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Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

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Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#21

Post by eadmund »

ltfey wrote: post #13

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one. Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion. In school, you learn that hard work is rew…

I think that's needlessly cynical, and moreover does not align with my own experience in large and small corporations. I think that most folks in a corporation are trying to do well and do good. What you don't see is that 'politics' are one of the merits the corporate meritocracy is optimising for ­— and that 'politics' is just a single word shorthand for 'dealing with human beings.'

My experience has been that yes, both professors and managers have favourites: they tend to favour those who have positive, unselfish, engaged attitudes. And sure, that is itself selfish: positive, unselfish, engaged people are more pleasant to work with. And I have also found that those who complain the loudest — I include myself in that number, in my lesser moments — are those who are not engaging with the system as it is, rather than the system as they wish it would be.

The real trouble is that in a large enough organisation the system as it is may be so opaque that it really does defy understanding and consequently engagement.

Anyway, rather than assuming bad faith, try assuming good faith. But of course verify it, too!

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#22

Post by em-bee »

lordnacho wrote: post #20
gwd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Year groups are still important socially After you left High School, was there ever a time in your life when you hung out with people of exactly the same age? The fact that everyone spends 13 years of their youth doing it now is an artifact only about 100 years old. > I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want. I'm pretty sure Montessori schools do something like this.

I found that it expanded a lot as I got older. In the early years people in the year above and below were like strangers. By the end of high school, I knew all the people in adjacent years, plus siblings. At uni there's only a few years there, so I guess it doesn't really count. Once I started worked it all stopped mattering, I have retired friends as well as ones that have just started work. But for little kids, it…

montessori groups children into age ranges spanning 3 years. 3-6 year olds are in one class and the older kids teach the younger ones. there is absolutely no indication that the age difference is a problem. so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#23

Post by lordnacho »

em-bee wrote: post #22
lordnacho wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that it expanded a lot as I got older. In the early years people in the year above and below were like strangers. By the end of high school, I knew all the people in adjacent years, plus siblings. At uni there's only a few years there, so I guess it doesn't really count. Once I started worked it all stopped mattering, I have retired friends as well as ones that have just started work. But for little kids, it…

montessori groups children into age ranges spanning 3 years. 3-6 year olds are in one class and the older kids teach the younger ones. there is absolutely no indication that the age difference is a problem. so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid.

I'm not saying it's a problem, just that you're gonna tend to have similar kids in a clump. That clump is gonna have some people ahead and some behind it. But the clump is gonna move at some sort of pace.

> so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid.

Anyone who has kids is going to disagree with this.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#24

Post by em-bee »

gwd wrote: post #17
lordnacho wrote: post #3

I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want. This should be easier now with video classes. Just let people take the algebra or calculus or whatever module, when they feel like it. There would still be some sort of minimum requirement so that you can write a decent email, but there would be no reason to lock people in year groups. Year groups are still important socially, but th…

> Year groups are still important socially After you left High School, was there ever a time in your life when you hung out with people of exactly the same age? The fact that everyone spends 13 years of their youth doing it now is an artifact only about 100 years old. > I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want. I'm pretty sure Montessori schools do something like this.

montessori does exactly that. the kids are grouped into batches of 3 years, and each child can study the material at their own pace.

i don't know how they handle the transitions from one group to the next though. maybe an extra slow kid that hasn't mastered the whole material in 3 years will tack on an extra time.

and i think that faster kids will spend the extra time teaching younger kids.

i also expect that in a 3 year period is is more likely for kids to catch up because they are probably not continuously slow. (keep in mind that montessori originally developed the material for kids with (learning-)disabilities) so learning at a slow pace is actually less of a problem, if it is a problem at all.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#25

Post by em-bee »

lordnacho wrote: post #23
em-bee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

montessori groups children into age ranges spanning 3 years. 3-6 year olds are in one class and the older kids teach the younger ones. there is absolutely no indication that the age difference is a problem. so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid.

I'm not saying it's a problem, just that you're gonna tend to have similar kids in a clump. That clump is gonna have some people ahead and some behind it. But the clump is gonna move at some sort of pace. > so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid. Anyone who has kids is going to disagree with this.

i have kids.

the age difference matters for the development of each individual kid, but it us rather useless as a measure to compare the development of different kids.

in the first few years, the development of each kid is so different that no two kids of the same age are alike. you can have a four year old with the maturity of a two year old, or a three year old going on five. a wider age range allows children with the same level of maturity to play together regardless of the individual age.

also younger kids learn from older kids with allows them to mature faster.

this difference in maturity continues, but as the kids are older it just matters less, because the material being taught in school does not depend on the level of maturity but only on what they already learned regardless of how mature they are.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#26

Post by bko »

ltfey wrote: post #13

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one. Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion. In school, you learn that hard work is rew…

You have it exactly opposite in almost every way.

Corporate attempts to be meritocratic. They have every incentive to be. Executives want to hire the more effective people to perform tasks so they can maximize profits. They can be greedy or stupid, but not both. They can hire their friends and family, sure, and sometimes they do. But they have an incentive to make decisions on merit otherwise they would go out of business and be out-competed.

