> Hackable is the default for any test imposed by an authority. The reason the tests you're given are so consistently bad — so consistently far from measuring what they're supposed to measure — is simply that the people creating them haven't made much effort to prevent them from being hacked.
In proof-based math classes in college, there really was no hacking them. You had to build up an intuitive understanding of the concepts and think on the fly to come up with a proof for a test.
Sure, you could try to seek out "all relevant questions" and memorize the proofs but there's such a large universe of possible problems to ask you'd never have enough time to study this way.
Nothing is worse than trying to pull an all-nighter or two cramming for a math class one didn't pay attention to the rest of the semester. It's really hard to gain an intuitive understanding in 48 sleep-deprived hours. I still have occasional nightmares of showing up to a final math exam unprepared. I could pull that BS off in a literature or history class, but not math. Foreign language didn't work so well, either.
On the other hand, the skill measured by those kind of tests (which I agree are good and not “hackable”) is of very limited value for a lot of students who just need to get by with the basics intuitions.
The focus on grades seems to me to be a symptom/side-effect of deeper structure. The structure of time that emerges from educational organization.
Imagine a job where there were six or seven unrelated cognitive tasks and one of them was running round physically and each of these tasks was allotted about an hour of each work day and management wasn't coordinating the work load among them.
And every few months the cognitive content of the tasks changed as did the nature of the running around.
Grades are the only common thread in the first sixteen or so years of education.
What people have to unlearn is distraction. Or rather what they have to learn is how to concentrate on one thing over a period of years...is it surprising the degree this sounds like grad-school? Or studio art? Or internship? Or the sort of interests that kids pursue outside of school?
The thing that has to be learned is flow. That is what ordinary forms of school remove. No time blocks of reading a book all day.
The tasks should be very much related! The stuff you learn in math class should directly apply to stuff you learn in physics class and in the economics class, and what you learn about economy and civics should dovetail with your history class, which should go hand in hand with your geography class, etc, etc.
The terrible thing is that they are taught in such a way that many kids don't make many of these connections. Much of my self-education was learning connections between things I learned in school and in university; much om my self-taught math, for instance, showed me important connections between different parts of math, physics (including pedestrian things like weather of metal cutting), CS, and daily programming practice. Much of the reason I love to read a random Wikipedia article is that it often shows me a connection between two things I was aware of, but hand no idea they are related, and how.
Th school system is ripe for a reform, and I hope whatever other approaches will be tried will include more connections between things, and more teaching how to look for and find these connections.
Education cannot be optimal because it cannot be individual. Whatever you do you ll leave some behind. At first sight I d tend to agree with you, but the disjointed education I had in a French school, where each subject is its own universe made me less utilitarist, made me accept philosophy and chemistry dont work in concert to make me a better tool but instead broaden my horizon to let me think on several modes.
If I speak english today it s not because it was deemed useful to understand computers when I was 12, it s because it was its own little science, important because of its own beauty.
Sometimes, you have to make kids understand there is no optimum or rule, just the joy of knowing more things.
Perfection is indeed impossible, but a better equilibrium most likely is. You can't teach kids so that learning is pure joy every minute for everyone. But you can teach kids so that their kmowledge is more interconnected, less of it is forgotten, more of it is applied in later life. Even more importantly, you can teach kids how to learn, and why to learn.
I've forgotten almost everything from a lot of my old biology, chemistry, geography, and history classes but I feel like I've gotten so much more real world experience and can make so many connections that it would probably be much easier the next time around.
Especially things that I felt like I was forced to memorize actually make sense once you draw connections to other places. I wonder why these things aren't taught like that. Or maybe it's just too difficult and too personalized for the current education system.
I am teaching in a very free art school. Very free means: people have to do their bachelor thesis and/or their master thesis, somehow get the credits and literally nothing else. You can finish with a degree without ever having done a single homework.
This might sound totally mad, but ultimately in art nobody cares about your degrees or grades if you don't have the works, the exhibitions, the prices etc. In fact if you went somewhere and declared yourself a good artist because you have a MA of Arts you'd be laughed out of the room. So sure: you could just slack around and get a degree in the end, but because that degree is not worth much in terms of any artistic survival afterwards there are very few people who are not willing to put in the work. This is mostly their own projects, helping with other people's projects etc. and this is how you gain experience.
It is utterly un-school-like and fresh students (especially those coming directly from school) often need a year to realize nobody but themselves is going to tell them anything and nobody but themselves should care if they learn something.
This works for arts (where a person's drive to live for the art is key for their survival afterwards), however I understand that it wouldn't work for engineering or similar fields.
Graham invents the notion of "authoritarian" tests, like school exams, and non-authoritarian tests, like football matches. But this is a poor distinction. Originally, sports were a genuine test of physical prowess. Eventually, the institution took over by enforcing rules. This is the same situation in education, except mental prowess is considered.
