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School grades are hopelessly broken

marco.org

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Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#41

Post by maxklein »

tokenadult wrote: post #29
maxklein wrote: post #15

Get this: Most people are not hypersmart creative individuals. They are normal people who need to learn some basic material about the world that they likely will never use because they don't care. The grading system caters to them, and it's a pretty good indicator of which of those people is going to be able to successfully do a standard job placed in front of him. School was made for average people, if you are so mu…

If you failed a test designed for average people, then by that criteria, you are below average. There are numerous counterexamples to this in the gifted education literature. If a teacher writes a test without fact-checking the approved answers, it is possible for a child who has a better grasp of the facts than the teacher to get a bad score on the test, while a child who parrots the teacher's mistaken view of the f…

Criteria as a singular is in common usage, and common usage is good enough for me, a commoner.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#42

Post by scott_s »

sumeeta wrote: post #34

Is this a nugget of wisdom or a naive frustration / hate piece? I can't help but relate to the author (in this post, too: http://www.marco.org/43768310 ) and feel annoyed by the "average" person's lack of passion and inattention to detail. It seems that his main concern is that school as we know it is geared towards creating this type of individual – and that people need to be more like us and care about stuff. Judgi…

I don't know if I'm younger or older than you, but: chances are that you are the average person and don't know it.

http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#43

Post by cabalamat »

yosho wrote: post #26

Another person who believes that intelligence overrides hard work. Sorry but I'm calling BS on this one. Intelligence might allow you to score well on tests while not finishing your homework, but it's hard work and dedication that truly makes someone successful at what they do.

> Intelligence might allow you to score well on tests while not finishing your homework, but it's hard work and dedication that truly makes someone successful at what they do.

I disagree. Hard work cannot compensate for lack of intelligence, just as intelligence cannot compensate for lack of hard work. (More fully: you can substitute the one for the other a little bit, but not a lot).

For example, a stupid person couldn't understand quantum theory no matter how hard they tried. Nor could a clever person if they put zero effort into it.

Fo a startup to succeed, its founders need a combination of intelligence, hard work, and luck. And I expect the same is true of most difficult and competitive human endeavours.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#44

Post by liquidben »

chrischen wrote: post #27
sanj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at how many of the tasks are BS-y when changing the world.

Boring does not equal BS-y. BS work is pointless, while boring might be understandably necessary. The authors complaint was of BS work, not necessarily of boring work. You can tell if he is simply avoidant of boring work by seeing if he carries out projects which he sees value toward, and whether or not he does everything, including the boring stuff, to completion. I'll admit his article doesn't actually give insight…

I think the grandparent post's application of quotation marks around "BS" subtly speaks volumes, i.e. perception of the bullshit value of a job is potentially invalid. Marco's essay reads as if he's got a pretty unilateral opinion about the worth of things. A person is allowed to deem something BS, but they've got to be open to potential compromise.

Apparently someone once thought over-designing the O-rings on the shuttle was BS work.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#45

Post by Retric »

dutchflyboy wrote: post #5
wheaties wrote: post #2

Great, I wouldn't hire you. I don't care how smart you are. Just on the basis of effort you're willing to put forward on tasks you deem unimportant to you means that I can't trust you to perform tasks that I deem important to me. I need someone willing to work through "bullshit" tasks just as much as I need someone to work on "gee-whiz-wow" tasks.

I agree. A guy who says "I just didn’t do my homework because I knew it was bullshit" just doesn't deserve any help.

A Job is not help. I don't want to higher people with a 4.0 GPA because they don't know how to prioritize tasks.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#46

Post by hga »

tedunangst wrote: post #40
chrischen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have legacy admissions?

The internet says yes and no, and I'd guess (without further information) the correct situation is closest to the "no bonus points for legacy, but you get a second look before rejection" policy one source claimed.

Yes, from the inside what I've heard is that it's no more than a "second look". Everyone who attends MIT must pass 1 year each (and at a fast pace) of the calculus (first term equals the AP Calculus BC curriculum) and classical mechanics and E&M (one term each). Plus one term of serious chemistry and nowadays I think one of biology.

MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part because of the self selection in applicants, although nowadays they're getting 13,000 per year, 1/3 of which the Admissions Office judges can do the work.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#47

Post by jdietrich »

wheaties wrote: post #2

Great, I wouldn't hire you. I don't care how smart you are. Just on the basis of effort you're willing to put forward on tasks you deem unimportant to you means that I can't trust you to perform tasks that I deem important to me. I need someone willing to work through "bullshit" tasks just as much as I need someone to work on "gee-whiz-wow" tasks.

From the source: "I'm Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and only developer of Instapaper.".

I don't think Marco really gives a shit about whether you would hire him or not. He has better options than to be cube fodder. The same goes for anyone who can build good things and solve real problems. If I were to concoct some evidence for my case, I couldn't do better than Marco's boss at Tumblr, David Karp. In this industry, smart people who ship get to call their own shots.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#48

Post by rflrob »

hga wrote: post #46
tedunangst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet says yes and no, and I'd guess (without further information) the correct situation is closest to the "no bonus points for legacy, but you get a second look before rejection" policy one source claimed.

Yes, from the inside what I've heard is that it's no more than a "second look". Everyone who attends MIT must pass 1 year each (and at a fast pace) of the calculus (first term equals the AP Calculus BC curriculum) and classical mechanics and E&M (one term each). Plus one term of serious chemistry and nowadays I think one of biology. MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part becaus…

"MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part because of the self selection in applicants, although nowadays they're getting 13,000 per year, 1/3 of which the Admissions Office judges can do the work."

If you think about it though, for an incoming class size of about 1000, they're still rejecting 3/4ths of the qualified applicants. Assuming a legacy applicant is qualified (and I'd suspect for a number of reasons that they're more likely to be qualified than the median applicant), that second look can be a big benefit.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#49

Post by hga »

jbeda wrote: post #32
grinich wrote: post #6

On the topic of grade inflation: In 1966, 22% of Harvard undergraduate students earned A's. By 1996, that figure rose to 46%. That same year, 82% of Harvard seniors graduated with honors. In 1973, 31% of all grades at Princeton were A's. By 1997 that rose to 43%. In 1997, only 12% of all grades given at Princeton were below the B range. (source: Source: American Academy of Arts & Sciences) One of the best things abou…

The data from http://gradeinflation.com/ (posted in another response) suggests that MIT is worse than average for grade inflation.

A thought: In the period from 1980 or earlier to the dot.com crash, ~ 400 students in each MIT class were majors in the EECS department ("Course 6"). With a class size of ~ 1050, that's 38% of the students.

In the early '80s EECS drastically changed it's core curriculum (or at least the CS part of it, SICP/6.001 was the start), and it definitely got better at teaching it.

If that also gave the students a better foundation for higher level courses, then we'd expect significant grade inflation based on MIT's policy of grading on mastery instead of the curve.

Also during that period the EE to CS ratio was 3:1 and flipped to a mirror 1:3. If CS is better or markedly better taught ... and be sure to factor in higher availability of computers, before MIT and at MIT ... that probably also is a factor.

Assume also during this period that only half the majors had a "calling" to EECS; therefore the quality of teaching would make the most difference to the other half to whom it doesn't come so naturally.

Re: School grades are hopelessly broken

#50

Post by hga »

rflrob wrote: post #48
hga wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, from the inside what I've heard is that it's no more than a "second look". Everyone who attends MIT must pass 1 year each (and at a fast pace) of the calculus (first term equals the AP Calculus BC curriculum) and classical mechanics and E&M (one term each). Plus one term of serious chemistry and nowadays I think one of biology. MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part becaus…

"MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part because of the self selection in applicants, although nowadays they're getting 13,000 per year, 1/3 of which the Admissions Office judges can do the work." If you think about it though, for an incoming class size of about 1000, they're still rejecting 3/4ths of the qualified applicants. Assuming a legacy applicant is qualified (and I'd su…

Arrgh ... it's not 1/3, it's around 3,000. But your point still stands, they're rejecting 2/3rds of the qualified applicants.
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