3 ms·

"To me this sounds like the teacher screwed up." Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Of course it

by roel_v 15y ago

"To me this sounds like the teacher screwed up." Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Of course it's possible that there is a teacher who for several weeks/months says 'looks good, go for it' and then out of the blue, at the end, decides to do a 180, fails the students and says 'I'm failing you because I don't understand'. But despite me knowing quite a few idiots and incompetent people, that just doesn't sound very much like something that would really happen in the way it is being painted. Of course I don't know the student, so I'm not going to go out and say that he's a liar, either. But there is room between calling somebody a liar and word for word believing a random stranger on the internet. Which is why I commented that in these cases, I'd prefer to hear the other side of the story, rather than using an obviously colored view as 'proof' for the article's author preconceived notions.

GeneralMaximus 15y ago
> Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Not at all. I'm in India. I regularly score terrible marks because my teachers don't understand my projects, not even when I limit my projects to things that most college students across the world are assigned as homework. A week ago I tried to explain to my teacher how I'm going to build a Scheme interpreter for my final year project. Now, this teacher spends about fifteen minutes talking to most students about their projects, most of which are basic CRUD apps/websites done in Java or C#. She spent all of 3 minutes with me, and then sent me on my way. All this time, she thought I was building a "steam interpreter". I'd tried really hard to explain to her what Scheme was, and I'd even shown her some example code in the Racket REPL. At the end of my explanation, she was blank. At the end of the year, every guy with a partially-working, hacked-together ASP.NET CRUD app that he grabbed off of CodeProject is going to walk away with an 85 or a 90, and I'll score a 75 or something. This happens every semester we have a project. Oh, and this isn't even the first time I'm getting screwed. Moreover, I'm not the only Indian kid who regularly gets screwed. The blogosphere is replete with nightmarish tales of Indian teachers screwing over students. I don't know about the UK, but 99% of the teachers here in India are absolute shitheads who don't deserve their jobs. And here's a little bonus for those who read this far: tomorrow, I have to explain some of the concepts behind ZFS to my teacher. Whee.
- chc 15y ago
  This sounds like a perfect case study for Patrick's advice about awesome points.
- DanBC 15y ago
  For school: just do the work that will get you the good grades, no matter how tedious it is. For home: hey, that's when you do the Steam Interpreter.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Three pieces of advice. 1) Write some shitty CRUD app in C# for school, and write your scheme interpreter just for fun. Don't waste your time fighting with a prof, just play the game and move on. 2) Add README files to your github projects. Some prospective employers will ignore your grades/cv and browse your github - readme files will help them. Put the scheme interpreter here too, even if it's just a fun little project. 2) When you are looking for a job, send me an email. I'm CTO at a startup based out of Pune and NY. When you graduate we'll either be hiring or bankrupt, and in the former case we probably want to talk to you (see point 2).
  - GeneralMaximus 15y ago
    Sound advice. Everyone has been telling me that, so maybe I should start listening ;) Thanks for the offer. I'll keep you in mind when I'm looking for a job next year.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Maybe, but in this specific story, the claim is that a teacher first says it's OK, that the student followed the marking criteria he was given, that the teacher during the course of the project still said it was OK and that then, at grading time, the teacher turned around completely and all of a sudden said that he didn't understand anything about it, and therefore had to fail the student. Many dysfunctional examples from systems across the world notwithstanding, this particular one doesn't pass the sniff test.
- solutionyogi 15y ago
postdesk 15y ago
Not a liar. It's the exact same experience I had during ICT GCSE from 2004-2006. It's not so much a 'I'm failing you because I don't understand', it's more a 'I'm failing you because the exam board doesn't understand'. Even building a pond liner calculator in Microsoft Excel we had to explain every single step of the process, in writing which took literally weeks in order to get the 'documentation' as they call it to A grade standard (as opposed to creating the thing which took about an hour). I can imagine with regard to developing an iPhone application his story is 100% plausible. What people are missing is a) The difference between ICT and Computing (especially at GCSE and A level), and also the fact that blame should be pointed at the exam boards and NOT the teachers themselves, many of whom will share your views and be commenting alongside you here. They have to legally adhere to the exam board specifications and whilst many teachers push the boundaries as far as they can (just as the teacher in this example did), it's quite clear why many don't (again - just see the example posted by Emma).

