Escaping High School • Hacker News Board

Re: Escaping High School

#121

Post by ModernMech » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

istjohn wrote: post #92

ModernMech wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, don't we all hate it when people come into our job and tell us how to do it? Parents love to think that because they have had one child (or maybe a couple), they know how to educate children writ large. Compounding that, most people went through the education system as students, so they believe they have insider knowledge as to how the system works. Usually their advice on how to fix the system is geared toward…

The example of phonics vs. sight reading shows that professional educators are just the blind leading the blind. Parents have known for years that phonics work, but institutionalists dismissed their complaints as spouting off from the sidelines. Challenging established authority is the engine of progress in science and society. Appeal to authority is the last resort of those who have no other ground to stand on. If y…

> Appeal to authority is the last resort of those who have no other ground to stand on. If you want to elevate the discourse, engage with what people are actually saying, with their ideas, instead of dismissing them as idiot outsiders.

I'm not appealing to authority, I'm appealing to evidence/experience versus ignorance and Big Important Feelings. As a scholar and an educator, I'm the first person to say how important it is to cite your sources and to argue from evidence.

So if you're going to write 12,000 words about how the education system sucks and how to get through it, wouldn't you say that some of those words should be devoted to citations? Or at least the recitation of facts? Or barring that, at least establishing the background of the author to dispense such advice? Is a single citation asking too much?

There is one external authority cited in this entire 30 page blog post: Paul Graham. I guess that really says it all though, doesn't it? 14 year olds don't know who Paul Graham is. It really tells me the intended audience of this is not 14 year old kids, but for HN.

Re: Escaping High School

#122

Post by gwbas1c » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #22

hardware2win wrote: post #5

Pretty decent collection of reasonable advices Especially this: Make sure you aren’t just doing a glorified version of trying to earn good grades. So many people failed on this, mostly because of parents. Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless. Just small nitpick to #1 Learning just in time =/= learning via practice Learning just in case, the opposite of JIT makes sense too, but is "unpredict…

>Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless. They aren't worthless. Grades make it easier and cheaper for you to go to college. Good grades in college make it far, far easier to get jobs and can get you in the door to significantly better and higher paying jobs or grad school. So not worthless, just not the be all and end all.

I think you've missed the point about TFA's discussion on grades. Here's a link so you can go back: https://skunkledger.substack.com/i/125171481/b-dealing-with-...

Basically, high grades aren't the end-all, be-all of school. They aren't a way of defining ones' worth. The analogy of treating school like a job really applies here. TFA also points out the risk of bad grades.

I should point out that TFA's advice works for conventional high school, but less for prep school. I had so much homework in prep school that it was nearly impossible for me to pursue the kinds of things TFA advocates for. Had I known better, I would have insisted on going to public school. (But all my friends were going to prep school; another mistake from TFA that I fell into.)

Re: Escaping High School

#123

Post by nvln » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:48 PM UTC

We are trying to codify this: https://puthir.org.

My son (and our first learner) launched his portfolio (real work, not fake stuff) back in December and he added his new math toy last month. We expect his portfolio (+ his experience, skill and knowledge) to grow over the next couple of years. Here is his Show HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36603838.

Re: Escaping High School

#124

Post by benji-york » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:49 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #18

Orexis-Vexatii wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that not utterly stratify social classes? Upward social mobility would be near impossible if not for general education? Children would have no approaches other than what their family already has access to. The son of a smith becomes a smith, the son of a carpenter becomes a carpenter, the son of a lawyer becomes a lawyer and so on. And schools also function in part as day care. Parents can devote hours of the d…

Would that not utterly stratify social classes? Yes. This is one of the outcomes the anti-school crowd is after.

Is there a name for this tactic of projecting motivations on others in order to explain their behaviors?

Re: Escaping High School

#125

Post by istjohn » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

Scubabear68 wrote: post #115

istjohn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is self-contradictory. You say the problem is low teacher pay and status, but then point out the private school teachers aren't highly paid, but are motivated. If I were to speculate, I suspect the differences are: 1. Modestly higher pay in the private school, attracting better teachers 2. More selective student body in the private school, making the school environment more conducive to learning for aver…

My post wasn’t contradictory, because you missed the part about status. Our private school teachers are treasured, and are honored to be part of the long tradition of this particular school. My children are also the same children they were in public school, but they are learning more now because they have better teachers. The knowledge gap of them transitioning from public to private school was considerable. Intrinsi…

I guess I just don't think you've made a good case for _why_ the private school teachers are better than the public school teachers. I don't think it's intrinsic motivation. Do you really think status is a sufficient explanation? Why aren't public schools getting our best and brightest?

