I've been known to criticize universities for churning out students who don't have basic skills needed in industry. Now I need to step back and rethink that. Joel Spolsky has a particularly scathing blog post about Computer Science education and at first blush, I was tempted to agree with him. Then I read Joel Spolsky - Snake-Oil Salesman and immediately thought back to my own experiences with academia and have to revisit my thinking.
About a decade ago, I was doing some work with the Alaska Department of Education (side note: if you want to see an example of "dysfunctional", study Alaska politics -- and that's not an oblique reference to Palin). The Department was thinking about creating a Web site that allowed instructors to share lesson plans. Naturally, I learned quite a bit about what was involved. While the people in the Department were dedicated professionals, they were trying to build cathedrals while handcuffed.
Case in point: Alaska was spending a lot of money on education and getting poor results, so the legislature passed a law offering early retirement to the best paid teachers. Many of them took this offer, but grades plummeted. Turns out the best paid teachers were often the best teachers. Who knew?
It's awfully tough to figure out how to maximize return on investment with education. "Pay for performance" schemes are often outlined, but usually by people who have no idea how to measure performance in academia. You can't simply pay for higher grades -- and if you can't see the problem with that, please stop voting :)
Another popular "pay for performance" idea is standardized tests. Give all students the same test and see how they do. Give the best pay to the teachers (or school districts) whose students do the best on this test. One teacher in Oregon lamented to me that she teaches Russian immigrant students. They can't do as well on these tests -- English isn't their first language -- and thus the teachers who take these particularly difficult assignments are looking at less pay for more work. Hmm ...
Another teacher, a friend of mine from Texas, is upset because so much of her time is now spent on "teaching the test". She complains that she struggles to teach her students new skills or critical thinking because she has to spend all of her time figuring out what those tests will ask and prepping the students for those tests. Creative teaching? Forget it. If she doesn't teach the test, her students will do poorer on them and this threatens her job because it threatens her school system's budget. With a lower budget, fewer teachers can be hired. You know who the school system would have to let go.
The "Snake Oil" rebuttal to Joel seemed spot on and from my experience with academia, had the ring of truth (though, of course, I can offer no evidence). Academia is hard. You can't just teach students a narrow set of skills. You have to teach them a broad set because you don't know what will be relevant tomorrow. You don't know what will be relevant to the student. The student won't know what's relevant to the student (which is why we teach algebra to high school students who hate it). It's easy to criticize something we're not intimately familiar with. I should remember that more.
Hi Ovid
Have you read:
"This little kiddy went to market -
The Corporate Capture of Childhood"
Sharon Beder
9781742230818
It documents at excruciating length the very problems you talk about.
And it's all over the Western world.
I know there are a lot of people who idolize him but I personally found him misleading, incorrect and downright bullshitting. I don't like the hype around him and usually I disagree with much of the things he says. Unfortunately some people gubble up his every word.
I agree with you on the education issue. It's tricky, and I do believe the most damage is done by the government's attempt to control budgets and trying to calculate something - anything - to try to evaluate where the money should go. George Carlin had a few things to say about that, such as when throwing money at the problem doesn't work, and taking money from it doesn't work, they simply lower passing grades. Then everyone has a higher standard. Or they also lower the quality bar. Then you're left with ASP, C# and the likes.
Re:I never cared for Joel that much
Ovid on 2009-10-28T11:57:39
Hey, C# is actually a pretty cool language. It shot the Java fish in the barrel, for example
:) Re:I never cared for Joel that much
Shlomi Fish on 2009-11-16T18:24:12
I don't like the hype/cult around Joel either, but I'm still an avid reader of his articles because I find them funny, amusing and usually insightful, or otherwise giving good food for thoughts and acting as a useful starting point for further discussion of the matter. I don't always agree with what Joel says, and naturally buy everything he says with a grain of salt, but still find value in what he says.
It seems there's often an opposite phenomenon from what you describe - that many times I mention something that Joel says for support someone gives an ad-hominem attack saying how much Joel sucks and how much it means my article is invalid.
If you have specific arguments against what Joel (or whoever) said, feel free to mention them giving proper reasons for why you think they are wrong. But from my impression of your Internet persona, you tend to throw many arguments into the air without giving proper explanation or reasoning (like "I disagree. What you said or your link sucks."), and expect us to guess why you think so. To do so is anti-intellectual, and I can easily dismiss what you said for lack of proper reasoning.
