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I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades

I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades? I've even heard stories of parents of young children fighting with each other over their children's grades.

moduspwnens14 2y ago
That seems to be a common theme in the responses to me here. The teachers set the course material and grading standards at least partially on how well the students are performing. Maybe not for a given class or year, but certainly over time. Scholarships are competitive. Slots in higher level courses are competitive, and often (at least partially) based on grades. Can you imagine that the coursework and education overall might, over time, look quite different if half or more of students are regularly using LLMs, without explicitly disclosing it?
- wvenable 2y ago
  Teachers aren't dumb here; they know what's going on. And they're actively working to figure out how best to navigate this situation. They're not looking to grade how well ChatGPT does in their course.
  - Yoric 2y ago
    I have many teachers among my friends. So far, they're mostly powerless. If a student is creative, there is basically nothing that will prevent them from cheating at any homework/exam. My father, who was a math teacher, already faced the problem mid-90s, as cheap mobile phones became available in my country. Things have only gotten worse since then. ChatGPT is only one more brick in the wall.
    - lukeschlather 2y ago
      The problem is tests/quizzes and especially standardized ones. They have never been good teaching tools, and teachers have been railroaded into using them because they provide a blunt way to measure outcomes at a population level. But real teaching is 1:1 and teachers have a lot of power, it's just stuff that doesn't scale and you can't mandate organizationally. But this has mostly always been the case. Trying to measure student performance with a student who is more interested in gaming the process than learning is a fools' errand.
      - nradov 2y ago
        Tests/quizzes are good teaching tools. Students learn more effectively when they are frequently tested on the material. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/optimal-protocols-for-studying-learning https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/optimal-protocols-for-st...
        macrocosmos 2y ago
        Students do better on tests the more they’re tested. How was the effectiveness of learning measured? I’m not doubting your claim but I don’t have time to listen to that podcast and I’m interested in what was said since you did.
        dns_snek 2y ago
        > Tests/quizzes are good teaching tools. I skimmed the linked material and that's not my conclusion. Practice tests are better teaching tools than just memorizing the material and then taking a real test, but on an absolute scale, I'm convinced that they're pretty terrible for most types of material. Throughout my education I've come across countless people who could memorize the material and recite it with relative ease but they didn't have any intuitive understanding so they couldn't use that "knowledge" to solve real problems. Much like ChatGPT itself. Equating good memorization and recall performance with good education and knowledge seems like a form of cargo culting to me, it's missing the essence of what makes knowledge powerful in the first place.
        foxglacier 2y ago
        What kind of school did you go to where you needed to memorize things? That's not how schools usually are these days. Tests don't test memorization, they ask you to solve problems.
        nxobject 2y ago
        Reading the abstracts and introduction of the linked articles: the testing literature focuses on recall performance, no? It's only part of the picture of "learning'. Of course, any good educator will interleave quizzes with integrative projects, chances to review past work, etc.
- cma 2y ago
  Why have grades like this that then still move everyone on to the next class. Don't move on until you've mastered the prerequisite. Why have a track of people making C's moving on from Algebra I to algebra II with the same people making A's. Get to college earlier by mastering, rather than a weird compounding competition that kicks off in middleschool. Something like that was advocated by the Khan academy guy, but I'm not sure if he worked out a full replacement system. There are some things in the current system like honors classes or retaking the classes for people who got an F, but why have the F ruin their chance at college if they later master it and get an A? If they always lag but eventually get there, I guess an argument is college would be too expensive if it took them a long time to get through it.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
  Are you suggesting that in general and over the longer term teachers are going to advocate for changing curriculum and grading standards in such a way that students outsourcing their homework to ChatGPT (or whatever popular LLM comes after) would be advantageous in some way? I would not wish to live in a society where “can bullshit an assignment with ChatGPT” is generally competitive in education.
itishappy 2y ago
Why wouldn't it be? Education's job is to prepare students for life in the real world, and life in the real world is often a competition with your peers. When I was in grade school (admittedly close to 20 years ago) we had accelerated and slowed tracks for students starting in 5th grade.
- MVissers 2y ago
  I mean, they should probably prepare people with knowledge of taxes and investing then. The competition is very obvious in societies with a lot of wealth disparity. In Europe there tends to be less disparity and less competition. US, China, India, UK, etc, much more disparity so it’s much more important for kids to be ‘top of the field’.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    > I mean, they should probably prepare people with knowledge of taxes and investing then. Fully agree. > The competition is very obvious in societies with a lot of wealth disparity. In Europe there tends to be less disparity and less competition. Fascinating observation! Wonder if that shows up at the school level as well? For example, In the US the highest/lowest performing schools tend to correlate to high/low income areas and have significant disparity in quality of education, and I expect this is a strongly self-reinforcing trend towards elite private institutions.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
  Typically the accelerated/gifted and talented/special education system in public education is designed to prevent students from being variously bored or overwhelmed, leading to poorer outcomes in either direction. It isn’t designed as a competitive construct. AP courses notwithstanding. AP courses were insanely competitive and speaking as someone had been all over the map in my K12 years (AP, accelerated courses, early foreign language, and a touch of remedial relative to grade level) the students in AP were mainly in competition with themselves. That however is just personal anecdote.
  - 2y ago
fnimick 2y ago
Grades determine what college you go to, which determines the connections you make, which determines the trajectory of your entire life.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  This never made sense to me, Unless the child is a literal genius or very charismatic, wouldn’t they almost certainly have worse prospects after graduating in the 10th to 30th percentile of their class at Harvard than from the 80th to 90th percentile of their class at Boston U? (Assuming they could even manage to squeak into Harvard in the first placd)
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    How do you figure that? Isn't Harvard very much about the network of contacts?
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      ‘The network of contacts’ isn’t some automatic mechanism that by default joins everyone in a class…? By definition to join a network they need to be accepted by their class peers.
      - pavel_lishin 2y ago
        But the difference might not be between Harvard and a local community college. People don't come out of "slums" to Harvard and immediately join the upper class. But you'll be exposed to different people and opportunities by going to a state school instead of a community college, or a better school out of state with a scholarship vs. a state college, etc. The small differences matter. I literally got my first job because my roommate's dad knew of someone looking for a software developer job. Would I have met that person in community college? Maybe! Lots of people with good networks go to community colleges, too - but I'd bet fewer than more expensive schools.
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
lazide 2y ago
If you think it’s bad in America in this aspect, Asia is 10x worse. (Well, China and India anyway)
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades? Oh wow, I thought Americans were super lax when it came to this, especially compared to more competitive educational systems like China. My kid is in second grade and hasn't gotten a real grade yet.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Oh wow, I thought Americans were super lax when it came to this It's hard to generalize here, as Americans are a heterogeneous bunch. Demographic subsets exist where education is seen as a vigorous competitive sport, where the goal is to achieve admission to the "right" college. The parents are as involved as the kids, usually for better but sometimes for worse. At the same time, among other groups of Americans, the goal is simply for kids to reach adulthood without too much interaction with the police. You can't draw sweeping conclusions that will cover the entire spectrum.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Ya, I assume Americans are all over the map so to speak. Anyone who wants to go to MIT, however, has to start early.
HWR_14 2y ago
Entrance to elite colleges is dependent on your academic record. Only so many spots exist. So competition in high schools is common. Then elite high schools only have so many spots, so competition in middle school exists. And so on down to preschool.
fivelorn 2y ago
Everything in America is a competition. I'm sorry, but I chuckled considering that this _very website_ is devoted entirely to ruthlessly choosing winners and losers in (what purports to be) a cutthroat field. It's Hunger Games over here, buddy.

