The Shadow Scholar

It started innocently enough: I wasn't working, and a friend of a friend who was doing her Master's (in Education, wouldn't you know) needed help typing and formatting a document according to APA Style. I needed the money, so I visited her at the school where she worked. I took the draft she had penned and started reading.

I nearly vomited.

The quality of writing was atrocious. It wasn't just 'bad', or 'needing improvement'. It was shockingly, horrifyingly terrible.

Poor structure. Poor grammar. Not answering the question. excessive circumlocution. Hackneyed phrases every other sentence.

I diplomatically told her that I would 'change some of the words'. As she dictated and I typed, I changed sentence order and modified her word choices. When it was finished, there was a semblance of respectability. A few days later, I heard that the lecturer loved it.

That, dear friend, was the beginning. I completed quite a few assignments for her, but stopped after she started quibbling over the already small fee I charged. (Note to self: Always charge what you're worth.)

Sometime later, a neighbour in my building called me upstairs to help a friend of his. She was typing a paper for her degree to submit that evening, and he, knowing my language skills and typing speed wanted me to help. I went, sat down, and read.

Oh, dear.

I told her that in all honesty, it sucked. I made a few changes, typed up the rest. 'Twas enough for her to get hooked.

Over the next two years, I did several assignments for her. It got to where she would simply email me the research question, and I'd 'learn' the subject (yes, in 2 hours), get references, and like 'Ed Dante' divide the paper into sections, and prepare material. I could do a 10 page paper in one day, which would probably net a 90% grade or better. This was after never having heard of the topic before. She would get wonderful comments from lecturers about her 'wonderful exposition' and 'excellent analysis'. This from a girl who, although not dunce, could never verbally put sentences together half that well. I often wondered about the intellectual prowess, or lack thereof, of her teachers.

It's a smug feeling, walking around as a college dropout while knowing that you can run intellectual circles around people with graduate degrees. I should note, though, that these were all humanities subjects: Use 10 words where 1 would suffice and make up some bullshit, and you're good to go. It doesn't have to make sense because Most teachers aren't going to read it anyway!

For those of us here on HN, who are in all probability above the average, it might be difficult to understand how stupid most people are; but take it from me: they are. Very.

I'm done with it now, though. I hated researching stuff that bored me, although I sometimes learned a lot. The most important lesson?

The world is bullshit.

http://www.designobserver.com/observatory/entry.html?entry=3...

In a word, yes.

You see, education, for most people, is NOT about learning. It's about getting a job.

We HN types value learning for its own sake, and would happily curl up with a copy of SICP or TAOCP and feel content. The average person wants the whole thing to be over as quickly and painlessly as possible. In the words of some of my classmates, concerning cheating:

"Better to cheat than to repeat."

or perhaps more poignantly:

"Don't be a hero and get zero."

We, my dear grellas, are not normal.

Robin Hanson from OvercomingBias says it best: School isn't about learning:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politics-isnt-a.html

I suspect it has as much to do with the following requirements:

1) A degree that is take-home essay heavy. 2) Very vocational -- the goal being the degree, not the learning.

I'd expect business and law schools to be high on the list too, although maybe the dynamic is somewhat different for professional schools.

And you certainly did your part in helping the world that direction.

You were willing to undersell yourself in allowing people to pass off your work and knowledge and skills as your own, and then you wonder why everyone around you seems to be so amazingly stupid. They're stupid because you provided them absolutely no incentive not to be. You made ignorance cheap, and as a result, it is precisely what you got.

There must've been some incentive for you, I presume. It probably wasn't the money, because you already said your fee was small. It wasn't the desire to wise these people up, because there was nothing for them to do once you were done. Why did you do this? I certainly hope it wasn't just for the sake of walking around smug amongst the uneducated masses, because then you are damning a monster you helped create.