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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

#441

Post by shkkmo »

nradov wrote: post #405
Jensson wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about "other peopke" though, recognising that your own parents are bad parents is very important, not sure why you try to dismiss that. People telling you that you are wrong, your parents actually did good, is just gaslighting and damaging.

You seem to have a very distorted view. Have you considered the possibility that those people aren't gaslighting you, and that they might be correct?

Have you spent much time interacting with children of abusive parents? I encourage you to go do some research a learn how bad it can get and how difficult it can be for them to struggle towards acknowledging and coming to terms with that abuse.

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

#442

Post by strken »

This is what happens when you take a class where some students don't want to learn, put them in a classroom with teachers who don't want to teach those students, and expect the teachers to act as inspectors in addition to actually teaching them.

If you're trying to learn, and if other people are involved, the process goes something like this:

1. you find a mentor, a peer group, or a teacher

2. you read or watch the resources they give you, and do some exercises

3. you ask them to critique your work, possibly in exchange for money[0]

4. they give you actionable feedback, you thank them, and go back to step 2

This is because you want to learn, they want to teach you, and they're not the same person who's going to be testing you later.

[0] A good example of when you'd pay money is Drawabox's official critiques

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

#443

Post by grog454 »

borroka wrote: post #430
rayiner wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there’s a reason for the generalization. Some parents are inadequate and abusive, but virtually every kid is an impulsive and short-sighted creature whose brain isn’t fully developed until their mid 20s.

It's a matter of probability like everything in life. A good parent can lead to good outcomes, say, 60% of the time. A bad parent, 20% of the time. The numbers are random, but that's the idea. In retrospect, the vast majority of parents I knew when I was a kid were "bad," not in the sense of abusive, but in the sense of having no idea. They didn't have any clue about their own lives, how many could they have about th…

>the best in the school, in terms of awards and recognition. Not Einstein, mind you

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Einstein wasn't academically accomplished until his great works were published.

A lot of your story reminds me of my own but I've reached a different conclusion. Specifically I suspect I would have been accepted into certain magnet schools (pre college) with the sourcing and simple suggestion of taking practice tests. If I had a kid that I suspected would be capable of excelling in that kind of environment that is exactly what I would do to help improve the odds of said kid achieving that goal.

But I don't resent my parents for not bothering to help in this way. I'm honestly not sure why but I suspect it has to do with an unspoken and mutual lack of respect for "academics". The system is so easily gamed, and a gameable system is a flawed one.

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

#444

Post by cortesoft »

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…

I don't apply any of my parents dumb rules to my kids... but I probably have my own dumb rules they my kids will choose not to use with their kids.

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

#445

Post by adminprof »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #433
adminprof wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see in a forum for dentists a thread where they offer clever suggestions for how to change software development. Clearly, all these dentists have used plenty of software before. They would have seemingly great ideas like "programmers should get 10% of their pay docked each time I encounter a bug in a program" or "the real solution is to hire someone to test the program from start to finish before releasin…

Terrible analogy. What authority might a team of QA testers have on restructuring the methods for software development? Perhaps not as much as a software developer, but certainly enough to grope at and possibly conceive of new and useful ideas. A student is a QA tester for a classroom, they are not a dentist using a program, they were involved in the entire process and saw basically every mechanism with varying level…

Students are users of a class, as much as a dentist is a user of a dental software application. Neither were involved in the making of the class or software. Both were delivered the experience as designed by the course staff (instructor and/or TAs), or software team. Both only see the final product after months or years of development, done by specialists trained for many years even before that.

The error you're making is stating that "students are involved in the entire process" which is laughable. Many classes have gone through years of iteration, and even new courses take many months to develop before students set foot in the classroom, not to mention the years of experience and education needed to get the instructor to the point that they can even make a class in several months.

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

#446

Post by shkkmo »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #389
bckr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or it could have the same tongue in cheek sentiment. It's a lot harder to beat the crap out of a 21 year old than a 14 year old.

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

#447

Post by matheusmoreira »

strken wrote: post #442

This is what happens when you take a class where some students don't want to learn, put them in a classroom with teachers who don't want to teach those students, and expect the teachers to act as inspectors in addition to actually teaching them. If you're trying to learn, and if other people are involved, the process goes something like this: 1. you find a mentor, a peer group, or a teacher 2. you read or watch the r…

Completely agree.

