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I asked my students to turn in their cell phones and write about it
- rkagerer 7y agoAs I read this excellent article my dog sitting beside me looked up at me several times to say "hey human, quit staring at that screen!"
- jbverschoor 7y agoStory has holes in it. They agreed to part for 9 days, yet after only two weeks they began to think phones are limiting their relationships.
- foobar1962 7y agoThe teacher has done this for a couple of years, and I think the timelines have become mixed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wnzl 7y agoMy experience with education is that you are often forced to write in order "to please" the teacher, rather than express yourself (if you want the proper degree). So personally I do not really believe in any of those numbers. Edit: At least not on academic level, there I think it looks bit differently.
- r_singh 7y agoGoing to school and college in India, I always thought it would be better in the west, where I assumed teachers would, on average, be more open minded towards different opinions from students. Cause bias against opinions expressed in writing assignments was a concern I had too.
- WalterBright 7y agoI just avoided classes that had writing assignments because I was tired of having to ape the teacher's opinions.
- chmod775 7y agoI often had opinions very unlike those of my ethics teacher and she gave me decent grades anyways as long as I made reasoned arguments. Depends on the subject really. It's probably not a good idea to try any stunts in history etc.
- sdenton4 7y agoYou might enjoy this song, "how I failed ethics" by the magnetic fields. https://youtu.be/Hu5dEXZ7DOY https://youtu.be/Hu5dEXZ7DOY "Though majoring in Visual and Environmental Studies And minoring in History of Sci I had to retake Ethics from my Mennonite professor For whom my skepticism didn't fly. "The first time I made mincemeat of the standard propositions Establishing a so-called moral science And I declared morality an offshoot of aesthetics And got a failing C for my defiance."
- salawat 7y agoI have never really felt compelled to "ape" a teacher's opinions. Demonstrate a sufficient and working understanding of? Yes; which I guess could be considered aping. However I can't recall a time I've been outright penalized for challenging a teacher's take as long as some greater mistake in making my case was not at the same time undertaken. For instance, the misapplication of logical device, or tortured cherrypicking of data/context. I've never professed to understand why many people view academia as an institution in which the end goal is to agree with the professor for the grade. I've always treated it as an institution for the search for answers to questions where the searching for good questions is arguably more important and more difficult than finding the answers. I can't count the number of times I've felt dejected because I've had an armload of data or observations that are somehow related, and I've not been able to do anything but stew in angst because while there was some meaning to it, I could never figure out how to formulate the question to which the observations were the answer. Then again, I stuck around long enough for my Bachelor's, then got out. I might not have gotten to the point where there is a much higher stake in tipping the Professor's Sacred Cow.
- chinesempire 7y ago> My experience with education is that you are often forced to write in order "to please" the teacher It, honestly, doesn't sound true. Teachers have ego, yes, but they also can recognise value in student's work, even if it doesn't please them. Of course the wrong answer is wrong, even if the student put a lot of effort in it.
- Spooky23 7y agoMany students interpret bad grades in writing assignments as bias on the teachers’ part. That can happen, but more often the position or argument expressed isn’t necessarily derived from knowledge. Aping the teacher/professor is the fast path, not only for the purposes of being agreeable, but because the argument is well thought out at some level. Part of the educational processes is being able to make an argument that you don’t agree with.
- will4274 7y agoHumans are able to fill in the blanks on arguments that they already understand and do so implicitly without even noticing. So, if you make an argument the professor agrees with and is familiar with, you can skip steps, and the professor will still grok it. If your argument is novel or unfamiliar, missing steps appear as logical leaps, even though those same missing steps appear as extraneous detail to somebody already familiar with the argument.
- chinesempire 7y ago> If your argument is novel or unfamiliar ... you probably are a genius! Students usually talk about things they don't know, understand or can relate to (yet). Or, as Alan Kay put it > Socrates didn't charge for "education" because when you are in business, the "customer starts to become right". Whereas in education, the customer is generally "not right"
- sdan 7y agoThis can definitely play a role. Over the past several semesters all I've been doing is writing whatever the teacher wants to hear: their interests, political leanings, ideologies, everything. Why? Because it works and because I'm trying to "hack" the system, in PG's words. Back to the point, I think some students may very well just write whatever they think the teacher wants to hear and compounded with those extra credit points, you get selection bias in it of itself. The teacher may have a point, but maybe take it with a grain of salt. As a teen I see a ton of people using their phones constantly and decided to go cold turkey after my junior year (no social media except twitter to stay up to date with ML research and HN for cool articles). Now instead of spending time addicted to whatever everyone else is, I spend a ton more time coding and learning cool stuff.
