I don't think students are the blameless victim of this "system". I know of a continuous evaluation system adopted in a college, where the final tests had a less than 50% weightage for the grade. Thr students rebelled. It was far easier for a majority to burn the midnight oil for a few weeks than be diligent through the course. The test model has stuck because it's convenient for everyone, regardless of its clear weaknesses.
The Lesson to Unlearn
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Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#22My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…
We thought the same way but it’s difficult to replace the social component. Still it’s hard to see how bad the school system is and force our kids to participate. It could be so much better.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#23I wonder if there will be any changes made to the YC application process now that Paul is thinking about these things.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#24This is a very interesting thing to think about, I thought about it a bunch of times already, and have a couple of thoughts about it too.
First of all, once you're 55, it's easy to say stuff like that, because you won't be tested anymore. And I think there is a good chunk of survivorship bias: "Hey, I made it without worrying about tests, so you can, too!" Although that is probably not true for a big chunk of the population, especially once we look at non CS people.
Then I think, he is fundamentally right. Grades shouldn't matter so much, it is about what you learn. And I like to approach things that way too, but in the end, I always have to study for the tests as well.
The problem is exactly how deeply it is ingrained in everything. If I just stop caring, it doesn't really help. I will just end up in a worse position, since everyone around me still cares about test results. The people that need to change their mind are the people that use tests as measures of qualities that they are not a good measure for. I think a lot of people are falling thought the cracks because they don't fit the expectation of a HR person close enough.
In the end, we will always have to have tests. A completely individualized assessment of peoples qualities or fit for certain roles just doesn't scale. It would be great though to come up with new ways of testing that are maybe more in line with actual learning. For example, it would be nice to have tests at university where I can google things, just like in the real world.
I am lucky enough to be able to work in the booming tech sector where there are so many jobs that it is fine if I don't work towards a test.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#25Interesting essay, however it is written from a perspective of having basic needs met and having the resources to spend time 'hacking' a system. When you are struggling to pay the bills for the basics, you don't focus on the hacking just on the surviving.
The question I have is how do you hack the system such that you help those who are struggling to survive?
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#26This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing.
> And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades.
> When I started advising startup founders at Y Combinator, especially young ones, I was puzzled by the way they always seemed to make things overcomplicated.
I suspect part of the problem (of early founders being focused on hacking tests) was related to how heavily YC funded people from elite universities—which select people who do exactly that.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#27And yet I’ve interviewed with 2 or 3 different y combinator companies that hire based on coding tests that test nothing other than that you’ve memorized “cracking the coding interview”.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#28Not sure I agree with this. The real world is very much about optimizing for and beating tests. It might be producing a specific CV or preparing for an interview whiteboard session to land a job. It might be socializing and networking in a specific way in order to land funding. The real world does not commonly reward just being really good at arbitrary things. It's almost always focused on meeting a need that someone…
There is truth to this. It reflects the shift of mentality in tech entrepreneurs since the 2000s (experimentally entrepreneurial, introverted hackers, libertarian) to the 2010s (work for FANG or make a feature that FANG wants to buy, well-curated github and social media, social justice). I could dare say that this mentality flowed from academia to the greater economy. Academic funding has been generally formalistic a…
So in the greater economy, how was funding allocated before that?
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#29Not sure I agree with this. The real world is very much about optimizing for and beating tests. It might be producing a specific CV or preparing for an interview whiteboard session to land a job. It might be socializing and networking in a specific way in order to land funding. The real world does not commonly reward just being really good at arbitrary things. It's almost always focused on meeting a need that someone…
> The real world
It's not the real world - its the human world. The real world is very different, and getting more so imho. Skills to survive the human world are usually useless in the real physical world. It's a distinction I read recently from a philosopher that I lost track of, maybe someone here knows. Her point was (I think) that when someone says the real world, with relation to education, it's not really - it's the world of human systems that are very much open to degradation and corruption, and they can be changed.
Re: The Lesson to Unlearn
#30My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…
All true known and well established. But homeschooling requires a parent to sacrifice anything else and be devoted for that. Not an easy decision. It's much easier to find a good school!