Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 502 posts

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

#371

Post by analog31 »

lazyant wrote: post #174
analog31 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an adjunct (EE and Math), it was widely known amongst all of the teachers, that the student evaluation scores were primarily a measure of what grades the students expected. And I had to ask myself: If I were a student again, why would I adopt any other strategy?

I don't remember if it was a formal study but somebody has asked students at the beginning of the course what grade they _think_ they'll get and at the end it fit very well. Basically all students try to make a particular grade with the least effort, since that's what they are incentivized to do.

Indeed, since the evaluations are handed out before the final grades are tabulated, they can only be based on expected grades. But expected grades are still a better performance metric than a coin toss.

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

#372

Post by nonbirithm »

> Shouldn’t you help the actual imperfect humans in front of them, rather than imagining a bunch of perfectly rational Platonic objects?

As a functional, working class adult, I carry a conviction that specific aspects of my life would improve if I was forced to give up a portion of my autonomy by an external party for what some people may term "my own good." And I don't mean this in the sense of finding enjoyable hobbies, but in doing the things that need to be done for the maintenance grounded in hard physics and biology, such as exercise and diet - two things I have little interest in, and for which I have no luxury of external deadlines for. There are limits to certain other strategies. Amphetamines don't exactly help with falling to sleep on time, for example.

For some reason, I believe this in spite of the issues my upbrining caused me, and it gives me conflicting feelings. As other commentators have pointed out, there can be numerous lifelong problems stemming from how one was raised by their parents. In my case, I suffered numerous traumas that I believe I have yet to fully move on from. Criticizing those methods, or the lack of them in the present, makes me feel like I'm shifting the blame to the world around me instead of taking responsibility for myself, as "an adult".

Yet, at the same time, I feel as if I can't be trusted to just expect myself to do the right thing because I've gained financial autonomy and the "adult" label. There are times when the perfect solution makes its appearance ("just" exercise daily), and yet the drive to pursue it fades before my eyes. There are disorders of the mind that are known to interfere with the very capability of someone to take responsibility, such as ADHD.

I sometimes imagine what it would be like to have access to a set of data on the exact dates and times of how people exercise each day, or how they plan their meals (knowing full well that those insights might not necessarily work for me), and the resulting health statistics/ages lived for those people. In some racing games, there is a "ghost" feature that shows you the runs of the players with the best times, to use as a guide for your own strategies. With the current Internet, at times it feels like there's only a massive pile of conflicting information and no sense of direction, which ignores what actual people ultimately do with their lives.

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

#373

Post by bluenose69 »

Once, I tried a grading scheme in which the grade is either a weighted average of assignments and exam grades, or the exam grade, whichever is higher. My reasoning was the same as in the article -- I thought this scheme would measure what matters most.

However, I found that quite a few students skipped assignments and also did poorly in the exam. Of course, the strong students sailed through either path. But the weaker ones also matter. And, after all, the point of grading is not just to assess. It is also to motivate students, and to signal to them which things are important.

Unless the class is quite strong, it makes sense to balance assignments and examinations. And, as in the article, it is helpful to pick a scheme and stick to it.

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

#374

Post by Groxx »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #33
endisneigh wrote: post #7

This problem isn't a teaching problem. Evaluating someone's skills in any respect or context is basically an intractable problem. Interviewing, school, job performance, etc. etc. If there were an organization that could "perfectly" evaluate people's skills in a fixed period of time it would quickly become the top, and eventually only company. It would use its own skills in order to remove low performers, perfectly fr…

The first thing to understand is that the goal in teaching is not to evaluate anyone's skills . The goal in teaching is to make sure that students learn things. From a teacher's perspective, the evaluation part is entirely a hack to make sure that they do.

If you have a goal that cannot be evaluated... how do you know if you're achieving it? How do you know if you're improving or worsening?

Evaluation is necessary. It doesn't have to be quantitative, we all know there are infinite problems with purely quantitative measures of human behavior, but evaluation itself is fundamentally part of any goal.