- hanniabu 7y agoMy biggest peeve is the length requirements with writing. There's no need for fluff unless you're going into literature. People need to learn how to succinctly get their point across. I remember we'd have reports where we need to write 10 pages and I would finish everything in 4 pages and have no idea what to do after that and then it just becomes a game of bullshitting to draw it out. Same thing with essays where it needs to be a page long and I'm able to answer on a paragraph.
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoWe had informal requirements (or better, "expectations") for the length of a PhD thesis (physics). It was about 200 pages. Mine was a whooping 40 pages. Introduction to the subject was two sentences and the fact that if you need an introduction to the matter you should probably not be reading this thesis which deals with a super specialized area. One of the reviewers refused to read it on the basis of the size. The four others looked relieved not to have to go though the history of physics again. I hope that things are changing in this age of blogs and concerned information, the French idea of a thesis made of published articles and a few pages of glue is great.
- hos234 7y agoYou should be able to make that case to your prof. You would probably get points for it :) Some profs are subject matter experts who have no actual understanding of Pedagogy. So they pick up whatever rules someone else tells them to use, and then with time figure out what works and doesn't from feedback (which students are always very hesitant to give).
- neltnerb 7y agoI have actually repeatedly heard the same complaint from professors. They don't want to read a bunch of 20 page papers when the standard in the field for (technical) publications is like 4. So they put maximum page limits on, which makes vastly more sense all around. Maybe in philosophy it's necessary because the standard media is books or long essays so making sure you can play the "game of bullshitting" is a useful vocational skill in that field, to make your text long enough for people to buy your book. No offense intended to philosophers, I love philosophy. But practical considerations like earning a living from a philosophy degree are perhaps different. It's kind of hard to sum up a new philosophical treatise in four pages since you'd probably take that long just to define your version of what "good" means.
- awild 7y agoIt sounded like the papers were ungraded. Which is something I encountered a few times in philosophy seminars and really appreciate.
- analog31 7y agoToday, students should write "to please" future employers and social credit rating algorithms.
- WWLink 7y agoI had a class or two taught by a teacher like that, but the majority of the time this wasn't the case.
- jon889 7y agoI don't understand why he decided to do his experiment after the students told him it was because they didn't understand the words in the book. But anyway, I think some of this is true that things like social media have gone to far in attracting our attention. But also a lot of blame is with the structure of education. Listening to one person for at least an hour with sometimes a hundred other people in the room is not a good way of learning, at least not for everyone. Also learning to remember to complete a closed book exam is not a useful skill anymore. One of the good things about phones is that almost any information can be found almost instantly almost anywhere. No need to remember formulas or dates. Instead how to find information, verify it, and use it is far more important.
- gcthomas 7y ago> Also learning to remember to complete a closed book exam is not a useful skill anymore. Looking up stuff is no good if you can't integrate it with a pre-existing scaffolding of concepts and knowledge. That pre-existing knowledge is essential to being able to make use of the search results.
- ForHackernews 7y ago> learning to remember to complete a closed book exam is not a useful skill anymore. Unless you need to pass a whiteboard job interview that depends on remembering some obscure algorithm. ;)
- capableweb 7y ago> Unless you need to pass a whiteboard job interview No one _needs_ to pass those kind of interviews. There are plenty of jobs that doesn't require that at all. But if you want to, it is sure handy to be able to remember obscure algorithms.
