Write Your Own Virtual Machine (2022)

> "I am the teacher, and you will not do anything I don't sanction, like learning way more than I demand for today's lesson"

The person explicitly made it clear that while you can be encouraged on your own initiatives you still need to be graded/ranked on a common scale with your peers and hence the need for some sort of standardization.

For example, in a recent HN discussion on "Software Developer Productivity" lots of folks were arguing on how you can have no common scale/metrics and so you can make no comparisons at all between developers which is plainly wrong.

Education is about giving everybody a minimum standard of knowledge/tools needed for the Modern World and that is what a Teacher/Professor focuses on. Every Society needs to revere/honour (and pay well !) their Teachers/Professors because they are the ones who build the next generation.

IT need innovation. As you are not just building systems or maintaining one, you need to people think beyond what is assigned. As most likely it is this innovation drive us.

Not rule followers. Obviously we need those as well. But a few rule breaker does not kill you.

Unless he goes all the way to say to the whole class not to be rule followers. That is revolution. ... I may still with him but I would understand then you fail him. But if just one ... why not accept computer or IT guys has exception. After all are we in hacker news. Do you have all those rule followers are reading these!

Yes, it is sad that people of my "kind" "exist as professor." I helped students start a business. I started a makerspace for them so they could explore the world of 3d printing, arduinos, etc. I guided them build projects that were worthy of showing off on their resume (which resulted in some getting jobs). I was proud of the cool things that they did, and I worked with those who had difficulty. I was just so horrible!

Actually, my students quite liked me, and I was often forgiving if a student came and talked to me... after all, that's part of their learning process. Either the student cared or they didn't. I made it clear from the beginning that I cared about them, even when I had a class of 165 in the middle of Covid.

Do you actually understand what a diploma represents? It is a certification of knowledge (binary in nature... you either have one or you don't, so it is by definition a very coarse measure). A grade (or GPA) is a one-dimensional measurement of that certification. That is what your tuition is paying for. It is paying for someone who is qualified to teach you something and then evaluate you on the standard to which everyone else from that institution is also held. It is also a ranking against their peers (which is a reason that I had no patience for cheaters, which I found some every semester). As an aside, this is why a course transferred from one institution to another will often not be included in the GPA of the later institution, because it is not the same standard.

In education, you need both structure as well as innovation. I taught both. You seem stuck on the "rule follower" and "rule breaker" mentality, but that is completely orthogonal to what I am saying. I taught mastery. Whether you follow or don't follow the rules (however you define "rules") you must still master your craft, and the university exists to certify that mastery. That is the point of the university. Certification of mastery.

If you don't want certification, then don't go to a university. You aren't required to get a degree. You can learn everything that you need to from books and other places. But if you want certification of your knowledge, then you have to actually go through the steps that verifies your knowledge and ability, as determined by other people from a variety of backgrounds who have each had their knowledge and ability certified by even more people from a variety.... you get the idea. That is what a university is.

Consider the similarity with the martial arts world. You can buy a black belt online, but do you have mastery? Someone would ask how you got it. Who considered you worthy of posessing the black belt? You might say "it doesn't matter... I can fight and win!" You might be right. But the black belt isn't about fighting. It's about self-discipline, philosophy, experience, and yes, mastery, as learned from and evaluated by someone else who has an applicable certification.

I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Notre Dame, an R1 research university, as conferred by a panel of experts from a variety of universities (meaning faculty from other universities, not just Notre Dame itself) based on my academic achievement in the field of Computer Science, peer-reviewed conference and journal publications in the field of Computer Science, as well as my creation of a peer-reviewed, published, and publicly-defended dissertation over graph grammars (blending formal language grammars and graph theory). That is my certification. Every grade that I gave derived its credibility from that certification, and was my communication to the world of my assessment of the mastery of that student to the expectations of the university, me, and their relation to their peer group (you've heard of a grade curve, right?). That's the way it works.

You are not requrired to take part in it, but just don't treat it like sour grapes (from Aesop's Fables, it might be an obscure reference).

But to resort to primary-school gold stars and points and such is possibly the very worst way, the lowest common denominator of the educator's craft.

I dare say my enthusiasm was evident. Knowledge and skill were on ample display. A better educator would have responded to that, advised more advanced study, given a different book and a different challenge.

I know; I was still naive, anticipating my college experience would be somehow different from the mass-indoctrination that had been primary and secondary school. It was my first inkling that no, that was not to be.