The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
hedgehogreview.com
hedgehogreview.com
I attended St John's College - which is probably as close as a "real" school can get to the Catherine Project - and loved every minute. Grades were not given, and there were no professors or lectures.
Seeing criticism about the business model and lack of tests, worry about educational fads, etc, is missing the point, in my opinion.
Consider the possibility that a group of adults may want to engage in rich and historically important works of thought, but have no interest in the trappings of educational institutions, with their tuition, grades, etc. Like a bible study, but without the bible. If you feel threatened by this, ask yourself why.
(If so: Color me jealous.)
It feels like a lot of the comments boil down to “well my education was different so I can’t take this seriously.”
I also had the privilege of attending some Great Books courses at my high school and always regretted not applying to St. John's for undergraduate. I would like to attend some discussions organized by The Great Books Council of San Francisco (https://www.greatbooksncal.org/), though it's difficult to find time.
Yeah, exactly. Or hackerspaces. Or OSS. Or presenting at DEFCON. (And, yes, these folks will include this project in their tenure/promotion cases and therefore indirectly benefit professionally even if they don't charge just like in the cases above.)
My only real "criticism" of this model is that the people doing this work shouldn't shy away from asking for "tithes"... humanities professors are criminally under-paid and plenty of folks would pay to attend these sorts of seminars (in the same way that most people tithe at church).
That's also tithing (and is completely normal for regular church goers... bible says 10% to the church and a lot of folks follow that prescription)
Reality is, most non-profits' (church & non-church like NPR) budgets are funded by a small handful of very wealthy/generous donors. Not even 80%/20% rule, more like 80% of donations/sponsorships are from ~5% of the people giving money, the other 95% people giving's total is a small % of budget.
That's why in all non-profits, the leadership has to 'report' to a small number or rich donors. Piss off a couple of the rich, your non-profit will fold.
Some countries still have "established" churches, which historically received direct government support from tax money (this is not always the case today... while the Church of England is still the "established" church in England, it no longer receives direct taxpayer support). Others may have a group of recognized churches that can receive taxpayer support (Germany is that way, I believe... you declare your religious affiliation, and if it is on the government-approved list, the government tax authorities will collect the tax and remit it to the church).
Also, people who are supporting church will often use a lot of their services so it's not like giving money to a charity you will never directly see their work (like environmental groups).
Finally, the 10% rule comes from times where the state had a much lesser role in fighting poverty.
Tithing is more like a PBS membership or seomthing.
Most churches did give sermons on the subject, but there was never a direct consequence for ignoring that teaching.
This sounds very suspect to me. Do you have any sources for this assertion?
I've never heard of a church requiring any form of support, tithe etc to be a member or at all. I've been attending church and have been a member of several for 20+ years.
http://ascensionfairview.org/contribute/parish-membership/ (Orthodox) $450/year
https://www.templeshalom.org/dues (Jewish) $3,950/year (based on 2 adult household)
https://www.buddhistchurch.org/membership (Buddhist) $44/month
https://beulahbaptist.org/flc/membership/ (Baptist) $30/month
As I said, few churches (or others houses of worship) will charge you a fee for attending services (other than the plate coming around), but if you want a say in church governance you usually have to pony up, either with formal dues or a less-formal expectation that you will provide significant financial support.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you.
Have you actually been involved in church governance in the churches you've attended?
But if we expand the scope to houses of worship, then temples are included.
I think I've heard of churches charging nominal fees for church membership, but not requiring tithing. Tithing is very different from membership fees. It should be strictly voluntary. That's been my experience and observation.
I've worked as office staff of a church and I'm currently treasurer of the church I'm a member of now.
Requiring tithing is not particularly common, but I'm also not surprised when I hear of churches where it happens. A lot of this probably depends on your tradition and geography. Requiring tithing is entirely unheard of in the mainline and very uncommon in the northeast generally, for example, but seems to be slightly more common among the particularly "charismatic"/"corporate"-style evangelical churches in the suburban and exurban midwest.
In any case, I think social pressure on members to tithe is MUCH more common than formal requirements. This might be the source of virulent disagreement. Just because there isn't a formal requirement doesn't mean that there isn't intense social pressure that creates a de facto requirement.
IMO both sides of this argument are correct -- formal tithing requirements are rare, but de facto requirements for members to tithe, enforced via social pressure, is probably quite a bit more common than folks who depend on that tithing for their salaries are willing to admit/realize.
> the only church...
The following rant is specific to the USA.