- chinesempire 7y ago> One of the good things about phones is that almost any information can be found almost instantly almost anywhere. If you need to constantly look up informations, it means you have no long term knowledge of anything. Hence you can't verify that piece of information. > Also learning to remember to complete a closed book exam is not a useful skill anymore The long term knowledge, AKA "your expertise" kindly disagree. You can't look up informations when you are at a meeting with the client. You should already know what you're talking about and know the answer to the most probable questions. Prior knowledge gives you confidence, without building a "memory only" information storage you can't be sure of anything. What do you do if you disagree? Engage in a google battle? Or, even worse, use Wikipedia as a baseline for the truth?
- 7532yahoogmail 7y agoWow. Really, really bold leadership here. He actually asked students to go without their phones ... the student's family were happy the teacher didn't ask for them too. Such power! Meanwhile, a university professor, - isn't mom/dad by pseudo punishing students removing phones - isn't moonlighting as pseudo pysch researcher who guessed phones were the problem - isn't a cool guru by wowing kids into wisdom with this unexpected ploy If your students did bad on their exam - make improvements as a teacher if you feel some responsibility lay with you (there's no need to gas on about this to students) - leave the grades unchanged - stop confusing the issue with stupid exercises then self marketing it into media
- lagadu 7y agoIf most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.
- sharedfrog 7y agoIn this case, maybe (I haven't read the article). But generally, I'd be wary of saying this. It conflates a complex subject to a single, easy answer which, incidentally, abolishes students of any responsibility for their own learning.
- ggggtez 7y agoAnd it abolishes the professor of responsibility as well. Not to say the author is entirely full of it, but broad generalizations blaming the existence of cellphones for the problems of our entire culture is way too reductionist.
- chinesempire 7y ago> the problem lies with the one factor in common Why not having a family? Or living in the the same country? Or having the same educational system? Correlation is not causation.
- lagadu 7y ago- Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have - Because other students in the same country succeed - Because other students in the same educational system succeed That argument only works if you manage to isolate the conditions to almost perfectly match a group, mine was "this teacher, teaching this subject" and the data fits. Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" when there are students with other teachers that use phones as well and don't fail makes blaming phones an illogical conclusion.
- chinesempire 7y ago> - Because the original premise hasn't controlled for family, we can only work with the data we have I don't think data says what you imply though > Because other students in the same country succeed [citation needed] The teacher in the article poses an ipothesys - he has the suspect the phones might be partially involved in the problem So he puts the hipotesys to test - he asks his students what went wrong - they answered, according to the article quotes “We don’t understand what the books say, sir. We don’t understand the words.” - he asks them to not use their phones for 9 days, offering an extra credit as a reward after the test he collected results. Among the other, I'll quote the first one > “Writing a paper and not having a phone boosted productivity at least twice as much,” Elliott claimed. “You are concentrated on one task and not worrying about anything else. Studying for a test was much easier as well because I was not distracted by the phone at all.” It looks to me that they were actually having a problem which is not their professor. > Because other students in the same educational system succeed Are they? Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-30/across-the-board-scores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-... > Regardless, crying "my students use phones and all of them are failing" That's not what he did, what you are doing is manipulative, it's a well know bias called "false premise" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise
- samdung 7y agoRemember the old days when a bunch of friends would agree to meet at any place and all of us would find each other after arriving at that place. Wonder if that would be possible today?
- nefitty 7y agoIt sounds like you think technology has fully eroded everyone's ability to plan. I doubt that's the case. We just use different tools now, and expend less time/energy on logistics.
- ekianjo 7y agoI think you conveniently forget the days where people were 30 mins late and you had to wait for them in the cold not knowing where they were and when they would arrive.
- the-dude 7y agoI my recollection, this hardly happened. And a friend would not do this.
- Spooky23 7y agoThat didn’t happen often to me, and when it did we just moved on. Today, we’re all stuck in these passive aggressive text standoffs in prisoner dilemma situations about where to go or what to order. Smartphones were superpowers when only a few folks had them. Now, they are not that!