What incentive does a school have to reward hard work? The teachers and administrators don't get a bonus if they're school does well. Many don't even get evaluated and firing teachers is very difficult in the US. I knew plenty of teachers that would just phone it in year after year. Everyone knew this, but really couldn't do anything about it. Many do care because its the right thing to do, but it's not built into the system.

> [re schools] If you are treated unjustly by the system, you can at least appeal to the concept of meritocracy, and you have a chance of winning.

Yeah, I don't know your experience but I was treated unjustly in school. The disciplinarian (yes this was a real thing in my high school) was a tyrant. He would selectively yell at certain kids, humiliate others and apply uneven justice. What could I have done about it? Some parents complained sure but you're pretty much stuck there unless you want to pack your bags and move to a different town. In corporate world you just find another job. It's a lot easier than convincing your parents to move

> Corporate is easier, in the sense that the work is almost never demanding, and the evaluation thereof is invariably political

Not all jobs are bullshit jobs. Some jobs actually deliver some kind of value with a feedback loop

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#27

Post by gwd »

lordnacho wrote: post #23
em-bee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

montessori groups children into age ranges spanning 3 years. 3-6 year olds are in one class and the older kids teach the younger ones. there is absolutely no indication that the age difference is a problem. so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid.

I'm not saying it's a problem, just that you're gonna tend to have similar kids in a clump. That clump is gonna have some people ahead and some behind it. But the clump is gonna move at some sort of pace. > so no, plus or minus a year does not matter even for a 3 year old kid. Anyone who has kids is going to disagree with this.

If GP meant "there's no difference", they're certainly wrong; a four-year-old is obviously 33% more advanced than a 3-year-old. But the question here was about socialization -- can a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old satisfy one another's needs for peer socialization? Is a 4-year-old who socializes with 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds but no other 4-year-olds being socially deprived somehow? I think the answer there is clearly "yes" and "no", respectively.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#28

Post by ekidd »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #16
ltfey wrote: post #13

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one. Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion. In school, you learn that hard work is rew…

Corporate is weird. The tendency is to have an in-group and out group, but that is just normal human behavior. Nothing ground-breaking here. But to say that work is not demanding and evaluation always political is very big generalization. Some hard projects go to people that can handle them ( or can't if you don't like them ). When that big project is over, there seems to be a very clear indication, who MVPs are ( ev…

> But to say that work is not demanding and evaluation always political is very big generalization. Some hard projects go to people that can handle them ( or can't if you don't like them ). When that big project is over, there seems to be a very clear indication, who MVPs are ( even if they do not have 'in-group' status ).

From what I've witnessed consulting, this varies greatly by company size. I once heard a Vice President of major bank explain it like this: "Look, beyond a certain size, almost nothing you can do will save or destroy a company. At that point, people mostly go to work to play politics. Occasionally, as a side effect of the political maneuvering, work sometimes gets done."

But at a 50 person company, or even a 500 person company, it's possible for single person to make a huge difference. And yes, if the company is competent, then saving the day will cut through the politics to a remarkable extent.

To some extent, this must also be true at a Fortune 500 company. But there, most of the people will the ability to "save the day" will usually be in upper management. The big tech companies may be an exception this: Google has their two "level 11s", and Microsoft had the massively talented team that they used to catch up to Netscape Navigator in the 90s.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#29

Post by swayvil »

ltfey wrote: post #13

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one. Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion. In school, you learn that hard work is rew…

Social media is very much like corporate in that arbitrary assertion backed with absolute power (downvoting, censorship, banning, cancelling...) runs everything.

And anything can be asserted. Up is down, black is white, beautiful is ugly. And you'd better go along with it or you're out.

Call it hive-corporatism.

It seems to be a natural social formation.

Re: Life, school, and the 80:20 rule (2019)

#30

Post by marcosdumay »

em-bee wrote: post #24
gwd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Year groups are still important socially After you left High School, was there ever a time in your life when you hung out with people of exactly the same age? The fact that everyone spends 13 years of their youth doing it now is an artifact only about 100 years old. > I've long thought that schools should just let people go at whatever pace they want. I'm pretty sure Montessori schools do something like this.

montessori does exactly that. the kids are grouped into batches of 3 years, and each child can study the material at their own pace. i don't know how they handle the transitions from one group to the next though. maybe an extra slow kid that hasn't mastered the whole material in 3 years will tack on an extra time. and i think that faster kids will spend the extra time teaching younger kids. i also expect that in a 3…

I have never seen anybody implement the exact Montessori idea for anybody that isn't very young children. For the very young, the answer is that the material isn't exclusive to the classroom so they will learn it sooner or later.

There are plenty of people that adapt it to older children, but the 3 years batches are the first thing to go away.

At the other extreme, I've seen attempts to get ride of the synchronicity at university undergraduate courses. It's almost trivial there and seems to have no downsides.

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