Now I tend to agree with you and Ovid (and the article he quoted) about education, and that it's impossible to teach everything within the scope of the degree, or that high education (or below) can fully prepare people and make them suitable for the job market. I wouldn't accuse Joel of trying to sell his tools on purposes - that doesn't seem to be his primary motivation behind his post, but he still may believe he knows too well how to do things the right way.
I may have errored with the same error, when I claimed that too little focus is given on reading "real-world code", which may not be the most elegant, and may be somewhat buggy. One constantly hear people complain about how bad the code that they work or what other people have written is, and how they would love to start over. (This was in fact inspired by what Joel said in "Things you Must Never Do, Part I"). In their studies, most people are not exposed to having to read and improve real code, which may be hard-to-read inelegant, or somewhat buggy, but which rewriting it from scratch will be much more time consuming than improving it by writing automated tests, refactoring, etc. In any case, there's little focus given to it in the universities, but I'm not sure if putting it in the curriculum will be a good idea. Maybe giving more projects where students contribute to open-source code (and not necessarily the best open-source code out there - there's a lot that's pretty bad), and then eventually merging it in, instead of writing something from scratch would be a good idea.
But I agree that measuring universities based on metrics is bad.
Re:I never cared for Joel that much
xsawyerx on 2009-11-17T09:09:28
I don't like the hype/cult around Joel either, but [...] I don't always agree with what Joel says, and naturally buy everything he says with a grain of salt, but [...]
That's funny you should say stuff like that. You seemed to me like someone who adores Joel. I'll elaborate on this below.
It seems there's often an opposite phenomenon from what you describe - that many times I mention something that Joel says for support someone gives an ad-hominem attack saying how much Joel sucks and how much it means my article is invalid.
I think you're missing the point. Yes, people do sometimes have a knee-jerk response of attacking Joel instead of saying "you're incorrect and here's why" but you have the most annoying habit of simply quoting Joel instead of saying why you think he's correct. It really pisses me (and other people) off. Many times in a debate you pull out a Joel fortune cookie as if it's going to win your stance. You assume on Joel's reputation (which is full of shit IMHO) instead of backing your words up. Saying "well, Joel thinks that" doesn't mean you automatically win a discussion.
If you have specific arguments against what Joel (or whoever) said, feel free to mention them giving proper reasons for why you think they are wrong.
This should actually be the exact opposite. If you have specific arguments why you're quoting Joel (except for your fascination of him), you should state them instead of just raising a Joel-flag and thinking you got the issue licked just by doing that. Burden of proof is on the presenter of ideas.
But from my impression of your Internet persona, you tend to throw many arguments into the air without giving proper explanation or reasoning (like "I disagree. What you said or your link sucks."), and expect us to guess why you think so. To do so is anti-intellectual, and I can easily dismiss what you said for lack of proper reasoning.
I resent that, and I don't resent much. First of all, first time you mentioned Joel when I just started on Israel.pm, I wrote a rather long argument (IIRC) on why I think Joel is incorrect. It went right over your head. Most times I find that you're pretty anal on a lot of things and I don't get that much pleasure or knowledge by having a long exhaustive discussion with you. So, a lot of times I say I disagree and move on. Yes. Same asshole behavior as Nietzsche. Secondly - and this is key - I don't assume that you should agree with me without knowing my arguments, but you do! You assume that by saying "Well, Joel obviously thinks differently, here's a quote from my bible [Joel limited edition]", I should agree with you right away. You do it often, and it's tiresome and annoying. You don't explain why you think it's this way or the other. That's why I never even listen to your discussions when you throw a Joel quote. It seriously pisses me off, and I don't appreciate you calling my actions "anti-intellectual" when at least I say what I think and not just quote a self-appointed "computer-wiz" as my claim.
Oh, and fuck your impression of my "Internet persona". I write detailed emails, and you will find not once or twice an apology for the length of my emails. So that's completely incorrect and offensive.
I wouldn't accuse Joel of trying to sell his tools on purposes - that doesn't seem to be his primary motivation behind his post, but he still may believe he knows too well how to do things the right way.
I wouldn't assume on his greed just yet either.
