I do not think the pressure comes directly from the need for higher grades. I think it come from how those grades are created.
I my academic history (highschool, undergrad, law school, now teaching) I only felt real stress where grades were incremental. Take my civpro class. We had an assignment after only three lectures, an assignment worth 5% of our grade. I had barely wrapped my head around law school and already my final grade, my scholarship, was on the line. I did poorly on that assignment, immediately chopping a few points off my final grade. On the other hand my crimlaw class had no assignments, just a big exam at the end. That class allowed me the time to figure things out and was much less stressful.
The highschool kids I talk to today are in a constant panic. ((That's how I see it. For them it's just normal.)) Grades are ridiculously high, with class averages well north of 90%. So every test, every graded assignment, requires the focus of a final exam. They cannot afford diversion or outside learning. Each week is prep for the next test and each of those tests directly impacts their grade. Have a bad week, or even a bad afternoon, and it might stick with you for years. They don't dare read anything that isn't assigned for fear of not aligning with the teacher's "learning plan". If it didn't come from teacher it isn't on next week's test and is therefore useless. Imho this constant "exam mode" is the real source of stress.
So drop the microtests. Give them the one big exam and let them relax and learn at their own pace the rest of the time.
Immediately, you've come up with a solution that wouldn't fit my type of learning, and my comfort level. I absolutely abhor "final" exams. It's like a grand-finale that is make or break, forcing you to study a ridiculous amount of content and make sure you know/understand all of it for a single event in the future. If you fail, you have to do it all over again. No course-corrections, no motivational reminders/nudges. Nothing.
The example you cite in the beginning, your fear of the impending results of a small test. Now multiply that by 20 (as you said yours was just 5% of the final mark), and that is how anxious I would be for the entire course leading up to the final exam.
So drop the ubertests. Test students understanding using application and insight, not giant knowledge dumps that can only be tested in one long-winded sitting. (I exaggerate a little, sorry about that).
> I do not think the pressure comes directly from the need for higher grades.
I strongly disagree, it entirely comes from the narrative instilled in all of us that we're screwed if we don't get top grades, that I am a huge failure if I can't get into an elite program. If that pressure wasn't there, neither would this problem. Some kids literally think it's the end of their life if they don't get into x,y,z school. There's no one telling them that college doesn't actually matter a fraction as much as it's built up in their head. Just get a degree, but I mean, at this point, 5 years out of college, you're not limited in the slightest by where your degree came from, not in this industry, where what skills you have and your hustle dictates all (granted a degree from an elite program gives you a marginal boost, but still marginal). My fellow Ivy League grads would get blown out of the water by some of the people I work with.
Gotta disagree wholeheartedly with you there. If I have one big exam at the end, I will procrastinate and likely end up doing poorly. Instead, in my medical school, we are quizzed at least once a week - this week alone I have 2 quizzes and 2 tests. I failed yesterday's quiz, as I knew I would since was at a wedding on the weekend. But I will know the material for the test on Friday, and now I know what kind of questions to expect.
Weekly testing lets me figure out how I'm progressing, whether or not my study habits are working, and also provides a significant amount of opportunities to do well - that quiz I failed yesterday really does not in anyway hinder me from acing the course.
Completely agree with that. As someone who came from the British education system (one big exam end of year) to the American college system (a test every week), I quickly realized that in the US I had no time to read around the syllabus. If you're being tested every week, you Have to stick to plan. Essentially, it is "teaching to the test".
I much prefer the British way. You have a lot of time to explore your interests without the risk of jeopardizing your future, you are given optional exams to test your knowledge, and you can bring it all together at the end of the year with a final exam.
Yeah I actually advocate for the moderate form of what you're expressing.
My issue with single, high-worth exams was that sometimes I would screw up, have some misconception in my head, and if it wasn't cleared up until the exam I was done.
I think you should be examined on a semi-regularly basis where each exam is worth an equal amount of grade.
That way the effects of various externalities, like I was sick, had something bad happen that week, or just didn't learn the material as well as I thought could be smoothed out of a period of time.
Generally, outside of some relatively garbage introductory classes, I found that my classes either required 2-3 papers or projects, a midterm exam and a final, or some combination of the above. The more bullshit courses, generally with the shittier professors, would impose a "class participation" component of between 5-10%, and do other garbage like clicker-based quizzes during lectures to try to get people to actually come to class, instead of just doing the reading, when exams were not scheduled.
Microtests should be bonuses; they should contribute to your final grade but you should be able to get A on the final exam even with 0 bonus points. So for a person that works during the year this alleviates the final exam pressure while allowing others that for any reason weren't scoring a lot to prove they mastered what was required.
Disagree. While I did well in the same system in law school, most people I know hated the one-and-done testing system. That said, you do have a point in situations where testing is practically constant (and affects the final grade) - there's probably a happy medium to be found somewhere...