This irritates me beyond words. Christian churches avoid BILLIONS in taxes via laws such as the Parsonage Exemption, whose original de jure justification was "to spread the gospel" -- about as clear a violation of 1A as you can get (to say nothing of the role that "spreading the gospel" played in the cultural and sometimes actual genocide of native populations).
Judges uphold these incredibly generous tax laws because, they reason, words like "church" and even "gospel" aren't specific to one religion and ought to be interpreted broadly. Excessively broadly, in the case of "gospel". This review does a good job at explaining the case history and legal reasoning: https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/51/3/Articles/51-3_...
Without that reasoning, laws like the one that establishes the parsonage exemption would be prime facie and blatantly unconstitutional. Most churches would lose substantial special tax treatment for many parts of their physical plant and fall into financial hardship.
That's all fine. Really. But don't try to have it both ways. In the USA, either (a) don't insist on using "church" in a religion/tradition-specific specific way, or (b) start paying a lot more taxes.
Anyways, that's all a bit off-topic. The actual point was that I think these folks should accept donations with large nominal "recommended donation" amounts, since I think what they're doing offers way more value than the typical church pastor.
As far as "having only one church" goes, I intentionally tried to get as broad a base as I could for the practice. There are many, many other examples, of all religions, and all branches of the Christian religion, as anyone who cares to do his or her own web search can soon determine.
> In any case, I think social pressure on members to tithe is MUCH more common than formal requirements.
Definitely. Even if there is no formal requirement, everyone knows who finances the church, and a wise minister goes out of his or her way to avoid antagonizing those people.
A non-finance related anecdote: several of the elders of a church some of my family members attended years ago decided to attend (Important Sportsball Game) in (Distant City) one weekend, rather than attending church.
The next Sunday the minister's sermon emphasized why attending church on Sunday should outweigh any worldly activity (such as attending Important Sportsball Games).
The next Sunday after that, there was a new minister.
That may be the case at some churches, but I would assert that that kind of social pressure is wrong and unbiblical.
"Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." - 2 Corinthians 9:7
So for a church where this social pressure exists, that is the fault of that particular church (it's leadership and/or people), not churches or Christianity in general. Anecdotally, I've never experienced this kind of pressure at any church I've attended or been a member of.
> To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual
> The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion...
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
Churches qualify for 501c3 tax exempt status because they are religious organizations and are non-profit. Same goes for mosques, temples, etc.
So why is using "church" in the traditional Christian religious sense and being exempt from taxes bad?
It's not, per se. Although I do think the Parsonage exemption is wrong and should be repealed, and I do think "religion" as a criteria for non-profit status should also be removed from tax code. Just treat Churches like any other 501(c)3. What's the problem with that? (Answer: many churches spend untaxed money on things that would lose them their 501(c)3 status if they weren't religious organizations... which is almost always also unbiblical stewardship of church finances, so it's perplexing to me that any practicing Christian would oppose at least the latter change to tax law).
But, again, that's not what I was saying. What I critiquing was your characterization of Buddhist temples and Synagogues as "in the traditional sense of the word" (your owrds).
That traditional sense has no meaning in the USA. Go read court opinions. "Church" does not imply Christian. "Gospel" doesn't even imply Christian. Because, if those things did imply Christian, most of the tax benefits that are unique to churches would be struck down as state establishment of religion (protestant Christianity, to be precise). These aren't my opinions. They're the law. "Church" and "Gospel" are interpreted to mean, roughly, any group that meets regularly and has some sort of spiritual tenets.
Anyways, again, this is all far off-topic from my original post, which in fact characterized tithing in a positive light.
OTOH, a nearby Unitarian / mega-style church made signing a form with your annual salary and a pledge to tithe a minimum percentage a formal requirement for membership. I heard they were active in enforcing it, but never bothered joining.
I.e. see https://www.uua.org/finance/fundraising/generosity/185418.sh...
Note under the "collection plate" header that they suggest you give in a way that has your name on it so it can count toward your pledge- they definitely track individual tithes.
> Do you have any sources for this assertion?
Don't be that person. Take or leave the anecdote, but don't make an asinine request of evidence for something clearly anecdotal.
Take a look again at their statement
> but often being a "member" of the church requires providing some form of formal support, such as tithing
note the word "often". How is that clearly anecdotal? If the commenter had framed it as their own experience at a church they attended, I'd have no problem believing them. But clearly that's not the case. They are making a general assertion about most (or many) churches.
And please be a bit more respectful and charitable. It's more conducive to discussion and common decency.
