11th grade • Hacker News Board

Re: 11th grade

#81

Post by timr » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 4:28 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #58

timr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And what makes you think the people designing your high school curriculum knew any better or that teaching you important things was even their goal?" I don't think they knew for sure , but they had a hell of a lot better idea about what was important than I did, at the time. And in retrospect, they weren't too far off. Most people who teach and design high school curricula are incredibly dedicated people, who want y…

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Yes, I've read that essay. The very fact that Feynmann was compelled to do what he did, by people who cared about the system, is proof of my point.

You can find corruption in any sufficiently large system. It doesn't mean that the system is inherently corrupt.

Re: 11th grade

#82

Post by timr » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 4:41 AM UTC

jey wrote: post #40

timr wrote: post #15

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real…

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?"

I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything, and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket.

When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything I don't like to do, then the system is broken." Smart kids seem to have this sense of entitlement worse than many people -- probably because they're so easily bored.

Trouble is, you're always going to have to live and work with people who are slower than you are. You can skip out on high school in an attempt to avoid it, take college classes early, rush into graduate school, whatever. Eventually, however, you run smack into the wall of society, and you've got to work within its framework. The ability to persevere through busywork is an extremely valuable skill in that context.

Re: 11th grade

#83

Post by pasbesoin » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 4:45 AM UTC

jey wrote: post #40

timr wrote: post #15

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real…

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

Slightly off-topic, but

s/high school/corporate life/

Some of the same social structures apply to both, as well.

The cartoon applies to my comment, as well. "The way we've always done it" can be a mercilessly rote and inefficient path. The bit of Perl I picked up (along with a hodgepodge of regex, SQL, VBA -- I know, but I had to use the tools at hand -- and whatnot) boiled a five person department down to one person, all the while handling significantly increased complexity with greatly improved accuracy.

If I hadn't taken the initiative and taught myself, none of it would have happened.

Of course, the ex-jock brought in from the outside to CEO, and his team whacked it, anyway. Just like high school.

But I walked away with a better skill set, to a better job.

Re: 11th grade

#84

Post by bokonist » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:07 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #82

jey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?" I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything , and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket. When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything…

If the point of school is to teach kids to deal with the busywork of real life, why not just have kids work 30-40 hours a week? Same result, except the kids could earn real money.

Re: 11th grade

#85

Post by mhartl » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:11 AM UTC

anewaccountname wrote: post #36

tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a spectrum running from Bill Watterson to Jim Davis, and I'm entitled to my opinion about where Randall Munroe falls on it. :P

Oh come on, Jim Davis at the bottom? Garfield may be terrible, but have you ever read Marmaduke?

Garfield is terrible; Garfield died some time around 1990. I don't remember the year exactly, but I distinctly remember the strip; it was a Garfield-stuffs-Odie's-mouth-with-a-watermelon-rind joke---exactly the same joke that had run a decade or so earlier.

But Garfield wasn't terrible. Go back and read the first five or six years of Garfield; at the time, it was a breath of fresh air.

Re: 11th grade

#86

Post by timr » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:19 AM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #68

timr wrote: post #15

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real…

I wholeheartedly reject the notion that a person of school age is inherently unable to determine when his time is being wasted. Frankly, I think your argument is a crass generalization. For starters, it's ridiculous to think that a person supposedly capable of learning what is taught by the system is incapable of learning how to accurately identify inefficiencies and failures in the system. This ought to be an acknow…

"It's not uncommon for highly intelligent students with passionate interests and a willingness to expend great effort in pursuit of those interests to have an inordinately difficult time with the work they're assigned....those that "deal with it" may wind up with poor or highly inconsistent academic records, which further erodes what value the experience might have had toward achieving their goals by constraining their options for higher education."

You probably don't want to hear this, but even straight-A students are bored by some of what they learn. The difference is that the straight-A students have learned to persevere through boredom, while the smart-but-underperforming students often haven't. It's a useful filter, and the people who discriminate against the latter group aren't simply being capricious.

