Attitudes towards votech education [ATTN: Boyish-Tigerlilly]

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

There are people who flunk out, but I don't believe it's due to the material being the problem. I think it's that a lot of people are lazy. In some of my history courses, for instance, they obviously don't want to do the work.

They don't ask questions, they don't stay after to discuss anything, they don't want to do study groups, and they bolt as soon as the class ends. It's as if they don't really want to be there in the first place.

They end up not knowing anything, and it's primarily because they really don't care; a good third of my class didn't know what the fuck was going on half the time, and they didn't bother to read the book.

Then they wonder why they don't do well, and they expect the people who do care and pay attention to carry them. If you don't, you are the bad guy and they talk shit about you.

Maths are more difficult than English or History. Objectively. They require, I think, more abstract thought on a higher level and a lot of consecutive build up of concepts and principles. English can have build up of principles and concepts, but it's not nearly as pedantic and mechanical.

You can be an excellent mathematician and a shitty writer, yea, but that's compositional. That's not a difficulty with any of the ideas, concepts, theory, etc.

[Darth Wong]

A lot of the humanities defenses I see tend to rely on the assumption that the listener doesn't know what humanities courses are. In a humanities course, you can bullshit your way to an answer. You don't even have to really know the material; you can know only portions of the material and rely on sheer style to bullshit your way through exams and assignments.

Try that in math, and you fail.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

In your opinion, is there a particular reason why you are able to bullshit to the answer not even knowing the material? Is it that the professors really don't care about whether your are actually answering the question using the material or that they themselves cannot recognize the difference?

[Darth Servo]

Oh yeah, I've seen that all too often, people who just write five pages of nothing; doesn't even address the question and they get an A. I'm not a long winded person and tend to be very concise, so i write a page or three that DOES stick to the issue but isn't as long and get a B+. They would often get away with plaigarism. The instructor doesn't even read the damn thing; just counts how many pages you wrote.

[metavac]

Christ, you're just pissing all over this thread with your abject stupidity, aren't you?

I did consent to letting a thread intended to determine how valuable Americans find votech education descend into a pit of claims about the humanities laughably lacking in evidence.

First you pretend that you can compare the difficulty of math and English by comparing SAT scores on those subjects: a preposterous non-sequitur if I ever saw one.

Non-sequitur? The issue at that point was whether people found mathematics more or less intuitive than the humanities. If reading and writing are foundational to humanities, you'd expect to see better performance on verbal sections of a test than math ones. My mistake was to chose a test used equating. Either way, that leaves me back at square one, with nothing but a gut feeling and personal experience to judge whether or not math is less intuitive than the humanities.

And now you assume that an infinite set must include all possible answers by definition, in defiance of not just logic but also elementary math.

The phrasing Durandal used is ambiguous. "The space of acceptable answers" isn't defined against a space of unacceptable answers, therefore I have as much reason to assume it isn't as you do to assume it is. If he intended to suggest that there is a complement then I concede your point, but my reading was not unreasonable.

The fact that you felt you had difficulty with a humanities course does not mean you were in any danger of flunking out. It means you were worried about getting a B- instead of an A.

I never said otherwise.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

So basically, it seems like professor apathy or incompetence? Sometimes, I get the feeling that they don't actually read the things we write either. For example, in some of my education classes, they have us write several 60+ page behavioral analysis reports, yet they somehow can get them handed back to you in less than a week, when they have three classes with about 12 people in them; your papers have almost no comments on them.

Some of the classes actually specifically tell you to use buzzwords, and you get points taken off if you don't use them. It seems as if they want you to obscure your paper with jargon instead of condensing into layman's terms.

Obviously, if someone gets an A and doesn't even address the question, that seems like a lazy or incompetent professor, and it should be addressed. Have you ever taken this up with the dean?

[Darth Wong]

In your opinion, is there a particular reason why you are able to bullshit to the answer not even knowing the material? Is it that the professors really don't care about whether your are actually answering the question using the material or that they themselves cannot recognize the difference?

They're like Olympic figure skating judges; they give marks for a performance, not for comprehensive ability. If you want to get a good score, show off your best moves and skip the parts you aren't good at. Rack up those style points.

Similarly, if you know only 20% of the material in a course, write an impeccably structured essay discussing that 20% in lavish detail, and you'll get an A. It's part of the nature of humanities courses, and anyone with good writing style can waltz through those courses on pure bullshit and balls.

[metavac]

Put it this way. On any given English essay, the space of acceptable answers is infinite. The space of answers on a calculus problem is generally finite.

After getting chewed out, I'll correct myself. Assuming there's a complementary, infinite set of unacceptable answers, the expected value and its normalization are indeterminate. Therefore grades are subjective.

[Durandal]

The phrasing Durandal used is ambiguous. "The space of acceptable answers" isn't defined against a space of unacceptable answers, therefore I have as much reason to assume it isn't as you do to assume it is. If he intended to suggest that there is a complement then I concede your point, but my reading was not unreasonable.

By definition, the set of acceptable answers and the set of unacceptable answers are discrete, with their intersection being the null set. This should just be obvious. That you misinterpreted my argument to mean "Everyone is generating an acceptable answer" either means you're extremely stupid or just dishonest.