Helping people see that their behaviour is not acceptable in a relatively mild manner is very respectful. The charitability thing is not really all that relevant here, because the words were not taken in a bad light - both of you agree on what was said. What you don't agree on is whether or not it should have been said, which no amount of charitable reading will fix.
The premise of andrew_14's correction, that the gp comment is anecdotal is totally wrong. I thought I'd made that clear.
So I'm genuinely curious, how was my behavior unacceptable?
Here is the flow of discussion:
Turing_Machine: "often being a "member" of the church requires providing some form of formal support, such as tithing"
Me: (paraphrased) That doesn't seem true that often being a member of a church requires support such as tithing. Could you give me some sources for this?
Again, please explain to me why responding to a blanket assertion by asking for evidence is unacceptable behavior? I see it here all the time.
> relatively mild manner is very respectful
Describing my request as asinine which means extremely stupid is relatively mild and respectful? Relative to what? Getting punched in the face?
I beg to differ that is was mild and respectful. Even if he put it in a respectable way like "I don't think your request is reasonable given the statement was anecdotal", again, the premise of his comment is totally wrong so his correction of my behavior is fallacious.
> The charitability thing is not really all that relevant here, because the words were not taken in a bad light - both of you agree on what was said.
I'm confused by this. I don't think both of us agree on what was said (your words). But since I don't quite understand what you are saying, I can't comment further. What words were not taken in a bad light? That he said my request is really stupid? I take that in a bad light. And what was said that we both agree on?
https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
I've been very loosely involved in Interintellect[0], which itches a similar scratch and looks spiritually very similar to the Catherine Project, with perhaps less of a focus on great books and a wider, more modern gamut.
For anyone considering Catherine Project, Interintellect, or St. John's College, I heartily recommend them. Diligently reading through deep written work, then discussing it with other people genuinely interested and invested in the work and the dialogue is a wonderful experience and one that's hugely shaped me.
I think if we look at the title and ignore the content of the article itself, it explains why the reaction was so strong.
A title that contains the word "liberal" and mentions experimenting with education is not going to bring out the most level-headed readers.
We stopped at the bookstore on the way home and I bought a bunch of books related to my interest in urban planning and read them while convalescing. One book was a collection of excerpts from various urban planning tomes. Another was a book called Seeing like a state. Another was about The Clemente Course in Humanities.
https://www.clementecourse.org/
To me, community development is about the people more than the buildings or infrastructure. Those things are not unimportant, but they need to serve the people. So I was also interested in the psychology of how the state relates to the needs of the people and how you develop human capital.
Human capital is developed in part with education. Jobs and other social connections also matter but education is one of the things that tends to separate the privileged from the underprivileged.
When I homeschooled my sons, I used to talk in online forums about teaching my kids a humanities education and defined it as being about learning to effectively cope with the inconvenient, inescapable fact of one's own humanity.
Humanities also gets called Liberal Arts. In spite of its current poor reputation, Liberal Arts was so named because the idea was that it was education that was empowering and freeing. It was, in a word, liberating.
My dream college back when I was a teenager, that I never got to attend, has a Great Books curriculum.
I think you'll find James Scott has a strong HN fanbase
They wanted to use a language test on all recently turned 3 year olds in the municipality because someone had told them that a bunch of the children starting in school ended up in trouble because they did not have good language skills.
Now, the school curriculum had recently changed to be much more intellectual in the first year. So you might think that perhaps something had gone awry in the school end - but no, see, the problem is here, our kindergartens clearly suck, let's just measure 3 year olds (!) so we can identify the bad kindergartens/children and fix them.
That's seeing like a state mentality in a nutshell. Having read the book, it was just so obvious.
I talked to several kindergarten leaders who hated that test because it had clear false negatives (kindergarten pedagogues are there because they love the children, anything that goes against that makes them want to die) and made parents nervous for no good reason, but try explaining that to the responsible manager at the municipality. He obviously thought I was just being dumb.
Luckily, the municipality made a mistake, because after a lot of digging it turned out they didn't actually have the authority to demand the tests.
For the record, I think the right thing to do here would be to strengthen the caring culture for misfits in the kindergartens - often, but not always, the children with language trouble have other troubles. And then look holistically at the curriculum in the schools. If it's not working out for them with the children they get, they need to do something else. It's like when you make a program and your intended users are too dumb to figure it out, well, chances are you messed up.