(For the record: I was always one of the latter group. I'm coming at this from the dirty side of the filter.)

Re: 11th grade

#87

Post by timr » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:31 AM UTC

bokonist wrote: post #84

timr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?" I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything , and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket. When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything…

If the point of school is to teach kids to deal with the busywork of real life, why not just have kids work 30-40 hours a week? Same result, except the kids could earn real money.

Because it's obviously not the only point.

Re: 11th grade

#88

Post by ghshephard » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:41 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #35

sown wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in HS I recognized it as a waste. I didn't really learn much. The people around me didn't care and it mostly felt like day care. It all was mostly busy work. The only way to get a "challenging" education was to jump through a bunch of hoops, such as joining Key Club, marching band, AP everything, extracurricular this and that, all of it just a way of padding a college resume. Now those are things you will…

You're talking to someone who not only went to a public high school (and not a particularly great one), but had to fight to take college courses, as well as the few AP classes the school offered. I was just as bored as you writing five-paragraph essays; I winced my way through such winning courses as "Home Economics" and "Typing", as well as a chemistry class where everything was taught as a fact to be memorized, wit…

Typing was a pretty important course for me. It's painful watching those around me who can't touch type. Though, I'm guessing in this IM world, most kids today don't even have to take a Touch Typing course - they learn it through osmosis. But, back in the day - Knowing how to type was invaluable.

Though, I must admit, we really could have skipped the day of learning how to fold a formal letter in three folds, what the platen was, the carriage shift, etc...

Re: 11th grade

#89

Post by Retric » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:51 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #82

jey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will le…

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?" I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything , and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket. When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything…

It would be pointless for you to spend the next six weeks doing 3rd grade homework assignments. Back in 9th grade my geometry teacher graded homework assignments which I never did. The class was obvious and I got the highest grade on the midterm without studying or doing any homework. But, I still got a B because he felt busywork was important. Next year I had an English teacher who constantly gave out stupid vocabulary assignments to help our SAT scores. She saw my perfect score on the verbal section of the PSAT's that year, but she still gave me zero's on those vocab assignments.

So I learned how important busy work was without actually doing it. In life looking for ways to avoid busy work has helped my advance. Teaching people that they need to waste their time stops being useful when you start measuring people on their performance not how they got there. The real reason teachers grade easy assignments is to let people who work hard, but have no idea what there doing pass.

PS: IMO busywork is why few high school valedictorians do anything interesting or meaningful with their lives. If doing well in high school correlated with doing well in life people might start caring about their performance.

Re: 11th grade

#90

Post by timr » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 6:13 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #89

timr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?" I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything , and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket. When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything…

It would be pointless for you to spend the next six weeks doing 3rd grade homework assignments. Back in 9th grade my geometry teacher graded homework assignments which I never did. The class was obvious and I got the highest grade on the midterm without studying or doing any homework. But, I still got a B because he felt busywork was important. Next year I had an English teacher who constantly gave out stupid vocabul…

In the situations you described, there are a couple of ways to respond:

1) Do the work. It's easy, so you'll do it quickly and get a high grade. Then you can ask for more challenging work (or just do something more interesting).

2) Don't do the work. Instead, complain about the inanity of the class and the idiocy of the teacher. You'll get a bad grade, and a bad reputation, too.

There are times to recognize busywork for what it is and eliminate it (i.e. where you benefit other people by eliminating it), and times to just suck it up and do it (i.e. where you can't change it and/or don't benefit enough other people by trying). Part of the art of being successful is knowing how to discriminate between the two scenarios, and how to respond accordingly (i.e. diplomatically).

The problem with student complaints about high school curricula, is that they clearly land in category two. Your bad experience with 9th grade geometry doesn't mean that the learning 9th grade geometry is wrong -- it means that you had a bad 9th grad geometry teacher, or that you brushed him the wrong way, or some combination of the two. And in that situation, you can suck it up, and do the work you need to do to get an A, or you can complain and get a bad grade.

Life is full of these situations. Complaining about the unfairness of the situation is not the correct response.