8 ms·

People Feel Dumb: That's why they don't code

36 points by tenpoundhammer 13y ago

LoganCale 13y ago
> I saw another article for an elementary school programming course, and I can’t believe how far off-base we have gotten. We don’t need more software developers but if you believe that notion, I don’t think more courses is the way to go. I don't think idea is to make everyone a software engineer, it's to teach the basics of computer programming to everyone so they can use it in their everyday life in the same way basic math, language and other skills are taught. Being able to hack together a basic script to automate a tedious task, or make your computer (something almost everyone has at this point) do something it can't already do would be beneficial to a lot of people, even when most of those people are not going to become software engineers in the long run.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Came to say this. I think everyone should learn to code; I don't think everyone should "be a programmer".
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Do you think they'd be allowed to? IT policy is generally 'nothing we haven't authorised' I remember not being able to connect non-approved keyboards to the computer....
Raphmedia 13y ago
People don't code because A) They are not interested in coding. B) They do not have the ressources to learn coding C) Coding has nothing to do with their job D) They are too lazy / no will to learn to code. Hell, I know to code. I code daily, it's my job. And I pretty much NEVER coded as a hobby. I don't see why non-programmers would take up coding...
- dingaling 13y ago
  E) They don't have time to code off-hours I have a list of things-to-code as long as my arm, lots of little utilities and websites I want to create. But once I knock-off work at the end of the day, have dinner and perform the daily ablutions I simply don't have time. It is frustrating.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    It is for this very reason that I think that Basic Income [1] can/will someday be a net wealth creator, even if 95% of its recipients end up sitting on their asses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
    - gshubert17 13y ago
      Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. Some might release their work to the public domain right away. Others might pursue different publishing options. All sorts of corporate (not just individual) welfare benefits could be eliminated; after all, everyone is getting a basic income. Basic income would greatly shift power from the most wealthy back to ordinary people. It could be that the effects would be profoundly democratic.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. While a basic income guarantee would reduce the capacity for coercion, unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input, its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. > We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create, which basic income does not do. OTOH, a well-established basic income guarantee would further weaken the case for very long term copyrights -- but the case for that has always been weak, anyway.
ocfx 13y ago
I think math can be taught much more effectively to young children through programming. It gives them a direct and useful application of what they learn in math which could motivate them a lot more.
- jgg 13y ago
  I think math can be taught just fine without dragging programming into it. Basic math is usually abstracted away in programming anyway - it would be no different than using a calculator. Plus, the level that you'd need to reach for the kid to see something interesting as a result of math would require so much time and knowledge that you'd have been better off to just teach them fractions.
brndnmtthws 13y ago
The author implies that everyone is smart. This is false. On average, everyone is of average intelligence. The entire population lies either below or above average. Not everyone is capable of being a software engineer, and people like Barack Obama need to focus on helping people do well at whatever it is they can do well at (rather than trying to churn out a bunch of burdensome code monkeys).
- fragsworth 13y ago
  > Not everyone is capable of being a software engineer Bullshit. This is a very narcissistic view that lots of programmers have. I think you have this belief because it helps you enjoy feeling superior to non-programmers. If a person can learn how to read and write, then they can learn how to program. It just takes time and effort, and some people can learn it faster than others. But just about anyone can do it. The only things holding them back are their priorities and misconceptions.
  - thedufer 13y ago
    You should read http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm... (or the linked paper, if you want something heavier). Maybe everyone can learn to code, but the research says that a portion of the population (on the order of half) isn't wired to think that way, and at least would take orders of magnitude more time to learn (if they can at all). I'm by no means claiming that this segment of the population is more or less intelligent than the rest, but to make claims like "everyone can learn to program" is to ignore the realities of the classroom.
  - RussianCow 13y ago
    It's not about intelligence--some people's brains just aren't wired in a way that would make them any good at software development. That doesn't mean that they couldn't ever learn how to write code given enough time, but not everyone has unlimited time and will power to do that. So in theory, yes, anyone could learn to code. In practice, it doesn't work out that way.
lukifer 13y ago
This generalizes to all forms of intelligence: those who are afraid of the feeling of stupidity and ignorance get stuck and don't move past it. I can't count the number of deeply intelligent people I've known who short-circuit their thinking and learning processes due to this fear. It's not a self-esteem issue; it equally affects those who see themselves as smart, and those who don't. It's an issue of tolerating discomfort and confusion long enough to get to the other side. I'm not sure how exactly one teaches that.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I'd prefer empirical data, but before that's available (to the discussion, at least) I'd guess one teaches that by giving opportunities to practice and reassurance that it's normal.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  I would argue that fear of failure is taught. Small children are relentless and courageous and highly tolerant of discomfort -- falling down 20 times does not intimidate them when learning to walk. They get tired, shrug and try again later. They pause their learning process temporarily but there are no negative emotions there, while the thrill of attempting something new is still kindling.
jere 13y ago
>I doubt that I am much smarter than the average person. If I can learn this stuff anyone can. Let me be super clear, there is nothing special about me or most other software developers, we just decided to show up and go for it. Are you sure? You claim to be "not much smarter than the average person," but remember: if you're any smarter than a person with median intelligence, you're smarter than most people. Also remember the really high failure rates in introductory programming classes: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm... >Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can't learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department's intake fail the first programming course. Maybe they're simply lacking in confidence, but these are students that chose to take the course in the first place.
- cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
