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| Thread: How life can quickly change |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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TheDeath
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posted October 22, 2008 05:15 PM |
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It's true that school reduces creativity. You're right about that. However, basic education has several purposes. One of them is teaching the basics, another is showing a young person some possibilities. You can't know that you like physics if you don't know what it is, right? Also, believe or not, but people are not equal. I could not be a businessman not because of the education system, but because of my personality. As for papers/skills problem. It's true that skills are much more important, but measuring skills is not as easy as you portray it, while measuring grades is very easy and accurate to a good enough extent (in most cases).
Well of course basic education is important, but that's it, just basic (high school is pretty advanced). Then, people will find things a lot easier if they are dedicated to it. Of course there are lazy people out there, but IMO they should not be able to get employed if that's their mentality (of course they can use tricks esp. if they have strong contacts with other high-position people). The problem with school is that it takes away all this stuff to do it yourself, and forces you to go into "their" direction so to speak. I'm not talking about subjects. The education should promote how children should learn with dedication, not with "OMG I need to have good grades and a paper" force type of attitude.
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Doomforge
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posted October 22, 2008 05:41 PM |
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I don't think laborers are idiots. If one lacks talent, creativity, guts to start something risky or is simply constantly doubting himself, there's really nothing left for him to do and no one else to be. That's ok.
But it's really because we're thinking that those who have their own businesses are super-humans, gifted with amazing business talents. That's a lie. They are just like us. Everyone can do it.
It's hard when you have 0$ on your bank account, like me, but it's still possible, even in Poland and other poor countries.
And in a land of amazing possibilities like the old States (you guys seem to have a big crisis now ;P).. I think it's even easier.
Of course not everybody should be like that.. we'd lack laborers, and slavery is dead. But it doesn't necessarily mean you should accept it and become another well educated laborer.
Yes, you may bankrupt, but there are things that never bankrupt (me and my brother-in-law are installing security systems, we currently don't employ anybody and we're doing the physical work ourselves, so there's no fear of bankrupting). Later on you're probably saved by your investments, even if stuff goes a bid mediocre. And you know what's great in it?
a) You can see your own "company" growing, even if it's two persons' company
b) You earn more than an average salary within two-three days
c) You're the boss, nobody yells at you, applies mobbing or ridicules you at work
d) You have more time for your hobbies, unless you plan to get rich or powerful quickly (if so you need to put a lot of effort in developing your business)
e) You don't work at standardized hours, no more 10 hours per day nonsense.
I hope I will be able to keep it.
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TheDeath
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posted October 22, 2008 05:45 PM |
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a) You can see your own "company" growing, even if it's two persons' company
b) You earn more than an average salary within two-three days
c) You're the boss, nobody yells at you, applies mobbing or ridicules you at work
d) You have more time for your hobbies, unless you plan to get rich or powerful quickly (if so you need to put a lot of effort in developing your business)
e) You don't work at standardized hours, no more 10 hours per day nonsense.
f) you don't look at papers when some guy wants to work and he can really help you 
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 07:22 PM |
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@TheDeath
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The education should promote how children should learn with dedication, not with "OMG I need to have good grades and a paper" force type of attitude.
We are talking about children, right? The little buggers who only want to run around and play games? Of course learning with dedication is better, but it's hard to get children dedicated, especially since every education starts with things you HAVE to learn whether you want it or not (grammar, math etc.). I agree, however, that the teachers that tried to reach out to me and show things from a slightly more interesting view were the best teachers I had (I liked going to math classes! ), but I don't see it as a problem of the educational system but rather as a problem of teaching methods.
P.S. I don't know how it is in other countries, but in Israel the real physics, chemistry, biology, robotics start in high school, so it's needed as well. On the other hand, in Israel high school students are given some degree of freedom in choosing their subjects. I chose to study physics and chemistry and computers, instead of geography, biology and other things that were on the list. So, yeah, I admit that was a good way to go in high school, when you already have some basics.
