School grades are hopelessly broken
marco.org
marco.org
Being completely subservient to the system and rejecting it outright are not the only two options you have a student. Personally I found the most effective method was to maintain a GPA over 3.25 with minimal effort and make my real focus undergraduate research. This has worked out incredibly well so far. I have a blast doing research because I get to work on intellectually stimulating problems and I only spend the minimum amount of time necessary on busywork for courses.
The concrete results in terms of awards and internships has been excellent. I've never once had an interviewer ask about GPA; it's high enough to be acceptable and is overshadowed by research experience. One recommendation from your research supervisor eliminates any doubt concerning intellectual ability and/or work ethic. If you want to optimize for both understanding and marketability at the same time, I believe in and strongly recommend this approach.
In 1966, 22% of Harvard undergraduate students earned A's. By 1996, that figure rose to 46%. That same year, 82% of Harvard seniors graduated with honors.
In 1973, 31% of all grades at Princeton were A's. By 1997 that rose to 43%. In 1997, only 12% of all grades given at Princeton were below the B range.
(source: Source: American Academy of Arts & Sciences)
One of the best things about MIT is that they have not succumbed to the this trend. There is no such thing as "honors"— An MIT degree is an honor by itself. That attitude is a fundamental basis of the student culture.
A reflection of this is that you are allowed a "saving throw" in your final semester: you can petition to graduate if you are lacking just one required course that you earned an F in that last semester. It must be "well earned", you have to have really tried, and I don't know how often the petition is granted but it is upon occasion.
MIT doesn't accept anyone who they don't think can make it. This works in part because of the self selection in applicants, although nowadays they're getting 13,000 per year, 1/3 of which the Admissions Office judges can do the work.
If you think about it though, for an incoming class size of about 1000, they're still rejecting 3/4ths of the qualified applicants. Assuming a legacy applicant is qualified (and I'd suspect for a number of reasons that they're more likely to be qualified than the median applicant), that second look can be a big benefit.
In the early '80s EECS drastically changed it's core curriculum (or at least the CS part of it, SICP/6.001 was the start), and it definitely got better at teaching it.
If that also gave the students a better foundation for higher level courses, then we'd expect significant grade inflation based on MIT's policy of grading on mastery instead of the curve.
Also during that period the EE to CS ratio was 3:1 and flipped to a mirror 1:3. If CS is better or markedly better taught ... and be sure to factor in higher availability of computers, before MIT and at MIT ... that probably also is a factor.
Assume also during this period that only half the majors had a "calling" to EECS; therefore the quality of teaching would make the most difference to the other half to whom it doesn't come so naturally.
CanDo is grading software that tracks competency instead of percentages. Each student has a rating on various skills that the class is supposed to teach, something like "Familiar with basics." The top level is being able to teach the skill to others.
Though that project is now stagnating, there's still a mandate to explore that type of grading software from the state of Virginia.
(Incidentally, paying high schoolers to work on something practical is a great way to get them to learn.)
The grading system caters to them, and it's a pretty good indicator of which of those people is going to be able to successfully do a standard job placed in front of him.
School was made for average people, if you are so much above the average, then you can surely figure out a way to be the best in a system that is so much below you. If you failed a test designed for average people, then by that criteria, you are below average.
People that are very much above average do not need the grades, because they will have a lot to show for themselves anyways. People who are average need the grades, because they need a way of showing their ability to do work in comparison to their peers.
So the logic of the writer is fundamentally flawed, because assuming he is indeed above average, he cannot use the failure of the system on him to mean that the system fails for the average person.
There are numerous counterexamples to this in the gifted education literature. If a teacher writes a test without fact-checking the approved answers, it is possible for a child who has a better grasp of the facts than the teacher to get a bad score on the test, while a child who parrots the teacher's mistaken view of the facts gets a good score.
The system actually lets down all learners, above-average, average, and below-average, but that's not only in the form of lousy grading standards. For detailed references to this, see the books
http://books.google.com/books?id=EjkKBotJcyIC&dq=Knowing...
and
http://books.google.com/books?id=7ncMKDdCd84C&printsec=f...
and the articles
http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99...
and
http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf
and
http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues...
There are more articles on similar subjects showing that much school improvement is necessary.
P.S. It may be you are not a native speaker of English, or you are a native speaker of English like me who types rapidly under conditions of distraction. I just wanted to point out, in a way that I hope will be friendly, that "criteria" is the plural of "criterion," so one can write of "that criterion" (singular) or "those criteria" (plural) as occasion demands.
On a personal note, being able to blow off high school and still go to college requires a level of financial privilege that neither I nor anybody else in my family enjoyed. There are plenty of reasons to play the high school game.
"Grunt work" that you learn from or that sets you up to do more interesting work is not so bad. If you build a city, you need to maintain the sewer system. If your company has you maintaining 8 peoples' cities because you're young and expected to pay dues, you should get another job.
Of course, a good boss will try to explain why the tasks he is assigning are important so the employees will see value in it too. Sometimes that is not possible. For instance, perhaps the reason behind the task involves sensitive information that cannot be released (this comes up very often in the military, and occassionally in corporate jobs.) Perhaps there just isn't time for the explanation right then. Or perhaps the employee just disagrees with the explanation when given.
In those cases, a good employee will get the project done well whether or not the employee sees value in it because the boss/organization does see value in it. An employee that does not do that should and probably will be fired with cause.
Apparently someone once thought over-designing the O-rings on the shuttle was BS work.