  I think the truly smart people don't realize how smart they are. I only know that I'm "smart" because I keep hearing it constantly from people. I thought I had normal conversations, apparently I have "intelligent conversations" instead! I have had the same experience as the author but I have internalized at this point that I do seem to be smarter than the average person. I also feel that pushing programming for everyone is a stretch. Some people just don't get it, and never will, and that's apart from intelligence - it just requires a specific type of intelligence to truly grasp the concepts.
pessimizer 13y ago
>I saw another article for an elementary school programming course, and I can’t believe how far off-base we have gotten. I don't understand this post at all. There were programming classes at elementary school 25-30 years ago teaching Logo and Basic on Apple IIs. If it weren't for those classes, I can't really be sure that I'd be programming now. So we shouldn't have programming classes for children now because confidence? Am I missing something, or does confidence often come with experience, especially experience gained in childhood when you're too young and stupid to be properly terrified? If you want to raise adult mountain climbers, does it make sense to start your children climbing hills, or to spend their childhoods giving them the confidence to attempt to climb mountains as adults, oblivious to their own incompetence? I don't think confidence-building to the exclusion of skill-building is the way to go.
- aaronblohowiak 13y ago
  I loved logo, was a big inspiration for why I am a programmer today.
- cschmidt 13y ago
  My son writes programs using Python's turtle graphics, which reminds me of the Logo programming I did on my Vic 20 as a kid. Yesterday he was writing the same "input a number and then draw a polygon with that many sides" program I did a long time ago.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    That's because Turtle Graphics is logo. In Python.
- booyaa00 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure most of us learnt to program outside of school, and off our own backs. Isn't that the best way? School is there to show kids how to teach themselves anything they want to learn. Not to spoonfeed them specific skills they may or may not want to have.
  - 13y ago
TulliusCicero 13y ago
The bare basics of coding, like variables, conditions, loops, creating and using objects, etc. aren't that hard. Certainly no harder than, say, high school algebra. So writing a simple script that's basically a big main function is something that most people are capable of learning how to do. But core CS concepts about data structures and algorithms, or designing large OO programs with your own classes and methods? Those are significantly more difficult things. Not everyone can do that. The thing is, being a programmer means you probably hang out with people of above-average intelligence, and read things written by people of above-average intelligence, so that skews your perception of what 'average' means. I mean, we had plenty of people fail miserably at my college intro coding class, and this was at a fairly respectable tier-1 research university!
- wwweston 13y ago
  > being a programmer means you probably hang out with people of above-average intelligence, Above average programming-related intelligence, anyway.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jgg 13y ago
What we need are more people who know what they're doing. I find it condescending to assume that we really need to coddle more people and make them feel good about coding. Do we need to make this same argument for electrical engineers, surgeons, pilots and air traffic controllers? I don't mean to imply that the current software world is a cabal of highly-skilled geniuses who need preserving - it's not. From personal professional experience, it's, on average, a nuthouse of self-promoting Java idiots with a "dropout genius" mentality who have no common sense and are not nearly as smart or good at problem-solving as their blogs or resumes would lead you to believe. However, I think it would another discussion entirely to ask if the wrong people feel confident enough to write code. The belief that we need to reach out and bring more people into programming, in a world where the average developer struggles to cobble together a web application that isn't full of basic security holes, is ridiculous. Also, I strongly suspect all of these efforts to drag more people into coding are at least partly sponsored by industry, in an attempt to drive the relatively-high wage of a programmer down, in the face of a perceived increase in programmer demand.
- KrisAndrew 13y ago
  > Also, I strongly suspect all of these efforts to drag more people into coding are at least partly sponsored by industry, in an attempt to drive the relatively-high wage of a programmer down, in the face of a perceived increase in programmer demand. Perhaps by newer and less experienced entrants into the business market. Whenever there's a boom in a certain market, you get a lot of hacks flooding in who have a lot of money, but little sense. Web development was this way post-dot-com-crash. There were many print advertising agencies that added on web development as a service to their clients. However, they didn't alter their business practices to accommodate the needs of software development. These agencies treated software developers like graphic designers. They almost always required fixed cost contracts for development ($X to build a website), and this caused a ton of problems that would be evident to seasoned developers. When I suggested that they change their compensation practices they would refuse, and just blame it on the original programmer for being unskilled. I didn't mind in the beginning, because I was making $200-$300/hr to fix their problems. However, I eventually quit consulting because I got bored with cleaning up bad code caused by time/money constraints. It wasn't stupid programmers who caused the problem, but stupid business people. Bringing it back to the main topic - I think it's wrong to get more people to code. Those who graduate with CS degrees and software development skills are entirely capable to building large, functional systems. However, a good bulk of those programmers aren't going to work at a software/tech company. They're going to work in the IT departments of companies in non-software industries. Efforts should be made to better integrate these ad-hoc IT departments into the primary business.
_random_ 13y ago
Why is it then all the worthy developers I've seen are super-smart?
stringerbell 13y ago
I agree with the premise, but not the conclusion. For myself, not feeling smart enough was why I waited longer than I should have to learn how to code. This part especially resonates with me: >"...we just decided to show up and go for it." I think that's a choice that anyone has to ultimately make if they want to learn anything. Software training programs among other things are just one way to capture people's interests, and I think is a good supplement to a larger push for people to learn how computers work.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
That's why people don't learn new things in general, they hate feeling helpless, clueless, dumb. They hate the shame and embarrassment of making basic mistakes, and they hate the potential of breaking things out of ignorance. If you've ever seen someone who is not very tech savvy use a computer you can see all of these things reflected in the way they go about things, it's a big reason why they tend to fall into a specific very narrowly defined pattern of use and stick with it.
bsbechtel 13y ago
Saw someone tweet a few weeks back that criteria for advancement in education (e.g., graduating 1st to 2nd grade) needs to be mastery-based, instead of time-based. This is the most brilliantly simple insight into our education system I've ever come across. What better way to make someone feel 'dumb' than to give them an "F", "D", or "C" after a year of education when their peers receive "A"s and "B"s.