[metavac]

By definition, the set of acceptable answers and the set of unacceptable answers are discrete, with their intersection being the null set. This should just be obvious.

To you. 'Acceptable answers' is a space of your own construction. It's not defined against any ambient space. I was left to infer that serendipitously.

That you misinterpreted my argument to mean "Everyone is generating an acceptable answer" either means you're extremely stupid or just dishonest.

Or that your setup was incomplete.

[Durandal]

This discussion reminds me of an XKCD I saw ...

[Durandal]

By definition, the set of acceptable answers and the set of unacceptable answers are discrete, with their intersection being the null set. This should just be obvious.

To you. 'Acceptable answers' is a space of your own construction. It's not defined against any ambient space. I was left to infer that serendipitously.

That you misinterpreted my argument to mean "Everyone is generating an acceptable answer" either means you're extremely stupid or just dishonest.

Or that your setup was incomplete.

You simply ignored the following analogy of a dart board.

[metavac]

You simply ignored the following analogy of a dart board.

I see the analogy now, I didn't before.

[Jack Bauer]

I can attest to everything that's been said.

I'm a third year at a good four year state university. I'm majoring in Political "Science". Frankly, I'm scared for my future.

Like it was mentioned before, there's nothing wrong with studying the humanities or social sciences. There will always be a need for people in these fields. However the degree to which it is represented on college campuses is grossly disproportionate to its actual utility to society.

Wong's right, it really was decades of propaganda that convinced that a 4 year college education was essential to a better life. That may be true for certain disciplines, but not for the vast majority. Its ironic, since I also work part-time as a groundskeeper at my school and I find it most rewarding. Yet I still get condescending looks when I tell people where I work.

With that said, my college experience has been totally rewarding and rather life changing. I used to very religious, but by going away to school, the paradigm has completely shifted. I honestly wouldn't recognize myself a few years ago and that has a lot to do with what I learned in college.

Frankly, the larger problem is how obscenely expensive a 4 year college education is nowadays. People will literally piss away tens of thousands of dollars (or worse yet, put themselves into serious debt) for a completely worthless degree. There really needs to be a complete reshift in the way we think about our education. There's a reason why the United States is losing the "innovation" race with India and China.

[Starglider]

In a humanities course, you can bullshit your way to an answer. You don't even have to really know the material; you can know only portions of the material and rely on sheer style to bullshit your way through exams and assignments.

Try that in math, and you fail.

The maths equivalent of that is deriving things yourself from first principles, which is much harder to do correctly than just knowing the material, particularly under time pressure. Plenty of really bright (but too lazy to revise properly) people do get away with it at high-school and freshmen level though, it's probably impractical for anything beyond that. I recall doing a fair bit of this for the grammars and formal languages questions in my compiler theory course.

Perhaps more of a polar opposite than an equivalent.

[Darth Servo]

In a humanities course, you can bullshit your way to an answer. You don't even have to really know the material; you can know only portions of the material and rely on sheer style to bullshit your way through exams and assignments.

Try that in math, and you fail.

The maths equivalent of that is deriving things yourself from first principles, which is much harder to do correctly than just knowing the material, particularly under time pressure. Plenty of really bright (but too lazy to revise properly) people do get away with it at high-school and freshmen level though, it's probably impractical for anything beyond that. I recall doing a fair bit of this for the grammars and formal languages questions in my compiler theory course.

Perhaps more of a polar opposite than an equivalent.

Deriving a formula is not equivalent at all. In fact, one of my high school math teacher explicity tested us on how to derive various proofs and formulas. It shows true understanding of the concept. This is in no way comparable to ranting on and on about something vaguely related to a question on a literature exam, particularly opinion questions as so many lit exams tend to be.

[Starglider]

In fact, one of my high school math teacher explicity tested us on how to derive various proofs and formulas. It shows true understanding of the concept.

Clearly, but doing it under exam conditions when it is not actually required (i.e. it's stuff you were expected to just know, with or without also knowing the proofs for it) comes under the definition of 'winging it' and generally only exceptionally bright people can get away with it. Deriving from first principles takes a lot of time compared to simple recall and where there are enough inferential steps either the intuition or luck not to waste even more time on dead ends.

This is in no way comparable to ranting on and on about something vaguely related to a question on a literature exam, particularly opinion questions as so many lit exams tend to be.

No, the only similarity is that they're both techniques students resort to when they don't know the material. The maths student is covering lack of recall with deep understanding and raw ability, while the humanities student is resorting to bullshitting and hoping they can make it look pretty.

Sadly the later is a more valuable skill than the former in many corporate/sales/hr/management careers.

[Darth Wong]

No, the only similarity is that they're both techniques students resort to when they don't know the material. The maths student is covering lack of recall with deep understanding and raw ability, while the humanities student is resorting to bullshitting and hoping they can make it look pretty.

So why even bring up the comparison, if the former is not an indictment of the person's comprehension the way the latter is?

[Darth Servo]

I repeat, deriving the formula demonstrates comprehension.

