School Grades are Backwards

[@ben9583_]

In one of my Berkeley machine learning classes, I spent tens of hours on a class project that was a total flop. For some reason, I couldn't get the model to train correctly, even though I had applied all the techniques we were taught and went over the lectures over and over again to figure out the right way to do the project. A couple hours before the deadline I ended up just writing a ton of notes in the comments explaining what I tried and how it didn't work, and I ended up getting nearly full credit for the project. Not all classes are like that, but I definitely appreciate the profs/TAs who understand this concept. It's unreasonable to hinge your success in a class based on not failing a single project the whole semester. I wasn't ashamed of my failure, but more so just curious what I had done wrong. I ended up coming back to the project later and found out the issue, fixed it, and got everything working. Way more rewarding than getting my grade tanked.

[@duckymomo7935]

I like that idea, I mean the problem with deadlines is that they can be a bit unrealistic - yes in the software world there are deadlines but they're not you must finish programming in a week but you have 3 months to work with you're team to develop something. but if you have no idea how to code at all, how is a prof going to ensure consistency for any potential project/prompt? I get that not even professional/senior devs will know everything but they know how to work out an efficient algorithm about 70% of the time which is consistent. This reminds me of CAP theorem where you can either be consistent, available or partition tolerant but not all 3 at the same time

[@TheWanderingNeko]

i've had several classes where we were told: "A finished product is not needed but you need to be able to present all your research and results as if you already had the finished product." if you can provide enough reasoning to prove that you know what you're talking about and have done the work, you'll get full marks, even if the product isn't done. It also involves telling them what went wrong and how you'd compensate for it in the future.

[@swordgeo]

I had this situation as a student teacher. I had to pick a kid and track their progress and more or less prove I was a positive influence on him and his grade. Well the dude’s girlfriend who was in this class with him dumped him, his grade took a nosedive, I was pretty screwed. No point trying to squeeze blood out of this stone, so I sat with him and shared with him similar experiences that happened to me and put into perspective that this is a big deal right now and eventually it won’t be as big. I put all this into my report and luckily I similarly got nearly full credit for meeting him where he was and giving him what he needed in that moment

[@Alehero]

Would this happen to be CS182 (because if so I did the exact same thing)

[@travcollier]

Some friends of mine were in a maths course where the final was one week, use whatever resources you want, and collaborate with anyone (not even limited to other students). If they managed to solve one of the problems, the prof would give them a summer job and write it up for publication... Because no one else in the world had managed to solve them yet. Every few years a student would actually manage to solve one. Oh, of course it was graded entirely on how you tried. I had some courses where profs would put one question like that on the final, but nothing quite to the scale as my friend's math course. BTW: When I TAed classes, I would add a question to quizzes that I expected students to get wrong. Ideally it would be something where there was an obvious answer/guess based on what they had learned so far, but it wouldn't be correct for the particular situation/question. Relatively easy to find things like that in biology... Exceptions to most every rule. Anyways, I would give full credit for just making a reasonable guess. But man, some of the students just freaked out and couldn't cope with having to actually guess and probably end up being wrong. If I were your machine learning prof, I'd give you something where the training set is just insufficient or maybe even poisoned to see what you try and if you can recognize when it's not going to work ;)

[@trwn87]

Grades unfortunately work like this: Say, you hand out an “F” in art, then the message you give that student is “you are terrible at art”. However, the student will additionally think “I will never be good at art” because that grade haunts them for years to come. Note that this is just an example and it applies to all classes and may apply to all grades that aren’t an “A+”, depending on the student’s standards imposed onto them.

[@owentucker6215]

Yep, 100%, and its even worse when GPA is such a huge factor for college admissions. Why would someone who is not great at something like Art (an optional subject) ever want to take it if it's just going to hurt their overall grade? There is no opportunity to explore outside people's comfort zone when everything is going on their record. It makes it unecessarily difficult to explore new fields.

[@IHTCAU]

an f in art is fart lol

[@Sammysapphira]

That is an absolutely ridiculous notion. Its not a grades fault that somebody gets an objectively bad grade on art and decides to not do it anymore.

[@trwn87]

@@Sammysapphira The grade has an impact on the person’s experience with art which receives a negative tint While it is certainly just a tendency, if experienced often enough, it becomes certain that they will lose their will to do art.

[@skyrailmaxima]

​@@trwn87 It shouldn't be a craft with GPA effecting scores. Unless you want to completely diverge stem and humanities. Then it might make more sense. It would at least help determine where peoples talent path is and allows them to specialize without worrying about mastering every subject outside of the basics

[@lapiscarrot]

6:50 this is why a lot of teachers / professors drop the lowest grade in certain categories (homework, quizzes, projects, etc.) It's not a perfect solution, but that's how it is oftentimes

[@pikminman13]

Sometimes professors also allow case by case negotiation. Though that only works in smaller classes because I can't exactly blame them for not keeping track of the entire situation for hundreds of students and the teaching assistants don't always know you either. I started my first full time job during this past semester and the professor of the one class I was taking to keep my resume warm was completely fine with me coming in late every day after work because he knows I'm one of the top students in the class.

[@zerotwoisreal]

I think taking the median score is better than the average.. if someone gets 97%, 96%, 94%, 89%, 0% the 94% is more representative of them than 75%.

[@arturintete2461]

@@zerotwoisrealdefinitely even more issues with that...

[@madhavraghu]

​@@zerotwoisrealwhat if someone gets 97%, 96%, 94%, 89%, 0%, 0%, 0%? Is 89% representative of their grade?

[@zerotwoisreal]

​@@madhavraghuI'd argue yes. When a student gets very low scores, and very high scores, the results indicates that they ARE capable of repeated success. Even with the low scores. you KNOW they are a very smart student. Perhaps they just lost interest, or something happened to prevent them from doing the tests. No employer would hire someone who scored 53%, so this student would miss out on opportunities that they deserve. wheras 89% shows their true potential. Now if the middle number was 50%, neither average nor median would represent them. I'd say just show all the scores

[@aditya_a]

This is so true, especially when u say “they need MONTHS on end” this is just 🎯. Schools never teach long term commitment or effort in one particular thing, it's always just juggling a laundry list of tasks to just finish one after the either which fundamentally encourages mediocrity

[@Orinslayer]

There's also no coordination between schools to offer a good experience. How many times do you learn color theory? Like 5 times and it's the exact same lesson 3 of those times.

[@dokchampa9324]

This is why the point-based system is vastly superior. I went to a junior high which employed it and my university uses it as well and the feeling between those two and other educational institutions in my life are like night and day. In the point based system you start at 0 points and everything you do throughout a semester will add points to your score, usually to a maximum of 100 (sometimes you can also do stuff for extra credit which would push it beyond 100 but that's rare in my experience). That way everything you do turns into a net positive, even if you score 5 points on a test that had a point maximum of 20 which would usually be a failing grade, in this system those 5 points still get added to your total and thus improve your grade overall. An added benefit to this system is that once you go over 50% points in a subject you just pass it and don't have to do any more school work for it, so if you know that you hate it and it won't be useful to your career of choice you can ignore it and instead focus on stuff that's actually important to you (Though personally that's not something I've done, I've always strived to get the best grades possible on all my subjects, but I definitely know people who would benefit from this approach) Also I just realized I'm 3 minutes into this 23 video so maybe you talk about exactly this later on, but I just got too over excited and wanted to talk about this now so I'll just leave this comment as-is with this disclaimer at the bottom. K, bye, love you

[@sfpt]

i think the point based system is basically the same as the system that cary thinks is flawed. the only difference is that in a point based system you are considering everything you haven't done yet as a zero, so your grade only goes up from zero. If you were to not consider the grades until you do the assignment, then it would be identical. so it has the exact same issues, its not superior.