> I saw another article for an elementary school programming course, and I can’t believe how far off-base we have gotten. We don’t need more software developers but if you believe that notion, I don’t think more courses is the way to go. I don't think idea is to make everyone a software engineer, it's to teach the basics of computer programming to everyone so they can use it in their everyday life in the same way basic math, language and other skills are taught. Being able to hack together a basic script to automate a tedious task, or make your computer (something almost everyone has at this point) do something it can't already do would be beneficial to a lot of people, even when most of those people are not going to become software engineers in the long run.

dllthomas 13y ago
Came to say this. I think everyone should learn to code; I don't think everyone should "be a programmer".
6d0debc071 13y ago
Do you think they'd be allowed to? IT policy is generally 'nothing we haven't authorised' I remember not being able to connect non-approved keyboards to the computer....

Raphmedia 13y ago

People don't code because A) They are not interested in coding. B) They do not have the ressources to learn coding C) Coding has nothing to do with their job D) They are too lazy / no will to learn to code. Hell, I know to code. I code daily, it's my job. And I pretty much NEVER coded as a hobby. I don't see why non-programmers would take up coding...

dingaling 13y ago
E) They don't have time to code off-hours I have a list of things-to-code as long as my arm, lots of little utilities and websites I want to create. But once I knock-off work at the end of the day, have dinner and perform the daily ablutions I simply don't have time. It is frustrating.
- lukifer 13y ago
  It is for this very reason that I think that Basic Income [1] can/will someday be a net wealth creator, even if 95% of its recipients end up sitting on their asses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
  - gshubert17 13y ago
    Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. Some might release their work to the public domain right away. Others might pursue different publishing options. All sorts of corporate (not just individual) welfare benefits could be eliminated; after all, everyone is getting a basic income. Basic income would greatly shift power from the most wealthy back to ordinary people. It could be that the effects would be profoundly democratic.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. While a basic income guarantee would reduce the capacity for coercion, unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input, its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. > We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create, which basic income does not do. OTOH, a well-established basic income guarantee would further weaken the case for very long term copyrights -- but the case for that has always been weak, anyway.

ocfx 13y ago

I think math can be taught much more effectively to young children through programming. It gives them a direct and useful application of what they learn in math which could motivate them a lot more.

