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School grades are hopelessly broken

marco.org

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Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#31

Post by chrischen »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #14
chanux wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type is not the get-hired type. It's the do-things-different-and-change-the-world type.

Yeah, that's a nice thought, but not really reflective of reality. First, the guy already has a job, which he clearly states in the essay. Second, the majority of people who change the world have jobs at different points in their career. People like Gates, Jobs, and Dell who never really had jobs and just did their own thing from day 1 are so far an exception that they're probably worthless as role models in that sen…

My school once told me that bill gates wouldn't be hirable for the IT department because he doesn't have a degree.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#32

Post by jbeda »

grinich wrote: post #6

On the topic of grade inflation: In 1966, 22% of Harvard undergraduate students earned A's. By 1996, that figure rose to 46%. That same year, 82% of Harvard seniors graduated with honors. In 1973, 31% of all grades at Princeton were A's. By 1997 that rose to 43%. In 1997, only 12% of all grades given at Princeton were below the B range. (source: Source: American Academy of Arts & Sciences) One of the best things abou…

The data from http://gradeinflation.com/ (posted in another response) suggests that MIT is worse than average for grade inflation.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#33

Post by pw0ncakes »

hga wrote: post #21
holograham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employer if you are handing out bullshit tasks then no one competent would want to to work for you. If the tasks actually aren't bullshit, it is up to you to convey the importance of the task to your employees. Same goes with teachers and assignments.

What if your customer or the government demands that your company do some "bullshit tasks"?

Hire dumb people who won't mind being garbage disposals in order to have pay and prestige that would otherwise be out of their league. In investment banks, this is known as the "analyst" program.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#34

Post by sumeeta »

Is this a nugget of wisdom or a naive frustration / hate piece? I can't help but relate to the author (in this post, too: http://www.marco.org/43768310) and feel annoyed by the "average" person's lack of passion and inattention to detail. It seems that his main concern is that school as we know it is geared towards creating this type of individual – and that people need to be more like us and care about stuff.

Judging from the year he graduated college, the author is in his late twenties – pretty young. Since he's still several years older than me, I'm inclined to let him validate my feelings. And that worries me.

Would someone older (and wiser) like to chime in and tell us why we're wrong and why the "average" person doesn't suck as much as we think?

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#35

Post by tsally »

The temptation for smart people is to reject the system and secretly congratulate themselves for being enlightened enough to do so. This is the approach the author advocates. I will admit, I had similar thinking when I first started college. However doing down that road can really limit (although not remove) opportunities later in life that you deserve. I've seen many extraordinarily intelligent friends get rejected from graduate schools because they took the scorched earth approach towards busywork.

Being completely subservient to the system and rejecting it outright are not the only two options you have a student. Personally I found the most effective method was to maintain a GPA over 3.25 with minimal effort and make my real focus undergraduate research. This has worked out incredibly well so far. I have a blast doing research because I get to work on intellectually stimulating problems and I only spend the minimum amount of time necessary on busywork for courses.

The concrete results in terms of awards and internships has been excellent. I've never once had an interviewer ask about GPA; it's high enough to be acceptable and is overshadowed by research experience. One recommendation from your research supervisor eliminates any doubt concerning intellectual ability and/or work ethic. If you want to optimize for both understanding and marketability at the same time, I believe in and strongly recommend this approach.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#36

Post by bugs »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #13
wheaties wrote: post #2

Great, I wouldn't hire you. I don't care how smart you are. Just on the basis of effort you're willing to put forward on tasks you deem unimportant to you means that I can't trust you to perform tasks that I deem important to me. I need someone willing to work through "bullshit" tasks just as much as I need someone to work on "gee-whiz-wow" tasks.

I think the reflexive not-doing-homework attitude is moronic and ultimately more useless than doing everything assigned without introspection. I tended to do the assignments in school. They were easy compared to the things I would do on my own, and the silly ones tended not to be time-consuming. If you never do homework, how do you know that the homework is bullshit? Some teachers actually know what they're doing, af…

Some teachers may know what they are doing but by the time highschool rolls around the smarter students already have been through so many bullshit classes and assignments to have figured out how to get the grade their parents (or themselves) want or require with minimal effort and work.

I didn't like homework in school and I didn't do it but that doesn't stop me from doing it in college courses where I don't understand the material but it does stop me from doing grunt work for the sake of doing grunt work.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#37

Post by ekiru »

I agree with the title of the post and little else. Marco seems to be extolling the virtues of doing nothing in high school instead of explaining why grades are broken or even why not doing schoolwork may be a good decision.

Why do people treat not doing schoolwork as being inherently virtuous? The view that the activities required to do well in school are a waste of time(though I believe that it wastes very little time) is valid, and I agree, for the most part. There are also some who believe that the potential benefits of doing well in high school(for example, going to a good university) are not worth the cost. I disagree with them, but if they make a considered decision that attending MIT or Stanford or the like is not worth the opportunity cost of doing well in high school and that their time would be better spent doing something else, then I'd respect their decision and them for giving more thought than most people to the consequences of their actions.

However, even in this community that I consider to have noticeably above-average intelligence, I sometimes see people almost boasting of how they did nothing in high school. This is somewhat understandable when they are explaining what they did instead of their schoolwork that was a more useful use of their time, but I simply cannot understand why people will brag solely of their inaction during high school without describing what they did instead. If you don't have something else you did in the time that was a better use of your time, doesn't that mean that you wasted the time even more than if you had done all of the work?

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#38

Post by timwiseman »

chrischen wrote: post #27
sanj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at how many of the tasks are BS-y when changing the world.

Boring does not equal BS-y. BS work is pointless, while boring might be understandably necessary. The authors complaint was of BS work, not necessarily of boring work. You can tell if he is simply avoidant of boring work by seeing if he carries out projects which he sees value toward, and whether or not he does everything, including the boring stuff, to completion. I'll admit his article doesn't actually give insight…

If he manages to be his own boss (startup, small company, etc) then that is precisely right. However if he has a job(and he states he does) then his value as an employee is about him carrying out the projects his boss(es) see value in.

Of course, a good boss will try to explain why the tasks he is assigning are important so the employees will see value in it too. Sometimes that is not possible. For instance, perhaps the reason behind the task involves sensitive information that cannot be released (this comes up very often in the military, and occassionally in corporate jobs.) Perhaps there just isn't time for the explanation right then. Or perhaps the employee just disagrees with the explanation when given.

In those cases, a good employee will get the project done well whether or not the employee sees value in it because the boss/organization does see value in it. An employee that does not do that should and probably will be fired with cause.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#39

Post by bhewes »

Reminds me of Samuel Bowles' Does education help? . “Being willing to sit in a boring classroom for 12 years, and then sign up for four more years and then sign up for three or more years after that—well, that’s a pretty good measure of your willingness to essentially do what you’re told."

Now, broken or not which is easier meeting the very low standards of most schools or fighting it tooth and nail? Sure fighting worked for you, but you still have to expended large amounts of energy defending your position. To me this is politics 101, pick your battles. Why attack one of the largest social institutions with a frontal assault?

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#40

Post by tedunangst »

chrischen wrote: post #24
hga wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd say it's an aspect of one of the best things, that MIT is firmly dedicated to meritocracy. If you belong in your department (and there is at least one for you) and put in the work, you'll get As and Bs and the degree at the end. A reflection of this is that you are allowed a "saving throw" in your final semester: you can petition to graduate if you are lacking just one required course that you earned an F i…

Do they have legacy admissions?

The internet says yes and no, and I'd guess (without further information) the correct situation is closest to the "no bonus points for legacy, but you get a second look before rejection" policy one source claimed.
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