Smart well intentioned people reinforcing inefficiency
Teaching is a dying craft that must be revived.
I read a paper in 2019 that proved my convictions about a particular failure in education that had and has bothered me for the longest time.
The fact that many computer science faculties assume computer science grades are supposed to be bi-modal by default: meaning on day 1 of school, many CS faculties believe some students must get A and some students must get C and D and that’s just how things are.
Aren’t the managers at schools supposed to make their systems increasingly better with feedback? Shouldn’t they prsonalise the pedagogy or the admission process? When a student is signing up for a degree, if the faculty is so sure he/she is gonna be a C and D student, why not give them a heads up, given the time, cost and emotional costs. And if you let them join, why not maximise their chance of success when you know the current system isn’t built for them?
My feelings aside, the research paper showed that faculties’ subconscious assumption actually does indeed reinforce that bad outcome, whereas in places where the faculties didn’t make such assumptions the outcomes were significantly less polarised.
What I find sad is that a lot of my smart friends still unknowingly approve of how things are in education and believe in darwinism when it comes to who can learn X and who can’t.
It’s convenient to assume some people are built for coding and some aren’t. It’s certainly convenient to generalise, that some people are built for x and some aren’t.
Self learning has never been as viable as it is today, but it shouldn’t make people who need teachers seem “dumb”.
Look, I don’t believe everyone is equal in their motivation and conscientiousness when it comes to learning. But I do think everyone can learn anything they want given the right coaching and pedagogy. I’ve taught coding to old and young people from various backgrounds, in 1000 different ways, and I’ve never had never had a student who couldn’t do it.
The fact that we don’t see that at scale isn’t a matter of darwinism, but that teaching is a dying craft that needs to be revived.
In fact, I’d argue most inefficiency in the world (especially in the software world) is created by self-taught experts who never had a great enough teacher or manager to show them they can do better.
Most inefficiency in education is still allowed because most people have gotten so used to inefficient education systems they can’t imagine a system that actually teaches you what you signed up for.
Smart well intentioned people reinforcing inefficiency kinda sucks but hey that’s an exciting problem to work on all day everyday so I’m not even mad.