jgg 13y ago
I think math can be taught just fine without dragging programming into it. Basic math is usually abstracted away in programming anyway - it would be no different than using a calculator. Plus, the level that you'd need to reach for the kid to see something interesting as a result of math would require so much time and knowledge that you'd have been better off to just teach them fractions.

brndnmtthws 13y ago

The author implies that everyone is smart. This is false. On average, everyone is of average intelligence. The entire population lies either below or above average. Not everyone is capable of being a software engineer, and people like Barack Obama need to focus on helping people do well at whatever it is they can do well at (rather than trying to churn out a bunch of burdensome code monkeys).

fragsworth 13y ago
> Not everyone is capable of being a software engineer Bullshit. This is a very narcissistic view that lots of programmers have. I think you have this belief because it helps you enjoy feeling superior to non-programmers. If a person can learn how to read and write, then they can learn how to program. It just takes time and effort, and some people can learn it faster than others. But just about anyone can do it. The only things holding them back are their priorities and misconceptions.
- thedufer 13y ago
  You should read http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm... (or the linked paper, if you want something heavier). Maybe everyone can learn to code, but the research says that a portion of the population (on the order of half) isn't wired to think that way, and at least would take orders of magnitude more time to learn (if they can at all). I'm by no means claiming that this segment of the population is more or less intelligent than the rest, but to make claims like "everyone can learn to program" is to ignore the realities of the classroom.
- RussianCow 13y ago
  It's not about intelligence--some people's brains just aren't wired in a way that would make them any good at software development. That doesn't mean that they couldn't ever learn how to write code given enough time, but not everyone has unlimited time and will power to do that. So in theory, yes, anyone could learn to code. In practice, it doesn't work out that way.

lukifer 13y ago

This generalizes to all forms of intelligence: those who are afraid of the feeling of stupidity and ignorance get stuck and don't move past it. I can't count the number of deeply intelligent people I've known who short-circuit their thinking and learning processes due to this fear. It's not a self-esteem issue; it equally affects those who see themselves as smart, and those who don't. It's an issue of tolerating discomfort and confusion long enough to get to the other side. I'm not sure how exactly one teaches that.

dllthomas 13y ago
I'd prefer empirical data, but before that's available (to the discussion, at least) I'd guess one teaches that by giving opportunities to practice and reassurance that it's normal.
comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
I would argue that fear of failure is taught. Small children are relentless and courageous and highly tolerant of discomfort -- falling down 20 times does not intimidate them when learning to walk. They get tired, shrug and try again later. They pause their learning process temporarily but there are no negative emotions there, while the thrill of attempting something new is still kindling.

jere 13y ago

>I doubt that I am much smarter than the average person. If I can learn this stuff anyone can. Let me be super clear, there is nothing special about me or most other software developers, we just decided to show up and go for it. Are you sure? You claim to be "not much smarter than the average person," but remember: if you're any smarter than a person with median intelligence, you're smarter than most people. Also remember the really high failure rates in introductory programming classes: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm... >Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can't learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department's intake fail the first programming course. Maybe they're simply lacking in confidence, but these are students that chose to take the course in the first place.

cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
I think the truly smart people don't realize how smart they are. I only know that I'm "smart" because I keep hearing it constantly from people. I thought I had normal conversations, apparently I have "intelligent conversations" instead! I have had the same experience as the author but I have internalized at this point that I do seem to be smarter than the average person. I also feel that pushing programming for everyone is a stretch. Some people just don't get it, and never will, and that's apart from intelligence - it just requires a specific type of intelligence to truly grasp the concepts.

pessimizer 13y ago

>I saw another article for an elementary school programming course, and I can’t believe how far off-base we have gotten. I don't understand this post at all. There were programming classes at elementary school 25-30 years ago teaching Logo and Basic on Apple IIs. If it weren't for those classes, I can't really be sure that I'd be programming now. So we shouldn't have programming classes for children now because confidence? Am I missing something, or does confidence often come with experience, especially experience gained in childhood when you're too young and stupid to be properly terrified? If you want to raise adult mountain climbers, does it make sense to start your children climbing hills, or to spend their childhoods giving them the confidence to attempt to climb mountains as adults, oblivious to their own incompetence? I don't think confidence-building to the exclusion of skill-building is the way to go.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago
I loved logo, was a big inspiration for why I am a programmer today.
cschmidt 13y ago
My son writes programs using Python's turtle graphics, which reminds me of the Logo programming I did on my Vic 20 as a kid. Yesterday he was writing the same "input a number and then draw a polygon with that many sides" program I did a long time ago.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  That's because Turtle Graphics is logo. In Python.
booyaa00 13y ago
I'm pretty sure most of us learnt to program outside of school, and off our own backs. Isn't that the best way? School is there to show kids how to teach themselves anything they want to learn. Not to spoonfeed them specific skills they may or may not want to have.
- 13y ago

