Re: schools banning homework

morrisjcroy@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I often felt pressured not to say anything negative about the real world.
If I did, I might, apparently, discourage the students from learning the
material, who might then drop out and do something else. If that happened,
it might be damaging to the administration's reputation, thus depriving it
of potential revenues.

It wouldn't surprise me that it would have preferred to have the students
finish, find out that the real world wasn't what it was cracked up to be
and then return to school for retraining, bringing with them money.


The students should have done their "homework" about the field, before
even thinking about enrolling in it at a college/university. These
days there isn't any excuse for not doing some "homework" a priori.
(ie. Google is their best friend, along with one's own common sense).

And put all those high school career counsellors out of work? Not a chance.

Many of my students had little or no imagination about what they wanted to do and likely chose our department because they didn't know what else to do or Mommy and Daddy told them to do that.


When I was younger, I did my "homework" on various fields by asking a
lot of questions to folks who recently graduated with a degree in it,
as well as some folks who worked full-time in particular fields.
(Mostly found these folks via family and friends). I didn't bother
approaching many folks who were already college/university students
nor instuctors/professors at that time, since I knew they probably
wouldn't be as upfront about things.

I grew up in a small town in northern B. C. so I had few people to talk to about it. All I knew was that I had to specialize in science courses and get good grades.


When I was in graduate school, my advisor was straight upfront about
what the field was REALLY like and the future prospects (ie. both the
good and ugly). I knew exactly what I was getting into when I first
started to do research. Otherwise I could have just left grad school
with a masters degree. (At quite a number of places, some academic
masters degrees didn't have a thesis requirement).

None of mine did. Then again, for my last two degrees, I had a teaching job to go back to.

<snip>

Nobody that extreme that I'm aware of. There was one chap who was
brilliant but who couldn't seem to find a job that suited him. The last I
heard, he was homeless somewhere in Ontario.


How exactly was this particular guy "brilliant"? Was he a "book
smarts" and/or "test smarts" type? Or was he well read? (It sure
sounds like he wasn't "street smart").

He apparently worked on a variety of things including biomedical devices and specialized nuclear reactors. As for his lack of "street smarts", perhaps he fell upon hard times.


At the Mensa meetings I've attended in the past, I got the impression
many of the regulars were folks who were either "test smart" and/or
"book smart".

Based on some of the discussions, I wondered how some of the people in attendance managed to pass their exams.


I don't think I've ever met anybody in Mensa who was really "street
smart". Most of the "street smart" folks I knew of when I was
younger, typically were folks who ended up joining street gangs and/or
organized crime type of groups.


Most of the members I knew weren't much different than those who weren't.
.

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