[@Sh1penfire]

@@sfpt I think it's part the effect it has on the mentality of the person looking at the system, but I agree with this as well not that it doesn't have the same inherent flaws, but I think a person told that they need to score points to do well vs a person who's told they'll be punished if they don't do well is like telling a person to work for something vs telling somebody to avoid failure. I don't think either are healthy in the long-term though cause in the extreme examples one person becomes a perfectionest who bases themselves off the system who falls appart when their skewed expectations don't match reality, and the other becomes too anxious to try anything because the internal backlash of doing poorly outweighs the a person who sees through the facade might sigh and say "whelp, time to appease the observers", I find this one the most relevant cause my intrests lie outside of school currently and it's just a pain to see I did poorly on things im not invested in (I thought it'd be intresting to do them, didn't drop them cause some stuff scaled up in points) on a side note, I dislike point-based systems which rank you against other people. It's probably eaier for UNIs to judge based off a single number, but said number doesn't represent the person as a whole. ATAR feels kinda BS cause instead of thinking about what im capible of, the system's built to see "but how much did you perform compared to other people in the cohort". Takes the focus away from individual learning/intrinsic motivation/curiosity about the world and shifts it into competing with others to get into higher education where supposedly job prospects and being traditionally successful lie. Could just be the Autism/ADHD talking but motivation is an ass and nobody around me can really see things how I do, so even the more open-ended assignments for STEM subjects can't really capture my process or give meaningful feedback to me, only the fact that I didn't hit the rubric. Part of my process for creative tasks is literally putting things off for months to let ideas flow, so making things in a timely manner with how I work is a pain and last minute motivation doesn't work for me when burnout decides to show its rear end and crap all over the place.

[@arcturuslight_]

The main problem is not the starting point. What you describe would work just as awfully as the thing in the start of the video, if the points are awarded in the same way and end results are considered in the same way as in the start of the video. You'd be constantly afraid of scoring 5/20 because that would ruin your chance of reaching an arbitrary threshold at the end of semester. The real problem in the US is how grades are awarded and the effect they have on your life in the end.

[@spaghettiisyummy.3623]

I would be willing to donate all of my Organs to have that system.

[@gehgegeg2746]

This is the same exact system just in different terms. The 20 point test is worth 20% of your grade, you got a 25% on it. “The 5 points still get added onto your grade” still happens in a “percentage” based system. If your teacher/professor gave your a rubric with point values of everything you can set up that kind of system for yourself, all it’s doing is putting all possible points out on the table at once instead of waiting until those points can affect your grade percentage

[@TaanielaTaufa]

School feels more of learning how to be “responsible” for your work and to learn how to follow orders. Which is good for standard jobs, but bad for the progression of Humanity.

[@klovexthewolf]

balance is the key i think (i know, super mindblowing)

[@TaanielaTaufa]

@@klovexthewolf Lol,, yupp

[@PrivateMcPrivate]

Humanity has progressed too much in my opinion so yay!

[@TaanielaTaufa]

@@PrivateMcPrivate Ehh, I'd say we come a decent way through our small, puny existence in such a short time compared to the universe. I think there is much more to progress in, and there is much more good (and evil) that is going to be done. Weather we like it or not

[@sssurreal]

@@PrivateMcPrivatethere are people like you and me that don’t have access to housing or clean water and you think because we have AI iPhones and PlayStations we’ve progressed to far lol

[@arielgalles2107]

There's an indie game called Hollow Knight that was released at the time that it was solely because the creators ran out of money for development and needed an income to buy food and pay rent with. This game is now one of the most successful indie projects ever. The team behind it were also able to polish the game after release through DLCs despite the initial release being incomplete. Of course now that they have infinite money from making a hugely successful game, they've been working on a sequel game for 7 years and the reason it hasn't been released yet is probably because they're stressing about releasing a complete and perfect product this time.

[@shovel_salesman]

when silksong comes out in 2050 gta 7 doesn't stand a chance

[@nikolaysitnikov796]

The problem is that you can keep adding improvements to a game forever. There will always be imperfections, but at some point the product has to be delivered. I do believe that the game will be extremely successful once it's ready, because the game did have a scheduled release date prior to the pandemic, which shows that the developer(s) has a final product in mind.

[@Quartz512_]

Silksong isn't real, what are you talking about /j

[@CrispyDragon11]

Grade inflation is real last quarter i was crying over an 89 in History, then I remembered that I had 10 bonus points laying around waiting to be used for the quarter.

[@CrispyDragon11]

(add on) In my 7th grade Gateway to Technology Class I had a 98 overall, but since there were like 20 diff assignments I knew one 0 wouldn't kill me, and I didn't want to animate on google slides so I just didn't do it, turns out luck was on my side and I got an 80 without doing it (this is twin brother speaking therefore it is not real brothers digital footprint)

[@xanderlastname3281]

Define "10 bonus points laying around"

[@CrispyDragon11]

@@xanderlastname3281 unit test had extra credit and I was the only one that did it

[@hithere640]

what schools are you going to with 10 EC points 😭😭

[@rondobrondo]

@@CrispyDragon11that’s not how digital footprints work. Also I think it’s hilarious that twin brothers share the same KZbin account

[@Vryheid]

School really stunts the ambitions of young people. I wish I pursued the ideas I had when I was in high school or even earlier, but knowing the environment of school, I couldn't while I was preoccupied with the stresses of testing and grades. If school grading worked like the real world, I'd see a lot more Cary Huangs.

[@justawatchin2]

​@@tbird-z1rbit harsh

[@foxtail286]

​@@tbird-z1r Many people don't have time to start and finish new projects while studying

[@flouglemireindustries4335]

@foxtail286 I would include myself, I have had a game idea that I turned into a prototype but had to leave it to rot for a year basically, because I had so much work and stress building up on me.

[@njdotson]

Yeah in college I want to do more experimenting in things I am interested in, but it's not worth it when I have to get assignments done all the time (and go to work I guess but at least I like working)

[@thebe_stone]

@@flouglemireindustries4335 I literally did the exact same thing, I put a ton of work into a game I was making over the summer, but then as soon as the school year started I had to basically stop working on it completely. it really kills your motivation when all of your effort has to go into school stuff that you dont even really care about.

[@yordvandamme]

Here in the Netherlands, it's really hard to get a 10 (out of 10). A 6 is what's needed to pass something. After primary school we have different levels of middle/high school, to fit your needs. After those you can always continue to study to get to university, but the lower the level you come from the longer you have to study to still end up high. But anyways because of this, combined with the 6 to pass, you can always try to get higher grades to improve your career. It's still not a perfect system, but it's better than whatever the heck you guys are doing.

[@yordvandamme]

Also I really recommend looking into the school system in Finland and Denmark

[@jblen]

I was thinking a similar thing about the UK system, where 70% is an A and it's just harder to get a 90+% than in the US, but it gives the possibility of 'recovering' a grade that you had potentially missed out on if you do happen to be an absolute expert in one particular thing. It also says to me that if everyone does get 90+%, it wasn't hard enough to properly distinguish the abilities of everyone taking the exam.

[@Regian]

In italy it's the same thing,6/10 is passing and 10/10 is almost impossible. Our system sucks ass but somehow the american one is even worse

[@yordvandamme]

@Regian real

[@xaf15001]

It's a mix in Indonesia. Before uni 75% is the passing grade, but in most uni it's 60% for C and 80% for A.

[@kolosso305]

I never realized how this was affecting my projects until you laid it out so plainly. Damn, thanks for sharing.