TulliusCicero 13y ago

The bare basics of coding, like variables, conditions, loops, creating and using objects, etc. aren't that hard. Certainly no harder than, say, high school algebra. So writing a simple script that's basically a big main function is something that most people are capable of learning how to do. But core CS concepts about data structures and algorithms, or designing large OO programs with your own classes and methods? Those are significantly more difficult things. Not everyone can do that. The thing is, being a programmer means you probably hang out with people of above-average intelligence, and read things written by people of above-average intelligence, so that skews your perception of what 'average' means. I mean, we had plenty of people fail miserably at my college intro coding class, and this was at a fairly respectable tier-1 research university!

wwweston 13y ago
> being a programmer means you probably hang out with people of above-average intelligence, Above average programming-related intelligence, anyway.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jgg 13y ago

What we need are more people who know what they're doing. I find it condescending to assume that we really need to coddle more people and make them feel good about coding. Do we need to make this same argument for electrical engineers, surgeons, pilots and air traffic controllers? I don't mean to imply that the current software world is a cabal of highly-skilled geniuses who need preserving - it's not. From personal professional experience, it's, on average, a nuthouse of self-promoting Java idiots with a "dropout genius" mentality who have no common sense and are not nearly as smart or good at problem-solving as their blogs or resumes would lead you to believe. However, I think it would another discussion entirely to ask if the wrong people feel confident enough to write code. The belief that we need to reach out and bring more people into programming, in a world where the average developer struggles to cobble together a web application that isn't full of basic security holes, is ridiculous. Also, I strongly suspect all of these efforts to drag more people into coding are at least partly sponsored by industry, in an attempt to drive the relatively-high wage of a programmer down, in the face of a perceived increase in programmer demand.

KrisAndrew 13y ago
> Also, I strongly suspect all of these efforts to drag more people into coding are at least partly sponsored by industry, in an attempt to drive the relatively-high wage of a programmer down, in the face of a perceived increase in programmer demand. Perhaps by newer and less experienced entrants into the business market. Whenever there's a boom in a certain market, you get a lot of hacks flooding in who have a lot of money, but little sense. Web development was this way post-dot-com-crash. There were many print advertising agencies that added on web development as a service to their clients. However, they didn't alter their business practices to accommodate the needs of software development. These agencies treated software developers like graphic designers. They almost always required fixed cost contracts for development ($X to build a website), and this caused a ton of problems that would be evident to seasoned developers. When I suggested that they change their compensation practices they would refuse, and just blame it on the original programmer for being unskilled. I didn't mind in the beginning, because I was making $200-$300/hr to fix their problems. However, I eventually quit consulting because I got bored with cleaning up bad code caused by time/money constraints. It wasn't stupid programmers who caused the problem, but stupid business people. Bringing it back to the main topic - I think it's wrong to get more people to code. Those who graduate with CS degrees and software development skills are entirely capable to building large, functional systems. However, a good bulk of those programmers aren't going to work at a software/tech company. They're going to work in the IT departments of companies in non-software industries. Efforts should be made to better integrate these ad-hoc IT departments into the primary business.

_random_ 13y ago

Why is it then all the worthy developers I've seen are super-smart?

stringerbell 13y ago

I agree with the premise, but not the conclusion. For myself, not feeling smart enough was why I waited longer than I should have to learn how to code. This part especially resonates with me: >"...we just decided to show up and go for it." I think that's a choice that anyone has to ultimately make if they want to learn anything. Software training programs among other things are just one way to capture people's interests, and I think is a good supplement to a larger push for people to learn how computers work.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

That's why people don't learn new things in general, they hate feeling helpless, clueless, dumb. They hate the shame and embarrassment of making basic mistakes, and they hate the potential of breaking things out of ignorance. If you've ever seen someone who is not very tech savvy use a computer you can see all of these things reflected in the way they go about things, it's a big reason why they tend to fall into a specific very narrowly defined pattern of use and stick with it.

bsbechtel 13y ago

Saw someone tweet a few weeks back that criteria for advancement in education (e.g., graduating 1st to 2nd grade) needs to be mastery-based, instead of time-based. This is the most brilliantly simple insight into our education system I've ever come across. What better way to make someone feel 'dumb' than to give them an "F", "D", or "C" after a year of education when their peers receive "A"s and "B"s.