- DocG 7y agoSeems about right. I did a self test on myself, leaving phone at home for the work whole week. No other restrictions, this worked great. It had the benefit of still using phone whenever I needed it, not missing interaction but having much more concentration while doing work related tasks and forced reasonable amount of self reflection time while in transit. For permanent basis I would request work dumb-phone from employer, that will stay on my office desk. Other than that, a lot of anxety related to phone got removed once the phone is on permanent silent, all unknown numbers are blocked silently, notifications are limited. Phone is for people who I want to interact when I can. FOMO
- MperorM 7y agoWhile I take a lot of issues with the article itself, I concur the core message completely due to having done the experiment myself. Two months ago I gave up my phone for a week, for a class on ethics along with a single other student. Not being able to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and music everywhere I go, I fell into so many more conversations than I normally would in a week. what I realized was that, while I didn't feel addicted to my phone I definitely was missing out on a lot of unique interactions by wearing headphones everywhere I went.
- jseliger 7y agoWhile I take a lot of issues with the article itself, I concur the core message completely due to having done the experiment myself. This has been my experience in teaching as well: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distraction-hardly-a-surprise https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract...
- skizm 7y ago> I definitely was missing out on a lot of unique interactions by wearing headphones everywhere I went. As someone who works in a big city, this is why I wear my headphones everywhere. I am usually not even listening to anything, I just don't want random people to engage me.
- collyw 7y agoThat seems quite irrational. I don't wear headphones in public very often, and its rarely that someone wants to interact with me. Usually its just to ask where some street is, and it actually feels quite good if you are able to help someone.
- reidjs 7y agoI appreciate where you're coming from and wish that were usually the case, but where I live 99/100 public interactions are to guilt you out of your money one way or another. Everyone's got to make money somehow so I respect their right to ask, but if I'm not in the mood to give away cash why waste their time by acknowledging them? I've never had to beg for money, but imagine you _really_ need a few bucks ASAP. You get someone's attention and they start talking about their problems, offer you some half eaten food, etc but ultimately refuse to give you some money. I would rather these good-hearted but cheap folks ignore me so I can talk to people who are in the giving spirit.
- wllknj 7y agoThe author is best known for complaining about modern education and having a low opinion of his students. The fact that he would respond to students not understanding the book he assigned by telling them their phones are the problem is unsurprising. Here is a pretty good summary of his MO which apparently hasn't changed much since a few years ago. https://hookandeye.ca/2016/03/23/the-unbearable-privilege-of-cynicism/ https://hookandeye.ca/2016/03/23/the-unbearable-privilege-of...
- thisone 7y agoahh, I did think that first student "quote" seemed made up by someone who doesn't listen to students.
- darkmighty 7y agoIndeed, most of my education was without (smart) phones, and teachers rarely had my raw undivided attention. I were quite frequently working on more interesting stuff (hobbies, math, stories), daydreaming, etc. Students are humans, and they have preferences -- and that's an excellent sign (that creates differentiation, that makes students more cognitively flexible, more adaptive). My preferences don't align perfectly with the curriculum and I were free to explore as I wanted (without disturbing other students of course), as long as I did my duty of learning enough to pass the course. In the worst case I've always had the refuge of my mind. To demand sole attention unconditionally and continuously is thought-police-alike. That said, there are certainly perils with too much distraction and smartphone usage. I'm a firm believer in human instinct guiding toward positive usage of technology, but there are unquestionably failings in our instincts -- there have been for quite a while. Television was a big one for me -- it's immensely more attractive than a book; but books can be much more gratifying and educational once you get started; it's just more work. Yet there was always a lot of value added by judicious usage of television -- documentaries, non-vacuous talk shows, good film, etc. Online games too -- I've spent a good chunk of my childhood in front a PC playing an MMORPG. Seems like a waste of time (and some of it was), but I've experienced a world of politics, fierce competition, intense cooperation, trading and all sorts of economical endeavors, friendship, cruelty and kindness in the safety of my home, with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures; I've learned a English and became extremely proficient almost entirely through the game. It also ran the risk of getting me addicted and isolating me entirely from real life social interactions; that risk was averted (and I would certainly still have a dearth of social interaction due to family problems) -- mostly through my own good judgement but also from pleads of caution from my parents and siblings. I still remember events, lessons and friends from those days. Surprise: we'll have to keep dealing with the ambivalence of technology. --- "The one solid fact is that the difficulties are due to an evolution that, while useful and constructive, is also dangerous. Can we produce the required adjustments with the necessary speed? The most hopeful answer is that the human species has been subjected to similar tests before and seems to have a congenital ability to come through, after varying amounts of trouble. To ask in advance for a complete recipe would be unreasonable. We can specify only the human qualities required: patience, flexibility, intelligence." From 1955: Can we survive technology? http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf "What kind of action does this situation call for? What-ever one feels inclined to do, one decisive trait must be considered: the very techniques that create the dangers and the instabilities are in themselves useful, or closely related to the useful. In fact, the more useful they could be, the more unstabilizing their effects can also be. It is not a particular perverse destructiveness of one particular invention that creates danger. Technological power, technological efficiency as such, is an ambivalent achievement. Its danger is intrinsic. "
- spodek 7y agoHaving foregone nearly all packaged food and all flying for about five years, I can report similar results -- discovering that what was supposed to be more convenient, bringing the world closer, connecting me to family, and exposing me to more culture did the opposite. Next to nobody I've shared my experiences with considers going without packaged food and flying possible, let alone my results, but experience speaks louder than their speculation.
