Conformance, not intelligence, predicts success in school at every level (well, until you're a tenured research professor, at least.) This fact is why I find it so amusing when people use school drop-out rate to as a proxy for per-capita intellect (as in the study on HN yesterday that showed that "Socratic discussions lower the drop-out rate"): all you're measuring is an increase n the amount of shit students are willing to put up with before walking out.
Intelligence (with a healthy dose of diligence) plays a big part in success in college. If you don't think so, then you're either not challenging yourself enough, or your college is not challenging enough.
Why do so many people on HN love to disparage school? Did they have horrible experiences? I had an incredible experience and learned an amazing amount of stuff. I almost never felt like I had to "put up with shit" to get a degree, or anything along those lines. Maybe I'm the exception, but I doubt that's the case.
Schools vary so much that if you recount an extraordinary experience, either positive or negative, you should give a hint of where you attended. What country/jurisdiction? How organized/funded? What size?
I went to a public high school on long island (I suppose we had good funding?), then to a private college w/1000 students per class.
Thinking about your post now, I'm curious where people who had bad experiences went to school. Was it the entire school system, or a particular teacher or grade that made you hate it?
My teacher in seventh grade was a tenured paranoid schizophrenic who had it in for me as soon as I corrected her on the first day of class. This was combined with an altogether toxic social environment. For me, school seems pointless -- a failed exercise in education cited within in a social disaster zone. I'm glad I got out. But the general inefficiency of the educational process has spread as memes to most corners of western society, so I am never truly away.
Can you describe toxic? I'm not trying to be a jerk, just genuinely curious. I remember social life in junior high and high school as being pretty stressful, and there were bullies (a handful I suppose), but I wouldn't describe it as toxic. I wasn't particularly popular or unpopular, just kind of did my thing with some like-minded friends. Kept to my academic clubs, played some sports here or there.
It sounds like the social aspect was what really killed it for you, not necessarily the education you got.
You asked this 3 days ago, so probably you'll never see my reply. But:
I read, and understood most of, Cosmos while I was in elementary school. For me, the educational process of school certainly was toxic. I can see that it works for plenty of other people, but for many -- some like me -- it is extremely adversarial.
It took me years after graduation to relearn learning, and re-discover focused curiosity, and to recall again how to intelligently consider the accepted notions that many other people have.
To be more specific, public schools lack (among other things) any focus at all on critical thinking and problem-solving. There are simply not classes for those at most schools. At best, a few teachers try to work them in to their class here and there, but it's not taught the way that, say, mathematics is.
Science classrooms are another specific example: they tend to concentrate on printed material and multimedia, and the few "experiments" that students do are little more than facades for re-confirming whatever thing is being taught that week. There is very little there to teach investigation, or to drive intellectual curiosity.
I say this as someone that was fortunate enough to attend some of the best schools in the Bay Area at the time; I imagine that my experiences, mediocre and toxic as they were, were still quite a bit better than what the vast majority of students are exposed to.
This is not to say that I didn't have some brilliant and dedicated teachers, however. I remember several of them quite fondly, all the time.
"Why do so many people on HN love to disparage school?"
Probably because most are well up the scale on what society regards as intelligence, and in the course of 12 or 16 or more years of schooling ran across teachers who weren't, or were otherwise obnoxious. Lord knows I ran across a few classics. You were fortunate, I gather, in your college; if you had such a good time in your primary and secondary schooling, you were very fortunate.
As to the general point, I am fascinated by the hard words that the learned find for the schools they attended. My best guess is that much of learning comes in short bursts, that this is necessarily the case, but that some of us infer that the whole experience could be at the peak level of intensity.
I suppose a few bad teachers would suck, but I can't imagine two or three bad teachers ruining your entire view of the education system. In high school, you're enrolled in 6-8 classes a day. If over the course of 4 years, you run into 3 bad teachers, is it just that horrible? I don't know b/c I don't have that experience, but it just seems a little overblown. Perhaps other people can shed some light on this.
