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Comment by reitanqild | Hacker News Reader

Protip: some of us can significantly increase our own throughput if we frame tasks like competitions.

I'll add a warning about not overdoing this, as someone who has previously burned out before I am careful not to trick myself too often.

Edit: at least -> out

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I wish I'd know how to do that. My brain refuses to cooperate with any attempts to purposefully "frame" something, immediately recognizing it as fake.

About the only time I was able to "convince myself" something is a game was when I was going through such a hard time that I was automatically turning everything into silly games as a coping mechanism. For better or worse, I'm unable to do that anymore.

And some of us do worse! Everybody overlooks the other statistic from this experiment: the girls' scores dropped as much as the boys rose, when playing the 'game'. I'd be more worried about that. Its not about reading, folks.

Sounds like a point in favor of going back to gender segegated schools. Let the girls cooperate, and the boys compete, and theoretically everyone will end off better for it.

Sure, its true today that gender-separated schools have better outcomes. But it may not be necessary to go to that extreme for everybody.

Anway, competition is normal in the working world (at least in America). So there's a problem regardless of school effects.

Used to think this was good, but not sure if this is a good thing in the long run:

Sooner or later they need to work together anyway.

I'd rather suggest being honest about the fact that statistically speaking boys and girls are different and both have to respect each other.

The girls' scores dropped half as much as the boys' rose.

Similar 'good' numbers for both, much worse 'bad' numbers for boys.

Did we read the same article? Their scores essentially swapped.

This is how I got through undergrad and grad school. I framed every class and assignment as a competition me vs. the teacher and/or me vs. the other students.

Which seems really weird to me - education isn't a competition it's a collaboration with the teacher and the other students.

This mindset seems harmful to me as I see it playing out with my kids "teacher X set this homework and will tell me off if I don't do it" rather than "teacher X set this homework and I'll not understand the subject as well if I don't do it". The kids think the homework is "for the teacher" rather than for them.

Education is supposed to be an opportunity not a sentence or conflict, isn't it?

Yes, it is. But more often than not the kids can't see it that way. It's a rare child that understands why the teacher wants them to figure out how many watermelons fifty people bought at 3 different stores.

Unfortunately, this mindset continues far longer than it should. Highschool students, unlike their elementary counterparts, are more than capable of understanding what education is, but still continue to view it as something forced upon them, rather than for their benefit. I've seen more than a few college students with this mindset as well. The cheer that goes up when the college gives them a day off is a bit disheartening.

I think one of the reasons is the need for autonomy. I was one of the people who more often than not cheered when we had a day off college - because education interfered with my time to learn on my own. Often, I was learning the same (or related) stuff, but without the soul-draining and distracting experience of grading and deadlines.

It's a competition to gaining knowledge.

You've totally missed the point.

It's not about what education is or is not, it's that the male brain, for whatever reason, is highly motivated by competition.

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