* create a small seminar of your own for an academic or quasi-academic text or topic that interests you, and meet and discuss it
I'm currently participating in a seminar on
https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/lf-current/index.h...
and some people I know are running their own read-through of Plato's Republic at the moment. No university required!
Take Software Foundations as an example. The tool it's written about, the logical foundations underlying that tool, and generations of pedagogic experimentation in explaining those idea that led to Software Foundations would not have been possible instances of the modern Research University in at least a half dozen countries (but most notably France and the US).
Even the human inputs to such a seminar probably require a university more often than not. The number of self-taught programmers who could work through Software Foundations is certainly miniscule.
There is certainly a viable community-building model here, not dissimilar from the Community Church or Hackerspace models! Just want to call out that it's sort of (virtuously!!!) grifting off of the spoils of research universities.
BTW: I'd love to see a Computer Science "Great Books" Curriculum. TAOCP, SICP, Cinderella, Dragon, Foundations, ... what else?
I don't understand the skepticism either. If people want to engage a great text with a community, what's the harm?
The thread's been jumped on by mysoginistic conservatives?
If the Catherine Project is indeed just one more form of that kind of decentralized ad-hoc learning, then the only downside is that it'll be just as successful. That is to say, a bunch of random people learning random things without a curriculum. Which is not really "an education", and carries a series of challenges and burdens for a great number (maybe most) of the population, that traditional academia is intended to address.
I mean, no grades, no cost, no degree at the end, four people per 'class' -- is it closer to a conventional university, or a book club? Not to knock book clubs -- they are great (especially if people read the books for once), but they probably won't solve the education system either.
If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students.
This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
I like to call them "Junior Assistant Vice Sub-Deans", and most academic institutions in the United States are infested with them.
The worse thing is that people seem to really enjoy it. Every time I have a discussion on it with someone I inevitably hear arguments like “it was such a formative experience”, “university is not only for studying” and so on. It’s really crazy that a huge part of the population is convinced that pouring thousands of money into an overpriced 4 year holiday should be a societal norm.
Is there any reason to believe that university is any less formative outside of the states?
For example for some it's maybe not be overpriced because of scholarships and aid. Or it may not be overpriced because they're rich. Or it may not be overpriced because there are actually very many reasonably priced colleges out there in the USA. Everyone's experience is different, and reducing the entirety of the college experience into "an overpriced 4 year holiday" takes all the nuance out of the issue.
And you know what, despite all the disparaging talk here about college being a "holiday" and a "resort", we really do work these kids hard, at least at my institution. These young minds are out there doing incredible work, engaging in the community, creating art, and doing actual research that will change the world one day. I'm not saying these things aren't going on outside of academic institutions, but there is an endless supply of creative energy and intellectual curiosity on college campuses, and that is an important resource for society. I don't know of any other institution that fosters and grows such a concentrated level of achievement at such a young age. Corporations don't do it. Governments don't do it. Local towns don't do it. Churches don't do it. Academia is where people go to explore new ideas and find themselves. Some, especially here on HN, scoff at the idea, but really it leads to magic, and it's hard to deny that.
I'm not arguing against the value of a university education. My point, which you acknowledge, is that the rest of the world manage to educate their students, while providing a similarly formative experience, without costing the equivalent of a year's salary or more for each year of education.
> But really what I'm trying to get at here is that calling someone else's experience "overpriced", when the premise is they have self reported that the experience was "formative", is more a statement of one's own values than a fair assessment of the actual experience of that individual.
I'm challenging whether those same students would have received a less formative experience without luxury dormitories, catered meal plans, or unused rock climbing walls. This is a very valid question, and while it's impossible to prove counterfactuals, one good thought experiment would be to ask whether a student who graduated from a first tier public research university in 1990 or 2000 received any less of an education or formative experience than a student who graduated in 2020. After controlling for advancements in technology and pedagogy, I'm not sure you can answer yes to this. And if you can, I'm not sure you can attribute whatever benefits to the miscellaneous luxuries they currently have access to.
I will say, as someone who went to university during the period you indicate, it was called overpriced and not worth it at that time as well.
Your counterfactual is a valid question, but I think it’s also irrelevant. As I said in my last post, the price one pays for any given university can vary wildly from full ride to full sticker price. Your argument seems to be that the sticker price is higher than the median salary in America, and higher than in other countries, therefore it’s overpriced. But again, those who make a median wage in America aren’t paying sticker price for college. I went to the most expensive university in the country at the time and paid 30% sticker price, making it more affordable than the public university down the street. My roommate paid sticker price because he came from a wealth family and didn’t qualify for any support. We both would report that our experiences were formative, yet not overpriced.