@Doom
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I don't think laborers are idiots. If one lacks talent, creativity, guts to start something risky or is simply constantly doubting himself, there's really nothing left for him to do and no one else to be. That's ok.
But it's really because we're thinking that those who have their own businesses are super-humans, gifted with amazing business talents. That's a lie. They are just like us. Everyone can do it.
Well, I prefer to think of them as superior to me rather than of me inferior to them. Helps my self esteem.
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Totoro
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posted October 22, 2008 08:46 PM |
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You're talking like school was some bogeyman.
In my opinion, school is a risk-free way to bright future.
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Doomforge
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posted October 22, 2008 08:50 PM |
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Why do you mean by school. What grade, what kind of study, and what do you mean by bright future - and I sincerely hope you don't mean just a better position in a rat race.
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TheDeath
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posted October 22, 2008 09:01 PM |
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Quote:
We are talking about children, right? The little buggers who only want to run around and play games? Of course learning with dedication is better, but it's hard to get children dedicated, especially since every education starts with things you HAVE to learn whether you want it or not (grammar, math etc.). I agree, however, that the teachers that tried to reach out to me and show things from a slightly more interesting view were the best teachers I had (I liked going to math classes!), but I don't see it as a problem of the educational system but rather as a problem of teaching methods.
High-school students are "little buggers"? What you described sounds more like primary school -- even "middle" school (however is called, usually after 4th class/grade whatever) kids are not that into just playing, though they still need a bit of "aid" so to speak. But even if so, why should this "forced dedication" be to acquire some sort of paper? The way I see it, it's not that children want to be good at what they want to do (even if they WANT a particular subject), but they just want good grades or papers or whatever, which is bad. You don't fix a bug in a program with your diploma.
And it's even worse because this is what school or some parents ENCOURAGE -- of course it has been mostly like this in the past, because if that's what we encourage, that's what we get. Thankfully it seems it's heading towards a better direction, though it's slow paced.
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 09:30 PM |
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Yes, when I said "little buggers" I meant primary school because that's where all begins. You force kids to study for several years in a row and then suddenly give them freedom in high school and expect them to use it wisely. If I would have total freedom in high school I would've skipped 90% of subjects, including those I now see as important.
And a grade shows more than you think, especially in high education. I'm not even talking about the ease of comparison now, I'm talking about something more practical. If you go to a good university, getting a good grade is very hard, and there is no way you can do it without lots of hard work and understanding the topic. So grades also show potential. A guy with good grades and no experience may be useless in the first month, but his knowledge of the subject and the readiness to work hard will soon bring him to the level of all the rest and he will become a valuable and versatile asset. While a guy with experience, but without "papers" may be an expert in what he did until know, but without proper knowledge gained in the university and without the ability to work and study gained in the university, he will havea hard time doing anything except his very small area of expertise.
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Doomforge
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posted October 22, 2008 09:48 PM |
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And a grade shows more than you think, especially in high education how good are you in learning things by rote. I'm not even talking about the ease of comparison now, I'm talking about something more practical. If you go to a good university, getting a good grade is very hard, and there is no way you can do it without lots of hard work and understanding the topic learning things by rote. So grades also show potential how much time you have wasted on learning things by rote. A guy with good grades and no experience may be useless in the first month, but his knowledge of the subject half-forgotten theory and definitions learned by rote and the readiness to work hard inability to do anything else than learning things by rote will soon bring him to the level of all the rest and he will become a valuable and versatile asset. prove that he is a person that only knows tons of useless theory that is unrelated to his duties While a guy with experience, but without "papers" may be an expert in what he did until know, but without proper knowledge gained in the university and without the ability to work and study gained in the university, he will havea hard time doing anything except his very small area of expertise. be free of useless knowledge that he will never need to recall, and will be able to focus on important stuff without his brain set to LEARN_BY_ROTE_PASS_FORGET way of working
there, fixed it for you.