It's not that I think I have bullet proof answers to these questions, but I feel like you're not acknowledging that these are important questions to answer if we're to understand why your children are getting a better education in private schools.

My theory is that it largely has to do with teachers prefering to teach the subset of children who get into private schools. As a rule, private school kids are better behaved and less difficult to work with. It's important to note that I'm not saying public school children deserve an inferior education. Their lack of behavioral and emotional skills is not their fault. In fact, those are skills that should be taught in school.

Re: Escaping High School

#126

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

jb1991 wrote: post #120

> And by the time you’re in your mid-teens, you’re probably as smart as you’re going to be – not as worldly or wise as you will be later, but the raw brainpower is mostly there. I strongly disagree with this. I don't know if it is genuinely true in a biological sense, but in my life experience it is not even close to true. There are lots of things I do that are so far beyond my abilities as a teenager. It could be du…

It seems to overly intellectualize a problem that has a whole spectrum of factors outside of being "smart". Long term thinking, risk/reward, motivations, emotions, hormones, all that stuff is either first forming or in total chaos and it's in no way as simple as smarting your way out of it.

Re: Escaping High School

#127

Post by gumby » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

jabroni_salad wrote: post #85

Something that bugs me today is the way music education was handled at my school, and probably other schools. I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. Maybe some of that is my bad, but I switched to keys after highschool and when I show up to jam, most wind players seem like musical cripples without a lead sheet, and my fakesheets…

> I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets.

Without commenting on the dire state of music (and arts) education in the schools, the same is true of all subjects. Mathematics is mostly taught as syntactic manipulation; physics as memorizing a bunch of "laws" and doing "experiments" that have a right or wrong answer (chemistry and biology are even worse in this regard) and so on. Even literature and history are not taught as an exploration and inquiry of possible themes but as structured topics (often one per book) that you learn as being "right" or "wrong".

The emphasis on testing, and in particular standardized testing, has made this worse, since teachers who don't "teach to the test" are often penalized.

Re: Escaping High School

#128

Post by ModernMech » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:53 PM UTC

Scubabear68 wrote: post #117

ModernMech wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching is not nearly as hard as you lay it out to be. > Our kids are in private school now because our public school is a dumpster fire of bad teachers and admins. The private school teachers don’t get paid a lot but they are valued and highly motivated to actually reach kids. The difference is astounding. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You have N=1 child, and you extrapolate everything from that one chi…

My kids aren’t top students at all. They both have learning disabilities. My son is highly sports oriented, my daughter is very musical. They both have trouble with traditional subjects. They both got “B”s in public school, despite their standardized tests showing them in the 15-20th percentile. They both struggled with their knowledge deficit transitioning into the private school. They are doing very well now. Not s…

"B" students are in fact top students. That you think they aren't is one of the things I've been pushing back on in my career.

I have several learning disabilities including dyslexia and ADHD and was also a top student, so those aren't exactly determinative. Many of my top students are neurodivergent. I get a dozen letters every semester from my top students regarding their learning disabilities.

Excelling in sports and music is also indicative of highly talented students with vast aptitude. Your kids are actually probably far above average, but you can't see that, because your N=2.

Re: Escaping High School

#129

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:53 PM UTC

TehShrike wrote: post #93

light_hue_1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For getting into top-ranked colleges, "the summer business I started in HS is already paying me more than your median graduate's full-time job" is a slam-dunk argument. No. It's really not. As someone who has been involved in the system that admits you to top ranked universities and whose summer hustle also paid well in highschool. This is not a slam dunk. It's one small piece. And it could easily backfire and be a…

It's not just an argument that they should let you in, it's a BATNA – it's an opportunity for them to argue that they are worth your time. If they don't even try to convince you, you should probably stick with your business.

> If they don't even try to convince you, you should probably stick with your business.

For someone invoking BATNA, I would hope you understood the concept of distributive bargaining.

Top universities get lots of good candidates. The lawn care business guy - he's just one of them. The school doesn't lose much if he doesn't go there, and thus he is not worth that much of the school's time.

Re: Escaping High School

#130

Post by starcraft2wol » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #64

dweekly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat surprisingly, the impact on lifetime earnings of attending an elite college is nil for men but strong for women. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25315

Women use their credentials more than men because they say a subset of men don't respect them without their credentials being aired. If that's true then it makes sense that the benefit to men is nil because they're viewed competent by default whereas women have to prove competency. Somewhat anecdotally people regularly confuse me for a mathematician although I lack any degree. I just like math and using it to prove m…

That's the most charitable interpretation I can think of. Wouldn't you agree that stereotypes are most impactful with first impressions and then diminish over time for those who know you?