- episteme 7y agoHave you done a writeup of how you made the switching to entirely non packaged food? I would imagine it would involve a lot more grocery trips?
- spodek 7y agoI've written several blog posts on it and my two TEDx talks cover more. TEDx talks: http://joshuaspodek.com/my-second-tedx-talk-what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-the-environment-and-how-to-get-it-right-went-live http://joshuaspodek.com/my-second-tedx-talk-what-everyone-ge... Blog post listing of other posts: http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2 http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2 Note: not entirely non-packaged. I fill about a load of garbage per year. Yesterday I threw out my load for 2019: http://joshuaspodek.com/emptying-my-household-garbage-for-the-first-time-in-2019 http://joshuaspodek.com/emptying-my-household-garbage-for-th... Here are reviews of my famous no-packaging vegetable stews: http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews
- sethammons 7y agowe've mostly eliminated packaged food for years now, it is usually healthier and tastier to make it yourself. Some things make it past that filter for convenience. On the flying one, it is hard for me to understand. I literally never flew anywhere until I was nearly 30, where I had a work trip. Outside of work, I've flown once.
- jccalhoun 7y agoDid I miss the part where he says what their grades were after this experiment? Without any specific improvements it is just someone complaining about kids these days.
- pdpi 7y agoIt’s also the “kids these days” agreeing with the professor, which is definitely different from other get off my lawn type posts
- ggggtez 7y agoI'm not quite sold on that either. The professor obviously cherry picks the quotes that would show him in the best light. And students know what answer the professor wants to hear, and he is giving them bonus points on their grade for participating in the experiment. Not to mention that a student who participates in the bonus-point offer is likely a student who is doing badly in the class and would appreciate the assistance from the points and from removing the distractions, as they likely are the same students that think the professor knows what he's talking about, otherwise why would they volunteer for the experiment at all? In that situation, it would not be difficult to cherry pick some supporting opinions. Remember, this is not exactly a controlled experiment.
- WomanCanCode 7y agoProfessors generally have academic freedom to try such stunts to get into media. But still seems like a pointless experiment in a philosophy class. Anyone know why colleges are not more focused on getting kids ready for working environment?
- Abishek_Muthian 7y agoForget about giving up smartphones, would it be even possible to teach ourselves some notification etiquette[1] e.g. while sending a chat text setting the priority level for it i.e. if cat gif (delayed) and if something important (immediate) etc. I think the app behemoths which gained from the notification pollution would never implement anything which forces etiquette to the user and that the well-being measures launched in Android and iOS are useless when it comes to limiting smartphone usage. [1]https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobile-productivity https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobil...
- will4274 7y agoIt's a simple pattern. 1. Offer extra credit for some wacky experiments with students 2. Make it clear to the experimental subjects what results you want to hear in advance 3. Complete the experiment without any rigour (blinding) and hear the results you wanted to hear It's not at all surprising to me that a group of students sucking up to a professor for extra credit would say just what they thought the professor wanted to hear, whether they believed it or not.
- krishsai 7y agoYes, cell phones or gadgets are making people isolated instead of making them more social. Keeping gadgets away from us will make us more creative and perform batter. Would like to experiment with me as well.