In regards to learning coming in short bursts, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I feel like learning has been pretty consistent over time.
On the point of people being intelligent, maybe that's a bit arrogant to think you're better than the system b/c you think you're smart. Are you really that smart? (By you, I don't mean you, the poster. I mean the people who rebel against school b/c they believe they're just too good for it). And if these people are so smart, why do they hate school? Wouldn't they be just rocking their classes with little effort and moving on with their lives?
> The best thing they could do with it would be to just hand out a copy to every 9th-grade student.
What makes you think that the folks who dropped out would be affected by that graph?
Assuming that someone does something because they're ignorant is almost always a mistake.
Example - smokers know that smoking is bad for them and they knew it long before the warning campaigns. (The phrase "cancer sticks" is quite old.) If you don't understand that they smoke because smoking is better for them than doing without, you can't possibly help them.
I'm assuming that at least some of these kids who are wagging school are just doing it out of short-term thinking. They don't want to be high-school dropouts, they just feel like hanging out at the mall today instead of going to school. They don't think it matters. Having this graph burned into their minds might scare 'em into showing up on days they otherwise would not have.
Cigarettes are chemically addictive, so analogies to most other behaviours are weak.
> I'm assuming that at least some of these kids who are wagging school are just doing it out of short-term thinking.
Actually, almost all of them are.
> They don't want to be high-school dropouts,
You're assuming that they care.
> Having this graph burned into their minds might scare 'em into showing up on days they otherwise would not have.
Do you really think that seeing that graph will keep them from engaging in short-term thinking? Wowsers.
The graph shows one consequences of short-term thinking. However, they're surrounded by negative consequences of short-term thinking and still they continue.
> Cigarettes are chemically addictive
That's not the only effect. It may not even be the strongest.
And it isn't true of starting smokers. They also know what smoking will do for them, but yet they start.
Also, it's clearly not the absences causing people to fail to graduate. Just think about the people you know who skipped classes and days of school in 9th grade...
It should be obvious both ways. On one hand, the people most dispositionally inclined to skip school are the people most inclined to drop out. It should be fairly obvious there's a causal link too, because if you're missing every fifth day of school you're probably going to fall way behind in your classes and understand less and less.
Still, the magnitude of the effect is surprisingly large, and this information is useful to schools if they're trying to minimise dropout rates.
I wouldn't be entirely sure of your assumptions that missing class makes them fall behind.
An example is myself. I am a high school drop out. I gave up when, in Grade 11, I passed my Math 20 class with an 85% - but had credits withheld (meaning that I either had to retake or had to make them up with some other class) because I missed 60% of the class. This repeated itself in other subjects. I didn't need to go to school, I was still learning the concepts etc, but I would not have graduated without repeating classes (and actually being there for them) because of my attendance record.
I'm also aware that this is anecdotal, but from discussions I've had with other people in similar situations, it's not that I was necessarily unique.
Why do high schools keep abusing statistics?
This is one of many cases where I have seen a high school find correlation between an act and grades, and then made policy decision assuming things like attendance and extra-curricular activities caused increased grades instead of considering the alternative that kids who have a nature that causes good grades also causes attendance and participation in extra-curricular activities.
Just because "correlation != causation" comments correlate with studies, does not mean idiots like me cause them.
I pose that it is the fault of the Study, and not the crazy person on the other end of this keyboard.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 57.7 ms ] threadWhy do so many people on HN love to disparage school? Did they have horrible experiences? I had an incredible experience and learned an amazing amount of stuff. I almost never felt like I had to "put up with shit" to get a degree, or anything along those lines. Maybe I'm the exception, but I doubt that's the case.
Thinking about your post now, I'm curious where people who had bad experiences went to school. Was it the entire school system, or a particular teacher or grade that made you hate it?
It sounds like the social aspect was what really killed it for you, not necessarily the education you got.
I read, and understood most of, Cosmos while I was in elementary school. For me, the educational process of school certainly was toxic. I can see that it works for plenty of other people, but for many -- some like me -- it is extremely adversarial.
