3 ms·

I think most people think school is like pokemon training, where X minutes = Y XP, and more minutes in class = more XP, thus leading to higher-level students.

I think most people think school is like pokemon training, where X minutes = Y XP, and more minutes in class = more XP, thus leading to higher-level students. I remember when I was in school we missed a few extra days from snowstorms, so they added several minutes onto the school day to "make up for the missed time". It was so obviously stupid then, but no school administrator listened to me, because what does a high school kid know?

tomjakubowski 3y ago
Yah, treating time as fungible is a big mistake and people do it all the time.
godelski 3y ago
> I think most people think school is like pokemon training, where X minutes = Y XP, and more minutes in class = more XP, thus leading to higher-level students. To be fair, most people think this is how productivity works in any domain. It's certainly true if your job is to turn a hand crank all day producing widgets and under the assumption that you have equal energy throughout the day (but even accounting for that you still get the effect that more time = more widgets). But that most certainly is not true in the modern world and definitely not with any task that requires creativity. I'm actually more shocked at how many developers believe this considering I think we've all been in plenty of situations where more time debugging creates more bugs and the solution is to walk away, go do something else, and come back later. Maybe the problem is simply momentum and the coefficient of status stubbornness.
supertrope 3y ago
It’s hard to measure education service quality at the scale of an entire province or state. We use proxies like standardized testing to avoid each school self-assessing as excellent. But tests can be gamed through cheating. States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula. It’s much harder to commit time tracking fraud. Incentives that encourage butts in seats of course can be gamed. Snow days are avoided through half days and NYC once had a “school day” that was just a video call long enough to take attendance. Attendance maximizing limits flexibility and greatness in pedagogy. However it guarantees a bare minimum service level. It also aligns with schools’ secondary function as daycare.
- quacked 3y ago
  > States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula. I am not a libertarian, but it is startling to me how many offensive facets of modern life came about due to perverse funding incentives from the state. I've been reading "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilich, which I think only thinly supports its own premise, but the pattern he describes in which formerly citizen-led components of society are institutionalized by the government and then experience a massive decades-long degradation of quality seems to ring true for everything.

tomjakubowski 3y ago

Yah, treating time as fungible is a big mistake and people do it all the time.

godelski 3y ago

> I think most people think school is like pokemon training, where X minutes = Y XP, and more minutes in class = more XP, thus leading to higher-level students. To be fair, most people think this is how productivity works in any domain. It's certainly true if your job is to turn a hand crank all day producing widgets and under the assumption that you have equal energy throughout the day (but even accounting for that you still get the effect that more time = more widgets). But that most certainly is not true in the modern world and definitely not with any task that requires creativity. I'm actually more shocked at how many developers believe this considering I think we've all been in plenty of situations where more time debugging creates more bugs and the solution is to walk away, go do something else, and come back later. Maybe the problem is simply momentum and the coefficient of status stubbornness.

supertrope 3y ago

It’s hard to measure education service quality at the scale of an entire province or state. We use proxies like standardized testing to avoid each school self-assessing as excellent. But tests can be gamed through cheating. States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula. It’s much harder to commit time tracking fraud. Incentives that encourage butts in seats of course can be gamed. Snow days are avoided through half days and NYC once had a “school day” that was just a video call long enough to take attendance. Attendance maximizing limits flexibility and greatness in pedagogy. However it guarantees a bare minimum service level. It also aligns with schools’ secondary function as daycare.

quacked 3y ago
> States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula. I am not a libertarian, but it is startling to me how many offensive facets of modern life came about due to perverse funding incentives from the state. I've been reading "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilich, which I think only thinly supports its own premise, but the pattern he describes in which formerly citizen-led components of society are institutionalized by the government and then experience a massive decades-long degradation of quality seems to ring true for everything.