So you see it’s impossible to make any blanket statements about this. It’s really specific to the individual.
Anyway, that’s all I really have to say on the matter. I welcome your reply but I think my opinion is stated exhaustively.
I do agree with you that there are societal norms to dump large sums of money into college, but will also point out that many of the things people enjoy from their college experience are things that are - in my judgment - becoming increasingly difficult to find in American society: namely, being able to form social connections that are deeper than the measly platitudes and shallow experience of water-cooler conversations at work.
The fact that colleges are able to command tens of thousands of dollars per year should tell us something about what their campuses are offering that general society and its structure is unable to provide.
They provide a piece of paper at the end that puts you an edge up above the people that cannot attend for one reason or another in the job market, which is going to be a part of your life for the next 40 years or so.
Climbing wall is the regular dog-eat-dog competitive nature of living and working in a capitalist society.
That easy. Concentrate on subject matter and not on politics. If I'd want to study humanities, then I'd want to gather more knowledge in areas such as ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, not become a political activist.
As someone who grew up during a tumultuous time for the public education system in Ontario, Canada, it felt like ever year or two whole curriculums were thrown out and the latest and greatest "cutting edge" approaches and fads were foisted upon us. I can see a lot of parallels in software development, but I wonder about the specific potential for lasting damaging effects for children and young people. I know I experienced some gaps that took a long time to be addressed.
Speaking of ethics, it doesn't seem entirely ethical to force students to memorize a bunch of facts (chosen by whom?) and regurgitate them for arbitrary grades for over a decade, as if that has something to do with education. Certainly there is some lasting psychological damage inflicted by that methodology.
And also, quickly changing methodologies sux, because they change faster then teachers can really learn and become experienced in teaching that way. And same applies to students, because different methodologies have different expectations on how they should behave. So, you have constantly teachers doing something they are not fully sure how to do yet, parents who are confused about why this or that is different then last year and frustrated students who perceive the system being inconsistent and hypocritical.
Modern education is overly concerned with fact memorization, since it's the easiest and most precise way to grade. In America we force (not ask) our children to attend institutions that greatly resemble totalitarian dictatorships, where they are not even allowed basic rights like bathroom use without being given permission.
Then we force them to memorize countless facts, many of which are never brought up again for the rest of their lives.
Consider this essay from 1991 from a celebrated educator. https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
The system we have isn't designed this way because it's best for the individual, and it's not a strawman to question it.
Since this Catherine Project seems to be trying to offer a traditional education practice to students who are both witting and willing, and thus, to me, at least, doesn’t seem to raise any serious ethical issues, I will comment on your point about ethical issues in public education.
I teach and do research on foreign-language education in a non-English-speaking country, and a few years ago I started to think about the ethical issues involved in that area of education. In Japan, where I live, all school children are required to study English even though the majority of Japanese children and adults have little or no need for English in their lives. The teaching methods can involve activities that some students find embarrassing, such as presentations and role playing; some children also seem to feel that being required to speak a foreign language threatens their personal identity.
While children themselves will complain about having to study English and raise ethical issues about it (“Why do we have to do this!?”), the discourse among both educators and the general public seems to ignore whether it is morally acceptable to require all children to study and try to speak a foreign language that most of them will not use and will soon forget.
When I mentioned my inchoate thoughts about these issues to a philosopher colleague, he pointed me to the is-ought problem raised by David Hume [1, 2, 3]. That helped to clarify for me a related issue that had been bothering me. A lot of research about foreign-language education seems to be based on empirical, objective information (what is), such as whether a particular teaching method leads to higher test scores or not. Education researchers, however, often conclude their papers and presentations with ethical recommendations for action (what ought to be done), such as to adopt the teaching method that does lead to higher test scores. The ethical and logical problem with that kind of is-to-ought reasoning rarely if ever is discussed, at least in my corner of the field of education.
I don’t know if the same problem exists in other areas of education or in education policy in Ontario. But I can say that I was similarly annoyed as a child, in public schools in California more than fifty years ago, when I realized that we were being experimented on with a series of educational “innovations” of dubious benefit and without our consent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
I'm not quite sure what this Catherine project is proposing. What you don't want is just some random selection of topics with no regard for unifying principles, intrinsic importance, or the fundamental concerns of human existence. Even the so-called Great Books[1] curricula, themselves often plagued by a bias toward anglocentrism, have been known to degenerate into "selected topics" with no unifying principle. In so-called classical education, everything that is taught is taught in a cohesive fashion, at least ideally. Modern education is Kafkaesque in this regard: things happen, you're told to do some things here, learn some things there, but there is no cogent overarching whole into which everything fits. The goal isn't to educate as much as it is to equip students with an assortment of skills thought to be economically valuable here and now. Of course, being able to provide economic value is important, but that is secondary to becoming properly formed. A technically savvy savage is still a savage, but even here, his savvy is bound to be superficial. Ironically, someone who is properly formed in a real education is more deeply equipped and free to provide economic value.