It took me years after graduation to relearn learning, and re-discover focused curiosity, and to recall again how to intelligently consider the accepted notions that many other people have.
To be more specific, public schools lack (among other things) any focus at all on critical thinking and problem-solving. There are simply not classes for those at most schools. At best, a few teachers try to work them in to their class here and there, but it's not taught the way that, say, mathematics is.
Science classrooms are another specific example: they tend to concentrate on printed material and multimedia, and the few "experiments" that students do are little more than facades for re-confirming whatever thing is being taught that week. There is very little there to teach investigation, or to drive intellectual curiosity.
I say this as someone that was fortunate enough to attend some of the best schools in the Bay Area at the time; I imagine that my experiences, mediocre and toxic as they were, were still quite a bit better than what the vast majority of students are exposed to.
This is not to say that I didn't have some brilliant and dedicated teachers, however. I remember several of them quite fondly, all the time.
Probably because most are well up the scale on what society regards as intelligence, and in the course of 12 or 16 or more years of schooling ran across teachers who weren't, or were otherwise obnoxious. Lord knows I ran across a few classics. You were fortunate, I gather, in your college; if you had such a good time in your primary and secondary schooling, you were very fortunate.
As to the general point, I am fascinated by the hard words that the learned find for the schools they attended. My best guess is that much of learning comes in short bursts, that this is necessarily the case, but that some of us infer that the whole experience could be at the peak level of intensity.
In regards to learning coming in short bursts, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I feel like learning has been pretty consistent over time.
On the point of people being intelligent, maybe that's a bit arrogant to think you're better than the system b/c you think you're smart. Are you really that smart? (By you, I don't mean you, the poster. I mean the people who rebel against school b/c they believe they're just too good for it). And if these people are so smart, why do they hate school? Wouldn't they be just rocking their classes with little effort and moving on with their lives?
What makes you think that the folks who dropped out would be affected by that graph?
Assuming that someone does something because they're ignorant is almost always a mistake.
Example - smokers know that smoking is bad for them and they knew it long before the warning campaigns. (The phrase "cancer sticks" is quite old.) If you don't understand that they smoke because smoking is better for them than doing without, you can't possibly help them.
Cigarettes are chemically addictive, so analogies to most other behaviours are weak.
Actually, almost all of them are.
> They don't want to be high-school dropouts,
You're assuming that they care.
> Having this graph burned into their minds might scare 'em into showing up on days they otherwise would not have.
Do you really think that seeing that graph will keep them from engaging in short-term thinking? Wowsers.
The graph shows one consequences of short-term thinking. However, they're surrounded by negative consequences of short-term thinking and still they continue.
> Cigarettes are chemically addictive
That's not the only effect. It may not even be the strongest.
And it isn't true of starting smokers. They also know what smoking will do for them, but yet they start.
Also, it's clearly not the absences causing people to fail to graduate. Just think about the people you know who skipped classes and days of school in 9th grade...
Still, the magnitude of the effect is surprisingly large, and this information is useful to schools if they're trying to minimise dropout rates.
An example is myself. I am a high school drop out. I gave up when, in Grade 11, I passed my Math 20 class with an 85% - but had credits withheld (meaning that I either had to retake or had to make them up with some other class) because I missed 60% of the class. This repeated itself in other subjects. I didn't need to go to school, I was still learning the concepts etc, but I would not have graduated without repeating classes (and actually being there for them) because of my attendance record.
I'm also aware that this is anecdotal, but from discussions I've had with other people in similar situations, it's not that I was necessarily unique.
Why do high schools keep abusing statistics? This is one of many cases where I have seen a high school find correlation between an act and grades, and then made policy decision assuming things like attendance and extra-curricular activities caused increased grades instead of considering the alternative that kids who have a nature that causes good grades also causes attendance and participation in extra-curricular activities.
This will happen whether the study actually asserts some kind of causal link or not. In this case, it doesn't.