[@tibees]

I worry that individual KZbin channels can be a bit like your restaurant example in that a viewer won't watch a video if there's a chance they watched a bad one from that channel in the past. But having multiple channels or other projects is better suited to risk taking. I'm using this video as inspiration to finish a writing project

[@ggdionne]

Imagine it's the 1950s and you want to teach yourself math. Your options for information are either to go to the library and teach yourself from a textbook, or to get someone to teach you. The issue with textbooks is that they cannot answer our questions, so when there's somebody who doesn't understand something, their only other option is to seek a teacher anyway. With the invention of the internet, we can get answers for whatever we need, explained by many different people in many different ways. We can ask an AI to explain the problem to us, addressing exactly what it is that we don't understand. The value of education suddenly plummeted, threatening the value of universities. Instead of staying competitive by increasing the quality of education, universities instead monopolized the certification that comes with their education program. In our modern world it is entirely possible for someone to teach themself programming, but if a hiring firm looks at the resume of a self taught coding prodigy and sees that they've been working at mcdonalds for the past five years, they're just never going to have a single chance.

[@davidaugustofc2574]

They're not gonna get hired because they had AI as a Math Teacher, hardly better than just leaving the questions unanswered.

[@Lylcaruis]

@@davidaugustofc2574 ai is a better teacher than alot of real teachers assuming you double check important info

[@i_guess108]

@@davidaugustofc2574 it's hard to search things up if you don't know what they're called, but AI can help with that. while the information won't be accurate a small percentage of the time, you can use what it tells you to find more reliable sources on the internet. compared to the teachers that throw chairs at students (it was twice, but two times is two times) and yell at them every day (still salty about my math teacher last year), ai is a much better teacher.

[@kregy7509]

​@@davidaugustofc2574you look at the comment. Pick one thing mentioned and applied it in the most bad faith possible. Truly a human moment.

[@davidaugustofc2574]

@@Lylcaruis researching, double checking information and putting it in practice is just the learning process. There's no way using AI to mindless mish-mash content from several sites without nuance is better than reading the source and taking my own conclusions. AI doesn't create geniuses, it helps the below average.

[@trwn87]

7:39 The claim that “many students wait for the last minute” is true, yet avoidable: If you give students a personal reason to work on something they haven’t dealt with before, you can activate their motivation from the start., And even if it doesn’t click, it just doesn’t click. Would you really make a student “fail” (in the traditional sense, as in repeating the class or not succeeding in the future) because they don’t show much interest in biology? When maybe they really like math and art and perhaps even PE? I am aware that you didn’t inform yourself particularly much about this topic but it’s really worth a thought.

[@xaf15001]

Another factor is it's usually easier to do things later than earlier because then you can compare notes with other students. This is especially true when sometimes the teacher doesn't explain the homework enough and doesn't want to explain it more. When you're confused you tend to wait for other people, which when there are none, you're not moving.

[@trwn87]

@@xaf15001 May I ask, how is this related to any of my comments?

[@i_guess108]

@@trwn87 they're building off of the topic your comment is about, and while it does go back to being a bit more general, it's not so general that it's completely out of left field. they bring up a similarly good point on why students would wait until later to start, even if they aren't simply unmotivated. i am aware that you may have just glossed over their relatively long (by youtube standards) comment, but it's really worth actually reading.

[@trwn87]

@@i_guess108 I always read the comments fully and the matter is clarified by now. I know that it is not fully off-topic, I just wanted to further investigate the idea underlying said comment.

[@kent631420]

Ever since the last century, our education system has valued test grades over creativity and potential. But, if you judge a student over how well they do on exams, they will have the mindset that they are not as good as they thought. My point is, that we as students should be given a second chance at the subjects we are actually good at, and discuss them with peers. Sitting at home pulling all-nighters studying for things we're probably gonna forget after the exam, isn't the natural way we learn Thank you, Cary, for the message 🙏🙏

[@jacobharris5894]

I 100% agree. Even in stem, grades are not really representative of a students future success. People learn at different rates and these fast paced classes aren’t the best way for everyone to learn. Just because your gpa is mediocre doesn’t mean you can’t be a successful researcher. But if it is mediocre it will greatly decrease your chances of being accepted into graduate school. I was a physics major and for the classes where we went over the same material a second time, even if it was significantly more advanced, I did way better. Unfortunately not all classes were like that. A lot of it you hadn’t seen the material before and then other courses built off of that one. So if your foundation was shaky you were in for an uphill battle. I was always trying to go back to rebuild my foundation but I felt like I could never keep up. The problem was, the professors in my upper division classes pushed everyone through on a curve, so as long as you tried your best you would most likely get a C. If you got a C or higher you weren’t allowed to retake the course for credit and just a few C’s could drastically lower your gpa. But you obviously don’t want to fail either because that shows up on your transcripts. So if you were struggling in a foundational course and it was too late to drop, it was basically a lose-lose situation.

[@motimusjav]

My understanding has always been that schools value "consistency," so ever getting a bad grade is unacceptable. I wish schools would emphasize endeavors other than just...grades. Same with standardized testing. One of my English teachers was very lenient on end of the year grades, and valued and emphasized growth over consistency. If you got all F's in the first half of the semester and then rose through the grades, he would end up giving you a much higher grade by the end. I don't know much about positive vs negative reinforcement literature, and I like to think I would prefer to give positive reinforcement...But logically negative reinforcement seems more effective to me in many aspects. Our strongest motivation comes from negative emotions after all, and it's often the negative experiences that occur which can more commonly shape our views and lives (unfortunately). Fear is such a strong motivator.

[@SioxerNikita]

Both positive and negative reinforcement is important, but the problem with your English Teacher is that the grade is not supposed to show growth, but your competency. If he rated people higher because of high growth, then the most effective strategy is start by tanking, then followed by growth, and you'll create very perverse incentives for the students that knows this. And actually, negative experiences tends to have a VERY high level of demotivation for most people.

[@motimusjav]

I think you’re misinterpreting my English teacher a bit. There’s more nuance to his grading than just “growth.” If he could tell you were participating and effortful, he would be more willing to increase your grade. Tanking your grade is not an effective strategy because the grade is also based on effort. Additionally, if you get all A’s the second half of the semester, in this case, you still might end up with a B. Therefore, it’s most prudent to try to get the best grade possible from the start. No, negative emotion creates the most motivation. This is scientific fact. Animals are motivated biologically by fear. It is how they survive and adapt. Negative experiences actually don’t demotivate us at all. That is a misconception about motivation. They actually motivate us to such an extreme extent that we decide to avoid certain situations. We are extremely motivated to not do something. For example, procrastination. In this case we are extremely motivated to avoid the fear and discomfort of doing work. So we are motivated to not do any work. It’s not an absence of motivation.

[@rlckyrlcardo]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@motimusjav luckily for us, we’re pretty intelligent animals. ethics standards are much more rigorous today, especially for children (at least in studies). what works for a wolf in the wilderness is not going to be what works for your little cousin in the 2nd grade. personally speaking, keeping someone’s mental health intact throughout development and education will only have positive influences on their success, happiness, relationships, outlook on life, etc. this isn’t to say that stress/fear should not exist at all in school, but like cary was saying, we should encourage calculated risk-taking and positive reinforcement throughout schooling.

[@motimusjav]

​@@rlckyrlcardo ​ I'm sorry if it came across as though I am advocating for negative reinforcement. I definitely am not and strive to advocate for positive reinforcement. I am just reflecting on this logical perspective I have. I think it's important to be realistic about why people fall into this idea that negative reinforcement is better. Because it seems more effective. Or maybe it's because we aren't taught any other way. I am not saying negative reinforcement is better because of efficiency or is right. I am just pointing it out despite me not agreeing with it morally. My point is that negative emotion is a strong motivator, and if we can both agree on that then we're not disagreeing.