He's correct that focusing on grades is bad. But one key point is very wrong:
> In theory, tests are merely what their name implies: tests of what you've learned in the class.
This is backward. In theory, most tests should be testing that the teacher is effectively teaching the material. If a student does badly on a test it should be interpreted as that student needing more help.
This is why things like 2-year vocational schools are so great! They tend to focus on competency-based outcomes, where "tests" usually involve demonstrating a skill in a simulated environment. Though I will definitely admit that this is not the best option for all areas of knowledge.
> No, no, no, experienced students are saying to themselves. If you merely read good books on medieval history, most of the stuff you learned wouldn't be on the test. It's not good books you want to read, but the lecture notes and assigned reading in this class. And even most of that you can ignore, because you only have to worry about the sort of thing that could turn up as a test question. You're looking for sharply-defined chunks of information. If one of the assigned readings has an interesting digression on some subtle point, you can safely ignore that, because it's not the sort of thing that could be turned into a test question. But if the professor tells you that there were three underlying causes of the Schism of 1378, or three main consequences of the Black Death, you'd better know them. And whether they were in fact the causes or consequences is beside the point. For the purposes of this class they are.
This is something I had to "teach" (hah) my classmates in a history class in college. I did benefit from a way above average memory at the time (diminished as I've aged, but still better than many of my age-wise peers) which helped me out a lot, but even without that advantage it wasn't hard to become an A student in that class. My method was to:
Take notes (no slides or handouts from the professor) in, more or less, an outline form. If there had been handouts, these would have mimicked them. They were not detailed, but mostly a way to pay attention to the lecture. If you didn't have a memory like mine you'd want more detail or to actually study these notes later.
"Read" the relevant chapters. "Read" because I didn't really read the whole thing. I read the intro/outro of the chapter and each section within the chapter. Then I read the first sentence of every paragraph. If any paragraph had a fact (dates, names, places) I'd make a note of it (highlight, underline, marginalia, or a note in a notebook, all can work), this was usually obvious by the first sentence of the paragraph without needing to read more. Again, if your memory wasn't like mine you'd need to actually study these notes (and today I'd have to).
That was all there was to getting an A in that class, and nearly every other fact-heavy class was the same. I learned a lot more about those subjects from my extra-curricular reading and experiences.
The problem is, grades are everything in school. I just finished a high stakes algorithms class where 75% of our grade was exams with only a few questions. A decent chunk of the class has to retake the class each semester, so it's important to do as well on the exams as possible. At a certain point, it's not only about learning the material but practicing exam-type questions over and over.
Does this extend to salary, wealth, or other more adult signals of status and achievement, or are those actually the goal?
There are just a few logical steps off the path of social expectation that will lead you to either solipsistic narcissism or the opposite direction to Zen Buddhism. The middle path is there not because we agree with it, but because we can’t decide what we do agree with.
(quoting the article:)
> Now you can make lots of money by making cool things
I know I am in a forum that talks about startups etc. But I wish and believe this "get loads of money" mentality will die in this century. This is an even more important lesson to unlearn. I also believe that if it does not die, its side effects, like climate change, will kill us.
I never had to unlearn this lesson. There's a second, related, lesson to unlearn though: The idea that the teacher is an antagonist.
The way it works is the teachers set up obstacles to you getting good grades, and any way over, around, or through the obstacles is fair game. Any good teacher is there to help you learn the material. They are your learning ally.
Is fake news what happens when the authority of journalism (editors) is replaced with the intrinsic measure of the internet? Naively, without corporate bias or gate keeping, the internet should set truth free. Paul writes
“Writers no longer have to submit to publishers and editors to reach readers; now they can go direct”
It sets the writers free, not necessarily the truth. So the authentic internet is not the place to be looking for true news. At least not indiscriminately, and isn’t that a call for authority?
I recently posted the Wikipedia article for the Tesla Valve, an invention more than 100 years old, and it was upvoted a lot, and then I learned had been posted many times before. I don't think the affair harmed anyone.
Hacker News is whatever the community wants it to be. We have no obligation to ensure the title of the community conveys any information about our activities.
I'd say that submitting a link to HN is not about having it handled in the most just and impassionate manner. This is a social media site, it's prone to fads and mood swings.
If you think something is worth considering, submit it in the right time: when the news feed is not yet very crowded but the readers are already there, or when the home page is already discussing a related issue, or has discussed it yesterday, etc. If not successful, use the "second chance", at the right time, again. In any case, bring good material.
Schooling is an ever-important topic, and with September looming closer, it's on many people's minds. PG used to write quite good essays, with important ideas, so people don't mind upvoting, just in case someone missed it in 2019.
In proof-based math classes in college, there really was no hacking them. You had to build up an intuitive understanding of the concepts and think on the fly to come up with a proof for a test.
Sure, you could try to seek out "all relevant questions" and memorize the proofs but there's such a large universe of possible problems to ask you'd never have enough time to study this way.