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Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they wan

by spikels 13y ago

Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they want: politicians, students, staff and parents. Yet nothing needs to be taught and nothing needs to be learned. Doesn't this go on a lot more often then we want to admit?

damian2000 13y ago
Everyone gets what they want except the chinese companies who employ them in their first job.
- awakeasleep 13y ago
  It's ok, they only have to implement plans stolen from other companies.
  - ig1 13y ago
    Flagged. Lets keep xenophobic comments off HN. [Edit: s/racist/xenophobic as per conversation below]
    - monkeypizza 13y ago
      It's interesting you assume he was being racist, rather than culturalist. I think it's equally valid to assume he was talking about mainland Chinese business culture. Is it controversial to say that mainland Chinese companies (as we're talking about here) commonly steal or clone business plans?
      - ig1 13y ago
        That's equally unacceptable, saying "mexicans are lazy" is as bad as saying "hispanics are lazy". It's just xenophobia. The OP wasn't starting a conversation about business practices, they were attempting to make a witty one-liner by denigrating a group of people and reinforcing a negative stereotype. They were implying that Chinese people don't need to be educated because they do unimportant work. Imagine if someone had said that it didn't matter if women or blacks cheated in exams because all they did was housework and unskilled labour ? - that's exactly the same as what the OP is doing here.
      - Volpe 13y ago
        Please point me to the company BYD Stole from? Or Tencent? Or Alibaba? The "copying" that you seem to be referring to, is no different to "normal business" in the US: Apple open a retail store, Microsoft open a retail store (or was it vice versa?) Is that "copying"? or is that "competition"? Is it only copying when the parties are different races? or more controversially when one party is chinese?
    - vorg 13y ago
      There's enough corporate espionage happening in the US also. Just 3 days ago, an officer at a certain US software company announced their intention to launder some open source code written 2 years ago by someone else and bundle it in the next version of their product.
      - duncan_bayne 13y ago
        That sounds interesting. Do you have a link you could share?
    - skwirl 13y ago
      edit: I'm going to tone back my comment a bit and try to assume the best - that this was a simple misunderstanding and not an attempt to trivialize intolerance. I believe the person you are replying to was making a statement about widespread Chinese government and corporate practices, and not about the Chinese people in general. God knows that the American government and corporate practices are under a constant barrage of attacks from around the world, yet we do not accuse those critics of xenophobia or racism. Also, from the Hacker News Guidelines: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
istorical 13y ago
I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation. It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At the end of the day though, you either learn what you need to learn or you don't. Industry isn't too terrible at calling out those who can't produce value, but can only cross their t's and dot their i's. EDIT: I should definitely draw a distinction between the magnitude of cheating/carelessness described in the article and what I encountered at an American university. The article describes a situation that is much worse.
- munin 13y ago
  I can promise you that there are schools in America where students and faculty see the knowledge gained as the value, it sucks that you're not at one though.
  - istorical 13y ago
    I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't schools where knowledge is the goal, only that such is the case at a minority of schools. My education was definitely better off than most; I attended a good school. If you do believe there are schools where very little or no cheating occurs, I'd love to hear about it though.
- gems 13y ago
  "I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation." www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/my-articles/engeduc/ARUSSIAN.PDF The article is about a Russian mathematician who starts teaching in American universities. The same thing already happens in America with these 'business calculus' courses.
  - waveman2 13y ago
    There are numerous more subtle forms of corruption in the US system of education 1. Grade inflation. 2. Bell curves so that a certain percentage of students must pass. 3. Student evaluations and students voting by enrolments that discourage tough/realistic marking. 4. Marking of courses is controlled by the teachers of the course. Thus the teachers are in effect assessing themselves. 5. In some countries students who pay full fees are marked easier than those who have government funded places. Hiring people in IT, I was amazed to find that a high percentage of people who have passed programming courses are totally incapable of writing a working program. So let us not be too scornful of the Chinese.
salmonellaeater 13y ago
This ignores the fact that a huge part of a degree's value is as proof you've passed a lot of difficult filters. One of those filters is ability to do an institution's bidding for many years. For many companies, this is much more important than any particular academic knowledge. For jobs that really require deep knowledge, there are fairly easy ways to test for it that the employer can do themselves (i.e. by interviewing).

