181–190 of 198 posts
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In my early teens, I was the only one who used sarcasm in the classroom, and none of my peers understood it. There needs to be more sarcasm in schools.
Why does there need to be more sarcasm in schools? I'm willing to hear you out, but would appreciate it if you could clearly explain the benefits of increased sarcasm in schools.
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You might be surprised. I was on the committee which adjudicated major entrance scholarships for six years, and I can count on my fingers the number of times someone said "can we get some verification of this?" We've never thought that fraud was a common problem, and when you're competing to recruit the top students you really don't want to go back to them and accuse them of dishonesty.. And (although we're revising…
A few years ago, I was mentoring at the local (major!) university and met a student who was the President of a club. Then a week later, met another student who was the President of the same club. A few weeks later, the same. It turns out, a bunch of students got together, created a club, and each member was called a "President." The best part is that if an employer ever checked, any member could honestly say "yes, he…
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> At my university (SFU, in Canada) admission to most faculties is based on high school grades Do you not interview the applicants though? I think the best thing to do is to set a basic requirement for grades from their highschool, then get people in and ask them to take your own tests and give them an interview with one of the teaching staff to make your own judgement about whether they're suitable or not. Accepting…
We're a public university admitting over 7,000 students per year. There simply aren't the resources to interview students... not to mention the fact that SFU competes with other institutions and would likely lose a large number of students if we required them to come in for interviews.
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What makes you think basing admissions on SAT/ACT does not also have 'major flaws'?
I imagine because being nationally standardized, the SAT/ACT more reliably correlate to IQ. A 4.0 GPA means nothing but an A in all classes, which may give some insight into Conscientiousness, but it says nothing about what the classes covered, what the school averages at, and is thus harder to correlate with IQ. Since IQ+Conscientiousness is better than either alone, of course they'll want to consider both.
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Yeah, I don't think Sternberg is advocating for ending standardized testing: "My colleagues and I developed assessments for creativity, common sense and wisdom... we doubled prediction [accuracy] for academic performance, and with Kaleidoscope we could predict the quality of extracurricular performance, which the SAT doesn’t do." It sounds like he just wants to reform them, and has some strong initial results to sugg…
Any metric can be gamed. It only works until people figure out how.
The article mixes two ideas that partially contradict each other. 1. Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE [...] You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place. 2. Do we know how to cultivate wisdom? Yes we do. I agree with the second statement, and its implications are…
I mean it seems to be in Silicon Valley and where startups are concerned, sure. But the average American likely doesn't work in that sort of company, with the kinds they work at (retailers, large corporations, etc) trending more towards a normal working week with more reasonable vacation options.
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A few years ago, I was mentoring at the local (major!) university and met a student who was the President of a club. Then a week later, met another student who was the President of the same club. A few weeks later, the same. It turns out, a bunch of students got together, created a club, and each member was called a "President." The best part is that if an employer ever checked, any member could honestly say "yes, he…
I would hire all of them.
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>2. We will not laugh at or make fun of a person's mistakes nor use sarcasm or putdowns. I would have appreciated this as my public school experience was rife with negativity, sarcasm, snark, jeering, insulting, etc. I'm not sure what causes such anti-social behavior but I dream of a day where all students can be kind, considerate, polite, and supportive of one another.
In my early teens, I was the only one who used sarcasm in the classroom, and none of my peers understood it. There needs to be more sarcasm in schools.
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I'm more impressed with the kid who came from a broken home in a terrible school district who managed to graduate and do well than I am with the kid who had every advantage but was also involved with the student politics and choir (or whatever).
Indeed. Out of six years of reading scholarship applications, the most impressive extracurricular activity I've read about was working at McDonalds -- because it was clear that they had been given nothing in life for free, and had spent years working every available hour trying to put together money to cover the cost of their education. That demonstrates commitment in a way that volunteering for worthy causes never w…
(By the by, I'm a huge fan of your work. It inspired me to get into compression several years ago and it's been a passion project ever since.)