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She tried 960 times

nytimes.com

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Re: She tried 960 times

#21

Post by diziet »

To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness.

The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way, she could have learned to learn, then learned to read and write, and then passed the exam, plus come out with other valuable skills. Doesn't this remind you of those college graduates that go through the motions, but when they sit down and are asked to do something on their own simply fail to even understand what they're asked? I remember back in college I would sometimes participate in study groups, and so often encounter students that relied simply on memorizing problem types and the ways to solve them without actually having any clue about what they were doing. It seemed more common with students hailing from asia, and surely had something to do with the way school and knowledge is treated there.

Re: She tried 960 times

#22

Post by jlees »

To me, this is less about the fact a single woman had to memorise a written driving test by failing it 949 times, and more about the mismatch between the test itself and the populace.

Surely she is fairly indicative of a rural inhabitant? Why is the test so inaccessible, and how many others are there like her?

Re: She tried 960 times

#24

Post by [deleted] »

petercooper wrote: post #11
kilian wrote: post #7

It's probably a webdesigner-thing to think of 960 as a nice round number, but that's the first thing I thought upon reading that.

I confess: I thought "960 Times" was a newspaper fixed width stylesheet template of some sort at first.

[deleted]

Re: She tried 960 times

#25

Post by SebMortelmans »

petercooper wrote: post #11
kilian wrote: post #7

It's probably a webdesigner-thing to think of 960 as a nice round number, but that's the first thing I thought upon reading that.

I confess: I thought "960 Times" was a newspaper fixed width stylesheet template of some sort at first.

Haha, I was thinking exactly the same thing :) Professional handicap I guess.

Re: She tried 960 times

#26

Post by Tichy »

Sadly, all she got was a drivers license. It's not like she hit success with her startup after 960 tries and became a happy member of the fym club.

Re: She tried 960 times

#27

Post by Goladus »

diziet wrote: post #21

To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness. The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way, she could have learned to learn , then lear…

She's 60+ years old and has been selling vegetables and working on farms most of her life. She doesn't remind me of college students or graduates at all.

For her, learning how to learn is probably much more difficult than you think it is.

Re: She tried 960 times

#28

Post by klipt »

diziet wrote: post #21

To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness. The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way, she could have learned to learn , then lear…

surely had something to do with the way school and knowledge is treated there.

You mean like the fact she only started school at 15 and never finished it? We take things like literacy for granted, but they're actually quite difficult to acquire if you don't start young.

Which is not to say that I think her method was a good idea, just that there may not really have been other options.

Re: She tried 960 times

#29

Post by petercooper »

zzeroparticle wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of something: I saw a documentary about championship Scrabble players and a lot of them aren't English speakers or even Latin alphabet language speakers. They treat Scrabble as a visual pattern game rather than a verbal one.

Pretty much been my experience playing. It's more about memorizing lists of words without really bothering to know what they mean and figuring out which words to use when and how to place them to maximize your point total on each play.

I mean no offense by this but.. is English your mother tongue?

I used to play Scrabble a ton and adopted a more verbal, etymological style that, I'd assumed, would be more common amongst native English speakers (but maybe not!)

Re: She tried 960 times

#30

Post by kenjackson »

Goladus wrote: post #27
diziet wrote: post #21

To me, this is an extremely sad story about the way we treat knowledge and learning. How absurd is it to cheer for someone that memorizes questions and answers without having contextual knowledge about the actual meaning behind those questions? It's not dedication, it's thick-headed stubbornness. The lady has been at it for about five years now. If she did it the right way, she could have learned to learn , then lear…

She's 60+ years old and has been selling vegetables and working on farms most of her life. She doesn't remind me of college students or graduates at all. For her, learning how to learn is probably much more difficult than you think it is.

Well its not so much that learning to learn is more difficult, but learning to learn in a given domain. If you don't have someone to teach you, figuring out the ideal way to learn something can be tricky.

For example, the Rubiks Cube. I'm sure there are great ways to learn to solve this puzzle, but I learned using a very time consuming technique with a lot of failure. While I have a really good schema for book learning, I have a relatively poor schema for learning the optimal way to manipulate items in 3space, despite the fact that I live that space.

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