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

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

#131

Post by ourmandave »

vacri wrote: post #121
wavegeek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 'program…

'survival of the fittest' is also misleading because fittest doesn't mean how buff you are, but how successfully one fits into their current environment.

Being ripped doesn't save you from the plague, but it might help later against the zombies.

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

#132

Post by Sambdala »

ska wrote: post #128
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…

Well, I think that theoretical guy would just be succeeding in a different industry than the one I happened to succeed in so far.

It's not like I didn't apply myself to anything, just not to schoolwork; except when I found a class interesting. As it turns out, the things I did apply myself to became my career rather than what I had gone to school for.

There's a large difference between "half assed four years of personal development" and simply concentrating more on things that are unrelated to your official studies.

In fact, one of the big reasons I'm striking out on my own (well, as part of a team) now is that I realized my day job was no longer providing me with nearly as much opportunity for personal development as it had during the first few years I worked there.

Edit: And the fact that it's entirely what you make of it isn't what's told to the 18 & 19 year olds heading off to college (at least not in the circle's I was in). What's told to kids is that it's the piece of paper that matters in today's society. Once you get it, you can do anything you want, but make sure you get that piece of paper or all opportunity will shut down for you forever and for always.

What causes these situations is the combined narrative that the piece of paper is what matters alongside the fact that getting that piece of paper is a highly gameable activity.

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

#133

Post by mcintyre1994 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #115
bsilvereagle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've seen variants of tests (maybe SAT Algebra?) where you fill in bubbles to choose a digit. (E.g., in column 1 you fill in a bubble next to []0, []1, []2, ..., []9, column 2 you fill in a bubble for the second digit, etc.) Cumbersome, but it would seem to overcome this. This also only seems to be an issue for the narrow set of problems where checking the answer is a lot cheaper than solving it. Sounds to me like st…

I don't understand how math answers without workings presented and marked are in any way useful or anywhere near "the right track"?

The first thing any teacher will tell you about UK math tests is write all your workings, because these are marked by a human. So if you're solving some complex statistical thing, and you type 0.535346 instead of 0.545346 so get the wrong answer, but all the steps are right, you get almost all the marks. There are so many places in late high school math where this matters that I can't imagine any use of a test that doesn't have a human look over workings.

Given there's probably only a few questions on each assessed topic, it seems much more important to know whether the student can apply the steps for solving a problem than to just give no marks to someone who makes a minor data entry mistake under exam pressure.

I thought math testing was already pretty bad because revision can be optimised so easily by learning to apply steps (not derive them) and by just doing past papers - but I had no idea anybody actually used an all or nothing approach to assessing these questions.

I don't even understand why you would mark it like that, unless you're only assessing math and other subjects you can feasibly reduce to objective answers. I mean, the point is presumably so a computer can mark it? But if you still bother assessing, say, English or History, presumably you still have to have a human mark them essays?

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

#134

Post by rayiner »

dunder wrote: post #98
bsilvereagle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So in the US, math tests are multiple choice AND teachers don't even require the student to write down the process by which they've come to the conclusion? Both of those seem unusual to me and I don't see how that method could possibly be beneficial in assessing knowledge.

I went to school in the US and never had a multiple choice math test that counted for a grade. We'd also almost always get no credit for failing to show our work on tests or homework.

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

#135

Post by saalweachter »

grimman wrote: post #42
markbnj wrote: post #37

I think to some extent she underestimated the differences in her own body after 15 years. I recall being bored and fidgety in school, but I was never so physically drained just from sitting in the way that she describes. That's probably something an increasingly inflexible adult experiences more than a child does.

I personally was constantly fiddling with something, be it drilling holes in erasers or doodling or whatever, but I was always doing something. Had I not been able to do something (allowed... now that's a different story ;)) I would never have passed a single subject! Just tiny tasks to keep myself busy while I was listening. Even to this day, a couple of decades later, I can't really concentrate on one task. That sa…

It's really funny, later in life, to be in a meeting full of people who have similar coping mechanisms. A dozen grown-ass adults spinning pens, playing with badges, anything but sitting still.

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

#136

Post by kirsebaer »

visarga wrote: post #96
bane wrote: post #51

I found this interesting. I worked for a few years teaching technical subjects to mid-career adults and ended up adopting an educational theory not too dissimilar to the author, but for mostly different reasons. Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251569 I remember high school very well, and it was a pretty torturous experience. If you could design an educational program that was almost guarante…

Maybe schools should use a system like Spaced Repetition (or Anki) that integrates in an intelligent way the repetition of old material with learning new things. It works very well for foreign languages, but could be adapted to other subjects.

Anki is great for memorizing vocabulary words and other facts, things that you can google. It doesn't help with critical thinking, creativity, or social-leadership skills.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

thirdsun wrote: post #101
earino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this, in a nutshell, is why my wife and I let our son "online homeschool" when he asked. He's a freshman in highschool and to quote him: "I'm happy to not have to deal with the arbitrary 'lord of the flies' social structure in High School and just be a normal person."

To be honest, I'd say there's actually some value in socializing and the concept of engaging with friends and students on a daily basis - especially outside of class. Aren't you worried that your kid might be missing out on those social interactions? There's a lot more to school life than attending several 90 minute classes in a row and calling it a day.

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by kirsebaer »

1a2a3a4a wrote: post #28

Interesting analysis, but as a current student I would find the things she wanted to change to be annoying in high school. It probably depends a lot on the student, but I really just wanted to listen to the teacher teach. My best teachers really knew their stuff and assigned interesting work for homework. The ones that tried to get us to hop around were not appreciated. I'm there because I want to learn, not do jumpi…

Seriously, it was so annoying when the teacher would have us get up and "move", for instance to demonstrate a math concept. She doesn't seem to get it that physically commanding students like that is demeaning, treating them like a dog.

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

#139

Post by kirsebaer »

derekp7 wrote: post #5

Why is this so surprising? Wasn't every teacher a high school student at some point? Is the experience so traumatic that they completely forget what the schedule was like once they become teachers themselves?

Seems like many people who become teachers enjoyed school. Also, when she was a teenager she may have blamed herself and her peers for restlessness and other problems rather than blaming the system.

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

#140

Post by ska »

Sambdala wrote: post #132
ska wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, I think that theoretical guy would just be succeeding in a different industry than the one I happened to succeed in so far. It's not like I didn't apply myself to anything, just not to schoolwork; except when I found a class interesting. As it turns out, the things I did apply myself to became my career rather than what I had gone to school for. There's a large difference between "half assed four years of perso…

Ok, "half assed four years..." was making some assumptions I shouldn't have. You could well have been doing other useful things at the time. At ~2hrs a week, you didn't actually find out what you could have done there, so that's a waste, but I understand being afraid to follow that conviction and drop college in favor of whatever you were finding interesting. I'm the last one to support the everyone-must-go-to-college message, but I understand it feeling risky.

Even in your circle though, I'm sure the (unfortunate) message was clear that the piece of paper was table stakes, not success. And every university has some variation of this message, repeatedly.

Table stakes get you a seat at the table, that's all. It's the things that aren't shown on that paper that decide what sort of a player you are. And success, in the end, is most of the time dependent on getting good at doing many of the sort of things you describe as struggling with, not because it's what you want to do, but because it's what is necessary to achieve what you are trying to do.

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