All education systems presuppose some vision of man. The modern education's view of man, as an economic actor and a cog in a machine, is a bleak, stunted view of the human person and ultimately one that is dehumanizing.
[0] https://catholicliberaleducation.org/
[1] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/09/great-books-e...
You actually think it was ever different? As you note at the start of your next para, "all education systems ..." - there's nothing "modern" about this.
Who is paying the bills, then?
> no grades
There's a reason why students cram at the end of the semester. Without pressure from grades, they won't do the work of learning. I know for a fact that I don't learn if there aren't exams and grades.
But maybe you're right and it's all a sham.
I didn't say "all students".
> a number of colleges and universities that don't use grades
An example of a prestigious university that doesn't use grades would help your case.
> Without pressure from grades, [students] won't do the work of learning.
If it were qualified with ‘many’ students, there would be no such confusion. Your comment, as-is, is trivially falsified by the example of any auto-didact.
If one meant "all" students, one would say "all students", "students without exception", "100% of students", "every student", etc.
Meaning they're still taking exams.
"The goal of the Reed education is that students learn and demonstrate rigor"
https://www.reed.edu/about-reed/history.html
Demonstrate rigor sounds like tests.
"Among the requirements for the major are successful performance on a junior qualifying examination, completion of a yearlong senior thesis based on original research or artistic expression, and a successful oral defense of the thesis before an interdisciplinary faculty board."
Testing is definitely done.
Also "demonstrate rigor" absolutely does not imply tests. In my undergrad (math) the level of rigor of tests was uniformly (and necessarily) much lower than homework and other assignments without the same time pressure. I would expect the same to be true in many other fields.
> Also "demonstrate rigor" absolutely does not imply tests.
Sure it does.
Is it better than not studying at all? Probably... but not much.
The drink-and-get-a-certificate people will indeed profit from being encouraged to study, but the controversial opinion here would be that university should only or mainly care about those.
It's also why there are athletic competitions. It brings out the best in athletes as they strive to win. Are their achievements fake?
Our system of testing incentivizes teaching to the test and a focus on pointless memorization.
Our schools aren't supposed to be competitions, at least not primarily. Comparing them to athletics events is silly. If we wanted to find out "who is the best at taking test", then a test is the most appropriate tool. If we want to find out "Can Timmy do geometry", a classical closed-book, timed test isn't the best measurement.
It comes down to, what is the point of testing students? What is gained by restricting access to clarifying materials or enforcing arbitrary time limits?
Nobody said it was "ideal". Sheesh. But nobody has found a better way.
> Our system of testing incentivizes teaching to the test and a focus on pointless memorization.
News flash: some tests are poorly conceived.
> It comes down to, what is the point of testing students?
Allow me to reframe that. Would you get on an airplane piloted by a fellow who was never tested on his flying knowledge and skill?
I mean, there are plenty of people who have found a better way. They get pushback from folks who think testing is the end-all-be-all of knowledge assessment.
>News flash: some tests are poorly conceived.
It's more like they are flawed from the get-go
>Allow me to reframe that. Would you get on an airplane piloted by a fellow who was never tested on his flying knowledge and skill?
I don't think it really benefits anyone to come up with irrelevant strawmen. Just like athletes, with pilots we care about their performance under specific conditions. Of course pilots should be tested in the conditions they should be working in. Obviously testing for specific things is necessary.
The problem with the analogy is that the testing we use in K-16 doesn't mimic any real world conditions.
A QB needs to be able to perform on the field and thats what we gauge them by. There is no reason an 8th grader needs to be able to solve X amount of problems in 50 minutes or whatever. It's adding elements to the assessment that are irrelevant for gauging knowledge.
It's perfectly relevant. Tests are used all the time to gauge mastery of a topic.
> irrelevant for gauging knowledge
It's not at all irrelevant. When you've mastered something, it doesn't take long to produce the answer. For example, the better at math I got, the faster I could answer the questions. If it takes one an hour to multiply 123x456, one is reinventing multiplication rather than knowing multiplication.