[@nekomikumata]

​@@motimusjav It is not the question of "positive vs negative" reinforcement. This is the most misinterpreted subject in psychology of all time. It is the question of positive/negative reinforcement and positive/negative punishment. In this context, positive/negative means "to add to" or "to take away from" and reinforcement means some type of reward, while punishment is some kind of detriment. An example of positive reinforcement is giving someone a cookie for having good behavior. An example of negative reinforcement is to take away an ailment. The doctor makes the boo boo go away, so this is negative reinforcement. The next time you get a boo boo, you go to the doctor. An example of positive punishment is the most controversial one, spanking or some kind of infliction. An example of negative punishment is the taking away of something good. Taking away the ipad. The idea of reinforcement in general is the result of the work of B.F. Skinner and his "Skinner boxes", in which he labeled this phenomenon Operant conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning (and radical behaviorism, and SEVERAL other names because psychologists love to seem much smarter than they are). The general idea was that you drop a rat in a cage, give it a button, and encourage it to press the button. Eventually, the rat associates the button with food, and presses the button when it wants food. However, cognitive beings like humans are not so simple, while there are certainly elements of programmable behaviorism present in humans in all parts of the cerebral cortex, there are several issues with the idea that humans are behaviorally deterministic. For example, we have expectations. You give a monkey a machine that gives it bananas, it is a happy monkey. When the machine spits out an orange, you now have an angry monkey. The monkey had to have possessed the cognitive ability to think of a banana in some capacity in order to expect it, thus, the monkey is capable of thought and cognition. What the behaviorist fails to account for is what thoughts led up to the decisions that are made by his subjects, and that the entire field of cognitive psychology. Another problem is that subjects may act superstitiously, in other words they have the capacity to make mistakes about the association. When first given the rat, it must be "trained" essentially to press the button. It initially has no idea what the button is, or have any instinct to press it. So what researchers do at first is to drop food when the rat is in the half of the box closest to the button, then when it is a quarter of the way to the button... then when it is on the wall... Sometimes, the rat may mistake another behavior for the food, and a common occurrence is for the rat to run around in circles chasing its tail because it thinks this behavior produced the food. This is common in humans too, how we have "lucky rituals" or bad superstitions about black cats, walking under ladders, throwing salt over your shoulders... etc. Finally, in terms of punishment, it is very difficult to extinguish undesired behaviors. This is because, by nature's design, the undesirable behaviors present some form of positive (or negative) reinforcement to begin with. Little Jimmy is not skipping school because he wants to make you angry, he's doing it because he is rewarded in some way. Perhaps skipping school relieves his stress and allows him to relax (negative reinforcement) or perhaps it gives him time to play video games (positive reinforcement). But Punishment must occur every single time jimmy skips school, and with the maximum punishment available, or he will weigh his options and decide it's worth it anyway. EVEN IF the behavior is extinct, the pathway to relearning that behavior can reappear in as little as 3-4 trials. This is known as the "Relapse", so undesirable learned behavior never TRULY goes extinct. If Jimmy skips a test one day after a good streak, he may realize that video games are fun, and he's back again to slippin' Jimmy. The other thing about punishment is that it doesn't teach the CORRECT behavior. Perhaps little jimmy will go to school next time, and then he will goof off, still getting bad grades. Jimmy must not only be encouraged to get good grades, but to perform the behaviors necessary that produce that result. And that's NOT an easy task, not as simple as giving him cupcakes every time he gets good grades. Jimmy doesn't just need to associate grades with rewards, but he needs to cognitively think that getting good grades is good for him and will produce something good, which you commonly see many students believe that what they are learning is "useless" and that it will not help them later, often acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would also like to point out that while you are indeed correct about "Fear being an effective motivator" because the Amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for making strong emotions) is right next to the hippocampus (the part responsible for memory) and has much to do with associations. However there are two things I would like to point out: The first is that the Amydala is ALSO next to the Anterior cingulate gyrus, responsible for attention, decision making, and impulse control. For example, when you ingest some kind of sedative, one of the first things that happens is that the frontal cortex is sedated, and this part of the brain that inhibits your most base desires no longer functions, and thus you act on your impulses. On the flip side, anxiety is like the exact opposite of that, things like Analysis Paralysis. I have just described stimulants and depressants. If we, as humans, acted on every single little paranoia, we would not be functional human beings. This is what is called an Anxiety Disorder, and Schizophrenia, which are generally disorders of serotonin and dopamine regulation. The second thing I would like to point out is that the Amygdala, being what it is, is necessary for long-term survival, but not always useful in human living contexts. Let's say that a rabbit has a traumatic experience. The bushes are rustling, and suddenly, a predator jumps out and attempts to catch the rabbit. The rabbit manages to get away. The question is: Do you think that this event is something that's important to remember? The answer is: YES! The rabbit will associate rustling bushes with danger, and will learn to stay away from them. For a human, this can present as something such as PTSD or generalized anxiety disorders. This is because of Stress. Generally speaking, people react very differently to stress, with some viewing it as a challenge and an opportunity for growth, while others allow it to consume them. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system (pupil dilation, saliva inhibition, noepinephrine increasing, etc). There is a reason that people say that stress causes grey hairs, because if your body operated at this level all the time, you would die at 30. Nature is cheap, and aims to be efficient. Stress is the antithesis of this, It's basically overclocking all of your systems beyond capacity in order to get away from predators, the fight or flight response. Daily stress, however, is highly inefficient, and is the cause of psychosomatic symptoms and possibly an early grave.

[@joe_z]

The thing that jumps out at me about the two distributions you're showing is that they're an example of the contrast between a Type I and a Type III survivorship curve in biology. School assumes your performance is Type I (i.e. that most people will do well except for a few failures), while tournament professions like art and game development are Type III (almost everyone will fizzle out early except for a few people who make it big). It's this distribution, and not anything inherent in school or the real world, that causes the averages to skew up or down in the way you observe. If instead of art, you thought of a more regulated profession such as working as an employee in an engineering firm (which most of your STEM friends probably had as a goal) - then your compensation curve starts to look more like the one at the top, where you continue to do acceptable work until maybe one egregious failure causes you to lose your job. As somebody who's worked in one of the big tech companies, this sort of risk aversion also permeates the employee culture there, and most people are just working to maintain their income stream, not to do anything groundbreaking for the company. Even for those people, though, that risk curve only extends _in reality_ to the work they actually do as part of their job - the moment you start talking about personal projects, the survivorship curve flips and your point is true again. Many people don't want to post their incomplete and low-quality works because they fear that it'll drag down their image as a creator - and there's one case where that's true: maybe don't include any incomplete work in your promotional portfolio, once you've started building one. But that's no reason to avoid showing it to anyone at all.

[@edsonluizbrasilfilho3840]

Interesting

[@ahscott2001]

Here's my take: The biggest problem in my opinion is that grades have a cap. If you pour your heart and soul into a project because you genuinely love it, you'll only get the same A as someone who just followed the rubric and went through the motions. Going above and beyond is actively discouraged. (The worst graders are those who require you to go above and beyond just to get an A.) On the other side, if you can't do something at work, you get help. If you can't do something in school, you just fail and are considered a cheater if you get help. Therefore, school actively discourages collaboration even on group projects. I had one professor last semester assign multiple group projects but of course we were graded individually. We were told that we had to enforce the grading requirements on one another, which is the education equivalent of when Communists encourage people to denounce their own families (admittedly that's a little extreme but you get my point).

[@phyzix_phyzix]

If your first job brought in $8k and your next job brought in $0 your average is going down. Its the same thing in both charts. Take the highest amount you could ever make and assign 100% to that and then assign 0% to $0 and you have the exact same scale. If you start a class by failing the first assignment your grade average is an F. It can only go up from there. Moral of the story: fail your first assignment in every class?

[@kongolandwalker]

Or evaluate homework quality in dollars, uncapped.

[@marc_frank]

@@kongolandwalker and pay students? would be kinda cool

[@kongolandwalker]

@@marc_frank But, according to the law of capitalism, the tasks would be real projects, otherwise nb would pay. After thinking more: that is just en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship

[@marc_frank]

@@kongolandwalker apprentices get a regular wage. no incentive to do better than passing grade. was a cool system for villages, with every profession accounted for, but not really fun in corporations. if school paid you more the better your work was, there would be more motivation to perform well. also no need for side businesses, cutting hair in the toilet or whatever. also incentive for poor families to send their kids to school.