Oxford has no exams in the second year for many subjects (and no tests other than maybe college 'collections' at the start of each term which don't count for anything, but my college didn't even do those for my subject).
Personally I really liked it as it gave me a lot of time to spend trying to really understand my subject without exams and revision hanging over me. It also helped I think that our tutors didn't generally set or mark the exams when we did have them. It did put a lot of pressure on for finals though knowing everything was hanging on how you performed over the course of eight exams in a fortnight.
The UK system (at least when I was doing it) at GCSE (14-16) and A-level (16-18) consists of smaller module exams, but students are allowed to retake the exams each time they're administered. So if they do well, it takes the pressure off their future exams, but it's not the end of the world if they don't. (EDIT: They're also standardised, which is pretty much necessary for this to work.)
I think it's a good balance between the massive short-term stress of big exams, and the consistent stress of smaller exams.
It think the pressure comes from globalization. The meme for success has shifted from a local scope to the global one: You are only really successful if you work around the globe in an international company. There are however, due to hierarchical centralization, there are very few positions in the global market, so you end up with a lot of people competing for a very low number of high-end jobs. That creates pressure, and in return, out of empathy teachers grade more benevolently. At the same time the education systems became more centralized too, leading to competition as well: Good teachers are those with successful students, leading also to grade inflation yet again.
I’m unsure whether this problem is solvable (e.g. with basic income or laws that penalize globalization), or whether it will solve itself with time.
I think the calibration of quizzes and tests is already an area of research that is receiving academic attention, it's just that there's a gulf between research and practice.
I also agree with emphasizing tests more, since measuring homework is so noisy (tutors and parents double-checking homework), but I definitely don't think having one big test is the right way. One of the reasons why people might face test stress is by dealing with the stress at the last minute.
I just got out of public highschool a few years ago and it was fairly easy 99% of the time. Even the final exams didn't take serious studying. Any work that was "hard" was generally more tedious than challenging. It was an easy coast to get 90s. Maybe it's not high schools in general, just specific districts.
I disagree. Tests are part of the learning process.
The problem is when expectation is 90%+. When that happens, there's no margin to differentiate between minor mistakes and actual misunderstandings -- the signal is lost in the noise.
A good test will amplify the signal and attenuate the noise.
And this is why we homeschool. Have a weird fascination with the human eye? Here's three medical textbooks, knock yourself out kid. Suck at math? No problem, we will take it as slow as we have to until you feel comfortable. There's no grades and pressure there's just things you've learned and things you're still learning.
I think probably a better solution is some sort of combination between home schooling and public school. Homeschooling alone makes it hard for children to learn peer social skills, and it makes it more difficult for them to relate later on to the majority of people who have had 13 years of primary/secondary education in a public school environment (in the US at least)
A lot of people here talk about homeschooling/normal schooling as a binary choice with stark trade offs. But if anyone has read the recent Reinventing Organizations book then the example of Berlin school ESBZ[1] imediately comes to mind - self managed school where the kids decide their lessons, help each other and solve problems with help and advice from the parents, teachers and children from higher grades - they are still graded normally at the end of the year so they get the basic skills but they also get so so much more - problem solving, autonomy and authority, etc. I really don't get why we don't try to get all of our schools to work like that.
[1]http://developyourchild.co.uk/blog/teal-school/
I believe that when you homeschool your child, you are just blindee by your presumption. For one good student that comes out, you have one thousand religious zealot that believe earth is flat. It allows atrocities a la "dancing mom". It allows people to avoid vaccinations. Without mentioning the social awkwardness. I truly believe homeschooling is also a crime against humanity.
The time commitment is pretty intense. I think that I'd love to homeschool my hypothetical child because I trust myself to do it right-- but I couldn't also provide for my family in the meantime.
> There's no grades and pressure there's just things you've learned and things you're still learning.
I'm incredibly naive when it comes to homeschool, so I hope you don't mind me asking: if you don't grade what happens when you want to go to college? If you don't have any grades and didn't follow a curriculum how can an admissions team adequately assess whether you're a suitable candidate with the necessary credentials?
I just quite simply don't understand where people find the time to homeschool their children. I leave for work around 8am, come back after 6pm - by the time you cook dinner and eat it's usually 8pm. When and how would I do this? It would be financially unfeasible for either me or my partner to stay at home at the moment, we both need jobs.
It's hard to advocate homeschooling as it's not a reasonable option for most people, either due to parents working or lack of necessary knowledge (at least at the high school level). I certainly wouldn't be comfortable teaching e.g. Spanish, French, or biology.
so what happens if you suck at maths, and took an extraodinarily long time to get to the same stage as institutional schools would have? When would you know you are ready to leave homeschooling, and move to university?
