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My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

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Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#101

Post by ef4 »

moron4hire wrote: post #63

How do you win a rigged game? Stop playing the game and make everyone else play your game. According to my parents, I was exactly like your son in the mid 80s. They homeschooled me to make sure I wasn't held back from my potential. It wasn't without its challenges, but nothing is. I'm doing pretty well now. I had a brief foray into "doing what I was told" in college, and figured out it was not going to get me to grad…

> And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to > play the game," "that's the system," "deal with it": you're > certainly free to ruin your own life, but leave the poor, > damn kids alone.

It's a defense mechanism. Some people need to believe that being a good little cog was their only option. Because the alternative is to admit that they find real freedom terrifying.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#102

Post by btilly »

pyre wrote: post #38
olympus wrote: post #18

There's a story from Gene Woolsey that I had to read my senior year in college (I was an Ops Research major, and Gene Woolsey is a pretty big deal in that field). The story went something like this: A group of students had just finished a big research project and were told to present a one page executive summary that outlined their work, results, and conclusions. They couldn't quite get it to fit on one page, so thei…

| If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask | your teacher first To be fair, it's a math class. The size of paper used is the stupidest thing to grade someone on. It would be like the physics world throwing out Einstein's conclusions because he used blue ink instead of black. I understand the value of 'gaming the system,' but the size the paper used for a math assignment is probably something that didn't get…

To be fair, the teacher has a stack of assignments which is probably put in and transported around in a pile. Something on the wrong paper size will be a major PITA. (I prefer this theory over the teacher feeding them into a scanner so that someone in India can do the grading, but that theory would also make paper size important.)

Life is full of incredibly arbitrary criteria that actually make sense in terms of someone else's workflow. You don't know that workflow, you're just given rules to follow. It is best to follow those rules, no matter how stupid they are.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#103

Post by btilly »

ef4 wrote: post #60
jcampbell1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system. That comment makes your perspective the complete opposite of the author's. The author kid moves his chess pieces randomly and the author writes a blog post about how the rules are not fair. You likely teach that sometimes you have to follow the rules to play the game. This blog post reads like like a fool arguing that the rules of chess are s…

If the world actually followed school-like rules, your analogy would be useful. But it doesn't. The recipe for "winning" the game of school is: - follow directions very carefully - be good at memorizing things - never challenge authority The market value of being able to carefully follow directions is nearly zero, and falling fast. That was a useful skill back when there were lots of good-paying factory jobs. Now it…

The recipe for "winning" the game of school is: - follow directions very carefully - be good at memorizing things - never challenge authority

This is an appealing theory, and I know lots of people who think it is true. However the "never challenge authority" bit poorly describes the people that I know who did best at school.

Respect authority? Sure. Follow the rules you're ordered to follow? Sure. But question authority, ridicule authority, and be a general PITA? That describes several very good students that I knew!

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#104

Post by kamaal »

brg wrote: post #3

After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…

>> One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done.

What? The student's context of getting things done is learning, not scoring marks. So the student is not getting things done. In short the student has just gamed the system to ensure he looks like someone who gets things done.

>>To have a high GPA

Too high or too low marks are both an indication that something wrong is going with the student.

>>But in the end they will get it done, and if they maintained a high GPA they have shown that he will get it done year over year and always with high quality.

Sorry, if you subscribe to this theory all you will get is students coming in a assembly line whose only known expertise is to score marks.

>>So a high GPA often means that they are not lazy and self centered. It often means a candidate will not sit idle because a task is beneath her, and she will not pigeonhole on a perfecting an ancillary module when there are better things to do.

This needs some elaboration.

Interviews are the equivalent of the examinations in the corporate world. When you hire nth order mug pots expert at scoring high marks, you are ideally hiring someone is too good at interviews. Think of it this way, if you spent approximately 3 hours practicing interviews everyday- you can soon(say in 2 years) reach a state where you can clear any interview in any company. Google, Microsoft, Adobe, FB- You name it, you would have likely covered anything that they can ever ask or will ever ask, you can even get to a stage where you can anticipate every damn question or the whole interview by just their initial questions. But to get there you will have to spend good amount of time practicing than actually doing the work you are supposed to do.

Believe it or not many people actually do exactly this. I know of a person in my last company who would dedicate at least spend 2-3 hours in a day practicing interviews come hell or high water. The person hardly ever got the work done, but had one quality. Practice interviews well, and then change your company every 2-3 years, and from what I know is highest compensated among all my friends and previous colleagues I know.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#105

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #85
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun. Hence why we have a society full of puppets with new cars in the garage. What an awful way to think, I'm disgusted by your reasoning. For whatever meaning of "winning" you have, life only matters if you do what you believe in, otherwise it's not worth living.

