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Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

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Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#321

Post by cracrecry »

turkishmonky wrote: post #196
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

Usually when someone has abusive parents, they become abusive themselves. It is a good idea that they get professional help in order to break the cycle.

>and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids.

This is usually the problem. You are intentional on NOT falling into THE SAME behaviors, and probably will overreact on the opposite behaviors that is as abusive as the original.

Just because something is bad does not mean that the radically opposite is good.

It is not a good idea focusing on what not to do instead of on what to do.

E.g I have seen parents that were too constrained as kids removing all limits for their children. The kids getting into bad friendships and destroying their lives as a result of the neglect from their parents.

Or someone educated as a Catholic with sexual restrictions promote sexual promiscuity on their children, with very bad outcomes.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#322

Post by SuoDuanDao »

fungiblecog wrote: post #300
warner25 wrote: post #10

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…

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…

Now this is a feel-good comment. Do you mind sharing one of the dumb rules that you might have been tempted to apply but decided against?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#323

Post by adminprof »

Vaslo wrote: post #112

Easy solution to the regrade. Never do one off regrades. Always say that a regrade of one question will require the entire exam be regraded. This will be done by someone else or the prof who may grade it worse than a rushing grad student who is just saying “yeah, yeah, fine, ok”. Most students fear this, especially when it’s the professor doing it. Almost never had to do regrades with this policy.

This doesn't work when I've tried it. How many students or times have you implemented this policy? First, it doesn't make sense when the regrade is most objective (like points were calculated wrong, or the grader didn't see something that the student wrote). And if you say that it doesn't apply for straightforward grading mistakes, then you get emails asking you whether something is a grading mistake or has the chance of lowering a grade.

And I've tried this policy before, and got students who wrote in my course evals something like "the professor intentionally tries to scare students from asking for regrades by threatening to lower their grade even more." And then what about when you are still asked for a regrade (which in my experience was not zero, but maybe about a third or half as much as without this policy). In those cases, you end up doing way way more, so the level of effort actually increases.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#324

Post by kelnos »

kikimora wrote: post #302
sanderjd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the article was fairly strong except for in the two points you highlighted here. In the first case, I still don't understand why you don't just mark their answer from creatively misinterpreted instructions wrong and move on with life. And in the second case it seems like just not worrying about cheaters and letting it be their own funeral (or not) is optimal. I remember who the cheaters were in my classes a…

> In the first case, I still don't understand why you don't just mark their answer from creatively misinterpreted instructions wrong and move on with life. Because your job is to educate them. They also complain about the task which in effect waste your time or give you trouble.

> Because your job is to educate them.

"Creatively misinterpreting" instructions means to me that the students are intentionally doing this (to get away with doing less work, or whatever). I think marking them down and moving on is educating them: it very quickly tells them that sticking to the letter of the law but ignoring the spirit is not ok, and will not be tolerated. It's pretty good preparation for being in the real world, too.

Regardless, giving ridiculously over-specified assignments will not be good preparation for the real world, where many (most?) things are under-specified and ambiguous. Adults need to learn how to read between the lines, interpret things properly, be comfortable asking follow-up questions for things that are not clear, and just figure things out when such clarity doesn't exist.

> They also complain about the task which in effect waste your time or give you trouble.

That sounds annoying, but to me it feels like over-specifying tasks in this way is the opposite of education. And it feels like the time dealing with the misinterpreters wouldn't be wasted; it would be spent actively teaching students that the world is not black and white, there's often no instruction manual, and that getting out of doing work through "creative misinterpretation" will not get you far.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#325

Post by professoretc »

gerbilly wrote: post #201
professoretc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems possible the teacher's instructions were confusing. Yes; I've been on both sides. I've written assignments that I thought were clear and unambiguous, only to find that a significant number of students misunderstood what I meant. They weren't intentionally trying to make the problems easier, they just weren't sure what I wanted. (And, of course, who is going to interpret an ambiguous problem so as to make m…

> who is going to interpret an ambiguous problem so as to make more work for themselves? I did. In fact I always tried to find a unique or novel solution to my problem sets, ambiguous or not. (If the problem set contained a hint I tried mightily to not use the hint, I'd always try to replace a proof by contradiction with a constructive proof etc...) My marks suffered for it. I even almost failed a first year exam cos…

I usually can tell which students will do well by how they answer ambiguous questions: they'll answer both ways, both the easy way, and the hard way.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#326

Post by kelnos »

lumost wrote: post #111
nvarsj wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was a physics undergrad who hopped into a few grad classes, and to be honest I was terrible at homework and great at exams (mostly due to some youthful obstinance on putting the time in on homework). At the time I believed that the exams showed who really knew the material and who applied time to solve the problem. With some time past I see that the larger/tougher problem sets were where the real challenge was. I r…

> The work for the first question easily totals > 20 hours of pen and paper time.

I guess grad students generally take less coursework than undergrads, but how could a professor expect students to have 20+ hours on hand to solve a single question, given other demands on a student's time?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#327

Post by gruez »

vishnugupta wrote: post #267
finexplained wrote: post #6

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…

> class of 1400 Is it a normal thing in the west? The largest class I’ve been part of in India had 105 students and I thought that was nuts. 1400 is like crazy to me.

"class of 1400" just means a given course has an enrollment of 1400 in a given semester, not necessarily that they packed 1400 students into one lecture hall and taught them all at the same time.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#328

Post by thrashh »

cracrecry wrote: post #321
turkishmonky wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

Usually when someone has abusive parents, they become abusive themselves. It is a good idea that they get professional help in order to break the cycle. >and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. This is usually the problem. You are intentional on NOT falling into THE SAME behaviors, and probably will overreact on the opposite behaviors that is as abusive as the original. Just…

Personally I find the solution is to meet and hang out with very diverse crowds.

I find that whenever you make a decision, you are really sampling from what you’ve already seen.

If haven’t seen a lot, your decision making is really constrained. If you’ve only seen bad decisions, you will make a lot of the same ones. You won’t even know that they’re bad.

The hardest part of life really is figuring out what you don’t know yet. And it’s really, really hard.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#329

Post by kelnos »

ryandrake wrote: post #220
raverbashing wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I don't know where I read this (might have been here on HN) something like: If you create the rules for the pathological cases, then you're "optimizing" for those. Not for the majority. Whereas the pathological cases should be dealt exactly like those. Though sure, sometimes explanations can be better, but you can only play the game up to a point

On the other hand, if you don't address the pathological cases in writing, 90% of your time will be taken up by the 10% of people who rules-lawyer their way through life: Pointing out the lack of written clarity, complaining about 'hidden rules', writing a letter to object, appealing to your boss, appealing to boss's boss, lodging a formal complaint with leadership implying discrimination, getting actual lawyers invo…

> I've seen salesmen who couldn't multiply two three-digit numbers together turn into Albert Einstein when the year's bonus structure got published.

I kinda think you are arguing against your point, here. IMO these sorts of sales people are a result of over-specifying homework questions to this degree, because they haven't been shut down or washed out at the stage where you find out they can't deal with a reasonable (or even too-low) level of detail.

But the problems you talk about in your first paragraph are real problems, and the solution is that the entirety of the school's administration needs to take a zero-tolerance approach with this sort of behavior. Rules-lawyering should be shut down at every step of the way. Yes, that might result in some actual lawsuits, which will suck up time and money, but I think that's just the price of educating people. And might still end up being less trouble overall.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#330

Post by jcims »

turkishmonky wrote: post #196
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

Fortunately your children will almost certainly find new ways to critique and disparage your decisions as a parent and their respect for you also diminish as they grow older and calcify their opinions of what makes a good parent.
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