I, for one, agree with the author in large part. I’m in my fourth year of college, about to graduate, and I can say that the majority of my school experience has been an utter waste.
I love learning, and that’s why I’ve never been a great student. In middle school and high school, I spent my free time learning about things that interested me—especially programming. In that time I learned about everything I could because school wasn’t enough. Dynamics and kinematics, geometry, optics, digital signal processing, splines, vector and matrix math, programming language design, lambda calculus, type systems—things no student my age was expected to know or care about.
I got high grades whenever I bothered to put in the busywork, but I had little reason to. Points and grades aren’t worth anything.
Pretending that grades have intrinsic value is toxic to learning and innovative thinking. You get what the teacher explains straight away, and want to move on? Not allowed: you have to go at everyone else’s pace. You want to know more about a related topic? Too bad: you have to follow the curriculum. You want to do projects with real-world value? As if! You have to do homework and memorise information—sadly, the kind of information that might have deep meaning to you if it were framed in another way.
I do think losing points for late assignments is fair, though. It inconveniences the person doing the grading, and in the real world, lateness isn’t tolerable. Besides, if you don’t follow the (meaningless) directions, you should expect (meaningless) punishment.
But here’s the thing: would I have bothered to learn on my own if I hadn’t had the insufficient school system to piss me off? Somehow, I think not.
You don't have to go at the same pace as everyone else.If you want to sit through the class, sure you can do that, or you can ask the teacher/advisor/dean what it takes to test out of the class. Go buy the book and go through all the examples and you should be able to test out of the class most of the time. I did this with one of my classes, and if I were to go back to school, I'd try to do this with every class that I could except research classes.
I was never allowed to test out of classes. I always asked when I felt it was reasonable, and always met with the same response. Though I did have a couple of great professors who would stay with me after class occasionally to talk about whatever I was working on at the time.
I had one class that I wasn't allowed to test out of during my second to last semester. The professor told us that all of the assignments were up on the portal for the class. I asked him if I could turn in all of the assignments the first week of class. He said yes but wasn't sure that I'd know the material. I arranged a deal that I would turn in all of the assignments the first week and as long as I got an A on every assignment, he would give me the final the at the beginning of the third week and I wouldn't have to show up to class again if I got an A. It's not always easy, and sometimes you've got to get dean/provost approval, but if you really want to do something, you can most likely do it.
> I love learning, and that’s why I’ve never been a great student.
And probably a poor employee. In the real world they pay you not to learn or to innovate but to do something. Usually, that something is something you have done many times before, that way you can do it faster and thus more cost effectively for them. The closer you become to machine the more profitable you become. That is the biggest hurdle the smart students face in the real world.
Actually, I’ve had much more success with work. First of all, money doesn’t mean much more to me than “points”, but at least you can redeem money for something. Second and more importantly, it’s a matter of pride and work ethic. If someone is paying me $x an hour, I can do no less than $x worth an hour, even if it isn’t interesting.
I love learning, and that’s why I’ve never been a great student. In middle school and high school, I spent my free time learning about things that interested me—especially programming. In that time I learned about everything I could because school wasn’t enough. Dynamics and kinematics, geometry, optics, digital signal processing, splines, vector and matrix math, programming language design, lambda calculus, type systems—things no student my age was expected to know or care about.
I got high grades whenever I bothered to put in the busywork, but I had little reason to. Points and grades aren’t worth anything.
Pretending that grades have intrinsic value is toxic to learning and innovative thinking. You get what the teacher explains straight away, and want to move on? Not allowed: you have to go at everyone else’s pace. You want to know more about a related topic? Too bad: you have to follow the curriculum. You want to do projects with real-world value? As if! You have to do homework and memorise information—sadly, the kind of information that might have deep meaning to you if it were framed in another way.
I do think losing points for late assignments is fair, though. It inconveniences the person doing the grading, and in the real world, lateness isn’t tolerable. Besides, if you don’t follow the (meaningless) directions, you should expect (meaningless) punishment.
But here’s the thing: would I have bothered to learn on my own if I hadn’t had the insufficient school system to piss me off? Somehow, I think not.