Comprehension >>> memorization

[SirNitram]

Are you familiar with the concept of Parsimony and Burden of Proof?

Parsimony has nothing to do with this, and are you familiar with argument from ignorance?

Those making a positive argument(In our tangent, that there is a consistantly applied standard, as opposed to there isn't one) must meet the burden.

First, you claimed this fact: "Despite the fact that humanities courses are primary subjectively graded and mathematics and science courses are objectively graded?."

My position has always been that I don't know that it is a fact that humanities grading is subjective--hardly a positive claim, hardly one that places a burden on me to prove, and hardly absolving not only you but all of us from responsibility for justifying it if possible. Since we both agree that in principle that grade determination in the humanities can be objective, we're left with the practical question of whether it is. Am I missing something?

Yes, you are. We both reached the same basic reality: If a consistant, universal standard was applied, the grading would be objective. This is basic logic. Trying to play childish shell games to throw the burden of proof onto me once you have reached this point is really nothing more than trolling, so, in the words of many a man: Put up or shut up.

[metavac]

Yes, you are. We both reached the same basic reality: If a consistant, universal standard was applied, the grading would be objective. This is basic logic.

I just told you that. You're just rephrasing my own remarks. But then you leap to this:

Trying to play childish shell games to throw the burden of proof onto me once you have reached this point is really nothing more than trolling, so, in the words of many a man: Put up or shut up.

You completely ignored the fact that you made the claim that humanities is, as a matter of fact, graded subjectively. I make no claim whether it is or it isn't. I don't know. Do you understand what 'I don't know' means? So how are we not still on your claim that "humanities courses are primary subjectively graded and mathematics and science courses are objectively graded" rises to the level of fact?

[metavac]

And just so we're clear, I'm not making some asshole demand for you to go do research on a claim you made. Hell, I'm trying to do it for you and turning up nothing. So instead of getting testy with me how about you help me find the answer?

[SirNitram]

Yes, you are. We both reached the same basic reality: If a consistant, universal standard was applied, the grading would be objective. This is basic logic.

I just told you that. You're just rephrasing my own remarks. But then you leap to this:

No shit, kiddie, that's why I said 'We both reached the same basic reality', you dumb peice of shit.

Trying to play childish shell games to throw the burden of proof onto me once you have reached this point is really nothing more than trolling, so, in the words of many a man: Put up or shut up.

You completely ignored the fact that you made the claim that humanities is, as a matter of fact, graded subjectively. I make no claim whether it is or it isn't. I don't know. Do you understand what 'I don't know' means? So how are we not still on your claim that "humanities courses are primary subjectively graded and mathematics and science courses are objectively graded" rises to the level of fact?

Due to the lack of a universally applied standard, it is subjective. There is no evidence I have found.. Or that you have found:

We can round and round as to whether this actually happens in practice, but I'm not going to commit to anything until I see some actual research. And so far I'm turning up nil.

...And thus the default assumption is that there is no consistantly applied standard to Humanities, ergo they are graded subjectively, ergo they cannot be as rigorous as mathematics and science. Getting it yet? Or is it still going through your eyes?

[metavac]

Due to the lack of a universally applied standard, it is subjective. There is no evidence I have found.. Or that you have found:

That's an argument from ignorance, arguing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I've already pointed out that in my personal experience universal, objective standards for judging the content of humanities papers have been applied. I now seek evidence that this is a consistent quality of humanities education. I haven't done nearly enough due diligence to rule out the existence of a standard. I seriously doubt you have, or even have much interest to do so.

...And thus the default assumption is that there is no consistantly applied standard to Humanities, ergo they are graded subjectively, ergo they cannot be as rigorous as mathematics and science. Getting it yet? Or is it still going through your eyes?

The hell it is. The default assumption is we don't know. We then work up confidence one direction or the other by verifying the null result or falsifying it. Get that yet?

[SirNitram]

Due to the lack of a universally applied standard, it is subjective. There is no evidence I have found.. Or that you have found:

That's an argument from ignorance, arguing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I've already pointed out that in my personal experience universal, objective standards for judging the content of humanities papers have been applied. I now seek evidence that this is a consistent quality of humanities education. I haven't done nearly enough due diligence to rule out the existence of a standard. I seriously doubt you have, or even have much interest to do so.

Why, because I haven't reached the conclusions you have? Sorry, not a valid rebuttal. I've seen two lit classes play from two entirely different playbooks, which shoots your little theory right in the asshole.

...And thus the default assumption is that there is no consistantly applied standard to Humanities, ergo they are graded subjectively, ergo they cannot be as rigorous as mathematics and science. Getting it yet? Or is it still going through your eyes?

The hell it is. The default assumption is we don't know. We then work up confidence one direction or the other by verifying the null result or falsifying it. Get that yet?

I'm sure you argue just as vigorously that the invisible dragon in your garage is just insubstantial, and the absense of evidence for it isn't evidence of absense. Wait, you won't, because you're talking out of your ass. This is pretty primitive stuff, Metavac, the idea that without evidence supporting a positive assertion, we throw out the positive assertion.