People are forced to learn because basic education is compulsory and higher education is necessary for success. Not everyone wants this but they're forced to go through it.

Since everyone has to be taught, schools turn into mass education centers designed to teach hundreds if not thousands of people at once. It's impossible to mentor individuals at this scale, so teaching becomes these one-to-many broadcasts called lectures and evaluation becomes mass testing.

There are inherent limitations to these practices. Not every student is engaged by lectures and there is no room for individualization, people who don't adapt often get diagnosed with "attention deficit" and medicated with amphetamines to improve fitness. Tests are so trivial they have to impose ridiculous constraints on them to artificially increase the difficulty, punishing perfectly reasonable behaviors in the real world such as research and team work.

And it goes on and on, it just keeps getting worse until even the average student can smell the phoniness of this system from a mile away.

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

#448

Post by shkkmo »

jedberg wrote: post #163
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…

Both questions were answered in the article. The reason for precise directions is because otherwise people will complain, and if you ignore their complaints, they will complain to your boss. At the end you'll win, but you'll waste a bunch of time defending yourself. The reason for not allowing cheating is repetitional. If you get a reputation for allowing cheaters, then all the cheaters will want to take your class,…

> The reason for precise directions is because otherwise people will complain, and if you ignore their complaints, they will complain to your boss. At the end you'll win, but you'll waste a bunch of time defending yourself.

So instead you force all your students to do busy work, like signing a statement accepting no grade if they use the wrong size bread board or photographing the breadboard next to a compass to prove it's the alignment?

To me this sounds like lazy teachers punishing students rather than working to solve the problem.

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

#449

Post by dhosek »

I remember an obvious case of cheating when I was teaching college students (a boyfriend and girlfriend who sat next to each other turned in identical test papers). I remember telling them that it was obvious that one of them copied off the other and that they couldn't sit next to each other and when I started to complain I told them that filing a formal cheating complaint was a lot of work and I'd really prefer not to do that but if they'd prefer that instead of sitting apart on test days, I could do that too.

They sat apart on the next test day. I forget which one of them was the one who failed the next test, but both stopped coming to class after that (I'm assuming the one who was providing the answers was only in the class to provide the answers to the cheater).

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

#450

Post by xlii »

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…

My experience is completely different. Due to the lack of record and a lot of both personal experience and trusted accounts I deem such exams completely untrustworthy.

The bias is both ways. Some teachers/examiners decide on the spot which questions to ask. Not all questions are the same. Some are easier and depending on the sympathy one can get one. Sometimes due to lack of accountability I even experienced complete dummy exams - a reason for which I decided to drop off from one. In college there was known strategy around one exam to not take part in written one as it was hellishly hard but instead go for oral one, where exam consisted of simply showing up.

This goes other way around, too. E.g. powerful member of exam committee of exam I took long time ago commission was infamous for failing people if not bribed in a very specific manner (not cash to hand but require buying specific set of services from family member). I dismissed that as malicious rumors but it proved to be true. I wasn’t failed but was scored inadequately which slowed my career progress for next few years.

I was told by academic staff foolproof strategies for failing students on oral exams. Like provide quick series of questions from various areas of topic, when they stumble due to stress finish them off with few extra ones. Other - ask questions so deep and profound they’ll either omit the details or start argue on ambiguity which are both enough reasons to fail.

There was small scandal about PhD exam recordings (which are obligatory) being purged 10 days after the exam, even though one of failed student decided to fight the result. Due to lack of evidence the exam result was held valid.

It really depends what kind of person is doing the exam. I’ve been always told that if one wants to skip exam they should go for oral instead of written one. Currently many are recorded but as they are widely used there’s minuscule chance they’ll ever be reviewed, and I recommend reviewing any piece of video if you think it’s easy. Find 3 seconds on 90 minutes video where student hands envelopes to the committee.

People on generally aren’t nice and while there is a sentiment for the teachers they aren’t any more special than and other group. You get lazy, power hungry or simply malicious people there too. And thus written record is a safe two way.

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