moduspwnens14 2y ago

That seems to be a common theme in the responses to me here. The teachers set the course material and grading standards at least partially on how well the students are performing. Maybe not for a given class or year, but certainly over time. Scholarships are competitive. Slots in higher level courses are competitive, and often (at least partially) based on grades. Can you imagine that the coursework and education overall might, over time, look quite different if half or more of students are regularly using LLMs, without explicitly disclosing it?

wvenable 2y ago
Teachers aren't dumb here; they know what's going on. And they're actively working to figure out how best to navigate this situation. They're not looking to grade how well ChatGPT does in their course.
- Yoric 2y ago
  I have many teachers among my friends. So far, they're mostly powerless. If a student is creative, there is basically nothing that will prevent them from cheating at any homework/exam. My father, who was a math teacher, already faced the problem mid-90s, as cheap mobile phones became available in my country. Things have only gotten worse since then. ChatGPT is only one more brick in the wall.
  - lukeschlather 2y ago
    The problem is tests/quizzes and especially standardized ones. They have never been good teaching tools, and teachers have been railroaded into using them because they provide a blunt way to measure outcomes at a population level. But real teaching is 1:1 and teachers have a lot of power, it's just stuff that doesn't scale and you can't mandate organizationally. But this has mostly always been the case. Trying to measure student performance with a student who is more interested in gaming the process than learning is a fools' errand.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Tests/quizzes are good teaching tools. Students learn more effectively when they are frequently tested on the material. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/optimal-protocols-for-studying-learning https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/optimal-protocols-for-st...
      - macrocosmos 2y ago
        Students do better on tests the more they’re tested. How was the effectiveness of learning measured? I’m not doubting your claim but I don’t have time to listen to that podcast and I’m interested in what was said since you did.
      - dns_snek 2y ago
        > Tests/quizzes are good teaching tools. I skimmed the linked material and that's not my conclusion. Practice tests are better teaching tools than just memorizing the material and then taking a real test, but on an absolute scale, I'm convinced that they're pretty terrible for most types of material. Throughout my education I've come across countless people who could memorize the material and recite it with relative ease but they didn't have any intuitive understanding so they couldn't use that "knowledge" to solve real problems. Much like ChatGPT itself. Equating good memorization and recall performance with good education and knowledge seems like a form of cargo culting to me, it's missing the essence of what makes knowledge powerful in the first place.
        foxglacier 2y ago
        What kind of school did you go to where you needed to memorize things? That's not how schools usually are these days. Tests don't test memorization, they ask you to solve problems.
      - nxobject 2y ago
        Reading the abstracts and introduction of the linked articles: the testing literature focuses on recall performance, no? It's only part of the picture of "learning'. Of course, any good educator will interleave quizzes with integrative projects, chances to review past work, etc.
cma 2y ago
Why have grades like this that then still move everyone on to the next class. Don't move on until you've mastered the prerequisite. Why have a track of people making C's moving on from Algebra I to algebra II with the same people making A's. Get to college earlier by mastering, rather than a weird compounding competition that kicks off in middleschool. Something like that was advocated by the Khan academy guy, but I'm not sure if he worked out a full replacement system. There are some things in the current system like honors classes or retaking the classes for people who got an F, but why have the F ruin their chance at college if they later master it and get an A? If they always lag but eventually get there, I guess an argument is college would be too expensive if it took them a long time to get through it.
TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
Are you suggesting that in general and over the longer term teachers are going to advocate for changing curriculum and grading standards in such a way that students outsourcing their homework to ChatGPT (or whatever popular LLM comes after) would be advantageous in some way? I would not wish to live in a society where “can bullshit an assignment with ChatGPT” is generally competitive in education.

