4 ms·

I really don't believe in the academic system we have now. It feels like an elitist club. Grades are only a snapshot of your current understanding of something.

I really don't believe in the academic system we have now. It feels like an elitist club. Grades are only a snapshot of your current understanding of something. Given enough time and interest, anyone can earn high marks. If I was in this class, I'd only care if I was able to learn what I came there to learn. I have friends who go through hell being on their anti-psych meds and anti-depressants because of uni. I wish the culture in university was more empathetic to their needs.

NoPicklez 6y ago
Just curious, what alternatives do you suggest to enable Universities to measure the capabilities of their students? Afterall, you can't allow a student doctor to graduate and practice if they don't sufficiently know what they're doing (extreme case). Perhaps only allowing for a pass or fail grade maybe?
- hn_asker 6y ago
  I'm a fan of IBL style courses. I don't know if it scales well but it isn't obvious to me that it can't. If a student can teach better than the teacher, then that should be good enough. The point of higher education is to create independent critical thinkers. IBL is particularly good at this in STEM courses by my personal experience. It's a narrow perspective admittedly. I suspect this is how education was really done before all this non-sense about grades. Elite schools select for the the best teachers anyway. Plus, knowing that students can eventually produce other students makes it easier for researchers to focus on their specialty. They may even come to the students for help. I'm not a big fan of time and deadlines either. Being quick and clever is great but you can do just fine being a conventional thinker that is persistent and diligent. The point is to refactor the academic system to be robust enough to adjust to a person's life. Right now it is a rigid system traumatizing the people it's supposed to serve.

NoPicklez 6y ago

Just curious, what alternatives do you suggest to enable Universities to measure the capabilities of their students? Afterall, you can't allow a student doctor to graduate and practice if they don't sufficiently know what they're doing (extreme case). Perhaps only allowing for a pass or fail grade maybe?

hn_asker 6y ago
I'm a fan of IBL style courses. I don't know if it scales well but it isn't obvious to me that it can't. If a student can teach better than the teacher, then that should be good enough. The point of higher education is to create independent critical thinkers. IBL is particularly good at this in STEM courses by my personal experience. It's a narrow perspective admittedly. I suspect this is how education was really done before all this non-sense about grades. Elite schools select for the the best teachers anyway. Plus, knowing that students can eventually produce other students makes it easier for researchers to focus on their specialty. They may even come to the students for help. I'm not a big fan of time and deadlines either. Being quick and clever is great but you can do just fine being a conventional thinker that is persistent and diligent. The point is to refactor the academic system to be robust enough to adjust to a person's life. Right now it is a rigid system traumatizing the people it's supposed to serve.