someone who devoted a couple of intense years learning and two years full time directly applying and honing the craft than someone who takes four years to study and comes to me with no experience other than, perhaps, a few summers as an intern here and there. And I'm glad people have this mentality...it's kept me employed, but when I've had to hire people, a vast majority of dropouts who work on experience (though not all) have a weak understanding of fundamentals, and while that's not a problem for some domains, it is a problem for mine.