I may have errored [...]
Since you like picking small fits on grammar with me, I'm giving you this one for free: it's erred, not errored.
[...] (This was in fact inspired by what Joel said in "Things you Must Never Do, Part I"). [...]
No shit. I'm completely surprised something he wrote inspired something you wrote. This is another prime example of Joel. Rewriting code from scratch is sometimes a must. A few examples come to mind: GNU/Linux (those are actually 2 things), GNOME, Git, Perl 6. I could think of more, but I won't, for now. The point being that it's not the "single worst mistake", it's often the "unfortunate necessity of a project".
Maybe giving more projects where students contribute to open-source code (and not necessarily the best open-source code out there - there's a lot that's pretty bad), and then eventually merging it in, instead of writing something from scratch would be a good idea.
I think that's a good idea. Google Code has been doing just that, which is why I highly support it.
But I agree that measuring universities based on metrics is bad.
Agreed.
Re:I never cared for Joel that much
Shlomi Fish on 2009-11-21T17:24:00
Well, since we're down to personal accusations and pointless discussions on who ultimately has the burden of proof lies, allow me to invoke Godwin's Law and end this discussion: you are a Nazi!
OK, I've lost, now let's go on with the rest of our lives. I'll continue to link to Joel when and if I agree with him. If you think he (or whomever I'm citing) is wrong and you expect to convince me that you are right, then you'll need to give me a proper argument explaining why and where he is wrong. Otherwise, I'll remain convinced in my original opinion, because it seems logical to me. When trying to convince someone else of your opinion, the burden of proof is on you, because that someone should not and probably will not listen to your rejection of their opinion by faith alone. See also this Hackers-IL post.
Anyway, enjoy your victory.
;-) Re:I never cared for Joel that much
xsawyerx on 2009-11-21T19:06:55
Well, since we're down to personal accusations and pointless discussions on who ultimately has the burden of proof lies, allow me to invoke Godwin's Law and end this discussion: you are a Nazi!
No dice! I'll invoke the Reverse Godwin's Law [just invented] which goes by: "I may be a Nazi, but you're still dead wrong!".
The beginning offending post was your comment saying I "tend to throw many arguments in the air without giving proper explanation". It's not correct and it's offending. I understand you don't find it so, because you're the one who said it so you give very little (to none) fuck of other people being offended. That's fine, but don't try to turn this into "we're down to personal accusations [the moment you replied to me]".
OK, I've lost, now let's go on with the rest of our lives. I'll continue to link to Joel when and if I agree with him.
As usual, any criticism towards you went right over your head. You're completely blind to it. Nothing short of astounding. My criticism was that you cannot simply link to Joel or provide a quote. "Joel said" IS NOT AN ARGUMENT!
If you think he (or whomever I'm citing) is wrong and you expect to convince me that you are right, then you'll need to give me a proper argument explaining why and where he is wrong.
I did, you ignored it. I said I did again, and you again ignored it. It simply isn't worth explaining things to you because a concrete wall is indeed a better listener/reader. How awful.
Otherwise, I'll remain convinced in my original opinion,
Color me surprised! Oh wait.. I'm not. You'll stick by your opinions even when someone iterated why they're wrong. You've done so in the past, you're doing so now and you will in the future.
When trying to convince someone else of your opinion, the burden of proof is on you
So wait, let me get this straight: if you want to claim something, you need to prove your claim? You mean I can't just pull a Joel quote out of my a^W^Wsomewhere? My dear god, it means... why, it means you can't do it either!
[...] because that someone should not and probably will not listen to your rejection of their opinion by faith alone.
Here's some more criticism that went flying over your head at 500km/h. I never said you should listen to me. Even when I provide arguments (which in most cases I do), I don't assume on your acceptance. However you do assume that people should accept whatever you opinion is because there's a Joel link there! That's cargo cult, that's bullshit, that's what I was talking about.
Anyway, enjoy your victory.
;-) It's like beating a child in a game. Sure, you won, but it's not like you were competing on the same level with him.
I gave actual criticism (spiced with rugged behavior - which I am apparently somewhat good at), what you provided is complete blindness and personal belief of absolute correctness. It's a pity, for such a bright bright mind (yes, twice the brightness), you can often be rather dense.
I still like you though
:)
