{"id":2462,"date":"2017-06-26T01:47:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T06:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2017-06-11T07:01:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T12:01:48","slug":"best-schools-less-ruin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2017\/06\/best-schools-less-ruin\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Schools, Less Ruin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>The best schools: do they teach any better or simply ruin fewer students?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ah, here is yet another<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/best-computer-science-schools-in-the-world-2017-2017-5\/\"> list of the best schools<\/a> (this one is about computer science). I didn&#8217;t attend any of these as I could not afford it. Rich kids go to these schools. Their rich parents&#8217; extraordinary tuition checks pay for scholarships for the poorer and smarter others who attend.<\/p>\n<p>Do these better schools teach any better? I doubt it. Math is math. History is history. Java and those other programming languages&#8230;well, you can learn them in a free online course.<\/p>\n<p>How is it that the graduates of these &#8220;better schools&#8221; do better than the graduates of those lesser schools (like the ones I attended)?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here is a thought:<\/strong> the students at the better schools know more when they arrive. The students either went to expensive private schools all their lives or they were poor but actually talented.<\/p>\n<p>The better schools start with brighter students. Still, there are bright students attending the lesser schools. What happens?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here is another thought:<\/strong> the better schools don&#8217;t ruin as many bright students as the lesser schools.<\/p>\n<p>Consultant and author <a href=\"http:\/\/geraldmweinberg.com\/Site\/Home.html\">Jerry Weinberg<\/a> has this saying (apologies as I can&#8217;t remember it exactly, so here is a bad paraphrase) regarding his goal as a teacher:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the students leave class not being less interested in the topic as when they arrived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Paraphrase of the paraphrase:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>he doesn&#8217;t ruin the student.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Here is a tip for the lesser schools:<\/strong> learn how you ruin students and stop doing those things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips The best schools: do they teach any better or simply ruin fewer students? Ah, here is yet another list of the best schools (this one is about computer science). I didn&#8217;t attend any of these as I could not afford it. Rich kids go to these schools. Their rich parents&#8217; extraordinary tuition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,20],"tags":[207,142],"class_list":["post-2462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-learning","tag-education","tag-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2463,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}