by spikels 13y ago

damian2000 13y ago

Everyone gets what they want except the chinese companies who employ them in their first job.

awakeasleep 13y ago
It's ok, they only have to implement plans stolen from other companies.
- ig1 13y ago
  Flagged. Lets keep xenophobic comments off HN. [Edit: s/racist/xenophobic as per conversation below]
  - monkeypizza 13y ago
    It's interesting you assume he was being racist, rather than culturalist. I think it's equally valid to assume he was talking about mainland Chinese business culture. Is it controversial to say that mainland Chinese companies (as we're talking about here) commonly steal or clone business plans?
    - ig1 13y ago
      That's equally unacceptable, saying "mexicans are lazy" is as bad as saying "hispanics are lazy". It's just xenophobia. The OP wasn't starting a conversation about business practices, they were attempting to make a witty one-liner by denigrating a group of people and reinforcing a negative stereotype. They were implying that Chinese people don't need to be educated because they do unimportant work. Imagine if someone had said that it didn't matter if women or blacks cheated in exams because all they did was housework and unskilled labour ? - that's exactly the same as what the OP is doing here.
    - Volpe 13y ago
      Please point me to the company BYD Stole from? Or Tencent? Or Alibaba? The "copying" that you seem to be referring to, is no different to "normal business" in the US: Apple open a retail store, Microsoft open a retail store (or was it vice versa?) Is that "copying"? or is that "competition"? Is it only copying when the parties are different races? or more controversially when one party is chinese?
  - vorg 13y ago
    There's enough corporate espionage happening in the US also. Just 3 days ago, an officer at a certain US software company announced their intention to launder some open source code written 2 years ago by someone else and bundle it in the next version of their product.
    - duncan_bayne 13y ago
      That sounds interesting. Do you have a link you could share?
  - skwirl 13y ago
    edit: I'm going to tone back my comment a bit and try to assume the best - that this was a simple misunderstanding and not an attempt to trivialize intolerance. I believe the person you are replying to was making a statement about widespread Chinese government and corporate practices, and not about the Chinese people in general. God knows that the American government and corporate practices are under a constant barrage of attacks from around the world, yet we do not accuse those critics of xenophobia or racism. Also, from the Hacker News Guidelines: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

istorical 13y ago

I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation. It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At the end of the day though, you either learn what you need to learn or you don't. Industry isn't too terrible at calling out those who can't produce value, but can only cross their t's and dot their i's. EDIT: I should definitely draw a distinction between the magnitude of cheating/carelessness described in the article and what I encountered at an American university. The article describes a situation that is much worse.

munin 13y ago
I can promise you that there are schools in America where students and faculty see the knowledge gained as the value, it sucks that you're not at one though.
- istorical 13y ago
  I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't schools where knowledge is the goal, only that such is the case at a minority of schools. My education was definitely better off than most; I attended a good school. If you do believe there are schools where very little or no cheating occurs, I'd love to hear about it though.
gems 13y ago
"I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation." www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/my-articles/engeduc/ARUSSIAN.PDF The article is about a Russian mathematician who starts teaching in American universities. The same thing already happens in America with these 'business calculus' courses.
- waveman2 13y ago
  There are numerous more subtle forms of corruption in the US system of education 1. Grade inflation. 2. Bell curves so that a certain percentage of students must pass. 3. Student evaluations and students voting by enrolments that discourage tough/realistic marking. 4. Marking of courses is controlled by the teachers of the course. Thus the teachers are in effect assessing themselves. 5. In some countries students who pay full fees are marked easier than those who have government funded places. Hiring people in IT, I was amazed to find that a high percentage of people who have passed programming courses are totally incapable of writing a working program. So let us not be too scornful of the Chinese.

salmonellaeater 13y ago

This ignores the fact that a huge part of a degree's value is as proof you've passed a lot of difficult filters. One of those filters is ability to do an institution's bidding for many years. For many companies, this is much more important than any particular academic knowledge. For jobs that really require deep knowledge, there are fairly easy ways to test for it that the employer can do themselves (i.e. by interviewing).