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Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

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Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

mooreds wrote: post #83
pnathan wrote: post #63

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. I believe the big work to hit the popular mind initially was Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which essentially says the same thing , but the disease was slightly less advanced then. As an interesting linguistic note: the liberal arts were conceiv…

Loved the reference to 'Gorgias', which, incidentally, I read in my college days at a liberal arts school. Rhetoric isn't the path to truth, but it can sure help with power. Here it is online: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html Edit: added link to 'Gorgias'.

Finished reading. The text is cut short on this page, but even after reading what is there, I am left amazed. A few points (mind you, I haven't read anything from the classic besides what they managed to force me to ingest in school, which as you can imagine is not much):

- Though I found the discussion overtly long (yay my non-existent attention span), it's surprisingly easy to read; I expected ancient Greek texts to be much more difficult in terms of language and style.

- All the whining I see and do about manipulators, liars, salesmen and contemporary advertising industry, Plato has described thousands of years ago. It's like, fuck, why do I bother rediscovering and repeating what ancient philosophers knew all along, and why the society doesn't seem to be learning from those lessons?

- I should have learned this already, but I'm still amazed every time I read an old text describing exactly the same problems we have in the contemporary world. Here's me thinking they are unique to our age, but apparently King Solomon is right, and there truly is nothing new under the Sun, at least in human relations - we keep repeating the same patterns, generation after generation.

- I guess I'm starting to appreciate the stated reasons for classic education.

Thank you for linking to the text.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#92

Post by ryanwaggoner »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #15
ColinWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the massive escalation in fees, and the ubiquity of phones, with instant access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more, do you really think things haven't changed?

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Ironically, that's almost certainly not attributable to Socrates (or Plato), but instead from a thesis written in 1907:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children...

Maybe if we had all had better humanities classes, we'd know that :)

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#93

Post by Namrog84 »

On an unrelated topic. Anyone else experience the inability to scroll properly on that page? I am on mobile but even requesting desktop version didn't fix. There are a few seconds of full scroll then it locks into a range. It's not even necessarily the beginning. One time it locked in some middle portion. Is this the fault of poor web design or is something wrong on my phone? Thanks!

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#94

Post by TeMPOraL »

geofft wrote: post #85
Mikeb85 wrote: post #70

I was expecting the worst judging from the comments here, but it's actually an excellent essay (or article, or whatever you want to call it). I personally agree. University should be more about learning and becoming better thinkers than simply learning a few facts and getting a piece of paper. Pretty much none of the students I interact with care about 'learning', or any form of critical thinking. They want the profs…

I think there's a valuable role for such an institution in the world, but I'm not sure why it should be the university. The vast majority of people who attend university don't really care about optimizing for that goal. The vast majority of people who require university attendance as a prerequisite for something else don't really, either. And the vast majority of people who provide outside funding to universities don…

It should be university because it originally was. It evolved towards being a very elaborate vocational school. The actual vocational schools are uncool now, so you get basically the same thing from Ivy League, only less efficiently and for more money.

I think both approaches are fine; what messes things up is the dissociative identity disorder the university suffers from. On one hand, it is expected to carry great traditions of scholarship. On the other, economic incentives create strong pressure to do vocational training instead. If we could split it (back) into two separate institutions, things would be much better.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#95

Post by dgacmu »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #69
maus42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The entire purpose of philosophy is to provide actionable guidelines for how to live life ...I thought it was about trying to find truth, and knowledge, and wisdom for the sake of love of them. What is reality? How it exists? What it means? And anyway, how we can we understand any of it? What it means to understand it? The whole idea of natural science of the important child of Western philosophy. History of philoso…

>...I thought it was about trying to find truth, and knowledge, and wisdom for the sake of love of them. What is reality? How it exists? What it means? And anyway, how we can we understand any of it? What it means to understand it? Why do people think they can even formulate these sorts of question with rigor and precision if they lack life experience and knowledge of how nature works? Why should we expect that the w…

