Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

Firstly, I sympathise that teaching seems to be awful. I think a lot of the problems are misaligned incentives (universities are judged by their research output; it is hard to have a career as an excellent teacher rather than an excellent researcher)

But I worry that the argument has strayed too far from one based on Chesterton’s fence to one with a lot of status quo bias and rationalisation. I say this because my university (outside the United States) followed a system much like the one the author is arguing against.

- Almost all of the degree was determined by a final exam. In fact there wasn’t even a final grade for the degree but one for each year and the convention was to take your final-year grade so in some sense only the final exam mattered (you might be expelled or advised to transfer to another course/university if you did particularly poorly in earlier exams). However, there were no resits.

- There was homework but it was not graded (at least for my subject. Your individual questions would be marked as right/wrong and problems would be pointed out)

- Attendance to lectures was not required however one had to spend a certain reasonable number of nights at the university (for a particular definition of ‘at’ and ‘university’) in order to graduate.

- Attendance to lectures was strongly encouraged (because you would struggle to get notes/homework without attendance as ~everything was handwritten or on physical paper)

- Attempting homework was strongly encouraged because you would go to small (one on one or one on two) group teaching sessions to discuss it, so there was social pressure to not be (extremely conspicuously) absent and to have something to discuss Let me now briefly discuss how this alternative system addressed some of the author’s points.

- Preparing for exams by doing homework (and also a ‘homework’ set of example exam questions) was incentivised by the social pressure of it being very obvious if you didn’t do the work

- The homework system also addressed the problems of asking questions being scary in a big group and the (not discussed) system where lots of students in the US don’t realise that they are meant to seek out help in office hours (and worse, I understand this is a particular problem for poorer students who are less likely to know that unlike high school you aren’t meant to touch it out alone)

- Because homework wasn’t graded, some questions would be very difficult (because attempts and discussion could be interesting) or chosen for the pedagogical value. Looking at homework offered good opportunities for feedback

- Converting examinations to grades was complicated (you would get regular partial credit marks plus two different kinds of bonus mark for different levels of significant progress on a question which got outsize rewards to encourage doing fewer questions well over having a crack at more questions; there was a vector which you could dot with your vector of the three marks to get an ‘overall mark’) and borderline candidates would have their submitted answers carefully reviewed by the examination committee to allow for more fair subjective grading

- The university didn’t really offer many opportunities to appeal which reduced the pressure on teachers but has its own problems. There were some rare allowances for extenuating circumstances but in general it was encouraged to not start exams if there were serious complications (eg some health problem) and to wait a year, which was also a problematic system.

- But they did try to be particularly fair to students, e.g. they would collect the rubbish paper after the exams and if some student claimed that they had answered a question for which no answer had been submitted, the bins would be searched

- Cheating was relatively difficult as there was only one big opportunity for it: the final exams of which there were four (to allow for more time and averaging out a several days) which contained questions from all courses. More could be invested in invigilation for these few exams.

That doesn’t mean the system was without complaints. The big complaints were (1) pressure, which was slightly mitigated by the selection procedures of the university somewhat selecting students who were able to handle big exams; (2) unfairness with regards to poor performance during the exam week for random reasons (e.g. injury/personal circumstances/mild illness like a bad cold); (3) different standards for different courses, particularly a divide between pure and applied and harder courses tending to have easier questions; (4) The university is selective and many students felt that they could have gotten a higher grade by going to a less selective university, and many students felt their future would depend on the grade and not the institution next to it (many companies claimed to have ‘institution blind’ hiring for example) and therefore the university was unfairly damaging students’ career prospects with their desire to grade students based on how much they might be allowed to continue education/research at the university.

I think It’s a question of scope not of the logical operator. One way to interpret the question is:

1. You choose X or Y or Z

2. You provide a scheduler that does the thing you chose

Another is:

1. You provide a scheduler where I choose X or Y or Z and the scheduler does the thing I chose.

The question is whether the disjunction applies to the input configuration of the scheduler or the output of the assignment. That is, whether the output of the assignment has type (X_scheduler | Y_scheduler | Z_scheduler) or type (X | Y | Z) -> scheduler.

>Covering more material isn’t necessarily a good thing if students are not really understanding the material that’s already been presented. I personally and benefited greatly from others asking questions. Sometimes the questions asked were not even things I considered. In my college classes that were purely lecture based where the prof didn’t allow interruptions, I certainly got more value out of studying with others because of the questions.

Sure, that can also happen. I've had multiple lectures though where the questions caused pacing issues and where the questions were unique to the questioner. It's a catch 22 because the teacher asked for this but still wants to cover the required material, and they need to balance it better to avoid losing control of the class. If in a college or grad school environment, a professor has office hours. If there are multiple students with similar questions, I have found that email or later lecture clarifications work well.

I'd say I got a lot of value out of studying with others regardless of whether questions were allowed. It's a necessity where a professor yells at you for asking a question as did my college statistics professor; unfortunately he was also the head of his department so nothing we could do about it but learn on our own.

That's not the trade-off without penalties for non-participation though. It's not 'no questions at all' or 'all questions, all the time.' It's some people ask questions, most people don't, the grades aren't impacted by your own introverted nature.

Here's the kicker - most of the time, if participation is graded it doesn't massively increase the actual participation in discussion. It just gives the professor more control over the grading, something they desire especially if it's blind grading numbers. It's a penalty system for people that the professor doesn't like or behavior they don't like, and sometimes a way to reward favorites. That's all.

There could be teachers who are fanatics about some political issue, and if you even hint you might disagree with them they'll try to lash out. I also recall some university level class (I didn't take it but a friend did) where religion was a topic and the professor intentionally set very loaded questions in online tutorials. While it's fair to ask people to question their own assumptions, it often seems the people most keen on this are ones who would become very irate if their own assumptions got questioned.

Perhaps that why some groups of people tend to gravitate to STEM, where teacher bias is less likely to have an impact.

Maybe I'm weird. I've brought up my kids without applying the dumb rules i hated as a kid and they're both happy and well adjusted. And i'm happier too because i've avoided all the usual stupid family arguments that would otherwise result.

I see other parents repeatedly inflicting on their kids rules and behaviours that are completely unnecessary but they think it's "the right thing"

i see this as truly stupid and a great way to sour your relationship with your kids when they get older and don't have to take it anymore