Comment by narkee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by narkee | Hacker News Reader

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I think that's the difference between academic education, and vocational training.

I've made this point before, but people often conflate the two, and are unable to separate them in their minds.

What this person is saying is "these things do not train a person to perform these specific sets of tasks". That's vocational training, and there's nothing wrong with that. Academic education, on the other hand, is about learning to think, about history, rhetoric, science, and all sorts of things that aren't directly applicable to a particular job, but provide a necessary foundation for critical thinking and enlightenment, so to speak.

What our system really needs is two streams. An academic stream, for those who choose, and a vocational stream, which is what a large proportion of students and seemingly educators like this guy want.

This way, everyone gets what they want. Students truly interested in learning things not directly related to performing a job will have the benefit of a more supportive learning environment, and students who just want to get a job will also attain the required vocational training.

It's really win-win.

Our system already has those two streams, has practically forever. People still abuse the college stream as if it were vocational training.

Unfortunately they are winning and academia is being dumbed down so that everyone can obtain a degree.

How do you reconcile that position with the original article?

The article is a single anecdote from the wrong side of the college continuum. After helping my daughter all year with geometry, it is not surprising to me that he couldn't do the math. Those kinds of tests ask questions like "Can you prove these triangles are congruent" and you have to remember all the SAS, SSA, ASA, etc theorems and postulates to have a chance. You will forget those after 20 years, no matter how much you excelled in high school, if you aren't using them (or derivative concepts in higher math) regularly.

Proving theorem's is often taught very poorly. If you haven't already I highly recommend you read Lockhart's Lament:

http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html

I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's been pretty eye-opening. It reminds me of how I once took a photoshop course in order to improve my design skills... pretty easy to guess how well that worked.

Perhaps I'm the exception, but in Grade 10 I didn't take math (long story) and had never seen most of the math concepts but still was the go-to math helper. High school math is fairly trivial- easy enough to figure out with just some intuition and general thinking skills.

There's a huge leap from being able to figure it out with a book and all the equations inside of it as opposed to taking a test with only questions, no reference material, and presumably a time limit.

No, I never used a book or any equations. People would give me questions with no context, and I would take a second to think through it and then help them. Things like solving systems of equations are easy - you just need to truly understand algebra. Similarly, high school geometry doesn't get far past the axioms themselves.

As a disclaimer to all of this, I was the type that had fun proving stuff in seventh grade and had already read through Spivak's Calculus by Grade 10.

As a disclaimer to all of this, I was the type that had fun proving stuff in seventh grade and had already read through Spivak's Calculus by Grade 10.

This makes your earlier claim of never having seen most of the concepts rather dubious.

I do not have a high opinion of school board members and the article seems like superficial fluff.

If you don't have a high opinion of them, you should try it, run and fix all of the things they're fucking up.

Absconditus is talking about higher education, I think.

These streams already exist. One of the major issues I see wit this is it assumes a child at 15 years old is capable of making this choice and understands all the implications. I think back to grades 9 thru 13 (Canadian), thank God it's not so long ago, but I realize decisions I made then were primarily based on emotion, testosterone and some social influence. Could I really have imagined life 15 years later? Absolutely not.

This is once again caused by education inflation. It's easier for the HR department to compare formal education than to really look at the applicant. So Master's degree wins over Bachelor's wins over solid vocational training and society carries the cost.

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