Credentials, Bad?!
Paul Graham has written an interesting piece on academic credentials and their value in predicting a person’s performance, vs. her actual performance. He touches on many interesting points, some very familiar for me and us; some less familiar and more intriguing. It’s a must read for almost anyone and anywhere!
Paul Graham is an old-time hacker, now turned venture-capitalist. Most of his writing, including this one, is about the life of startups and the markets in which they thrive. But if you think of it from the education perspective, you (or even I) may reach interesting solutions to the “credentials madness” that is the trend here and now.
As a failed outcome of a deeply and typically flawed education system myself, I may not be the best person to criticize it. Although the flaws in our education system is well-known to me and others, so much so that some may argue that we have stopped trying to find real problems and have confined our views to clichés, I haven’t given much thought to the practical solutions. If nothing else, that would be an interesting thought experiment.
Very good … very good… yes something should be done to the education system… it is just more killing potential for growth than helping it.
While adding the referenced writing to the ever growing list of open tabs on my Firefox for reading in (presumably) near future, I had something to say about those “clichés”. It is not just because we don’t like to tackle new problems. It is because we are ignorant of them. We think they are solved or not important, until we fall into them.
Take for instance the problem I’m dealing with at the moment. It’s about the new room mates I’ve got. They sneaked into my place when I was gone to Vancouver and ate all my cereals. I was pissed off and decided to kill them all, for real. Don’t worry, they are mice. To make a long story short, I thought the “problem” is already solved. I got a few mouse traps (those nasty wooden ones), and put some cheese on them as the bait. Now just as I thought the problem was a cliché, my solution was also a cliché. In fact mice don’t like cheese. They like peanut butter and chocolate.
So, little by little I started reading more about methods to catch mice and I could kill 3 on my endeavor so far. But again yesterday the cliché came back to my stupid mind and I thought I could kill them all in one shot with pesticides without any trouble. Now you see the problem was much more complicated. I leave in a small apartment and my neighbors have little kids. Now tomorrow morning the dead mice might show up all over the place (hopefully not) and these kids might actually touch them. The pesticide I’m using is very toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. So tomorrow morning I’m going to knock on all the neighbors’ doors and tell them what I’ve done. Now you guess how (stupid) I feel about that and how urgent the matter is.
The moral of the story is that, problems are not those clichés you see in the movies and cartoons. The real problem is what happens in your (I mean my) own miserable life. And you got to deal with it.
By the way, maybe it’s better to change the date and time back to English, as you mostly write in English.
Exactly. How much of what we know is a direct result of actual education versus an indirect result of being in the environment of a university, or from straight self-education? In my case, I’d say it’s like 10%-50%-40%.
Maybe the goal of an education system should be putting people in an environment of learning and discovery and “Aha!” moments, instead of trying to cram long lists of stuff in the heads.
Amir H., I have enjoyed reading your thoughts on education in your blog, and obviously your experience is much more than me in this area. But a mix of my concern about this subject and the fact that I can’t leave comments on your blog (Google’s SSL servers don’t like me!) and Graham’s essay got me wondering and writing!
@MatGil:
I did (change the date and time back!) That was just the ghost in the machine, acting up again!