Re: OFF-TOPIC: Changing Education Paradigms [Re: Advocating non-free softwares]

[David Kastrup]

Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup writes:
>
>> Starting scene of Macbeth.  But at any rate, I perceive a shift in
>> educational systems to award degrees that have at best a weak
>> correlation with being competent in the certified field of expertise.
>> There is much stronger pressure on teachers and professors to have
>> enough students pass exams rather than make sure that those who pass
>> exams can be trusted with their subjects.
>
>> But we are by now seriously off-topic.
>
> You're not alone in perceiving this.  The famous `Changing Education
> Paradigms' by Sir Ken Robinson is currently the most viewed TED talk.
>
> A broad movement has been started in the Netherlands to actuate this
> change in education: essentially a shift from tests to value.

An ex of mine studied Romance Language and Literature with a minor in
philosophy.  For a term paper in second term, she picked "Reception of
Platon in the Chartres philosopher school" because from secondary
literature she considered this an interesting topic.  Unfortunately she
discovered subsequently that nobody had bothered so far translating the
important texts from medieval Latin to something better accessible to
her.  The standard options in such a case are

a) I was not planning to read the primary texts anyway.  Smart people
have already done that and written everything worth writing about them.
b) tell the professor about the situation and negotiate a different
subject.

Her solution: grit her teeth.  As a Romance major, she'd be needing
Latin anyway.  That stupid term paper, by the way, is the reason for
quite a bit of robust support for classical Greek in LaTeX by yours
truly.  After all, the original terms from Platon needed to appear in
footnotes and glossary, and "you said that I can do this with LaTeX".

She handed it in somewhat too late and too long, and of course, since I
had been involved with the technical aspects I was also proof reader,
and a rather nasty one.

She got it back from the secretary about a week later, sparse remarks
mostly pointing out additional sources for more extensive coverage in
the main text, and at the bottom "Very good.  What for?"  Somewhat of a
letdown after all the work.  So she made an appointment to get some more
feedback.

The "what for" turned out to be him not being able to figure out who she
was and that this was supposed to be a first year minor course term
paper.  He thought it was likely a draft for a PhD thesis and was unable
to remember having negotiated one.  He actually tried finding out
whether it would be possible to use this as a base for the master thesis
(three years away), but that has to be in one's major course...

Basically throughout her academical career the grading was of the "we
really can't give you proper credit since we don't have anything better
to offer than the highest grade".

After her PhD and further education, she became a university librarian
because she considered the state of the academics in her area a nuthouse
where competing on the merits was not really feasible and worth the
hassle, since a lot of the existing structures were held in place by
upcoming fakes while the competent people went into retirement and were
at a loss how to actual teach approaches for arriving at their skill
sets to the students, partly because of the students they had to work
with, partly because of a shortage of time, where serious work in the
field required several decades of extensive study, and a PhD as the last
actually graded work had to be in reach after maybe seven years.

I'm probably pissed a lot more than she was that this was likely a smart
choice for her to make.

-- 
David Kastrup