I have what seems to be a unique perspective in this thread, among a bunch of trendy libertarians. I was actually homeschooled my entire life. It wasn't great. It did not do much to prepare me for the adult world, where people don't really care if your precious ass needs extra time on something or would rather do something else, and you do have to collaborate with people you may not particularly care for. I did not anticipate the need to navigate office politics. After a lifetime being spoiled, I'm floundering. Most of the jobs I've held haven't lasted beyond 6 months. If I do have children, I would respect them enough to put aside my ideology (after all, I hate the government as much as the next HN reader) to not do them that particular "favor".
Ah, yes, this. When I went back to university after taking a break a couple of years ago I promised myself it would be out of pure interest, because I cared about the subject, not to get good grades. Of course it didn't work out exactly that way, pretty soon there's an assignment to hand in tomorrow, and exam to get points on next week... and again I found myself preparing to answer the questions I knew I was going to get, rather than delving into that one subject that seemed interesting, or reading through the proof of a theorem being used. The grades were good, the learning... maybe not so much.
Right now I'm working on my final thesis research, and I found a good subject. Everyone keeps asking what my deadline is, when it is going to be done, how I'm progressing. I don't care. I'm learning, creating and having fun. I want to be able to spend the whole day exploring a topic I don't understand, or refactoring parts of my simulation code that I don't like. I know I'll get it done at some point, and when I do it'll be a valuable contribution at least to myself and hopefully the field I'll be publishing in. That's what learning's supposed to be like for me.
I read and discussed classics at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, for 8 weeks per summer for 4 summers, for a master's degree; and there were no grades. (Yes, the grades are on a transcript which I could request, but haven't.) It is my understanding that the undergraduate program has the same grading policy.
It was refreshing to be able to learn without grade pressure.
When I was a below average student, I used to have a lot less stress. The expectation was so much lower.
Once I started getting As across the board I started panicking.
The problem is we have essentially "privatized" learning.
What that means is once we started attaching money to learning via the university industrial complex and cheap credit. Your knowledge became a store of wealth like your house ( which itself is a terrible idea ).
Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.
If you get As you get to go to Stanford and be 10X in debt as someone who went to a Community College.
It reminds me of the argument by Louise CK, where loans are much easier to get when you have liquidity already.
This has lead to a situation of "Too smart to fail" among students who get good grades, when in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit, and not celebrate grades so heavily, but celebrate when that education leads to value in society.
> Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.
What? If you want to be an engineer you can go to a state school, work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year for 1/4 the price of a private school.
Well there's something to be said about helping people up to a certain level, but there's also the point that we should be encouraging people to kick ass at what they are good at. So instead of having a bunch of average people we can have a bunch of people that excel at different specialised tasks and so we are better off for it.
> in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit
Why? Turning good engineers into great engineers is arguably a much more marginally efficient use of social resources than turning average telephone sanitisers, estate agents or PR managers into good or even great ones. The engineers (or software architects, biotech researchers, Wall Street quants etc) are the ones that create innovations and companies that build on them - whereas the marginal improvement of spending the same money on weaker students is - at the very best - them not ending up in jail or doing a job well that should have been automated in the first place.
Learning is a beautiful thing when it happens, but it mostly does not happen in education. Learning is a delicacy, a luxury, thing which not everyone will appreciate.
On the other hand, vocational training is necessary and most people appreciate the necessity. It is time to officially redirect universal education to vocational training. Expecting education to provide learning is expecting too much. By expecting too much we will only be disappointed.
I disagree that learning is a delicacy. Learning is an innate human behavior. It's what separates us from the animals. It's how we became apex predators across multiple biomes stretching across the globe. You can see this in children, they have unbridled curiosity and depthless enthusiasm for learning. But they have a limited tolerance for tedium and bureaucracy, and those are in extreme abundance in education today. It's a system that's practically designed to beat out any hint of desire for learning, intellectualism, and reading. In some ways it's a wonder that any vestige of those things survive at all through such experiences.
I always thought it would be better to measure a student by how much they've learned not how good they are. For example one student would be on algebra 1 and another on calculus. I think it is easier emotionally to think of someone else as just farther along than better than you. Traditional in room lecture based learning required all students to be at the same point. This is a terrible assumption because many times it's not true. Assume a student was not able to focus during Algebra 1 because of a tragic event during that year, like the loss of a parent. Without herculean effort that student will be lost in geometry, trig, and calculus because they lack the Algebra 1 foundation. One year of missed learning turns into four.
I hope that MOOCs allow for this to be fixed. No longer would the assumption need to be made that all students need learn at the same pace. This means the 40% of gifted kids won't be bored, and 20% of kids who learn a little slower won't be hopelessly lost.