Mastery and speed are strongly correlated.
Caltech classes sometimes had "infinite time" exams. But the students hated them. There was always the temptation to do more on them, and the students wanted an end to it, as they had lots of classes with exams.
I think you must just be extremely mistaken on what people are talking about then. I can't understand why you think that anyone is calling for pilots not to be given tests.
>It's not at all irrelevant. When you've mastered something, it doesn't take long to produce the answer. For example, the better at math I got, the faster I could answer the questions. If it takes one an hour to multiply 123x456, one is reinventing multiplication rather than knowing multiplication.
You aren't everyone though. Some people get major test anxiety, some people are good at doing math but bad at memorizing equations.
Just call a spade a spade. Do we care about how fast a student can do 10 math problems? Or do we care that the student can do the 10 math problems? Those are just different things. Most people only care if the student can do the 10 math problems.
>Mastery and speed are strongly correlated.
But speed is irrelevant to mastery. You can master a skill without doing it as quickly as others.
> But the students hated them. There was always the temptation to do more on them, and the students wanted an end to it, as they had lots of classes with exams.
That sounds like a personal problem. Probably because they grew up taking tests that were more about memorization and regurgitation than they are about recognizing when you've answered a question completely.
At the end of the day it comes down what are metric for success is. If you can cram for a test, that is a good indication that the test is mostly a test of your ability to regurgitate answers. If two students can get 100% on a math test, and one student takes an hour and the other takes an hour and half, most people would consider them both proficient on those math questions.
You, for whatever reason, think speed at answering questions is important. Lots of others, including most people who study education, don't share that view.
Majority of people don't participate in athletic competitions. They checks out. These are for elite majority interested in finding out who is best of the best while everybody else sits on sofa and watches them on youtube.
Ideally, education should not have majority of students ignoring whole thing exists or merely watching others compete without every learning themselves.
The ones that don't aren't very good at it.
> sits on sofa and watches them on youtube.
Exactly.
> education should not have majority of students ignoring whole thing exists or merely watching others compete without every learning themselves
Right. Testing&grades provide 1) motivation and 2) assessment of progress.
There's a reason a lot of first-year grad students end up dropping out. :)
We call this pumping-and-dumping. You pump the info into your brain then dump it on the test, then you forget it. This is not really meant for learning.
The type of student that won't learn unless strict deadlines and grades are placed on them is a very different type of student than one that will learn more with less deadlines and grades.
Take away deadlines and grades, and you will divide the class into two groups: that which genuinely learns the information better without deadlines and grades, and that which will slack off without strict deadlines and grades. The education system is (or should be!) designed to push students into the former category.
Unfortunately "desire to learn" is incredibly difficult to measure, let alone objectively, hence the standardized testing (you never get complaints about favoritism if everyone gets the same test).
Now ten years after finish school I think I have learn a hundred time more by myself than from my scholarship.
There is a quote from Taleb which looks something like this "What I learned on my own I still remember."
Maybe that's why the current school system sucks. It's good for some people but not for some other
Then why do you suppose people read books in their free time?
That said, I think that your question is a bit loaded. Textbook-level treatment of a subject is usually very shallow (depending on the subject, I suppose).
Nice to meet the unicorn! Meanwhile, how many textbooks are on the shelves at Barnes&Nobel? Not exactly bestsellers, right? Even the University of Washington bookstore puts the textbooks in a separate room in the basement.
> Textbook-level treatment of a subject is usually very shallow
Maybe the ones you read are. The ones Caltech uses aren't, like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...
How much of that supposed "learning" is actually retained though? Could these pass the same test a year later without the opportunity to study for it?
I can honestly say that grades got in the way of much of my learning, although I think that I’m atypical on this front.
University tests are typically very poorly designed (the folks who make them usually aren’t prepress I Al test developers), and quite a bit of effort needs to go into looking for old tests with model answers and going to either professor or TA office hours to get inside info on what is likely to be tested.
This took time away from me reading cited sources and cited sources from those cited sources, which was what (imho) gave me quite a bit of depth of knowledge of the subject area.
The good part was that I was often able to have conversations with the professor or TAs that went beyond the basics that were covered in the course, and sometimes this led to wonderful opportunities in further learning and/or research, but the loss of time spent on projects and tests for grades is time and learning that I will never get back.
The Wikipedia page about you says: “[Walter Bright] taught himself computer programming from the type-in programs in BASIC Computer Games” citing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28574770 as a source.