Papers can be good if you suddenly find yourself without lavatory paper. You just have to crumple it a bit, otherwise it may prove too hard 
It's talent, skill and experience that matters.
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 09:51 PM |
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Edited by Geny at 21:57, 22 Oct 2008.
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Remind me what you study in university?
Edit: Logistics? Well, I'm glad I didn't take that then. Because I only do the stuff you said for math and physics courses which I don't need to know very deep. All I need from them is the application in electronic engineering, so yeah - I study, learn them by core, get a good grade and forget everything except the application. But it's not like that in EE courses. You see, I like most of the EE courses, even the hard ones, and I want to understand them, and I need to understand them in order to get a good grade in them because that's how the tests are written. So I do much more than just study them by core.
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Doomforge
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posted October 22, 2008 10:02 PM |
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Used to study biology and cope with amazing amounts of unnecessary material. it's hard to imagine how much they expected from us to LEARN BY ROTE. I was supposed to know the context of three frickin BOOKS 300 page long each.. after first four months 
And NOT to make my own definitions. just repeat those from the book.
Very useful in my future, really.
Right now I study logistics, and I still have to cope with excessive amounts of unnecessary material, like
->The process of making.. ughh, I have no clue how it is called in english, and dictionaries fail too. Well, the thing that is a product of the process of pressing. with detailed info on each process, power applied at each step and so on
->Calculating logistic costs of using fork-lifts and the time they spend on turning (not a joke, there are a couple of determinants like turn determinant, speed determinant, and so..)
->Advanced probabilistic
->Advanced mechanics with main focus on Mohre's wheel or however it is called in english and the tension matrix, although our professor calls it "introduction to elements of basics" (not a joke again.)
->Types of cranes, with diagrams to learn by rote.
and a lot of other things
by rote ofc
it will be very helpful since I want to focus on electronics
still compared to biology it is heaven
I guess we have the worst learning system in the world. Communism by-product that was never changed.
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 10:10 PM |
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I can agree with the last part. When I came to Israel from Ukraine I felt in heaven when I learned (after I finally understood Hebrew that is) that I can explain things in my own words instead of quoting books.
Yeah, that way of studying is stupid. Understanding is much more important and efficient then remembering. Because eventually memory can fail, but if you understand things, even if you forget them you only need a book and very little time to refresh your memory, because you truly know how things work.
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mvassilev
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posted October 22, 2008 10:53 PM |
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Antistar:
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard because he thought he had a lucrative idea. He didn't drop out of high school because he didn't like it. There's a big difference.
Larry Ellison dropped out of the University of Illinois, not out of high school. Again, there's a difference.
Doomforge:
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As antistar described, the richest people never cared for excessive education - they didn't have time for it, and it wasn't necessary anyway.
Yes, but, in many cases, at that level of wealth, it's very much a matter of luck.
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Of course i don't mean you shouldn't know the basic stuff, or even the more advanced one, but thinking that becoming a magistrate (I don't think you US guys use the same titles, hope you know what I'm talking about) is your path to lots of money (like many Poles seem to think) isn't really very correct.
Agreed.
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And compare your Moscow engineer to a uneducated - well, not as much - investor, importer or other kinds of business people without the higher education, not mentioning musicians, artists, athletes, prostitutes, criminals and many other people with barely any school at all, but with a talent of some sort that gave them what education never can and never will.
Talent is talent and can't really be taught, so it's beyond the scope of this discussion. But you can teach yourself to play basketball until your hands bleed, but you'll never be able to challenge Michael Jordan. And there's also a great deal of luck involved. Imagine this: a guy walks up to you on the street and says, "Here's a six-sided die. If it lands on the 1, then you get a million dollars. If it lands on anything else, you lose all you have." Do you take that risk? Some do, and win a million dollars. Five times as many people lose everything they have. And still others decline to try, and attempt to earn money reliably.
So, sure, you can make money - even lots of it - if you drop out. But it's by no means a sure thing, and the odds are very much against you. But if you stay in school, you can depend on something less lucrative but much, much more stable.
