Why adults still dream about school
Here &quot;Why adults still dream about
school&quot;, <i>The Atlantic</i> and many of the
comments in this thread touch on some
serious points about life and education.<p>Here I hope to give some examples for some
<i>lessons</i> that might help others.  Some of
what I give are opinions where some people
might differ.<p>I consider the US system of <i>formal</i>
education K-12, college, and graduate
school through Master&#x27;s based on classes,
tests, and grades.  Ph.D. is related but
often quite different.  I can&#x27;t comment on
schools of law or medicine.<p>(1) Racket?<p>This <i>formal</i> education does a lot of good
in the sense that the US would be a lot
worse off if the whole system were
abolished.<p>Still, a lot about this system is too
close to being a <i>racket</i>, a lot of
misleading the students, a lot of serious
harm done to some of the students, and
good for the schools.<p>(2) Remember?<p>Yes, I remember school!  I don&#x27;t have bad
dreams but can&#x27;t forget.<p>Some that I can&#x27;t forget are the girls!
Uh, maybe these days it is politically
incorrect to mention, but I was a boy, now
am a man, there has been no ambiguity, and
I very much do remember the girls.  Often
they tried hard to be be pretty and
otherwise <i>feminine</i> and were very
successful.<p>E.g., in 9th grade algebra class, I looked
over to the right along the wall and saw
some of the girls, perfect posture, very
well dressed, immaculate, perfect decorum,
etc.  They struggled with the course, but
I found it easy; so at times I tried to
help them, but they didn&#x27;t want my help!<p>When I was 14, I met a girl of 12, and we
tried to be boyfriend&#x2F;girlfriend.  About
18 months later we had a misunderstanding,
that we handled poorly, and <i>broke up</i>.<p>But she was the prettiest human female I
ever saw in person or otherwise.  I
downloaded her high school graduation
picture from Facebook and keep it in the
UR corner of my computer screen.  Can&#x27;t
forget her.<p>A few years ago, a women explained to me,
at that age, 12 and early teens, girls are
the prettiest they ever get -- seems true
for the girls I in was in class with in
grades 6-12.  Can&#x27;t forget.<p>But there is a lot I&#x27;d prefer to forget:<p>From nearly all the teachers nearly all
the time, I got a lot of contempt.<p>In math and science, occasionally I would
fight back, take a problem others were
struggling with and solve it.  And I had
some significant victories -- on the
standardized tests of aptitude and
accomplishment, in math and science I was
one of the best students in the school,
but mostly the contempt continued.<p>Once for fun I attacked how to inscribe a
square in a semi-circle.  My approach
seemed novel so I wanted to check.  The
teacher said &quot;You can&#x27;t do that.&quot;.  Later
I discovered that she was wrong, that I
had reinvented <i>similitude</i>.  Can&#x27;t
forget.  I learned a lesson:  In K-12 and
college, some of the teachers are actually
not very good with their subject.<p>The <i>social</i> situation was a mystery to
me:  It was very <i>competitive</i>, with maybe
even a <i>pecking order</i>.  I had no idea
what was going on; I was no good at the
game if only because I had no idea there
was a game.<p>Some of the boys took athletics quite
seriously, but I saw no reason to do that.<p>Some of the pecking order depended on
academic <i>performance</i> and, as I look back,
maybe I was doing well at that (but didn&#x27;t
know it).<p>Then for the girls, eventually it dawned
on me that for the girls my age, I likely
was not going to be very successful
<i>socially</i> because I was fighting Mother
Nature, Darwin, and likely the parents of
the girls.  Instead, once the girls
started being interested in boys, they
were more interested in boys 2-4 years
older than they were.<p>But there is a cliche:  The boys are
interested in things and the girls, in
people.  So, in the social pecking order
game, the girls will dominate.<p>I wish someone had explained to me that
game and other issues and lessons of
<i>socialization</i>.<p>(3) Tests and Grades.<p>My father was an expert in <i>education</i>,
had his Master&#x27;s in it, yes, had a
<i>teaching certificate</i> for grade school,
and had a career in high end education
theory and practice for the US Navy.  But,
for my grades, he didn&#x27;t care!  So, at
home I was getting no big push to make
A&#x27;s.  Lesson:  If he didn&#x27;t care much
about grades, maybe they were not very
important.<p>In the 4th grade, we had a spelling test,
and I missed &quot;pneumonia&quot;.  When I saw how
the correct spelling was so far from being
either intuitive or phonetic, I still
wanted to learn the important material but
gave up on spelling and grades.<p>So, I learned the arithmetic but didn&#x27;t
bother with the tedious, redundant
exercises in a big workbook.  The teacher
sent a message home that I would complete
the workbook or she would fail me.  Dad
gave me a little arithmetic test and
concluded that, yes, I was plenty good at
the arithmetic.  Then he looked at the
workbook, and together we used a
calculator to fill in all the results.
So, again I got contempt for grades.<p>I never got over my contempt for grades.
In particular, I never lost sleep, got an
anxiety disorder, or had bad dreams about
grades.<p>My summary:  Knowledge can be really
important.  Formal education can be one
way to get some parts of the important
knowledge.  But courses, credits, and
grades are usually a bit distant from
being directly helpful later in school or
in practice.<p>In some situations, a perfect or nearly
perfect grade point average can be
helpful.  In nearly all academic
situations, getting such a grade point
average is very stressful.  There is
considerable question if such grades are
worth the stress.<p>Short of perfect or near perfect grades,
possibly surprisingly grades don&#x27;t count
for much, either for or against the
student.<p>In particular, possibly surprisingly, in
the best US research universities, for a
Ph.D., there is some contempt for the idea
that a Ph.D. will be awarded for high
grades in courses.<p>There is something of a secret concern,
cliche:  Some student has been making
grades of A from the first grade on, has
done really well at doing what she (the
main concern is for girls!) was told, but
can&#x27;t do original research.  This
<i>concern</i> is likely more from some profs
being arrogant about their research than
they are with actual experience with such
students.<p>Some universities make a point of stating
that there is no coursework requirement
for a Ph.D.  Instead of grades, a usual
hurdle is the <i>qualifying exams</i>.  And
important beyond all else is publishable
original research.<p>Or, in short, once submit a paper for
publication, no one checks your grade
point average.  And once the paper is
accepted, no one cares about your grade
point average.<p>In grad school, I got contempt from the
faculty.  Then I took an unsolved problem
in an old subject and got a nice solution.
The work was clearly publishable.  The
contempt went away.  Then no one cared
about my grades, when I made A&#x27;s and when
I didn&#x27;t.<p>In general there are ways other than
course grades to show aptitude and
accomplishment, and usually these other
ways can make up for grades of B, C.<p>K-12 can give, each year, for each
subject, a standardized <i>achievement</i>
test.  A student who does really well on
one those tests should have a reason to
complain if they are also given a low
grade in the subject.<p>E.g., there are the SAT and GRE exams.
And over a wide range of possibilities, at
times actual practical achievement can
count a lot more than grades.<p>When I was a prof teaching an applied math
course, I had a little <i>approach</i>:  I
would hand out some exercises, work them
in class, state that the tests would be
like the exercises, and advise the
students &quot;If you can do well on these
exercises, then you should do well on the
test.&quot;<p>But exercises on the tests would be fairly
easy -- making an A was not difficult.<p>Then the rest of the class would be for
more advanced material.  Students could
take it seriously or not as they wished.
And some of the students did take the more
advanced material seriously:  It was good
working with them, fun for me, productive
for them, with no stress about grades.