The other benefit to the learning being self paced and through computers is that you could test progress through small quizzes. If a student failed a quiz, she could simply relearn the material. This eliminates, the TEST, a huge unnecessary stresser in children's lives. You could also test material from several quizzes ago to make sure the important points are hammered home through spaced repetition.
Most teachers I know currently spend 80% of the year teaching to the test. Self paced materials means that you'll be able to measure performance of a kid and a teacher by how they do over a year, and not how they do on one day.
Anyway that's my dream of MOOCs and automated learning in the class room :).
My radical view on education is that everyone should work at their own pace until they have an A understanding/test scores in each topic of each class before moving on.
This completely takes the focus off the grade (its always an A) and focuses it on learning well.
It also means that nobody falls behind which is a source of a lot of stress. Slow learners get extra time and teacher attention before trying to move on to more advanced topics.
Fast learners enjoy racing through subjects at their own top speed. It is extremely rewarding to be able to skip forward as soon as you are ready. This naturally develops self-managed education habits.
I got to learn this way for one year in elementary school and it was the best experience I have ever had in education.
To do this, teachers need organized lesson plans for each class that students can follow at their own pace, and act more as self-learning mentors and a learning resource, as apposed to controlling the pace with all-class lectures. The commonality between all classes is teachers are teaching kids how to learn by their own efforts, not just topics they will forget.
I'm all for teaching kids curiosity and how to learn and how to prepare to be ready for a future years hence. Surely we need to question methodology and results thereof.
Yet for all of one child's failure there are many other successes. So it's more a matter of what methodology gets your educational system the greatest results for people entering adult society years hence.
Any system will be a disservice to some. Perhaps for some children tailored or perhaps less structured home schooling or other alternative forms of education would be more beneficial to them in the long run.
On the other hand, it's not as if east Asia and south Asia are doing poorly economically due to their focus on achievement. On the contrary they are very vital economic engines, china due to surpass the us in ppp GDP. So, its not clear that this model is that detrimental. Any model will incur casualties, it's up to us to seek better alternatives with fewer casualties but proof of the pudding is in the eating.
> ....for our willingness to put their long-term developmental and emotional needs before their short-term happiness. For our willingness to let their lives be just a little bit harder today so they will know how to face hardship tomorrow.
Isn't decreasing the pressure to be a perfect student the exact opposite of letting their life be a little bit harder today?
Although I think the whole "the fear of failure has destroyed learning" thing is rather dramatic, I realize there is a basis for that perspective that I think lies more in that academic achievement destroys exploratory, off-script types of learning that lead to fulfillment. America is rather innovative and we are arguably innovation leaders, but the quantitative success factor overlooks the qualitative measure of living life.
Innovation in the USA in particular seems to largely focus on chasing some sort of target and/or be driven by some paranoia based anxiety. A perfect example of this whole issue is something I heard the other day, that technology could be used to solve earth's environmental problems. It's so schizophrenic if you start even barely thinking about it ... we're going to invent solutions to problems that we are causing ourselves, at this very moment? It strikes me as a similar strategy as growing yourself out of net loss. It's really kind of mind boggling and quite similar to obsessive compulsive disorder; just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean, just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean .... innovate our way out of the problems that our last innovation caused, innovate our way out of the problems our last innovation caused ... and on and on.
The issues raised here are side effects of the discontinuity between how humans evolved to learn, and how we are taught today.
Fundamentally, the problem is similar to the problems of mass production. The need is to produce greater volume, with standardized results and less variance in the end product. But this is exactly opposite of how humans evolved to learn. We're evolved to learn primarily from our parents, secondarily from extended family and then from the larger group. This is why children in general have a desire to please their parents, and parents have both anxiety about struggling children and and pride when they do well. There is another force for learning, curiosity, that is the underlying factor for children's increasing knowledge and innovation, and which drives persistence and resilience. In a prehistoric environment, teaching and learning were highly personalized. 2 parents may have to nurture 2 or 3 children at a time. Prehistoric children also learned quite a bit on their own, in their own way, at their own pace when no teacher was paying attention. [0]
In today's world, the amount and type of what has to be learned to function far exceeds what parents and family can teach. Even with homeschooling, advanced topics may be learned from texts that the student reads, rather than from tutoring by their parents. Most parents don't have homeschooling as an option, so we invented schools, which are by their nature, not personalized. Instead of ~1 teacher/parent per student, we have 30+. Teaching is not personalized, which goes strictly against human nature.
My gut feeling is that some of the top universities could change this with no effect on employment, but positive effect on actual learning and related exam stress.
You could give the kids internal assessments that don't count. "Here's some questions that should be easy if you understood the linear algebra course. It's up to your own conscience to decide how well you know it."
And then have a pass/fail line that is external. "This kid went to Harvard and did these courses and passed. All our kids are smart, and there's not much point in you, as an external employer, trying to figure out who is better based on a GPA."
