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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

#381

Post by Shared404 »

sosborn wrote: post #357
eloeffler wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point here. Ideally the 3rd gen kids will grow up to realize their 2nd gen parents made reasonable decisions even though they disagreed as kids, just as the cliché says (and like so many testimonials out there). e.g. If gen 1 only used witty condescending remarks to teach their children that they're dumb, then 2nd gen can realize that this severely damages their kids' self-esteem. If gen 2 recobers…

Take any family line. What generation are they at? Shouldn’t all bad parenting be weeded out by now?

This assumes that the kids themselves actually learn and grow at some point.

Some don't. It may be that the parents overcorrect and never teach their kids right/wrong, or it could just be the kid being a problem, or any number of other issues.

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

#382

Post by mandmandam »

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

You are egregiously wrong.

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/21/04/effect-spanking-br...

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

#383

Post by s1artibartfast »

kelnos wrote: post #312
s1artibartfast wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heuristic can be reworded as adult parents are more knowledgeable and capable than children. Put the average child in the position of the average parent and you will see the difference. Think of how abusive the average parent is, then imagine them trying to parent with 10-20 years less development.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that we should excuse parental abuse, because a child would be a worse parent than an adult?

not at all. Some people are objectively bad parents.

I'm just that in general, the heuristic is accurate that parents have better decision making than their children. The very real counter examples (eg abuse) don't negate the trend.

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

#384

Post by s1artibartfast »

pc86 wrote: post #333
kelnos wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that we should excuse parental abuse, because a child would be a worse parent than an adult?

And somehow also strangely arguing that most parents are abusive?

Not the best phrasing on my part. Better phrasing would be "consider how likely the average parent is to be abusive"

That said, all parents make bad decisions to the detriment of their children. The severity and frequency is what constitutes abuse vs mistakes.

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

#385

Post by WaitWaitWha »

> [...] course grades should be 100% determined by performance on a final exam—an exam that could be taken repeatedly, with the last attempt being the course grade. [...]

Lets take this at face value.

There is no reason pay academia for the entire class. If I can pass the final (and pay for that part) which demonstrate my knowledge, there is no reason for me to spend the entire semester/quarter/period in class or pay for it.

Prove me wrong.

This is how it works with real-world licensing and certifications.

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

#386

Post by avar »

evilotto wrote: post #276
professoretc wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ran my class like a job... Deadlines are deadlines. We were having a conversation at my college about deadlines at some training thing and someone pointed out that almost no job is like that . That movie scenario where the guy has a big presentation, but it's also his daughter's dressage recital or whatever, and if he misses the presentation he'll lose his job? That doesn't happen. In the real world, you just say…

Rocket launches, if you're a rideshare are not soft deadlines. You don't get your payload delivered on time, you lose. Even if you're the only payload, you have hard deadlines - there may be a few windows to launch in but if you miss those the next opportunity might not be for another 26 months. Someone will lose their job over that.

They are soft deadlines, launches are routinely delayed due to unforseen circumstances, such as weather.

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

#387

Post by jason0597 »

whatever1 wrote: post #66
lumost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many engineering programs have their most challenging courses set up as semester long projects. In chemical engineering the final boss is the process design class, a project where you are asked to produce a chemical substance with desired properties at scale without losing money. Almost everything you learned during the program has to be used to pull it off. Programming, numerical methods, CAD, Transport phenomena, k…

I am currently in the last few days before submitting my Chemical Engineering Design Project (I'm designing a packed bed methanol reactor), and yes I can confirm it is absolutely fucking brutal and hands down the hardest thing I've done in my life so far

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

#388

Post by virgildotcodes »

sosborn wrote: post #357
eloeffler wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point here. Ideally the 3rd gen kids will grow up to realize their 2nd gen parents made reasonable decisions even though they disagreed as kids, just as the cliché says (and like so many testimonials out there). e.g. If gen 1 only used witty condescending remarks to teach their children that they're dumb, then 2nd gen can realize that this severely damages their kids' self-esteem. If gen 2 recobers…

Take any family line. What generation are they at? Shouldn’t all bad parenting be weeded out by now?

People are not purely products of their parents behavior. You have not only genetic variation, but a lifetime of all the incredible complexity of life experience that happens outside the house and with all other humans. I could imagine these factors moving each person backwards and forwards along any scale of “progress” we chose to measure people by, generation by generation, at times overwhelming the positive or negative influence of their parents.

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

#389

Post by throwawaylinux »

bckr wrote: post #140
Swizec wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> Parents can also get worse as you age and learn that some actions or behaviors are inexcusable 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 w…

The quote isn't about his temperament but his knowledge, so I think that interpretation is a bit of a stretch.

I think the same kind of quote would absolutely apply in exactly the same way to temperament though. The 14 year old thought his dad was a jerk who mellowed out by the time he was 21, the reality again being that the biggest change was actually the child's temperament.

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

#390

Post by l_s »

nojs wrote: post #366

One of the most effective exam techniques I have seen, which is uncommon in my country but maybe common elsewhere, is oral exams. I TA’d for a German professor who did them for his stat/ML course, and so got to sit in on all of them (I also took the course myself in an earlier year so had the experience as a student as well). The process was: 1. Give students a list of about 100 questions in advance, more than you co…

To back this up - I went through the oral exam experience on both sides (student and TA) with two different German professors and it worked incredibly well. We offered oral exams as a remedy for a few situations:

- suspected/known cheaters - students who missed exams due to illness - times in the course where we needed to get a good grip on whether our students understood the coursework the way we'd taught it

It was scary for a lot of students, especially the ones without great English, but it was always, in my view, incredibly fair.

edit: based on your comment history you're also in Australia - I have a feeling we might be talking about the same place :)

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