Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns • Hacker News Board

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#121

Post by vacri » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 11:49 AM UTC

wavegeek wrote: post #109

vacri wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution is not sentient, and doesn't 'design' or 'plan' or 'program'. It's merely the name for a process, like 'the water cycle' or 'the bessemer process'. Evolution can result in things, like any process, but it doesn't design, and it's wrong to characterise it this way. This being said, if you're looking to the behaviour of primitives, the male-heavy roles were not 'war', but 'hunt'. And no, we're not all driven…

> Evolution is not sentient, and doesn't 'design' or 'plan' or 'program'. Literally true but the effect is "as though" it designs or plans. See eg "Why evolution is true" or any evolution text book eg "Evolution" by Douglas Futuyma. As for war versus hunting, the levels of violence in hunter-gatherer societies were astronomical with death rates from violence typically in the 30-50% range. So yes 'war' though not usua…

The effect isn't 'as though' it designs or plans at all, any more than clouds 'plan' to rain on the plains. Evolution is better described as 'survival of the fittest' than 'programmed to -foo-'. Keeping it phrased correctly also helps keep specious Intelligent Design arguments at bay - by talking about 'design' or 'programming', you're implying a sentient cause. And you don't actually need to say things like 'programmed by evolution' anyway. It's better to say 'resulting from evolution' or similar. Makes the same point, but keeps it correctly phrased.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#122

Post by reledi » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 11:51 AM UTC

One of the best high school teachers I had used to teach Dutch to adult immigrants before becoming a Dutch high school teacher. She treated her previous students with respect and expected them to do the same. She taught us with the same approach and had thoughtful discussions with us, and it made a world of difference.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#123

Post by VLM » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 11:51 AM UTC

bsilvereagle wrote: post #77

yummyfajitas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized tests even more so. Without any actual learning from the class itself, you can generally come close to ace'ing most high school tests by being moderately intelligent. How do you do this? I mean if a test asks you to solve 3x^2+5+2x=7, how do you solve it without know the quadratic formula or some such? There is a difference between gaming a test (in the sense of not knowing the material, but still passin…

> Standardized tests even more so Standardized tests are almost always multiple choice. So, given four (or five) possible answers for x, plug them all in and see which one equals 7. That's arguably faster than using the quadratic formula to solve the problem.

Even better, put it in standard form with coeff 3, 2 and -2 and just by inspection the answers have gotta be "around" the zero. So you can outright ignore the multiple choice answers like +1000, -1000, one bazillion, ...

Also there will be a lot of "stupid" answers on MC tests like listing three, four, five zeros for a quadratic to see if you understand the basic concept of what you're doing, always read the answers before you start. If you think you're getting five zeros out of a quadratic by some unusual plug and chug of the formula then you've already failed.

Another fun one... the discriminant of this one will be 28, right? Its simpler than solving the whole problem, I did this in my head in a couple seconds even though I'm pretty much asleep. So you'll have a bunch of boring rational number zeros which can't possibly be correct for that discriminant and one whacked out obviously irrational answer and that will be the correct answer.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#124

Post by VLM » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 11:57 AM UTC

wavegeek wrote: post #107

vacri wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your rejoinder to my point is "professionals have nice working conditions"? If so, perhaps go visit a call centre. I've worked in one where the floor staff had less than a meter of desk space each. Or clerks in a crappy government department. Or try being a taxi driver. Professionals also have a nice salary that keeps their interest; rarely is it below median wage. These shitty places don't have a lot of acting ou…

Call centers are the archetype of a bad work situation. If you are aiming for classes to meet that standard, you are aiming very low.

And yet, in a pyramid shaped economic structure, there probably are 100 call center employees for every dotcom programmer, making it extremely representative of "real world office conditions".

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#125

Post by ObviousScience » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 12:14 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #100

nilkn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty representative of tons of professional workers I know from many industries and extremely typical in technology companies. Most high quality office chairs are pretty expensive; the Aeron chair that is used at so many tech companies is easily in that price range, depending on where you buy it (and in what quantity). Maybe the only thing that's slightly unusual is the window. If your company is not providing…

Up-thread there was a comparison from office workers to high school students. Do you really think that the "average office worker" has a chair (in the price-range of an Aeron), an office with a view, and a flexible schedule?

As a paper pusher during college, I had a $400ish chair, a desk with more than enough space to spread out the documents I was working with and the keyboard I was using, and could get up and take a quick break whenever I felt like it, just to stretch my legs, go to the bathroom without asking, grab a quick bit of food, or whatever. I could snack at my desk as I saw fit. While they preferred I not take personal calls at work, it was similarly acceptable to momentarily step out to answer important calls. They were more concerned I moved a bunch of papers than I sat obediently at my desk every second of every day. The only difference is that I wasn't sat next to a window, but across a cubicle farm from one, but I could clearly see out a bank of windows if I lifted my head a bit from my desk.