I get the feeling a lot of the grade stress is unproductive. Kids divert their attention to exams, which employers have no idea how to assess. Some kid gets an A in math. How much of a predictor of business success is that really, for your average consultancy/bank/whatever? The result is the kids end up spending their energy on something that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things.
I think it's pretty telling that most courses outside school aren't structured...
Course: Math, Grade: A-F.
...but...
Course: Math E, Grade: Pass/Fail.
Course: Math D, Grade: Pass/Fail.
Course: Math C, Grade: Pass/Fail.
...etc.
I think the former mindset unfortunately can be quite common in the tech industry. "We need an A grade programmer". When what you really are looking for is a "C grade programmer with A grade ruby, B grade security, B grade network knowledge".
Here's an idea. Drop exams entirely, and examine at the point of job application. If a person learning understand the material, encourage them to move to the next thing. If they're still addressing subject matter, let them continue.
This is a sort of a hamster-ball problem. You have a school that is severely underperforming, an children are not learning at all. You have a big achievement gap in the classroom, where a good chunk os students are illiterate. Then we try to solve this with grades, as a way of holding teachers and students responsible and provide a feedback loop. Then the grades inform the learning process, changing everything.
It's an example of a wider problem that I think I've heard it called "legibility." It can exist police departments, for example. You know that half the cops are lazy, so you measure arrests and such. Then cops' job becomes arresting people rather than maintaining peace. All sorts of damaging dynamics play. Even if a measure (eg arrests) might be good at telling you who's a good cop, optimizing for the measure does not necessarily make cops better. It's demoralizing to the good cops, who are now judged by stupid measures.
Schools have this problem and lots of others too. Lets start with the fact that a 6+ hour schooldays for 8 year olds is nonsensical. More hours does not result in more learning. You could halve the hours (double the teacher/student ratio for the same price?), but schools need to be babysitters too. A big group of kids of equal age is an unnatural environment for juvenile humans to interact and learn in, causing (among other things) emotionally turbulent self judgement constantly. Everyone is your yardstick.
Overall, these are problems we hit as we create institutions. I think it's a problem all over the modern world. Our anemic & sanitized work culture isolated from our home life, and the split personality people develop living in these two worlds. The anonymity and isolation of the oversized and transient "communities" we live in. We develop "unnatural" institutions to deal with life in these inorganic world. Formal reviews and targets in a company instead of the normal peer pressures you would find in a more organic setting like a family farm with a dozen workers (or a hunting party if you want to take it that far). We replace school discipline, grading and such with children's innate desire to learn and discover.
I have a hint of a grand historical theory floating around in my mind that I don't understand well enough to articulate:
It's becoming very clear that technology is developing much faster than culture and psychology. Comment trolling and the even more common emotional overreactions and general emotional idiocy of our online selves are an obvious example. But, I suspect it might go much deeper and longer maybe to the paleolithic revolution.
Early civilizations were (we think) these slave societies with god kings and terrible oppression. They had seeds in our natural (even prehuman) instincts for dominance, status, subordination. But, they were really pathological worlds where people couldn't thrive. They built institutions like slavery and priesthood out of the existing "natural" dynamics (say tribal shamans and chieftains) but most of the brickwork was this clunky new stuff barely holding together this new way of doing society: slavery, cast hierarchy… When we think of the "Charles Dickens World" of street urchins, poorhouses, filth and urban poverty we're seeing people living in a newly constructed industrial world with cobbled together institutions and culture.
Organic cultural takes time, generations. The alternative is an engineered culture with its legible, formalizable logic and none of the nuance.
It's particularly sad though, when it comes to small children.
[+] [-] sandworm101|10 years ago|reply
I my academic history (highschool, undergrad, law school, now teaching) I only felt real stress where grades were incremental. Take my civpro class. We had an assignment after only three lectures, an assignment worth 5% of our grade. I had barely wrapped my head around law school and already my final grade, my scholarship, was on the line. I did poorly on that assignment, immediately chopping a few points off my final grade. On the other hand my crimlaw class had no assignments, just a big exam at the end. That class allowed me the time to figure things out and was much less stressful.
The highschool kids I talk to today are in a constant panic. ((That's how I see it. For them it's just normal.)) Grades are ridiculously high, with class averages well north of 90%. So every test, every graded assignment, requires the focus of a final exam. They cannot afford diversion or outside learning. Each week is prep for the next test and each of those tests directly impacts their grade. Have a bad week, or even a bad afternoon, and it might stick with you for years. They don't dare read anything that isn't assigned for fear of not aligning with the teacher's "learning plan". If it didn't come from teacher it isn't on next week's test and is therefore useless. Imho this constant "exam mode" is the real source of stress.
So drop the microtests. Give them the one big exam and let them relax and learn at their own pace the rest of the time.