[@kongolandwalker]

@@marc_frank *apprenticeship with payment proportional to the market value of their product. I feel such things already exist.

[@ninjireal]

2:38 and then you try furry art

[@anguswetty]

"Maybe... uhhh.... F-fractal art"

[@WingedEspeon]

2:25 I think we all know what the well paying genre of art is...

[@possesed_beans]

That mention of motivational speakers is so true. They come in and are like "take risks", "don't be scared of failure", etc. but then again, we're measured and defined by our grades, we have ourselves/teachers/friends/family obsessing over how high our grades are.

[@sethbettwieser]

Starting at 100% assumes that you aren't failing your first assignments. If you are, then your grades can only improve over the year/semester, not get worse.

[@sethbettwieser]

@@flarflecakes reread my comment

[@flarflecakes]

@@sethbettwieser ohhhh mb mb

[@idlegameplayer3756]

if you fail your first assignment of the year/semester you should be expelled i think

[@pkmnhx43_27]

When you were first giving the example I was thinking about an entrepreneurship class I just took and how at some point it was mentioned the idea that investors invest into a lot of things and then the one that makes it big pays for everything else, although I hadn't heard it called by the fail faster thing, however I have heard of fail faster before and it was exactly another thing you talked about. I have taken many game development classes as it is my major, and that was where I was introduced to the "fail faster" mentality, and rather than in being put in the context of making money, it was in the context of making games people enjoy. By failing faster you get not only get more shots at hitting the jack pot, but youre able to scope out the interest to know to put in the effort to develop it further, but even more importantly, you will learn from making it, the faster you fail, the faster you learn from your failures, and this idea of failing faster in order to learn more makes the idea of it even more applicable and meaningful compared to the investment strategy its all about your one success making up for your failures. With the motivational speeches, school are drilling an awful system of beliefs into students, and then think occasionally slapping a good system of beliefs in their face will just fix it. Its drilled into them for more than just a year, its drilled into their heads since the moment they enter a school and until decades later when they graduate during the most developmental years of life. And not only is this mentality itself bad, but another mentality that gets drilled in is that their worth as a human is entirely based on those grades, in the best case giving students with good grades a whole lot of extra stress, and in the worst case giving students without good grades an awful self image. And then when high school starts to finish up, and they are deciding to go to college, these mindsets also make it seem like college is the only viable option when in reality it has been less and less useful, but more and more expensive, and the main effect will be that most people go into crippling debt to try to prove their self worth because if they don't go to college, they'll never get a job that can afford the bills, theyll never be happy, and that they will be considered a worthless excuse for a human that will die sad and alone. And the fact that people will go to college not knowing what they want to do enough for being undecided to be a concept people know about is a massive red flag that people aren't going to college because it will help their career path when its a massive investment that will only help certain career paths but will be nothing more than a massive financial and mental burden for anyone else

[@joe_z]

"Schools are drilling an awful system of beliefs into students" You say that as if it's a failure of the system. I think it happens by design - risk aversion produces compliance, obedience, and orderliness. Big companies (and governments) want unquestioning workers like that because they're easy to control.

[@pkmnhx43_27]

@ its a failure of the system regardless of whether or not its intentional

[@NinetyUnderScore]

2:15 *furry art

[@REMdonor]

LOL

[@REMdonor]

*2:22

[@trwn87]

It’s really important to get this to a broader audience. You did just that, Cary, congrats!

[@kongolandwalker]

When i finished a semester, I had my own set of grades (each from 0 to 100). One is given by a teacher as a final. One is my own evaluation, how much of a study program i understood. One is how many % of other students I understand the subject better than. Sometimes i got a B, but it was obvious I was best in the class, so i gave myself 100% in the third category. Sometimes I got lucky questions at the exam, got A, but gave myself 60% in the second category. It is usually not possible to optimise all 3. More you spend time learning exact phrases from the book - less time you have to experiment and understand and extrapolate. So I optimised one of the three categories, depending on the subject, its difficulty and usefullness.

[@flouglemireindustries4335]

My mental model basically, that rocks bro

[@qwertyTRiG]

What you say at the end is that institutions incentivise what they _actually_ incentivise, which may well not be what they _say_ they incentivise. So schools may talk a good game about not stressing over exam scores, but they also frequently emphasise the importance of exams.

[@Powerracer251]

If you tank an asignment in an unusual way in Uni, just go to the professor. It's actually even better if you already talk to the professor before that happens. Showing them you care will make them empathize with your struggle more often than not and it will bail you out.

[@annaairahala9462]

While this doesn't address the issue, this is still a very true approach. Many actually do care, unfortunately you could still get unlucky depending on the prof; some profs genuinely don't care or get a power trip out of it.

[@sepro5135]

I think your real world example is biased. In some places: art, music, entrepreneurship…it is normal to „fail“ a lot, but the few success make it worthwhile. In most jobs, that’s not the case. When you hire people, you’d rather hire 4 good people rather than 3 bad and one extremely good person, as they won’t be able to form a good team and deliver consistently. If you build software for a company, your software should be consistently good etc. most real jobs need consistently good delivery, as big mistakes are VERY expensive, which is similar to the grading system. An employee with a 50/50 chance of delivering a stellar project to a client or failing miserably is a bad employee.

[@TLPYL]

Crazy that you posted this on the day I got a C in my AP pre-calculus test.

[@talentlesscommenter1329]

I’m in calc bc rn, but I heard a ton of people in precalc at my school failed the test on logs.

[@awanderingp3rson]

@@talentlesscommenter1329 do we go to the same school lol. the same thing happened to me (i'm in the precalc class)

[@yea-u8b]

@awanderingp3rson nah man i think logs are just hard. that shit was my worst test that year when i took it

[@awanderingp3rson]

@@yea-u8b dawg im boutta become a lumberjack with how much im growing to hate them

[@yfiles700]

In situations where you sucesses are weighted more than your failures, you don't need to have the same risk adverse or perfectionate mindset

[@RemotHuman]

if you are allowed to fail some stuff you could also fail to learn some stuff, part of the point of school is actually making you learn the material, not just teaching you good work habits (though that is/should be part of it too). Some of this stuff is stuff you don't actually need to learn for your main goals in life, but that some people think it's important for you to learn, for example history. Some stuff might be important foundational knowledge for stuff you do want to learn even if you are not self motivated enough to learn the foundation without being forced to, eg maybe recursion (idk if you really need that or not) That said agree with this video in regards to the habits / models of the world it is teaching you. I also feel like the negative reinforcement of school teaches kids to not be self motivated or come up with stuff to do themselves, which is sad. I also feel like when the kids are forced to worry about their grades a lot of them turn to cheating, and the whole point of the class is wasted. Also not fully cheating but cutting corners eg reading sparknotes, maybe that's ok though

[@ITR]

Reminds me of one thing I really disliked in Norway'S senior hs equivalent - at the end of each year we had two tests judged by externals that were added to our grade average of all subjects we had. But the subject it was in was random, so if you got a subject you're bad in that could drag your average down, which might affect what universities you can go to.

[@tifforo1]

Solution: make the thresholds for each grade lower (so 50-65% is a C), but make everything significantly harder to make up for it so everyone doesn't just get a free A

[@Aml_07]

Sooo the British system (which is very far from perfect)?

[@brandonkellner]

You kind of already acknowledged the problem with this - you mentioned C is bad. It's passing. With the growth only model, the de facto standard by which you're seen as good or bad also has no bounds. Imagine being at 1/1000 of what is considered "good" but is still considered passing.

[@acelm8437]

I recently started college and just had this exact thought! Even though my grades before finals were all 95+, it was possible to get 70 on some finals and drop all the way to a B. Ended up passing them, but it gave me a fair bit of stress knowing that three months of work could go to waste in days. Off topic, but IMO the bigger problem with American education is that there's NO penalty for failing every assignment; most students just get pushed along anyway. If you don't understand 4th-grade material, you shouldn't be moving on to 5th, because that hole in your knowledge never gets fixed and it sends the message that slacking off is okay.