So yes, I actually think that it's fairly representative of the experience of US office workers when compared to high-schoolers, which are given a much smaller work area in much worse conditions with considerably less freedom to deal with the reality of every day life.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#126

Post by VLM » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 12:15 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #40

Wow, 7:45 sounds awfully early. And out at 2:35?

The district my kids are in is even earlier, we're at a very high latitude, and on paper the reasoning is so that even in the darkest days of mid December the kindergartners travel time at the start and end of the day will be in sunlight.

The same bus that carries a high school kid between 6am and 7am carries a grade school kid from 8am to 9am (roughly). Its actually even more complicated because we stagger grade school, middle school, and high school, so there's a middle school run from 7am to 8am in between. Rather than three times as many buses and drivers each only working two hours a day, they all put in pretty much an 8 hour working day split shifts.

Unofficially its all about high school sports and away games travel time, also somewhat optimistically getting in a practice or maybe even a game/meet before a "normal-ish" dinner time.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#127

Post by malka » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 1:12 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #100

nilkn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty representative of tons of professional workers I know from many industries and extremely typical in technology companies. Most high quality office chairs are pretty expensive; the Aeron chair that is used at so many tech companies is easily in that price range, depending on where you buy it (and in what quantity). Maybe the only thing that's slightly unusual is the window. If your company is not providing…

Up-thread there was a comparison from office workers to high school students. Do you really think that the "average office worker" has a chair (in the price-range of an Aeron), an office with a view, and a flexible schedule?

Pretty sure the average worker can get up from his/her chair and stretch whenever he wants. A luxury high-schooler do not have.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#128

Post by ska » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 1:17 PM UTC

Sambdala wrote: post #13

I remember high school. During class I hid whatever book I actually wanted to read at the time inside the class book and drowned out the teacher. If homework was worth >10% of the total grade for the class (so that you couldn't get an A from tests/quizzes alone), I would copy the homework from someone else the period before. Tests & quizzes are so gameable it's a complete joke. Standardized tests even more so. Withou…

One thing that's missing here is that college really is a "you get out what you get in" situation. As a prof, you see people like this all the time, and hopefully you take the time to try and engage them more, but at the end of the day it isn't your responsibility if they choose to waste the opportunity. The "challenge" in college isn't to make a 4.0 GPA, it's to push yourself to find your own boundaries. Many profs will bend over backwards to help a student who is doing this, and (unlike high school) you can scale up your program to meet and exceed any persons abilities.

Sure, maybe you can skate by and manage a decent GPA, but you aren't doing yourself any favors, your basically telling us that you half assed four years of personal development, and you should know that it is probably obvious to those you've worked with and for. The corporate world has its share of people too, skating just like they were. Typically they are the ones not being considered for rapid advancement and grooming for bigger things.

Of course, you may just be exceptional. And it's not like you can't recover from this with hard work. But consider this as you head out on your own: Sometimes you just get lucky, but it's more likely that you will succeed or fail now largely on the back of hard work (and here's the tricky part) applied to the right places. Consider an alternative universe "you" who grabbed hold of college with both hands and squeezed until it gave up as much useful stuff as it could....

That guy would be eating your lunch right now. Not because of the college, per se, but because of the attitude and experience.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#129

Post by marco1 » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

"Offer brief, blitzkrieg-like mini-lessons with engaging, assessment-for-learning-type activities [...]"

Is that normal usage of "blitzkrieg"? Do you use it in everyday language?

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#130

Post by kamaal » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #68

Sambdala wrote: post #13

I remember high school. During class I hid whatever book I actually wanted to read at the time inside the class book and drowned out the teacher. If homework was worth >10% of the total grade for the class (so that you couldn't get an A from tests/quizzes alone), I would copy the homework from someone else the period before. Tests & quizzes are so gameable it's a complete joke. Standardized tests even more so. Withou…

Standardized tests even more so. Without any actual learning from the class itself, you can generally come close to ace'ing most high school tests by being moderately intelligent. How do you do this? I mean if a test asks you to solve 3x^2+5+2x=7, how do you solve it without know the quadratic formula or some such? There is a difference between gaming a test (in the sense of not knowing the material, but still passin…

>>I mean if a test asks you to solve 3x^2+5+2x=7, how do you solve it without know the quadratic formula or some such?

If you have memorized the general heuristic to solve any particular equation, its basically that is all there is to solving that equation. What is left after that is to practice that algorithm enough number of times until it just comes to you naturally when you see such equation again.

Richard Feynman, noted people find math difficult because all the while they are focusing on just that 'memorizing that algorithm' part. He used to call this as 'for people who don't know what they are doing'.

In school, or even in college, there are only a finite number of such algorithms to rote memorize. If you do, and practice those problem enough number of time, you can essentially score big marks in the exam.

Unfortunately the same is in software interviews these days. The most common algorithm experts you come across these days, are exactly algorithm experts. These are simply people who can recall all the algorithms they have rote memorized earlier. I know of people who spend dedicated time every day memorizing time and space complexity of many commonly asked interview algorithms on flash cards.

Ironically hiring such candidates at times is almost synonymous with hiring bad candidates.