Frankly if something isn't BS, the reason can be properly explained. And if the subject can't understand the reason why, then he/she is not ready to do the work.
So whoever over-designed the O-rings must have had a good reason to do so. If he/she had a good reason, it is by definition no longer BS (it may still be boring grunt work). If not, then they were just lucky that it worked out.
First, the guy already has a job, which he clearly states in the essay.
Second, the majority of people who change the world have jobs at different points in their career. People like Gates, Jobs, and Dell who never really had jobs and just did their own thing from day 1 are so far an exception that they're probably worthless as role models in that sense.
Finally, the majority of people who bullshit their way through school and deliberately slack off because they're cynical about the system do not change the world. Some do, but so do some people who work hard, apply themselves, and get as much as they can out of the broken system. In fact, I'm betting that more of the latter do, but that's just my opinion.
Right. They are like pro athletes. Their work ethic is to be admired, but expecting one's life to be anything like theirs without great evidence is idiocy.
Some do, but so do some people who work hard, apply themselves, and get as much as they can out of the broken system. In fact, I'm betting that more of the latter do, but that's just my opinion.
I think so. American high school life is a pretend world. Much of it-- prom, the cafeteria hierarchy, the make-work assignments, the goofy assemblies-- is bullshit. On the other hand, a few of the classes and teachers are really good. Why not take advantage of the few opportunities that do present themselves?
Fortunately I went to a school where there were enough good classes and teachers to make up for it, but apparently this guy didn't.
Anyway, at my job at a big important corporation, busy work and meaningless stuff happens--but it's not common, and the higher ups usually think they have a good reason for it. They're not just going through the motions of "assign work, evaluate performance". And if they are, you are free to--and should--find a job elsewhere.
If the tasks actually aren't bullshit, it is up to you to convey the importance of the task to your employees. Same goes with teachers and assignments.
I tended to do the assignments in school. They were easy compared to the things I would do on my own, and the silly ones tended not to be time-consuming.
If you never do homework, how do you know that the homework is bullshit? Some teachers actually know what they're doing, after all.
I didn't like homework in school and I didn't do it but that doesn't stop me from doing it in college courses where I don't understand the material but it does stop me from doing grunt work for the sake of doing grunt work.
On the other hand, maybe you wanted to say "boring tasks which are necessary". But don't they stop being bullshit, by definition, when there's some monetary incentive attached to them?
Or do you have a bunch of shmucks who plod in to work, do what they are told (and never any more), and then plod back home?
Have you ever thought that maybe the most successful businesses are the ones where the employees are bright and motivated and will actually call YOU out on your bullshit ideas? Do you really think that every idea that you deem important really is important?
I don't think Marco really gives a shit about whether you would hire him or not. He has better options than to be cube fodder. The same goes for anyone who can build good things and solve real problems. If I were to concoct some evidence for my case, I couldn't do better than Marco's boss at Tumblr, David Karp. In this industry, smart people who ship get to call their own shots.
Why do people treat not doing schoolwork as being inherently virtuous? The view that the activities required to do well in school are a waste of time(though I believe that it wastes very little time) is valid, and I agree, for the most part. There are also some who believe that the potential benefits of doing well in high school(for example, going to a good university) are not worth the cost. I disagree with them, but if they make a considered decision that attending MIT or Stanford or the like is not worth the opportunity cost of doing well in high school and that their time would be better spent doing something else, then I'd respect their decision and them for giving more thought than most people to the consequences of their actions.
However, even in this community that I consider to have noticeably above-average intelligence, I sometimes see people almost boasting of how they did nothing in high school. This is somewhat understandable when they are explaining what they did instead of their schoolwork that was a more useful use of their time, but I simply cannot understand why people will brag solely of their inaction during high school without describing what they did instead. If you don't have something else you did in the time that was a better use of your time, doesn't that mean that you wasted the time even more than if you had done all of the work?
Judging from the year he graduated college, the author is in his late twenties – pretty young. Since he's still several years older than me, I'm inclined to let him validate my feelings. And that worries me.
Would someone older (and wiser) like to chime in and tell us why we're wrong and why the "average" person doesn't suck as much as we think?
Now, broken or not which is easier meeting the very low standards of most schools or fighting it tooth and nail? Sure fighting worked for you, but you still have to expended large amounts of energy defending your position. To me this is politics 101, pick your battles. Why attack one of the largest social institutions with a frontal assault?
Grades don’t reflect your aptitude, intelligence, or
understanding of the subject matter.
However this type of complaint requires some suggestion of a viable alternative.
In my personal experience though, I only noticed the inflated grades problem in the US. While I was an undergrad engineering student in Spain there were some classes where not even 50% of the students passed, and overall, only 5% of them graduated with the minimum amount of time (5 years).
On the other hand, when pursuing graduate studies in the US, not only were the classes easier, but in many of them most people got A's. In my opinion, that defeats the purpose of grading.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...
And grade inflation is rife at the college level, as well as at the high school level:
Sorry but I'm calling BS on this one. Intelligence might allow you to score well on tests while not finishing your homework, but it's hard work and dedication that truly makes someone successful at what they do.
I disagree. Hard work cannot compensate for lack of intelligence, just as intelligence cannot compensate for lack of hard work. (More fully: you can substitute the one for the other a little bit, but not a lot).
For example, a stupid person couldn't understand quantum theory no matter how hard they tried. Nor could a clever person if they put zero effort into it.
Fo a startup to succeed, its founders need a combination of intelligence, hard work, and luck. And I expect the same is true of most difficult and competitive human endeavours.
Really?