131–140 of 502 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same boat, same feeling. But I also think there are mistakes we aren’t making, a maturity that will lead to perhaps enhanced outcomes for our kids even if not for us.
Which mistakes?
This perfectly describes my experience as a TA in graduate school. At first I didn't understand why my advisor insisted on being so precise in assignment instructions. Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise. An exception for the new case would be added to the next iteration of the assignments. I only understoo…
Did someone ask the students why they were cheating or creatively interpreted instructions? And then tried to address the underlying problem?
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After just starting a grad program after 12 years in industry. I'd have to disagree. While a large fraction of homework is busy work designed to give the illusion of challenge and rigor - tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam. In CS, a ~4-20 hour project is vastly more representative of how well someone understands the material and could apply it in a re…
>tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam. I feel a deep sadness reading this. Is your computer science curriculum more accurately described as a software engineering curriculum? Memorization should be virtually irrelevant on most computer science exams. Proofs should be core to computer science exams; the ability to reason is the most fundamental skill to…
Given that most CS students want to go into software engineering, it would surprise me if this isn't the case for most CS curriculums. In my experience CS students don't generally want to be scientists, so most CS classes are more application-oriented than proof-oriented.
Schools are starting to provide separate software engineering programs, but we're not all the way there yet.
> But some are an assault on reason, with every word of the assignment creatively misinterpreted. It was never stated which temperature circuit to build or how to prove it works or what level of explanation was necessary. And who’s to say what “build” means? OK? So your students tried to do something and failed creatively. Sounds good. Reward them for their efforts, ask them to try again if you feel that they still n…
Ahh, here speaks someone who's never taught a class :) If word gets out that you round 89 up to 90, then next you'll be dealing with all the people who got 88.5. At some point you have to have a grade boundary. It may just as well be at 90 as at 89 or 88.5.
>Me cheating one time had literally no negative impact on my life
As the article explains, cheating has negative effects on everyone else. Of course cheating can be good from the cheater's point of view – that's why people cheat!
I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…
I guess your comments reminded me of that in the sense that you always have something to learn from people who went before you. Sometimes they have made mistakes you don't want to repeat, and sometimes you all collectively face things no one has faced before, but usually people who are experienced have some wisdom to impart.
Sometimes I think agism is partly a sign that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of assuming everything we do is new. The Chesterton's Fence analogy in the original post is apt in this regard.
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I get what you're saying but I also disagree with it as a generalization, and say it would depend on the subject. For theoretical subjects, an exam is about the only way to test your understanding. Memorization is not going to help you solve math problems.
> Memorization is not going to help you solve math problems. On the contrary, memorization is the way most people I know got through most of their math classes, at least through calculus and linear algebra. You memorize the steps by rote repetition without really learning why they work, then the test is mostly an exercise in guessing which steps and formulas you should apply to the given problem.
I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Always loved that quote. Unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way. Parents can also get worse as you age and learn that some actions or behaviors are inexcusable. But as a younger person you either didn't unders…
Indeed, many would envy those in this thread who seem to have avoided having the truly stupid/insane/wicked adults in their lives.
> I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
I actually interpret this as Twain saying that his father was a jerk, but that said father managed to mature with time. But he's written it in a way that the average person would chuckle and say "ah, see, his father wasn't a jerk all along!". Either that, or he's just written a perfect magic mirror.