Tag: school

flavoracle:

languill:

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

illustraice:

aplpaca:

kinda funny when english teachers say stuff like “i can tell if you didnt read the book” or “i can tell when people bs their paper”

no you cant.  you can tell when people are bad at bs-ing their paper.  i didnt even read the sparknotes and i barely skimmed the wikipedia and you gave me an A.  you kneel before my throne unaware that it was born of lies

you kneel before my throne unaware that it was born of lies

glumshoe:

A reminder that turning in assignments for partial credit is better than not turning them in at all. It is. Even if you think you’ve done a bad job and are ashamed of your work, or it’s way overdue, you take whatever you can get. Partial credit dramatically improves your grade over a zero, and I’m always astounded by how often even the smartest kids don’t really comprehend that. 60% is worlds better than 0%. Even 10% is going to help you. Letter grades are misleading and are not created equal. “F"s are valuable. Turn that late assignment in.

prokopetz:

dirkar:

Why study for exams when you can deduce the answers based on context clues from other questions and then use those answers to provide you with even more context clues for even more questions in an hour-long stress-fueled Professor Layton-esque logic puzzle extravaganza of future-hinging doom.

Believe it or not, if you want to do well in academia, this particular skill set is at least as important as knowing how to study properly.

Acing an exam doesn’t require filling in answers that are, in some abstract sense, “correct”; it requires filling in what whoever authored the exam thinks the correct answers are. Often the two have very little to do with one another!

Working up a mental profile of the exam’s author based on the wording and arrangement of the questions and going “okay, if I was the joker who wrote this thing, what would I expect the correct answer to be?” is a totally legitimate exam-writing skill, and arguably more critical than actually knowing the material.