[+] [-] zo1|10 years ago|reply
The example you cite in the beginning, your fear of the impending results of a small test. Now multiply that by 20 (as you said yours was just 5% of the final mark), and that is how anxious I would be for the entire course leading up to the final exam.
So drop the ubertests. Test students understanding using application and insight, not giant knowledge dumps that can only be tested in one long-winded sitting. (I exaggerate a little, sorry about that).
[+] [-] orthoganol|10 years ago|reply
I strongly disagree, it entirely comes from the narrative instilled in all of us that we're screwed if we don't get top grades, that I am a huge failure if I can't get into an elite program. If that pressure wasn't there, neither would this problem. Some kids literally think it's the end of their life if they don't get into x,y,z school. There's no one telling them that college doesn't actually matter a fraction as much as it's built up in their head. Just get a degree, but I mean, at this point, 5 years out of college, you're not limited in the slightest by where your degree came from, not in this industry, where what skills you have and your hustle dictates all (granted a degree from an elite program gives you a marginal boost, but still marginal). My fellow Ivy League grads would get blown out of the water by some of the people I work with.
[+] [-] pragone|10 years ago|reply
Weekly testing lets me figure out how I'm progressing, whether or not my study habits are working, and also provides a significant amount of opportunities to do well - that quiz I failed yesterday really does not in anyway hinder me from acing the course.
[+] [-] onionjake|10 years ago|reply
"Your grade is your tests grade or your projects grade, whichever is higher." http://matt.might.net/teaching/compilers/spring-2015/#gradin...
This allowed both the really good test takers to succeed and also those who did better on projects, without all the pressure.
[+] [-] littletimmy|10 years ago|reply
I much prefer the British way. You have a lot of time to explore your interests without the risk of jeopardizing your future, you are given optional exams to test your knowledge, and you can bring it all together at the end of the year with a final exam.
[+] [-] adam419|10 years ago|reply
My issue with single, high-worth exams was that sometimes I would screw up, have some misconception in my head, and if it wasn't cleared up until the exam I was done.
I think you should be examined on a semi-regularly basis where each exam is worth an equal amount of grade.
That way the effects of various externalities, like I was sick, had something bad happen that week, or just didn't learn the material as well as I thought could be smoothed out of a period of time.
[+] [-] douche|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hermel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbaskin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvvw|10 years ago|reply
Personally I really liked it as it gave me a lot of time to spend trying to really understand my subject without exams and revision hanging over me. It also helped I think that our tutors didn't generally set or mark the exams when we did have them. It did put a lot of pressure on for finals though knowing everything was hanging on how you performed over the course of eight exams in a fortnight.
[+] [-] aninhumer|10 years ago|reply
I think it's a good balance between the massive short-term stress of big exams, and the consistent stress of smaller exams.
[+] [-] rndn|10 years ago|reply
I’m unsure whether this problem is solvable (e.g. with basic income or laws that penalize globalization), or whether it will solve itself with time.
[+] [-] fezz|10 years ago|reply
The latter is useless in both the real world and for the student. Tests/grades aren't the only way to show progress.
(disclaimer: dad homeschooling a kid)
[+] [-] threatofrain|10 years ago|reply
I also agree with emphasizing tests more, since measuring homework is so noisy (tutors and parents double-checking homework), but I definitely don't think having one big test is the right way. One of the reasons why people might face test stress is by dealing with the stress at the last minute.
[+] [-] jimmaswell|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffdavis|10 years ago|reply
I disagree. Tests are part of the learning process.
The problem is when expectation is 90%+. When that happens, there's no margin to differentiate between minor mistakes and actual misunderstandings -- the signal is lost in the noise.
A good test will amplify the signal and attenuate the noise.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|10 years ago|reply
And you're right. It allowed me to pursue extracurriculars (rowing) throughout the year and then adjust to final exam studying at the end of the year.
[+] [-] walshemj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaawn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikerin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryoshon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgerobinson|10 years ago|reply
I'm incredibly naive when it comes to homeschool, so I hope you don't mind me asking: if you don't grade what happens when you want to go to college? If you don't have any grades and didn't follow a curriculum how can an admissions team adequately assess whether you're a suitable candidate with the necessary credentials?
[+] [-] gambiting|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cozzyd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chii|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juliangregorian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Elte|10 years ago|reply
Right now I'm working on my final thesis research, and I found a good subject. Everyone keeps asking what my deadline is, when it is going to be done, how I'm progressing. I don't care. I'm learning, creating and having fun. I want to be able to spend the whole day exploring a topic I don't understand, or refactoring parts of my simulation code that I don't like. I know I'll get it done at some point, and when I do it'll be a valuable contribution at least to myself and hopefully the field I'll be publishing in. That's what learning's supposed to be like for me.