Was there a series of formal tests and grades involved there? Or do you disagree with your own claim that you learned computer programming from that untested, ungraded experience? Presumably most of your expert knowledge of compilers comes from practical experience implementing them yourself and independently studying other people’s implementations rather than from taking formal tests in graded university courses.
Just as you learned programming by satisfying your own curiosity, other people manage to learn about e.g. differential geometry, materials chemistry, entomology, Mesopotamian history, meteorology, electrical engineering, comparative linguistics, sports journalism, fine-art photography, pie baking, ... by similar self-directed experiences.
A formal education full of tests and grades can provide helpful structure for many students, but it is neither the most efficient nor the most effective way to get passionate students to learn and explore for themselves.
I have audited some programming classes, and learned very little, because I never did the exercises nor took the exams.
I know that there are some unicorns who learned math on their own. But I haven't encountered one in the real world.
(Ok, so I know one - Hal Finney. But that man was simply so smart, he learned it by flipping through the book, i.e. it was effortless for him.)
> it is neither the most efficient nor the most effective way
I simply don't buy that. After all, how do you determine if those students learned the material without tests? I've often thought I understood something, but when faced with solving a problem, realized I understood nothing.
I attended Caltech, where they selected for passion. I was passionate, too. With just auditing the classes, I figure I'd have learned maybe only 10% of what I did. That's neither efficient nor effective. Ditto for the bulk of the students. Even though I picked courses that I wanted to master.
The reality is as humans we love to learn things. Focus providing an environment that delivers that and the motivation is not a big issue.
But consider this:
1. How does one know one mastered the material? I've often thought I knew it, but found out I did not.
2. How does a college know one mastered the material?
3. Even when doing things one loves, there are always some boring things that need to be done, too.
BTW, in learning to program on my own, I later discovered there were yawning gaps in my knowledge that were conventional knowledge taught in CS classes. It was embarrassing.
So begging is your business model?
1) It's not profit generating, this is a not-for-profit organisation, so 'business model' is a bit of a loaded term.
2) The practice of having clubs / social groups where members are encouraged to donate money to help with the running costs is pretty common, and is not typically considered begging.
I help run a local theatre group which we fund with a whip-around with our members to assist with the venue hire and a donations bucket at the door of our to shows. Is that begging? I don't think so (I look at it as people giving money to keep something they enjoy experiencing running, which is different to begging).
This particular not-for-profit may have no business model, i.e. no revenue outside of donations.
But there are many not-for-profit entities that rely on services/fees (as opposed to donations) to fund their operations. For many of these non-profits, the main things that distinguish them from for-profit companies is that:
A) The founders don't get rich from an exit. They (and their cronies) get rich from buying their own services.
B) They can more easily get contracts from government entities that can for-profit companies. Because somehow people see outsourcing to for-profit companies as 'privatization', but outsourcing to non-profits as supporting the local economy.
It looks lovely, and looks like they have great growth, but let's not blow it out of proportion.
I was responding to part of your comment, which seemed to assert that "not-for-profit" is inconsistent with "business model".
I pointed out that many non-profits do have business models. But I was careful to point out that this may not apply to The Catherine Project ("This particular not-for-profit may have no business model, i.e. no revenue outside of donations.").
But yeah, of course, anyone can have a business model including not for profits, I think it just implies something that is heavily formalised and 'bigger' than it is (even though a business model could technically just be as simple as 'get donations and spend it on a zoom subscription').
Even if one has no intention of making a profit, the accounting still has to be done, the books still have to balance, and there has to be enough revenue to cover the expenses.
In fact, it often happens in reverse for these sorts of clubs/societies - Because the base expenses are very low (a £11.99 zoom account and to start with it is volunteer-led) rather than requiring enough revenue to cover expenses, you usually gather donations which let you spend money, and you don't spend money that hasn't already been donated. If less money gets donated, you can just slow down spending.
In terms of not for profits here we aren't talking about a company the size of Oxfam - we are talking about a reading group that has 12 volunteer hosts.
Begging is a valid, profitable business model. Louis CK[1] and Radiohead[2] famously did it.
Although nonprofits don't get to retain profits or pay taxes on them, they can certainly earn a profit, which means there are thousands of organizations whose business model is begging. You may be interested to learn that the (supposedly) ultra-capitalist Ayn Rand Institute is among them.
1. https://theweek.com/speedreads/570880/louis-ck-released-new-...
2. https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/did-radioheads-in-rainbo...