itishappy 2y ago

Why wouldn't it be? Education's job is to prepare students for life in the real world, and life in the real world is often a competition with your peers. When I was in grade school (admittedly close to 20 years ago) we had accelerated and slowed tracks for students starting in 5th grade.

MVissers 2y ago
I mean, they should probably prepare people with knowledge of taxes and investing then. The competition is very obvious in societies with a lot of wealth disparity. In Europe there tends to be less disparity and less competition. US, China, India, UK, etc, much more disparity so it’s much more important for kids to be ‘top of the field’.
- itishappy 2y ago
  > I mean, they should probably prepare people with knowledge of taxes and investing then. Fully agree. > The competition is very obvious in societies with a lot of wealth disparity. In Europe there tends to be less disparity and less competition. Fascinating observation! Wonder if that shows up at the school level as well? For example, In the US the highest/lowest performing schools tend to correlate to high/low income areas and have significant disparity in quality of education, and I expect this is a strongly self-reinforcing trend towards elite private institutions.
TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
Typically the accelerated/gifted and talented/special education system in public education is designed to prevent students from being variously bored or overwhelmed, leading to poorer outcomes in either direction. It isn’t designed as a competitive construct. AP courses notwithstanding. AP courses were insanely competitive and speaking as someone had been all over the map in my K12 years (AP, accelerated courses, early foreign language, and a touch of remedial relative to grade level) the students in AP were mainly in competition with themselves. That however is just personal anecdote.
- 2y ago

fnimick 2y ago

Grades determine what college you go to, which determines the connections you make, which determines the trajectory of your entire life.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
This never made sense to me, Unless the child is a literal genius or very charismatic, wouldn’t they almost certainly have worse prospects after graduating in the 10th to 30th percentile of their class at Harvard than from the 80th to 90th percentile of their class at Boston U? (Assuming they could even manage to squeak into Harvard in the first placd)
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  How do you figure that? Isn't Harvard very much about the network of contacts?
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    ‘The network of contacts’ isn’t some automatic mechanism that by default joins everyone in a class…? By definition to join a network they need to be accepted by their class peers.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      But the difference might not be between Harvard and a local community college. People don't come out of "slums" to Harvard and immediately join the upper class. But you'll be exposed to different people and opportunities by going to a state school instead of a community college, or a better school out of state with a scholarship vs. a state college, etc. The small differences matter. I literally got my first job because my roommate's dad knew of someone looking for a software developer job. Would I have met that person in community college? Maybe! Lots of people with good networks go to community colleges, too - but I'd bet fewer than more expensive schools.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago

lazide 2y ago

If you think it’s bad in America in this aspect, Asia is 10x worse. (Well, China and India anyway)

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

> I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades? Oh wow, I thought Americans were super lax when it came to this, especially compared to more competitive educational systems like China. My kid is in second grade and hasn't gotten a real grade yet.

CamperBob2 2y ago
Oh wow, I thought Americans were super lax when it came to this It's hard to generalize here, as Americans are a heterogeneous bunch. Demographic subsets exist where education is seen as a vigorous competitive sport, where the goal is to achieve admission to the "right" college. The parents are as involved as the kids, usually for better but sometimes for worse. At the same time, among other groups of Americans, the goal is simply for kids to reach adulthood without too much interaction with the police. You can't draw sweeping conclusions that will cover the entire spectrum.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Ya, I assume Americans are all over the map so to speak. Anyone who wants to go to MIT, however, has to start early.

HWR_14 2y ago

Entrance to elite colleges is dependent on your academic record. Only so many spots exist. So competition in high schools is common. Then elite high schools only have so many spots, so competition in middle school exists. And so on down to preschool.

fivelorn 2y ago

Everything in America is a competition. I'm sorry, but I chuckled considering that this _very website_ is devoted entirely to ruthlessly choosing winners and losers in (what purports to be) a cutthroat field. It's Hunger Games over here, buddy.