[@annaairahala9462]

The issue there is not that it pushes you along, but rather there is little incentive to encourage retention. If there were regular reviews without the pressure of grading there would be no issue there. You've just started college so you've probably begun notice how after some fundamental first year courses, a lot of the rest is just focusing on completing the term and not worrying about retention afterwards as that's treated as unimportant by the system despite it being the primary aspect of learning

[@eirdonne_]

@@annaairahala9462 if there's no incentive, why would people take it seriously? that's just bloating the system.

[@annaairahala9462]

@@eirdonne_ that's the issue, there is little incentive behind actual learning

[@PencilTheGamer]

If C really was average, it should be around 50% and not 70-79%

[@subtopewdipie4159]

for what reason?

[@aaronkriegman]

The British system gets this better. In England, your entire grade is a few exams at the end of the year. That means that throughout the year you can take risks on your homework, or blow off your homework to do your own learning or your own projects (which is what I did :P).

[@BillPark-ey6ih]

I think one misleading part is that failing in real world makes it harder to have a second attempt. So, if you fail on first project, you might not have enough money to start a new project.

[@Veilure]

The University of Washington’s CS program does something similar to this idea: Every project and test can ONLY increase your grade. I really love how they do it there!

[@joshuanorman2]

At the university I go to usually each module has 4 assignments and they're graded with a best 3 out of 4 policy. If you have a bad week or you're too busy to do one of the assignments then you're only at a minor disadvantage.

[@jimrichter5769]

it's the difference between creative and operational work. school is good at grading one, but not the other. glad you're drawing attention to this difference.

[@Archiv1st]

me when i got the extra credit, am now at 101%, and know anything graded will bring my grade down:😐

[@chocolatebar6785]

tbh schools giving out a bunch for exams per term is dumb it only serves as a way to micromeasure someone’s knowledge it would be way more beneficial for students to participate in one massive exam period that tested them on each subject they take (like the HSC for australia but without the extra assignments) that or students only have to take 1 exam period for their entire school career like in finland this encourages people to retain the information being taught while also putting less pressure on students throughout the rest of their time at school this would also remove the focus on exams in classes, since alot of classes atleast ones i’ve experienced were mostly based on passing some useless exam/worksheets than on the actual concepts of the subject (*cough**cough* maths)

[@glemmstengal]

Yeah right dude. At LEAST 50% of the student body would flake out because of anxiety if everything was packed into one exam and then they'd just be passed along anyway.

[@G7Animated]

3:16 sounds like a serious gambling problem

[@nak_attak]

0:44 unless you're taking spanish and your teacher gives hella extra credit (I finished with a 110)

[@PhillipHarris-nr4wt]

bro got S rank

[@Traelot]

Our school doesn't allow extra points :(

[@geekjokes8458]

i think there's a simpler problem with grading before we even discuss the idea: HOW THE FUCK IS 77% BAD?! using _letters_ instead of numbers is an awful system because it creates the *perception* of what you described: since C is "in the middle", the fact that it is closer to perfect than to half, suddenly doesn't matter anymore, because C will now be seen as "close to 50%"; it's a HUGE range of quality you just ignore

[@jimothybimothy6]

C should NOT be 70-79

[@objectified2763rebooted]

ikr it should be almost B

[@Joel2Million]

in the UK I think 70% at university is a 1st, highest possible grade lol 40% is a pass and 50% is a "C" I just think you should get a percentile, maybe if it's 25 percentile or lower then just give them a "sub 25 percentile" to save the poor student with the worst grade's mental health, getting a 1 or 0 percentile grade would SUCK

[@peterparker-zy9oe]

@@Joel2Million That's how it used to work here in India as well. I think 60% or above was 1st class.

[@redactado266]

Me fucking jumping out of joy as a 24 year old man in public as i get a 75 as final grade for a course I flunked 3 times already.

[@denimator05]

I know I've heard of a grading scale that works a little better than this. In a class, you have a certain number of skills or proficiency and then you get graded based on how well you can do each of those skills instead of being graded for each project. This means that if you can do really well on all of those and show that you are capable of doing well, you can still get full credit on all of the skills, even if you do poorly on an individual project since you were able to show on other projects that you learned those skills. This also has the benefit that you can easily implement it into a pre-existing system.

[@butler3394]

In my high school district we had something called the “50 percent rule,” which states that if a student gets a grade below 50%, it gets rounded up to 50%. The only way to get a 0 is if you don’t submit a project. This is good because it encourages attempting over perfectionism, valuing the student submitting work over reaching for straight A’s.

[@andrewjones6473]

I'm in college right now and i have had 2 instructors that did the start at 0 and earn points nethis of grading. One of them was my history class this past semester. I have never felt less stressed going into a final because i knew i had already passed the class. (I had 75/75 points for classwork and the final was the remaining 25 points. I still havent gotten that grade back but im not at all worried about it because 75% is still a c and "Cs get degrees")

[@charactooling6470]

6:54 *listening while crying over my own CS project where the professor decided to change requirements on a solo 6 weeks project while there's one week left... on Piazza*

[@micboyyaboy2578]

The "bad graphics" are part of the charm of Minecraft. Everything else I agree with though!

[@Dextrostat]

This is especially magnified in people with disorders like Autism/ADHD. Since the interest isn't always there and our systems are based on interest not importance. It's very difficult to do well according to typical standards. The example of pointy students can be an indicator that the person runs based off interest and likely has executive difficulties. Add-on anxiety and school becomes a nightmare. I still have a hatred for academia because I flunked out of CS due to one class, while passing a major foundational exam that determines if you continue in the major, but nope Calc 2 was the real foundation exam lmao.

[@kelvin31272]

I love these, Cary. We're listening and enjoying the ideas!

[@eveleynce]

This is why I decided in middleschool that grades can smd and I'd focus on the actual content of the classes more than the homework and tests. I still don't even know what my graduating GPA was at this point, because I never checked it.

[@idlegameplayer3756]

i hope you know that this is fucking awful advice. this is some "gen z just isn't working hard! back in my day i walked into apple, gave the manager a firm handshake and then he made me the CTO!" type shit. if you don't get good enough grades, you will not make enough money to survive comfortably.

[@sniperpickaxemc]

(the scoring concept where 1 element carries) could be implemented with a kinda major, where part of the grade is determining which major is best for you to pursue, and you get a guaranteed 1 point per project looked into so if you found 100 things you couldnt do then you still pass

[@fredoguan6702]

I agree with you point that schools should emphasize success. My high school implemented an experimental grading scheme for some classes called standards-based grading. Instead of having a set of assignments that were graded, there was a set of standards that students would be graded on. The assignments were opportunities to meet different standards, with each assignment targeting specific standards. If you wanted a higher grade for a particular standard, you could have a later assignment evaluated for that standard. With this system, you start not having demonstrated mastery on any standard and gradually build up you mastery as the course progresses. Your grade for any given standard never decreases over the course of the class; it only increases. The problem with how this system was implemented in a social studies class where the standards hinged on a list of 30 or so very similar verbs that made it hard to understand each standard. I can see this working far better in a stem course, where skills and topics are far more distinct and do not rely on verbs ("The student can assess the context of a primary source and analyze its relevance, perspective, and biases in relation to other sources" vs "The student can work through and solve improper integrals" or "The student and implement and make effective use of a sorted linked list")

[@wasquash]

this is a really interesting and logical take on the education system. very impressed

[@benrex7775]

I don't think that this is accurate. In the places where my grade went down over time is because over time I got lazy and I didn't do my homework properly anymore. And if we look at the whole of my education, each new level got more difficult and towards the end I was at my capacity, which obviously means my grades are lower. When it comes to your graph then there is an entirely different problem. You assume this 8k is capable of supporting you. But usually those are one offs. And usually they don't sell as well as Minecraft did. Instead they are like gambling where you have enough success every now and then that you keep going while you don't make enough to support yourself. At least for the average independent artist.