You seem to be asking whether it is possible to derive truth a priori by logic, or whether truth is dependent upon the physical context in which it's found. Perhaps the answer is a combination of both. Perhaps I just paraphrased Kant - and perhaps you just asked an interesting question that was raised hundreds of years ago by people in armchairs. ;)

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#96

Post by TeMPOraL »

danieltillett wrote: post #87
Mikeb85 wrote: post #70

I was expecting the worst judging from the comments here, but it's actually an excellent essay (or article, or whatever you want to call it). I personally agree. University should be more about learning and becoming better thinkers than simply learning a few facts and getting a piece of paper. Pretty much none of the students I interact with care about 'learning', or any form of critical thinking. They want the profs…

When I was a professor I tried an experiment a few times of offering extra classes during the lunch break. These covered interesting and important areas that we just didn't have time to get to in class. The topics covered weren't on the final exam and were totally voluntary. Out of a class of 100 I would get around 10 or so students come to these classes which were more tutorial than lecture. It was great experience…

I'd probably be in the middle of the perfomance spectrum of your group. I learned in my own pace, followed things that interested me, which meant that I could have bad grades (mostly from ignoring assignments) but still have a keen interest in the subject.

That is, if anyone would tell me this is a thing. I always thought that office hours are mostly for a) helping people who didn't understand some part of a lecture, and b) dealing with formal stuff - grades, extensions, absences, etc. It was pointed out to me just around the time I was finishing my education that I could have just come to talk about the subject matter, and a lot of the staff would be more than happy to tell me about it. This is one of my two biggest regrets from the university - that I didn't come to professors and asked them, only limiting myself to occasional after-lecture chat.

(The other one being that I completely ignored party life and thus didn't take the chance to meet and befriend many smart people studying various sciences and arts.)

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

Bahamut wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids today can listen with one ear, read with one eye... Do their research with one tab and chat on Facebook with another. Can you code with one tab open to Facebook chat? Because the overwhelming consensus here on HN is that coding requires concentration and lack of interruptions. So does learning. Technology doesn't change the basic biological processes of learning, and the fact is that technology has proven itse…

I actually code with one tab open with Facebook...I trained myself to ignore it unless I have a free moment. Sometimes it's necessary for me to be responsive there due to having plans to do something later with friends (i.e. meeting up in the afternoon to run or have dinner at Facebook). However, if I have important tasks to do, I keep a mental reminder to respond later and focus on my current task first. I agree wit…

Same here, though at work I keep just the Facebook Messenger on (it's on http://messenger.com), mostly to stay in touch with my SO. I used to keep IRC too, but I find myself either too distracted by it, or too frustrated by being afraid of missing out.

I find that my ability to divide attention is directly related to how much I'm enjoying the task at hand. At work I can barely keep focus, but when I get into the flow while working on a personal project, I can IRC, respond to e-mails, chat with few people on IM and browse HN while still doing solid work on the project, and without losing focus for a second.

(Funnily, I remember that I was turning off my IM for coding when I was a kid, but that was only because my computer wasn't very strong, and the compilation would take 3x as long with the communicator open.)

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#98

Post by danieltillett »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
danieltillett wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a professor I tried an experiment a few times of offering extra classes during the lunch break. These covered interesting and important areas that we just didn't have time to get to in class. The topics covered weren't on the final exam and were totally voluntary. Out of a class of 100 I would get around 10 or so students come to these classes which were more tutorial than lecture. It was great experience…

I'd probably be in the middle of the perfomance spectrum of your group. I learned in my own pace, followed things that interested me, which meant that I could have bad grades (mostly from ignoring assignments) but still have a keen interest in the subject. That is, if anyone would tell me this is a thing. I always thought that office hours are mostly for a) helping people who didn't understand some part of a lecture,…

I used to have the occasional student that would "drop in to chat”, but I think most were too scared to do so. In the natural sciences you have labs which are smaller and more informal where students were more comfortable chatting about science. I had lots of interesting conversations in labs and even occasionally about the subject.