[+] [-] gshubert17|10 years ago|reply
It was refreshing to be able to learn without grade pressure.
[+] [-] 1971genocide|10 years ago|reply
When I was a below average student, I used to have a lot less stress. The expectation was so much lower.
Once I started getting As across the board I started panicking.
The problem is we have essentially "privatized" learning.
What that means is once we started attaching money to learning via the university industrial complex and cheap credit. Your knowledge became a store of wealth like your house ( which itself is a terrible idea ).
Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.
If you get As you get to go to Stanford and be 10X in debt as someone who went to a Community College.
It reminds me of the argument by Louise CK, where loans are much easier to get when you have liquidity already.
This has lead to a situation of "Too smart to fail" among students who get good grades, when in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit, and not celebrate grades so heavily, but celebrate when that education leads to value in society.
[+] [-] hoopd|10 years ago|reply
What? If you want to be an engineer you can go to a state school, work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year for 1/4 the price of a private school.
Half of the top ten engineering schools are public: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
The top ten liberal arts schools are all private: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
[+] [-] daemin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MagnumOpus|10 years ago|reply
Why? Turning good engineers into great engineers is arguably a much more marginally efficient use of social resources than turning average telephone sanitisers, estate agents or PR managers into good or even great ones. The engineers (or software architects, biotech researchers, Wall Street quants etc) are the ones that create innovations and companies that build on them - whereas the marginal improvement of spending the same money on weaker students is - at the very best - them not ending up in jail or doing a job well that should have been automated in the first place.
[+] [-] sanxiyn|10 years ago|reply
On the other hand, vocational training is necessary and most people appreciate the necessity. It is time to officially redirect universal education to vocational training. Expecting education to provide learning is expecting too much. By expecting too much we will only be disappointed.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesBarney|10 years ago|reply
I hope that MOOCs allow for this to be fixed. No longer would the assumption need to be made that all students need learn at the same pace. This means the 40% of gifted kids won't be bored, and 20% of kids who learn a little slower won't be hopelessly lost.
The other benefit to the learning being self paced and through computers is that you could test progress through small quizzes. If a student failed a quiz, she could simply relearn the material. This eliminates, the TEST, a huge unnecessary stresser in children's lives. You could also test material from several quizzes ago to make sure the important points are hammered home through spaced repetition.
Most teachers I know currently spend 80% of the year teaching to the test. Self paced materials means that you'll be able to measure performance of a kid and a teacher by how they do over a year, and not how they do on one day.
Anyway that's my dream of MOOCs and automated learning in the class room :).
[+] [-] Nevermark|10 years ago|reply
This completely takes the focus off the grade (its always an A) and focuses it on learning well.
It also means that nobody falls behind which is a source of a lot of stress. Slow learners get extra time and teacher attention before trying to move on to more advanced topics.
Fast learners enjoy racing through subjects at their own top speed. It is extremely rewarding to be able to skip forward as soon as you are ready. This naturally develops self-managed education habits.
I got to learn this way for one year in elementary school and it was the best experience I have ever had in education.
To do this, teachers need organized lesson plans for each class that students can follow at their own pace, and act more as self-learning mentors and a learning resource, as apposed to controlling the pace with all-class lectures. The commonality between all classes is teachers are teaching kids how to learn by their own efforts, not just topics they will forget.
[+] [-] donflamenco|10 years ago|reply
This infographic summarizes the ideas very well.
http://i.imgur.com/HGBY1tW.png
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
Yet for all of one child's failure there are many other successes. So it's more a matter of what methodology gets your educational system the greatest results for people entering adult society years hence.
Any system will be a disservice to some. Perhaps for some children tailored or perhaps less structured home schooling or other alternative forms of education would be more beneficial to them in the long run.
On the other hand, it's not as if east Asia and south Asia are doing poorly economically due to their focus on achievement. On the contrary they are very vital economic engines, china due to surpass the us in ppp GDP. So, its not clear that this model is that detrimental. Any model will incur casualties, it's up to us to seek better alternatives with fewer casualties but proof of the pudding is in the eating.
[+] [-] aianus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoopd|10 years ago|reply
Isn't decreasing the pressure to be a perfect student the exact opposite of letting their life be a little bit harder today?
[+] [-] wahsd|10 years ago|reply
Innovation in the USA in particular seems to largely focus on chasing some sort of target and/or be driven by some paranoia based anxiety. A perfect example of this whole issue is something I heard the other day, that technology could be used to solve earth's environmental problems. It's so schizophrenic if you start even barely thinking about it ... we're going to invent solutions to problems that we are causing ourselves, at this very moment? It strikes me as a similar strategy as growing yourself out of net loss. It's really kind of mind boggling and quite similar to obsessive compulsive disorder; just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean, just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean .... innovate our way out of the problems that our last innovation caused, innovate our way out of the problems our last innovation caused ... and on and on.