And you are too pessimistic about learning by rote. IMO, that's not really the way you're supposed to learn. It's just something that looks like a shortcut to learning the idea, but really isn't. The trick is to understand the idea. If you're going to elementary school, and the teacher tells you that 1 + 1 = 2, and that 1 + 2 = 3, by the end, you don't ask, "But what does 4 + 5 equal?" That's the trick with other things as well, but not everybody understands that. For example, for you, it may seem that it's rote learning, because you don't understand "the trick", whatever it may be. Others may understand. All of this "learning by rote" isn't really supposed to be learning at all, but specific examples that will make you understand the general idea. But not everyone can understand it, and so, to them, it's learning by rote. Sure, you can have good grades if you learn by rote, but you're also going to be pretty exhausted. On the other hand, if you understand the underlying idea, you'll also get good grades, but much more easily.
TheDeath:
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No some of the guys who hire them are idiots for asking papers before or instead of portofolios or talent (quiz, etc).
Yes, you're right, to an extent. But imagine that you're hiring an engineer. One of them graduated from MIT cum laude and seems confident and knowledgeable. The other one is a self-taught wild-eyed high school dropout who claims to have a lot of ideas. As a business owner looking to make a profit, whom do you hire?
William:
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I have basically finished my high school education, and it was a waste of a few years of my life.
lol, I know the feeling. And, in retrospect, much of my high school career, as much as 90-95%, was a waste of time. But I can say with equal confidence that if I never went to high school, I would never have the plans that I do now.
Geny:
I agree with everything you said thus far. 
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Doomforge
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posted October 22, 2008 11:03 PM |
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just don't forget that universities and way of teaching varies between countries. I always wanted to study at MIT..  I am pessimistic (or maybe realistic) about rote learning because I have had to do it on two different specializations (technical and biological) and it is/was utterly pointless because I can't recall 1 word from the material I learned a year ago (and got A). And trust me there was nothing to "understand" there, because what they expect here is repeating definitions that are too scientific to understand anyway.
And yes you can't learn talent, but as I said: if you don't have it and have no idea on starting your own stuff, becoming an ordinary employee is pretty much the only thing to do except starving or becoming a hippie, and it's ok them. Still it never hurts to look for an opportunity in life, and those are hardly connected to education.
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TheDeath
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posted October 22, 2008 11:03 PM |
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Edited by TheDeath at 23:06, 22 Oct 2008.
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And you are too pessimistic about learning by rote. IMO, that's not really the way you're supposed to learn. It's just something that looks like a shortcut to learning the idea, but really isn't. The trick is to understand the idea. If you're going to elementary school, and the teacher tells you that 1 + 1 = 2, and that 1 + 2 = 3, by the end, you don't ask, "But what does 4 + 5 equal?" That's the trick with other things as well, but not everybody understands that. For example, for you, it may seem that it's rote learning, because you don't understand "the trick", whatever it may be. Others may understand. All of this "learning by rote" isn't really supposed to be learning at all, but specific examples that will make you understand the general idea.
What is "supposed"? I think you are not being realistic. School teaches you, especially at higher levels (not primary school), to GET GOOD GRADES, not to LEARN. If you can cheat at exams, people will cheat. They do not care about learning. They care about good grades. This is what school for those people (aka the ones who don't want to take the risk) ENCOURAGES. They don't care how they get them, they only want that. You can't fix a bug in a program with good grades or papers. Of course the system will never change as long as people OBEY it as it is. How do you expect to change something if you don't even challenge a new change? 
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But not everyone can understand it, and so, to them, it's learning by rote.
Such learning should be discouraged and not even practiced. Of course this is never going to happen with people with your mentality. And then you wonder why people complain about school so much. (Even though you think it's in their "best interest" so to speak, but you don't get that they choose the LONGER and harder path to get there...)