[@Maker0824]

This probably gets addressed, but the starting argument is so bad I don’t want to watch the rest because it upsets me too much. To make it match lets change the money situation to “You are earning enough income to keep yourself alive, and getting a little bit extra on top of that for 3 weeks, then one week you can’t work at all and earn almost no money. That will be pretty bad, but because your previous weeks were good you will be fine.” I think that matches a C pretty well. You just picked to completely different scenarios, with entirely different scales, and said “look, they are different”. Like obviously they are different.

[@Maker0824]

if I wanted to change the school scenario to match the money one it would be: You are doing really poorly on the tests for the class, but the final test accounts for 99.9000999% of your grade and you ace it, giving you an overall A

[@RecordedSpace0880]

TL;DR: This vid was an unscripted rant, so his example could be better, but mathematically they are similar. Having one be a percentage and the other a dollar amount is confusing, so just imagine $1000 is a 10% grade and look at them both as percent. He wants to lower the usual minimum grade to pass for reasons he elaborates on in the video. I believe the point he's trying to make here is that having an overall 70-79 C in a class being a mediocre or even undersirable result *forces* the student to max out their grades, because even one failure will make their entire performance subpar. This leads to stress, bad learning habits, and generally no actual drive toward the material at hand, only towards a number and a "you pass, congrats." And this model is not representative of all career paths, only risk-averse ones like STEM feilds. In the bottom graph, imagine instead of $8k it's 80% on a grade, and the average performance is thus about 20% ($2k). This would be considered abysmal by typical school standards, but as an alternative grading system, he describes, it'd be an acceptable model of risk-attracted career paths like artistry. It'd also lead to less stress on the students behalf --- they can focus on the grade for one assignment and then care about the course material itself for the rest of the semester, not necessarily the grind. Obviously there's a balance here. The system with an 80% minimum acceptable avg. has real flaws that affect the student's learning ability, but the 20% system clearly has much lower standards and will let just about anyone pass. Maybe we as americans should adopt the systems most of the developed world uses and aim for 50-60% average. Not too stressful, but not effortless either.

[@carbonatedmilk1]

I think the point was that one massive breakthrough can be life-changing even if you weren’t performing great

[@tone618]

If there is no single assignment that can make you succeed there should be no single assignment that fails you.

[@Cas-Se78.97]

One way to encourage reliability would be to have tests or projects with more than 100 points available. That way you can work around single areas of failure while also encouraging you to get at least a few points in a lot of categories.

[@andrebarrett4112]

I dont know if this was the solution you were thinking of, but some classes have you take a certain number of quizzes or assignments and drop the lowest grade. Then, your grade isn't as dependent on failure

[@kavinbala8885]

cry for a C?! tears of joy when i get my degree! 😂

[@myself2noone]

Yeah, that's a good point. I recently read about how science has been having similar issues. We need more risk taking, and we should organize secioty more to be more friendly to risk.

[@j100j]

Without grade inflation this wouldn't be the case. If D-C was average, failing once wouldn't be that bad but getting one A could get you far.

[@economicinfo823]

Humans are more motivated by an aversion to loss, then for a potential of gain. Thus starting high and taking points away is superior for motivating students

[@lolglolblol]

2:20 you know damn well that the last bar is for furry art

[@benjaminchen4367]

Since you mentioned you felt your opinion was in an echo chamber among friends, I'll offer a slightly different perspective. Grading systems prioritize consistency across a wide range of assignments, most of which is arguably busy work, rather than true mastery of the material. Things like showing up to class, not forgetting to do easy homeworks, etc. And like you, I also believe they promote a risk averse mindset. I personally don't like it, but I think there is societal utility in it. Your take is interesting but I think you can go deeper. Rather than it being binary, there is a spectrum from risk aversion to risk neutrality to risk taking. On an individual level, people should optimally be able to shift their mindset anywhere on that spectrum at will to suit the situation. Societally speaking however, its probably beneficial for schools to teach a risk aversion mindset. Being risk averse and consistent is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if someone is going to be an employee at a large company, showing up on time, dependably finishing their work, etc is very valuable. More valuable than an employee that fails 9/10 of their assigned work and never shows up to meetings but occasionally does really well. Not everyone in society can be a risk taking, entrepreneurial, fail fast kind of person or else society would fall apart. You touched on that briefly with examples like doctors, but I would argue that the vast majority of people do jobs where consistency and lack of mistakes is more important than having a single breakout success. A society consisting entirely of spikey stanford admits would probably not be a very long lasting society. You need normal, plain, dependable people for any large group to function well. And unfortunately with the resource constraints of public education, the curriculum will always have to be tailored towards the mean rather than the exceptional. I'll give another example, you say in the real world it's best to try 5 things, have 4 of them fail, and the 5th be a huge success. However, isn't this the same mindset that gamblers follow? And I think we can agree that the expected value of gambling is typically negative, and that gambling is not the way to financial success. So it's clear this mindset is not always strictly better than the consistency mindset grades promote. I think the logical conclusion is that people should treat risk as a sliding scale and adjust their degree of aversion/riskiness to fit the situation, but that's not an easy (or possible) thing for a public school system to teach

[@trwn87]

23:05 Traumatising, it truly is, Cary!

[@Googahgee]

With your restaurant analogy and how it differs from the art/project side of things, I think you were really close to the key difference this video is highlighting - service vs commodity. The service industry relies heavily on consistency/average performance and punishes failures immensely, while with a commodity-focused business or project, innovation and specificity reign supreme. Grades in a class are a measure of mastery/understanding of a broad subject, just like how the average star rating or a restaurant or business is a measure of the quality of service that business provides. Whereas freelance work or design/development rewards having a few great ideas/performances and a bunch of scraps/flops. I dunno. I’m not really an expert on this stuff, it’s just some dots I connected which I thought others would also appreciate. Food for thought, I guess.

[@Alex-mt7vg]

So how would this work in STEM? You get an objective number of questions correct on an exam or assignment, and 100 percent is the highest score you can get

[@Alex-mt7vg]

The reason why school grades don’t reflect reality is because in school, we try to use an objective rubric based grading system to make scoring as “fair” as possible. Reality unfortunately is unfair, and subjective. Reality poses too many different factors, some of which are out of our control. That being said, the original grading system still encourages students to “put something out there,” as if you don’t submit an assignment, you still get a zero. I don’t know if this new system you propose really changes anything, other than making it harder and more subjective to grade students.

[@Alex-mt7vg]

You’re positing that we should all have individualized grades based on our unique strengths. What if the projects all build on each other? Like all the exams are interrelated and affect each other in some way? Isn’t that way we have individual grades for different classes? Like imagine working with an author that has zero verbal skills

[@aaronkriegman]

I made such a big mistake in my college applications. In middle school I built an 8 bit calculator in Minecraft, and I didn't mention it anywhere in my applications 😞

[@tomraineofmagigor3499]

2:23 I work at a factory and the company understands there's bad days. As long as you put the effort in to fix the issue and something didn’t break because you acted in a dangerous/obviously wrong way it's not put against you. Instead if there's multiple days like that the question will be what's wrong: is something damage that needs fixed? Is someone training? Are we not accounting for temp/humidity change? Is there an issue with the process? The worker only gets blamed if other workers are reporting them not paying attention or all those other questions were asked and it wasn't those

[@thestormcrafter]

I never experienced it as grades going only down. But yeah, I could, for example, hold myself at 15.0 points in physics but now with my 14 points class test, my average is at 14.5. Which still rounds to 15, but we will still get one more small note and should that be anything other then 15, my average for the small notes will drop from 15.0 to slightly below that which means it wouldn’t compensate the 14 just enough to keep me at 15. On the other hand, I started maths with 12 points, but I could climb back up to an average of 14 in the small notes, my class test, should it be 15, would bring me back up to 15. Yes, these notes will go into my final scores. I calculated that the difference between 14 or 15 in one semester will be 20/11 out of a total of 900 points I could get during these last to years. (As a side note: You only get 15 in tests when you had basically no mistakes because you need 98,67% which for reasonable amounts of scoring units means no mistakes, but in class tests, you only need 95%, which is much closer to reality. I basically had good look until now.)