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

#375

Post by MengerSponge »

derangedHorse wrote: post #331
MengerSponge wrote: post #306

To first order, you can solve the regrade and homework issue with policy: gate regrades on completion of homework assignments, and limit the number of regrades that may be submitted per week. You need a rate limiter to prevent students from just spamming regrades until the evaluation returns "A", and you want to incentivize the desired behavior--homework is intended to help students develop skills. If you want to lea…

That's exactly my problem with this post, the author makes it seem like a lot of thought was put into their teaching when it seems like most of their "progressive" ideas were half-baked. When talking about the abundance of regrades, instead of re-iterating on the idea, they gave up on it and deemed it impractical. > "We could change from the current “mandatory Odysseus” regime to an “optional Odysseus” regime: On the…

Yep, exactly. Chesterton's fence is a worthwhile thought experiment, but a lot of things that get justified with "we do it this way because it's been done this way" are known to cause harm.

The bigger problem is that this change is really stinking hard. In addition to whatever subject material you're trying to teach, you also have to re-train your students, because they're going to default to "an A- is a 93%, a B- is an 84%, etc", and somehow "things graded with more points were graded with more care"

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

#376

Post by blindmute »

yojo wrote: post #301
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…

My dad’s dad hit him with a belt when he misbehaved. My dad spanked me with his hand when I was a toddler. Not overly hard, and not after age 4, but still. Do I think my dad could have made better parenting choices? Yes. Am I happy that he made substantial advances from what he learned as a kid? Also yes. A small number of parents are legitimately abusive and should have their kids taken away. Some parents are amazin…

Literally nothing is wrong with a controlled spanking

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

#377

Post by mat0 »

kelnos wrote: post #336
dan-robertson wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you, but not as the assignment is worded: > “implement a job scheduler, using FIFO, LIFO or round-robin job scheduling” To me, "using" modifies "implement"; that is, the teacher is telling me to implement something, and then telling me what to use. (That is, "using" does not modify "job scheduler".) If the teacher wanted the second interpretation, they should have said: "Implement a job scheduler that ca…

Not more clear, he should've fixed his mistake. Or is not and. Period. I agree with you, but I wanted to emphasize the mistake

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

#378

Post by jamiek88 »

swat535 wrote: post #291
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…

You clearly haven't had incompetent parents. I'll give you a personal example: both my parents _completely_ failed to manage their finances, they kept on borrowing money, refinancing the house 3-4 times. Since the age of 17, as a young software engineer, I was constantly asked to help with the payments. Now that my mom has passed away, my dad has 0 income, he didn't bother to plan anything for his retirement and thus…

You don’t ‘have’ to do it.

You are choosing to do it despite them stealing from you.

At some point you bear responsibility for how you are treated.

Cut him off. Let him die alone. Not your problem.

I had to do the same with my alcoholic mother.

It was very hard it the moment her antics started affecting the quality of life of my family she had to go.

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

#379

Post by pdonis »

kikimora wrote: post #299
nicoburns wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I was just unlucky, but that isn't my retroactive judgement on my childhood at all. My experience was one of mostly adults making me do something that is really down to subjective preference because that was their preference. And now that I'm an adult and can make my own choices I'm much happier about it.

I think is how it is supposed to be - parents making decisions for their kids using their best judgement (preferences). It is ok for kids to disagree when they grow. It is less ok to make a problem out of it. Most parents really try hard to make rational decisions using information and background they have. Criticizing them for making mistakes does not make sense to me. We all humans and we make mistakes.

> I think is how it is supposed to be - parents making decisions for their kids using their best judgement

Yes.

> (preferences).

No. The parent is supposed to use their best judgment about what is best for the kid given the kid's reasonable long-term preferences [1]--not the parent's preferences. Or, to put it another way, what is best for the actual kid, not what would be best for the parents if they were in the kid's position. The two are often very different.

[1] I say "reasonable long-term preferences" to make it clear that I am not saying parents should indulge a kid's preferences for sugary foods instead of nutritious ones, lots of TV instead of a better mix of intellectual activities, and no exercise. I'm talking about cases where the adult the kid will grow up to be will genuinely say they are different from the parents in this respect and wish their preferences as a kid had been respected.

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

#380

Post by KerrAvon »

blindmute wrote: post #376
yojo wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad’s dad hit him with a belt when he misbehaved. My dad spanked me with his hand when I was a toddler. Not overly hard, and not after age 4, but still. Do I think my dad could have made better parenting choices? Yes. Am I happy that he made substantial advances from what he learned as a kid? Also yes. A small number of parents are legitimately abusive and should have their kids taken away. Some parents are amazin…

Literally nothing is wrong with a controlled spanking

Even better, a controlled whipping. Flick that switch hard. Draw blood. Nothing teaches ‘em like the old methods.
Post reply on HN