461–470 of 502 posts
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Harry Potter on Kindle readers are probably young adults.
I’m reading it out loud to my family (every character has a different voice). It’s a very mixed group with lots of discussions.
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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…
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Good! Students should be failing out of they're unwilling to work hard
You could call it unwilling to work hard. Or it could be difficulty prioritizing work, or ADHD, or disorganization. Are those traits what we’re testing for, or are we testing for knowledge of the subject?
> The problem is that student performance is continuous. When you are forced to discretize into a small number of bins, injustice is inevitable. Yeah, so why insist on doing that? Because that's what's easy for the schools and the teachers of this rather inhumane mass education system. How else are they to evaluate the performance of hundreds of students? They can't know each student individually. They must create ar…
That's too dismissive, almost a bad faith frame. The sad reality is that there is not enough money, there are not enough teachers, and most teachers are not good teachers, and quite a few are actually bad. That cannot be changed. We can't open a can of one million good teachers. Even if money weren't an issue, they just aren't there. More teachers, even if mediocre, would help probably, but that's a matter of money and politics.
> The problem is much of what is considered "cheating" by these people is actually perfectly normal real world behavior.
So is stealing and murdering. Schools are not there to teach "real world behavior", but increasingly advanced motoric, cognitive and (to a lesser degree) social skills. At higher levels of education, project and team work becomes more frequent (even too frequent, if you ask me). But you cannot learn reading, writing and arithmetic in a group of 3 where 1 person learns to read, one learns to write, and one learns arithmetic.
This opinion seems uninformed about a great body of research that has been done around standards-based grading. Stanford has led a lot of this and a family member of mine has collaborated with them on successful field studies in school districts. The result has been increased comprehension, better test scores, and especially improved performance for disadvantaged groups. By removing grades on homework, and making it…
This is interesting. Do you have a link to further reading?
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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 ki…
> 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.
Most parents act in the best interest of a kid, not themselves. The outcome varies because parents model of the world usually flawed in many ways and they actually make bad decision thinking they have made good ones. E.g. my friend is obsessed with pre-school development. This is likely because she perceive herself as not smart and wants her son to be smart. She force her son to exercise, he can read and do some math at the age of 3. Long term this is bad for the kid. Unfortunately she cannot realize this. Doing so would require a level of knowledge and self-awareness she does not have. I her eyes she makes perfect decisions.
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I'm always amazed how these kinds of folks survive. Do they luck out into well paying jobs? What do they even spend the money on? Don't they noticed the bad patterns after a while? Soooo many questions :-)
> how these kinds of folks survive By getting into massive amounts of debt
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…
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That is an excellent point. Yes, usually parents do "what is best for their children". However, good intentions do not guarantee good results. It took me 20 years to undo some of the more direct damage done to me by forcing me into a path I didn't want. Parents being completely wrong for the right reasons is very much a thing. That doesn't even count psychological damage almost guaranteed to lurk in there pretty much…
I think people find it very easy to judge parenting from the outside and/or with hindsight, whether their own or other peoples. I know that my children will wish I did things differently. Whether that is location, discipline, activities, internet access etc etc. I know they will wish I made more reasoned choices in the moment. That I was never tired, distracted, frustrated. That I let them spend their time as they wi…
Surely it is easier in hindsight. Nevertheless, there’s this golden rule of “parents should always be forgiven” when if fact it should be “children should not be forced to keep their connection to parents if they don’t want to”.
You, as a parent, are not giving them the “chance to live”, you are bringing them to a world where they probably want to be happy, and if you failed to make them happy they should not be forced to keep you in their life because “a parent gave them the privilege of living”.
Yes parenting is hard. Yes I understand parents make unoptimal decisions all the time. That’s their problem.