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Yes, you're right, to an extent. But imagine that you're hiring an engineer. One of them graduated from MIT cum laude and seems confident and knowledgeable. The other one is a self-taught wild-eyed high school dropout who claims to have a lot of ideas. As a business owner looking to make a profit, whom do you hire?
I test them first, see how well they perform, with a promised "reward" at the end of the day (NOT the normal salary). Then I make the contract/whatever. Well I over-simplified it but you get the point.
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 11:11 PM |
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If you can cheat at exams, people will cheat. They do not care about learning. They care about good grades. This is what school for those people (aka the ones who don't want to take the risk) ENCOURAGES. They don't care how they get them, they only want that.
I wasn't like that in school. And I am one of those people. I cheated... three times in the whole time I was in school and never since I started university. And I tried to really understand the topics I was interested in and the topics I felt I'll need later. I still say that it's not a problem in the system, but in the people - both teachers and students. When teachers encourage students to take interest and students agree to at least try everything goes very well.
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DagothGares
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posted October 22, 2008 11:17 PM |
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Lesson kids: learn languages instead of science
Well, I don't know how it is with other people, but I lose everything in an oral exam, if I don't understand what i'm saying. Granted, I have a horrible, but still, a teacher who takes an oral exam can get so much in the depth of thematter that superficial knowledge will kill you.
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TheDeath
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posted October 22, 2008 11:39 PM |
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I wasn't like that in school. And I am one of those people. I cheated... three times in the whole time I was in school and never since I started university. And I tried to really understand the topics I was interested in and the topics I felt I'll need later. I still say that it's not a problem in the system, but in the people - both teachers and students. When teachers encourage students to take interest and students agree to at least try everything goes very well.
Geny, you might not have cheated, and you try to learn. Good. That is the thing that is supposed to be important. If grades or papers wouldn't be important then people wouldn't cheat and pay attention to the stuff they're interested -- but with this mentality, people are interested only in the grades/paper. You see, that is exactly what I pointed out. You seem to be a guy that dedicates his learning, and that is perfectly fine. If you dedicate then you shouldn't need papers.
Either that or you actually only want the papers, in which case you should cheat (but probably didn't for other reasons). That is the mentality our system encourages that's why it sucks so badly.
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Geny
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posted October 22, 2008 11:49 PM |
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I want the papers, because I need the papers and because the papers should be a way of distinguishing between the good and the bad. I don't cheat to get the papers, because I want to feel that I've earned them. Besides, I know that if I cheat on getting the papers, even if I initially get the job, my boss would quickly see that I can't do anything and fire me.
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mvassilev
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posted October 22, 2008 11:57 PM |
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Doomforge:
I'm not sure if you understood what I'm trying to say. Rote learning isn't supposed to happen. At all. You don't memorize every possible addition problem in order to do addition - you do a few of them to understand the concept, and then you can do any of them. Same here, although the concept may be buried more deeply. Some, unfortunately, hide the concept too deeply, where it's difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to find. Such is often the case with these "technical" definitions. If you know the concept perfectly, 100%, then you should be able to come up with the definitions without having to memorize them by rote.
TheDeath:
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School teaches you, especially at higher levels (not primary school), to GET GOOD GRADES, not to LEARN.
That, unfortunately, is a difference between theory and practice. But if you learn, you should be able to get good grades. There are certainly flaws in the system, and a lot of reform is possible, but the core idea remains intact - because the alternative ideas just aren't as good.
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Such learning should be discouraged and not even practiced. Of course this is never going to happen with people with your mentality.
What mentality would that be? And of course such learning should be discouraged. But what is rote learning to some isn't rote learning to others.
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I test them first, see how well they perform, with a promised "reward" at the end of the day (NOT the normal salary). Then I make the contract/whatever. Well I over-simplified it but you get the point.
I politely tell the dropout to get lost, because, probabilistically speaking, I am more likely to lose money from wasting my time testing him and finding out he's no good than I am to gain a significant amount of money from finding out he has a lot of talent.
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