by roel_v 15y ago

GeneralMaximus 15y ago

> Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Not at all. I'm in India. I regularly score terrible marks because my teachers don't understand my projects, not even when I limit my projects to things that most college students across the world are assigned as homework. A week ago I tried to explain to my teacher how I'm going to build a Scheme interpreter for my final year project. Now, this teacher spends about fifteen minutes talking to most students about their projects, most of which are basic CRUD apps/websites done in Java or C#. She spent all of 3 minutes with me, and then sent me on my way. All this time, she thought I was building a "steam interpreter". I'd tried really hard to explain to her what Scheme was, and I'd even shown her some example code in the Racket REPL. At the end of my explanation, she was blank. At the end of the year, every guy with a partially-working, hacked-together ASP.NET CRUD app that he grabbed off of CodeProject is going to walk away with an 85 or a 90, and I'll score a 75 or something. This happens every semester we have a project. Oh, and this isn't even the first time I'm getting screwed. Moreover, I'm not the only Indian kid who regularly gets screwed. The blogosphere is replete with nightmarish tales of Indian teachers screwing over students. I don't know about the UK, but 99% of the teachers here in India are absolute shitheads who don't deserve their jobs. And here's a little bonus for those who read this far: tomorrow, I have to explain some of the concepts behind ZFS to my teacher. Whee.

chc 15y ago
This sounds like a perfect case study for Patrick's advice about awesome points.
DanBC 15y ago
For school: just do the work that will get you the good grades, no matter how tedious it is. For home: hey, that's when you do the Steam Interpreter.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Three pieces of advice. 1) Write some shitty CRUD app in C# for school, and write your scheme interpreter just for fun. Don't waste your time fighting with a prof, just play the game and move on. 2) Add README files to your github projects. Some prospective employers will ignore your grades/cv and browse your github - readme files will help them. Put the scheme interpreter here too, even if it's just a fun little project. 2) When you are looking for a job, send me an email. I'm CTO at a startup based out of Pune and NY. When you graduate we'll either be hiring or bankrupt, and in the former case we probably want to talk to you (see point 2).
- GeneralMaximus 15y ago
  Sound advice. Everyone has been telling me that, so maybe I should start listening ;) Thanks for the offer. I'll keep you in mind when I'm looking for a job next year.
roel_v 15y ago
Maybe, but in this specific story, the claim is that a teacher first says it's OK, that the student followed the marking criteria he was given, that the teacher during the course of the project still said it was OK and that then, at grading time, the teacher turned around completely and all of a sudden said that he didn't understand anything about it, and therefore had to fail the student. Many dysfunctional examples from systems across the world notwithstanding, this particular one doesn't pass the sniff test.
solutionyogi 15y ago

postdesk 15y ago

Not a liar. It's the exact same experience I had during ICT GCSE from 2004-2006. It's not so much a 'I'm failing you because I don't understand', it's more a 'I'm failing you because the exam board doesn't understand'. Even building a pond liner calculator in Microsoft Excel we had to explain every single step of the process, in writing which took literally weeks in order to get the 'documentation' as they call it to A grade standard (as opposed to creating the thing which took about an hour). I can imagine with regard to developing an iPhone application his story is 100% plausible. What people are missing is a) The difference between ICT and Computing (especially at GCSE and A level), and also the fact that blame should be pointed at the exam boards and NOT the teachers themselves, many of whom will share your views and be commenting alongside you here. They have to legally adhere to the exam board specifications and whilst many teachers push the boundaries as far as they can (just as the teacher in this example did), it's quite clear why many don't (again - just see the example posted by Emma).