People are not engaged. They are fixated on numbers, models, and abstractions, with the assumption that the numbers, models, and abstractions have actual meaning tied to them. They don't, aside from creating more students that create more systems that define more numbers, models, and abstractions. Some of these students get pissed off and try to create the opposite.
This is why the humanities are important. You can have the soundest logical systems, with the most elegant mathematical models, and completely miss the point. People get so caught up in the minutiae of measurements that they forget to see the big picture. Measurements don't mean anything when the measurements are used to measure themselves.
I swear, sometimes I really wonder whether society has it's head up it's ass. If these systems can model 'theoretical students' under 'better conditions', then why aren't the 'theoretical student' models running the world? Oh, that's right, because there's a gigantic difference between data and theory. How do they even know what a better student is? How can anyone in their right mind, define that? How can anyone even pretend to know what a great student is?
> When I went to school, the people who made these judgments were my parents. You can't make these judgments by formula, and you can't make them if you don't know the details of each individual case.
When I went to school, I used to think my grades meant something more than being a very complicated way of validating someone else's world view, in a way that tricks everyone into thinking we've made any progress at defining or understanding intelligence at all.
> To me, the fact that so many schools are fixated on "data-driven" student evaluations means that parents are not engaged.
The parents may be extremely engaged, but they just don't know whether to call their kid smart or not. If the kid complains about the book they read because it was boring, is that appropriate? If the kid programs a calculator to do 4 years of standardized test math homework, is that appropriate? Education is doing a fantastic job at driving the personality out of people by forcing them all to sit in the same box. The parents don't know, the teachers don't know, the government doesn't know, society doesn't know, yet we all pretend we know.
This is why the humanities are important. You can have the soundest logical systems, with the most elegant mathematical models, and completely miss the point. People get so caught up in the minutiae of measurements that they forget to see the big picture. Measurements don't mean anything when the measurements are used to measure themselves.
I swear, sometimes I really wonder whether society has it's head up it's ass. If these systems can model 'theoretical students' under 'better conditions', then why aren't the 'theoretical student' models running the world? Oh, that's right, because there's a gigantic difference between data and theory. How do they even know what a better student is? How can anyone in their right mind, define that? How can anyone even pretend to know what a great student is?
> When I went to school, the people who made these judgments were my parents. You can't make these judgments by formula, and you can't make them if you don't know the details of each individual case.
When I went to school, I used to think my grades meant something more than being a very complicated way of validating someone else's world view, in a way that tricks everyone into thinking we've made any progress at defining or understanding intelligence at all.
> To me, the fact that so many schools are fixated on "data-driven" student evaluations means that parents are not engaged.
The parents may be extremely engaged, but they just don't know whether to call their kid smart or not. If the kid complains about the book they read because it was boring, is that appropriate? If the kid programs a calculator to do 4 years of standardized test math homework, is that appropriate? Education is doing a fantastic job at driving the personality out of people by forcing them all to sit in the same box. The parents don't know, the teachers don't know, the government doesn't know, society doesn't know, yet we all pretend we know.