I had always wished that we could have a more informal learning process where the professor’s job is to guide the student through the subject, but this is not really compatible with the industrial-scale higher education system we have today. In the end you feel you have accomplished something if at least a few students have learned something.

On a bit of a rant at no stage in your performance evaluation as a professor are you ever judged on what your students learned. No effort is made by the university to measure how effective your teaching is or if your students have gaining anything from the course. Entertain the students and hand out A’s like confetti and the university is happy.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

danieltillett wrote: post #98
TeMPOraL wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd probably be in the middle of the perfomance spectrum of your group. I learned in my own pace, followed things that interested me, which meant that I could have bad grades (mostly from ignoring assignments) but still have a keen interest in the subject. That is, if anyone would tell me this is a thing. I always thought that office hours are mostly for a) helping people who didn't understand some part of a lecture,…

I used to have the occasional student that would "drop in to chat”, but I think most were too scared to do so. In the natural sciences you have labs which are smaller and more informal where students were more comfortable chatting about science. I had lots of interesting conversations in labs and even occasionally about the subject. I had always wished that we could have a more informal learning process where the pro…

If I may give an unsolicited hint (with standard disclaimer of n=1 anecdote-neq-data) for the sake of other students who are like I was: make sure your students know they can drop in to chat about science, and that's totally fine and you'd be happy to talk to them.

The experience of primary and secondary education I had has taught me that teachers generally are not that accessible, and only few of them know stuff outside curriculum. It's not that they don't want students to come to them, but it was never encouraged. Managing their opinion of you, on the other hand, was paramount to getting by, especially if you're not their favourite pupil who gets straight As on all tests. You also didn't want to be seen in your class as lickspittle (yay the dysfunctional world of schoos). I carried that attitude with me to the university, and didn't realize until it was too late that situation is different now - that those (still intimidating) professors and PhDs are really willing to share their knowledge, and they're often national, or even world-class experts in their particular domains.

Sometimes what a young person needs is an explicit permission and reassurance - that yes, they can stop by to chat about things. Like the article said - the means and opportunities are there. People are just not using them, and don't even think they should.

EDIT: A side note - the other big thing I learned only after getting close to befriending several faculty members (I'm generally likeable person, I find it easy to establish good relationships with people even above my status level). Initially I used to believe that a lot of our professors, like high school teachers, didn't know shit about what they're teaching, and that they totally sucked at doing it. But then one day I was chatting with a lecturer about her plans for next years of the course, and she got emotional and told me something important - that she doesn't like this subject, doesn't know much about it in the first place; it's not her domain of study and she simply was told to teach the class. This was an eye-opener, later confirmed - quite often that professor or PhD that comes across at stupid, miserable or annoying is simply forced to teach things he doesn't know or care about, and if you come and ask him about his research field instead, then he turns out to be quite a different person - smart, excited, and suddenly capable of teaching effectively. It's a big failure of university management that members of faculty have to teach things they have zero interest in.

Re: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University but Don’t

#100

Post by danieltillett »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
danieltillett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have the occasional student that would "drop in to chat”, but I think most were too scared to do so. In the natural sciences you have labs which are smaller and more informal where students were more comfortable chatting about science. I had lots of interesting conversations in labs and even occasionally about the subject. I had always wished that we could have a more informal learning process where the pro…

If I may give an unsolicited hint (with standard disclaimer of n=1 anecdote-neq-data) for the sake of other students who are like I was: make sure your students know they can drop in to chat about science, and that's totally fine and you'd be happy to talk to them. The experience of primary and secondary education I had has taught me that teachers generally are not that accessible, and only few of them know stuff out…

My students all knew they could drop in whenever they wanted - it was the standard within our department so it was nothing unusual for our students. Even given this the vast majority never took advantage of this and I would usually only be visited by less than 5% of all students in a semester.

Edit. In response to you edit this is very common. I had to teach all sorts of subjects at very short notice (the worst I was only given 3 days notice). I taught many subjects where the last contact I had had with the area was when I was an undergraduate. Makes for very stressful teaching.

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