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School's so stupid. If you give people a grade and tell them to maximize it, with no meaningful rewards that they can understand, they're going to cheat. Duh. I
by staticassertion 5y ago
School's so stupid. If you give people a grade and tell them to maximize it, with no meaningful rewards that they can understand, they're going to cheat. Duh. I regret not cheating in school, what a waste of time all of that shit was.
The teacher is basically like "haha dumb kids, we know you're cheating" and "if only we could punish students more!". There's a lot of "the smart kids are suffering because of the dumb kids" attitude here that I find disgusting.
> That too was in keeping with a theme. The teacher email I mentioned above was from one of the conference threads, but the emails sent to me personally from counselors and administrators have overwhelmingly broken down along these lines: such-and-such a student is feeling stressed, so please excuse her from this set of assignments. This other student gets nervous about taking tests or giving presentations or working in groups, so please excuse him from work of those types.
Oh god, how awful that these students won't get to suffer through some idiot's assignment that I'm sure would greatly better their life.
There's a lot wrong with school but I feel like this teacher doesn't realize that they're a part of that.
> Wow, a 100% pass rate! What a successful school!
Yes, it's cheating. They have an incentive, as your students do, to 'pass', and so they cheat.
Give students a place to be during the day while their parents work. Give them real, meaningful incentives that matter to young people - money, freedom, social structure, a feeling of productivity - and align those with learning real, practical skills, like how to read, write, analyze context, etc.
Hire non-idiots, pay them more, reduce class sizes. Yeah it'll cost more, but the obvious economic benefits will offset that. I can count on one hand how many teachers I had that I respected - the rest were obvious failures.
- um_ya 5y agoI like the school voucher idea a lot. Give parents a voucher, as good as cash, for their child and let them choose the school. Private companies will compete for those vouchers, aligning focus on satisfying the parents and the children, rather than the government.
- crooked-v 5y agoThat sounds like a great way to indirectly punish parents who can't afford commutes for their children, since they get stuck with whichever schools the wealthier parents pull their children from.
- um_ya 5y agoThe idea is that schools would compete for as many vouchers as they could, meaning they'd be willing to send buses out to your area, or find other ways to accommodate the parents with before school programs, ect.
- dane-pgp 5y ago> Private companies will compete for those vouchers "Send your kid to our school, and we promise they'll always score 100% on their tests!"
- um_ya 5y agoThe parents choose where to spend the voucher. Unless you think parents value "100% on their tests" more than receiving a quality education. I trust a parent's judgment more than administrators looking to prop up their numbers.
- jackson1442 5y agoYeah, some parents do value “100% on their tests” more than receiving a quality education. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/22/college-admissions-scandal-rick-singer-abbott-sartorio-sat-cheating-act/3765323002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/22/colleg...
- grumple 5y agoThat's fine, let them care about that. Let the rest of us that care about the education quality find that where we may.
- somnic 5y agoThe assumption that accreditation and education must be done by the same organization is absurd, really. Public schools evidently have the exact same incentives. The answer is that third parties should be evaluating education, not administration making up numbers and giving themselves a pat on the back for doing so well. Of course, teaching to the test isn't ideal. But it looks like the alternative isn't a well-rounded education, but not teaching at all.