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|10 years ago|reply
Fundamentally, the problem is similar to the problems of mass production. The need is to produce greater volume, with standardized results and less variance in the end product. But this is exactly opposite of how humans evolved to learn. We're evolved to learn primarily from our parents, secondarily from extended family and then from the larger group. This is why children in general have a desire to please their parents, and parents have both anxiety about struggling children and and pride when they do well. There is another force for learning, curiosity, that is the underlying factor for children's increasing knowledge and innovation, and which drives persistence and resilience. In a prehistoric environment, teaching and learning were highly personalized. 2 parents may have to nurture 2 or 3 children at a time. Prehistoric children also learned quite a bit on their own, in their own way, at their own pace when no teacher was paying attention. [0]
In today's world, the amount and type of what has to be learned to function far exceeds what parents and family can teach. Even with homeschooling, advanced topics may be learned from texts that the student reads, rather than from tutoring by their parents. Most parents don't have homeschooling as an option, so we invented schools, which are by their nature, not personalized. Instead of ~1 teacher/parent per student, we have 30+. Teaching is not personalized, which goes strictly against human nature.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/02/spoiled-rotten
[+] [-] lordnacho|10 years ago|reply
You could give the kids internal assessments that don't count. "Here's some questions that should be easy if you understood the linear algebra course. It's up to your own conscience to decide how well you know it."
And then have a pass/fail line that is external. "This kid went to Harvard and did these courses and passed. All our kids are smart, and there's not much point in you, as an external employer, trying to figure out who is better based on a GPA."
I get the feeling a lot of the grade stress is unproductive. Kids divert their attention to exams, which employers have no idea how to assess. Some kid gets an A in math. How much of a predictor of business success is that really, for your average consultancy/bank/whatever? The result is the kids end up spending their energy on something that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things.
[+] [-] gozo|10 years ago|reply
Course: Math, Grade: A-F.
...but...
Course: Math E, Grade: Pass/Fail. Course: Math D, Grade: Pass/Fail. Course: Math C, Grade: Pass/Fail.
...etc.
I think the former mindset unfortunately can be quite common in the tech industry. "We need an A grade programmer". When what you really are looking for is a "C grade programmer with A grade ruby, B grade security, B grade network knowledge".
[+] [-] petewailes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netcan|10 years ago|reply
It's an example of a wider problem that I think I've heard it called "legibility." It can exist police departments, for example. You know that half the cops are lazy, so you measure arrests and such. Then cops' job becomes arresting people rather than maintaining peace. All sorts of damaging dynamics play. Even if a measure (eg arrests) might be good at telling you who's a good cop, optimizing for the measure does not necessarily make cops better. It's demoralizing to the good cops, who are now judged by stupid measures.
Schools have this problem and lots of others too. Lets start with the fact that a 6+ hour schooldays for 8 year olds is nonsensical. More hours does not result in more learning. You could halve the hours (double the teacher/student ratio for the same price?), but schools need to be babysitters too. A big group of kids of equal age is an unnatural environment for juvenile humans to interact and learn in, causing (among other things) emotionally turbulent self judgement constantly. Everyone is your yardstick.
Overall, these are problems we hit as we create institutions. I think it's a problem all over the modern world. Our anemic & sanitized work culture isolated from our home life, and the split personality people develop living in these two worlds. The anonymity and isolation of the oversized and transient "communities" we live in. We develop "unnatural" institutions to deal with life in these inorganic world. Formal reviews and targets in a company instead of the normal peer pressures you would find in a more organic setting like a family farm with a dozen workers (or a hunting party if you want to take it that far). We replace school discipline, grading and such with children's innate desire to learn and discover.
I have a hint of a grand historical theory floating around in my mind that I don't understand well enough to articulate:
It's becoming very clear that technology is developing much faster than culture and psychology. Comment trolling and the even more common emotional overreactions and general emotional idiocy of our online selves are an obvious example. But, I suspect it might go much deeper and longer maybe to the paleolithic revolution.
Early civilizations were (we think) these slave societies with god kings and terrible oppression. They had seeds in our natural (even prehuman) instincts for dominance, status, subordination. But, they were really pathological worlds where people couldn't thrive. They built institutions like slavery and priesthood out of the existing "natural" dynamics (say tribal shamans and chieftains) but most of the brickwork was this clunky new stuff barely holding together this new way of doing society: slavery, cast hierarchy… When we think of the "Charles Dickens World" of street urchins, poorhouses, filth and urban poverty we're seeing people living in a newly constructed industrial world with cobbled together institutions and culture.
Organic cultural takes time, generations. The alternative is an engineered culture with its legible, formalizable logic and none of the nuance.
It's particularly sad though, when it comes to small children.