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Comment by LoSboccacc | Hacker News Reader

something I don't understand of this approach, how can one strive to get better if there is no better to get?

Surely as one learns to ride a bicycle, one will strive to fall off less, and to ride faster; and as one learns to cook, will strive to burn or spoil the food less and make it more delicious; all this done without a ranking system.

but those are something you learn for your interest, not something the society has deemed necessary for everyone to know.

school has conflicting goals, you need to help develop both kid with interest in learning and kid that would spend their time in other activities but need to reach the same goals nonetheless

this is definitely not about self improvement.

> this is definitely not about self improvement.

Well, even when we learn to read and write, and learn maths, is that not self-improvement? Do we learn this things because they are beneficial and useful in our lives; or is it just a matter of achieving the highest score?

When you write things on this forum; is your only motivation to receive the most upvotes and get the highest score?

Just because something is useful to society, doesn't mean that it will have no use for ourselves, does it?

case in point: I hated latin in high school. I precisely only put in enough effort get a passing grade.

Good point.

Indeed, if you don't use some kind of authority towards students, you won't be able to teach them things that they can't see the point in at all.

The question is whether we (as teachers / as society) choose to use tests and authority to motivate them by fear; or to try to entice their interest in the subjects; or if something is genuinely not interesting then perhaps just not force that it upon students at that particular time.

My favourite teachers have had an radiant enthusiasm for what they were teaching, and could make almost anything interesting. On the other hand, some teachers manage to make even the most exciting subjects dull.

If you're learning to drive, or program, or whatever, is your objective to be able to do it efficiently, or to do it better than another person?

Both, I think but it depends on the situation. For many things in life competency is enough (although there are still tests involved in demonstrating this) but there aren't unlimited jobs in any field so being 'better' certainly makes you more desirable. A racing car driver is measurably better than me at driving but then driving is not a job for me and so proficiency alone is acceptable.

yet company has to pay a lot if they want a better candidate, technically speaking

or any country from 3rd world country can afford hiring silicon valley graduates at $300k per year just for a senior to tech lead level position?

If you want to use these skills not only for yourself, but to sell them to others as well (as labor), it's really helpful to know where you stand on the market. Otherwise you might think you're good enough at something, devote a lot of time to it, but only later learn that others are better at it.

In fact, I think it's quite common scenario in a lot of solitary pursuits, be it intellectual or artistic. Without the immediate ability to compare, you can spend years doing something without being rewarded for it at the end - for example, Hitler spend a decade trying to be a painter, before he finally owned his failure and switched to politics. If there was a way to get reliable feedback in painting without putting a decade of work into it, he might've had abandoned it much earlier and not grow his resentment towards "the gatekeeping Jews".

both and neither. in some programming languages I'm barely literate, like I know enough to cook a php landing page or a simple file/database accessing system should the need arise for something simple, cheap and done yesterday. in some like Java I take pride in knowing them far beyond what's required on the job and in being a reference point for my team. some stuff like node.js I just put my hand into because I can get around, but hatee it with passion and will only do if strictly necessary.

so the question is what drives my choices? for one I can derive a lot of wealth out of my knowledge. on the other hand there's the pride of accomplishment.

but if I had to generalize I say lot of people around me just have an utilitarian approach to knowledge, and they won't deepen their unless enticed or coerced.

beside I can't see people getting around and just learn stuff outside what's in their interest to begin with, me included, didn't and won't care to learn ancient languages and those lesson at school were just a chore

note that I think of it heading also has another purpose, to let parents know efficiently if these any hiccup in some courses. how held would parents know where their kid needs help? sure there's the semestral parent-teacher meeting but that seems inefficient and too coarse compared to punctual grading

When it comes to learning, "better" is always relative to yourself only. Comparing yourself to other people is pointless, especially on a metric as non-informative as examination scores, because scoring higher than someone else doesn't actually tell you anything about why it happened. Maybe you're just really good at getting high scores in exams, but is that actually a useful skill?

Similarly, scoring higher in your next exam doesn't actually indicate that you have fixed the problems you had during your previous examination. If you actually want to improve, you need to review your own results and find out where you failed and what to correct.

Maybe that feeling of enjoyment learning and mastering things.

that common feeling within the creative type is just not there for the majority of the population, learning has had to be made mandatory specifically because juniors won't otherwise do it on their own accord

I have a very hard time believing first graders etc have much use for scores. And beating knowledge into students only goes so far. The downsides to external rewards and punishment vs intrinsic ones are so great anyway, I wonder what the point is with scores many times. It didn't work on me, that I can say for sure.

> I have a very hard time believing first graders etc have much use for scores

people all age react to compliment and scoldings, grades are just a synthetic alternative

"better" does not mean much in a context of a university, rankings are very subjective.

.. a pleasure like always to have a discussion around here

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