[@DerClaudius]

Another thought: There are a lot of reasons that would lead to a bad grade besides lack of knowledge like being nervous or having slept badly that day etc... lots of random things. But if you get an A, there's nothing random about that, everything went right. So this means it's easier for grades to be lower than your ability but not possible to be better than your ability, so they're always trailing behind the truth. One way to compensate for that would be to throw bad outliers away... just omit the worst grade before calculating the average.

[@sooooooooDark]

school isnt even trying to get to ready for the real world/make loads of money its getting u prepared for a docile cuckhold job where u r meant to be risk-averse 😂

[@SioxerNikita]

Most of people are pretty much risk averse in the first place. Not everyone can be Bill Gates, or world altering.

[@objectified2763rebooted]

wait um my country, A was 80-100 and now it's 82-100 edit: IT WAS ONLY MY SCHOOL SRRY- 😭😭😭😭

[@mariomario9209]

In my country A is 90-100 😭

[@TunaBear64]

Here in Chile we dont even use letters Is just 1.0 to 7.0 with 4.0 being sufficient

[@yukko_parra]

here in australia: A's/HD's are between 85-100

[@Wagon_Lord]

Woah, you made scale of the universe? That's one of my favourite things on the web.

[@manuillo94]

so, does this "fractal" art has paws and tails?

[@idlegameplayer3756]

i hope so owo

[@adityakhanna113]

6:30 it makes sense to talk about counting successes when you consider the real world, Because the real world doesn't have assignments. A class is meant to test your particular proficiency. In a fighting game match, you indeed get positive reinforcement by Landing more hits. But if you're practicing a combo your degree of success is measured by your failures

[@mystifoxtech]

Are all of the GttTATiNT variants on flashpoint? If not then you should try to get all of them put in a collection so that they can be played again.

[@Hejustlikemefr-km1mx]

Insane frame brah keep going never give up

[@bahachicken89]

so all it takes is one success (jackpot) to win big?,

[@nak_attak]

Always keep gambling

[@matthewcarter919]

This is a pretty simple mindset issue. Seeing your grade as... anything... at the start is silly. Your grades accumulate; nothing more. There is a route sum and percentage at the start of the class and as you do projects, that sum increases. Every point you gain is permanently gained. Points you have not gained are not guranteed.

[@genericbeansmile756]

I'll also say an annoying part of the grading system is that pretty much all high schools have a grade range from F to A+, but then some colleges/universities (including my own) go from F to A instead, which slightly shifts everything.

[@metraberryy]

this video is about to change my life i think

[@LimeGreenTeknii]

As a piano teacher, this was kind of my mind. Performing music sits in a strange place when it comes to perfectionism vs. moving on and making progress. On one hand, one obviously wrong note can really stick out; hitting 95% of the correct notes can still sound like an awful performance if those 5% are really out of time and out of key. However, because of that, it's very easy to go overboard on perfectionism. It's easy to forget that not all mistakes are equal, especially in the ears of the average listener. Playing 4 obviously wrong notes is not the same as playing notes that weren't in the sheet music but still sounded good anyway, or playing just a little out of time or just a little too loudly or quietly at one part. It's easy to treat those all as errors that prevent you from saying you "completed" or "mastered" the song. However, you do want to nip bad habits in the bud when you can. At the beginning, correcting all the bad habits can feel like a huge hurdle that prevents you from making progress. But if you don't, it really slows you down in the long run. But on top of all of this, it is true that music isn't like food or medicine where being risk-averse is crucial for safety reasons; nobody's ever died from listening to a bad performance. So all the time, I'll have a student who will technically play all the notes in the right order, but their rhythm will be off, and their fingering will be terrible, but they'll ask me, "Did I play it right? Can I go on to the next song?" and I always have to wonder if I really should say yes and not discourage them, or should I say no, let's try to clean this up before we move on.

[@zainkhan7812]

Here in Australia, people learn for the grades, not the knowledge

[@Mr.Haberdash]

7:08 implement ranked weighted scaling. you're top performing exams/projects are weighted more, and your worst performing scores are weighted less. although the easiest and most straightforward implementation would be to drop the lowest score, it wouldn't fix the "Minecraft" example where a student should pass as long as they have a single overwhelming success far exceeding other failing criteria. you could then implement a "golden buzzer" award on each exam/project where the top scoring student gets an automatic pass on the test, but would have consequences where it's likely that a student that performs the best is going to keep being the top scorer, or students will stop caring about the class once they get the award. at the end of the day, are the students learning and using knowledge? and that is measured through completion of tasks and assessments. a struggling student that still manages to turn work in is more competitive than a brilliant student who is unable to complete or even start anything

[@numberhaver7795]

Yeah, the Montessori system doesn't have grades, instead it has the stages of Introduced, Working, and Mastered.

[@waleedkhalid7486]

The issue with education is that the ideal doesn’t work for the majority of people. Most kids, especially in the West, are not education-driven. Any attempt to provide students with a self paced inquiry driven system guided by experts in their respective fields will fail simply because most kids wouldn’t want to learn in the first place. Detractors might argue that ‘we haven’t tried this how do you know?’, but the fact is that most teachers do try this and find, VERY QUICKLY, that it’s the fastest way to students ignoring work and then you having to deal with all the paperwork and hassle of failing them and maybe even being fired because of all the parents saying you didn’t do you job. There are schools designed to function this way, but they are typically for the rich and families who can instill academic independence and accountability in their kids. Essentially, if you can afford it, you can get it. For the masses, this is the form of education that works. We don’t like it. Students don’t like it. No one likes it. But if you want to educate that many people then you have to do it that way.

[@silentobserver3433]

I feel like one of the core reasons why school can't work like life is because school has assignments. For a thing to blow up in real life, you have to make it reeeeally good, compared to what you did before. In school though, no matter how much you study you can't improve after 100%-ing the test. The grades are capped from above while life isn't. Maybe it's different in art-like majors and you actually have an ability to produce extremely good art, it doesn't work in STEM fields: there is no such thing as extremely good code or extremely good physics calculation, there is only "code that works" and "calculation that is correct" and an innumerable amount of ways you can fail at it. Actually, that's kinda how life works too in those fields! You can only get an extreme success if you're trying to be creative and out of the box, but if you're simply working a regular engineering job, you can't get more than your paycheck no matter what you do, but there are tons of ways you can fail and get fired. So, this is simply the difference between creative and task-based workload, and regular school is only suited for the latter.

[@caminatior]

2:20 I was so sure he was gonna say furry art this is so sad

[@carsonman0762]

this reminded me of the one class where I had a 95% going into the last test in a class with 7 tests and I was terrified I wouldn't get an A(90%) even though I got a 95% because I was terrified I would fuck up on this one last test because I couldn't use the drop the lowest test grade policy on this one test. worst part is that that last test wasn't a final either, it was just like every other test, so IDK why that policy didn't work on it either

[@MontyChomu]

man I usually refrain from making comments like this but your insane head to body ratio made me

[@SuperSurreal]

Verryyy interesting thoughts on this, thank you for making and posting this!

[@durandus676]

Yeah I did 130 manufacturing instructions with integration of quality control and router, in a year, if I was charging per instruction I would have gotten paid like 180-260K range. My salary was 60K. This same concept applies to freelance vs salaried for technical projects. If I charged for style reworks I would probably have doubled that like 500K, as every time some senior manager barely attached to the project came to a meeting they wanted a total style change when it only matters what the senior assemblers want and the client.