I am sorry. I wrote that from the wrong perspective. I was raised in a tiny town in the southern US, where being "right" has something to do with "praising jesus". Thanks to my parents, I was encouraged to "win" and now I live in NYC, and have a great job, a wife I love and respect, and an awesome daughter. My point is not about right vs. winning, it is more about giving your children the tools to do well in any envi…

Well, that I agree with.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#106

Post by scott_karana »

ethnt wrote: post #59
olympus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tptacek, I'm sure you have a compelling viewpoint both as someone who has to manage an entire company and as someone who is older and wiser than I am (I'm not sure if you have kids of your own). Would you care to expand on why you don't think spanking is an acceptable form of discipline? To clarify, I only recommend open palm spanking. Not switches/lashes/paddles/belts. It doesn't bruise, only stings for a few second…

We don’t allow adults to strike one another in anger or as punishment for a mistake or wrongdoing. We don’t allow children to hit each other — indeed, we actively discourage it. Then why is it okay for an adult to hit a child?

I agree with you, but what alternatives does that leave us with?

Economic or "jail" punishments aren't suitable in many cases when it comes to kids.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#107

Post by pyre »

btilly wrote: post #102
pyre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask | your teacher first To be fair, it's a math class. The size of paper used is the stupidest thing to grade someone on. It would be like the physics world throwing out Einstein's conclusions because he used blue ink instead of black. I understand the value of 'gaming the system,' but the size the paper used for a math assignment is probably something that didn't get…

To be fair, the teacher has a stack of assignments which is probably put in and transported around in a pile. Something on the wrong paper size will be a major PITA. (I prefer this theory over the teacher feeding them into a scanner so that someone in India can do the grading, but that theory would also make paper size important.) Life is full of incredibly arbitrary criteria that actually make sense in terms of some…

I could see the teacher giving a warning that the next time it should be the correct size, rather than a zero-tolerance paper size policy, especially when the child put forth so much effort on the homework. Teachers are supposed to encourage learning and interest in the material.

I realize that sometimes we just have to follow arbitrary rules, but the attitude of, "keeping one's head down," is not how change happens.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#108

Post by btilly »

pyre wrote: post #107
btilly wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the teacher has a stack of assignments which is probably put in and transported around in a pile. Something on the wrong paper size will be a major PITA. (I prefer this theory over the teacher feeding them into a scanner so that someone in India can do the grading, but that theory would also make paper size important.) Life is full of incredibly arbitrary criteria that actually make sense in terms of some…

I could see the teacher giving a warning that the next time it should be the correct size, rather than a zero-tolerance paper size policy, especially when the child put forth so much effort on the homework. Teachers are supposed to encourage learning and interest in the material. I realize that sometimes we just have to follow arbitrary rules, but the attitude of, "keeping one's head down," is not how change happens.

Do you know that said warning had not been already given and this wasn't "next time"?

Do you know that the teacher had not clearly stated to the class what the penalties would be for the wrong paper size?

In either case I can see the teacher acting as described. And wouldn't fault the teacher for doing so. If, indeed, the teacher was enforcing an arbitrary rule which had not been clearly communicated, then I would fault the teacher. But I suspect this was not the case. The rule was present and the kid was supposed to know it, but forgot.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#109

Post by jmharvey »

kenster07 wrote: post #61
greenlander wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed thousands of new college grads. The guys who I made offers to were almost always guys who did stuff on their own. Right before I retired, the last guy I made a job offer to showed me an app he had written for his iphone that simulated how particles diffuse in a solvent, and his resume showed a link to the code that he wrote. His GPA was only a 3.5. But I totally got him: he was great because he had a pa…

This is an irrational model for evaluating a candidate's talent. The best way to evaluate a candidate's talent is to make them code for you, plain and simple. Many people's motivations in university diverge from their motives in the professional world. Some people will work much harder when the result is a paycheck every two weeks, or when they have to feed a family, or because they see their work career as distinct…

> The best way to evaluate a candidate's talent is to make them code for you, plain and simple.

For evaluating talent, sure, but the job interview process isn't about finding the most talented candidates, it's about finding the candidates who would do the job the best. The point of the parent and grandparent comments was that GPA was an important indicator for the non-talent portions of the jobs they were hiring for.

From personal experience, I've worked with several people who were absolutely brilliant when presented with a new and interesting problem, but as the novelty wore off (usually on the scale of weeks) and their excitement waned, their ability to actually complete their work dropped off, too. That's not something you can tell by just making them code for you.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#110

Post by ordinary »

moron4hire wrote: post #86
epochwolf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of artists, unfortunately it's not. They need to have a job to support their art habit/hobby.

Perhaps that is because they focused too much on so-called "real" work and never developed their art enough to make a living. Perhaps they need so much money because they went to a university to learn what is free at any library.

Some of the most celebrated artists in history barely made enough to pay for their rent and were utterly unappreciated in their time.[1]

More recent examples abound in the music industry, in which you can be wildly successful, yet make less than what amounts to minimum wage.[2]

The importance of art to understanding human condition cannot be understated. Yet, for whatever reason, societies by and large does not reward the people who produce it financially. There's certainly a lot wrong with our education system, but blaming it for the starving artist syndrome is unfair.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_gogh

[2] http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

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