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Huge Study Finds Professors' Attitudes Affect Students' Grades (arstechnica.com)

A huge study at Indiana University, led by Elizabeth Canning, finds that the attitudes of instructors affect the grades their students earned in classes. The researchers conducted their study by sending out a simple survey to all the instructors of STEM courses at Indiana University, asking whether professors felt that a student's intelligence is fixed and unchanging or whether they thought it could be developed. Then, the researchers were given access to two years' worth of students' grades in those instructors' classes, covering a total of 15,000 students. Ars Technica reports: The results showed a surprising difference between the professors who agreed that intelligence is fixed and those who disagreed (referred to as "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset" professors). In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by "growth mindset" instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points. No other factor the researchers analyzed showed a statistically significant difference among classes -- not the instructors' experience, tenure status, gender, specific department, or even ethnicity. Yet their belief about whether a students' intelligence is fixed seems to have had a sizable effect.

The students' course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development." Students were less likely to say they'd recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required -- the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that -- in any number of small ways -- instructors who think their students' intelligence is fixed don't keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don't focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.

136 comments

  1. *Grabs popcorn* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    munch munch

  2. Bull by TheMeuge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Prove to me that is not because one set of professors actually gives fair grades, while the other artificially inflated them...
    This study is why people now think social sciences are bullshit. It made horrible racist assumptions at the outset, and then denied the basic truth that some people are smarter than others, regardless of whether they are back, white, green, or polka dot.

    1. Re:Bull by gtall · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've taught logic in graduate school. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is determine that smartness is baked in. The best thing you can do is assume every student is a budding Einstein if you could just help them along a bit to discover how to learn. By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.

      Jeezus, I hope you never get near students.

    2. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This comment makes no sense, so logic tells me you were a bad logic teacher.

    3. Re: Bull by TheMeuge · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well since you seen to have conflated the idea that believing people are different is the same thing as assuming anything about your students individually, you're pretty bad at logic. Also you're an arrogant prick.

    4. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In graduate school, you did not have undergrads. So most of the low IQ demographics is already out.

      That's what graduate schools are for: when diversity is out, you can finally teach those few who can be taught.

    5. Re: Bull by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the social sciences, by graduate school most of the high IQ demo is already out.

      Think about who likes to live in echo chambers? It isn't the smart ones.

      Shouldn't they have learned logic before grad school? Sounds like * studies to me.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    6. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Did I miss it in TFA? Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly? Study seems incomplete otherwise.

    7. Re:Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Prove to me that is not because one set of professors actually gives fair grades, while the other artificially inflated them....

      Exactly that! If you look at the graph comparing grades, you will see that the "fixed mindsets" generally gave lower grades. This could be interpreted as being more demanding or rigorous and not inflating the grades. With more rigorous testing you will get a bigger difference between higher and lower performing students, because the grades will be spread over larger interval (reflected by the larger error margins in their data).

      If the authors of the article want me to believe them, I want to see the grades that the students taught by the "open mindset" professors will get when they are tested by the "fixed mindset" professors. Also, subject all students to a test that is implemented by a third party and see if the "open" vs "fixed" differences remain the same. Not too hard experiments to do, are they? I have a very "fixed mindset" when it comes to experimental proof vs. wishful thinking.

      PS. The authors have not controlled for family income, which is known to correlate with learning performance: richer kids go to better schools and are more prepared when they get to the university.

    8. Re:Bull by fazig · · Score: 2

      Einstein was pretty good at math and natural sciences in school. The whole failing math thing is based on a translation error as far as I know.

      I can't speak for graduate school. When I graduated this wasn't a thing here in Germany.
      Today I work mostly with 2nd or higher up (of 7) semester undergrads. From my experience I can say that smart people come in all shapes. Here I mean either motivated people or those who are quick to grasp concepts and can solve their problems without a lot of assistance afterwards. Nurture can work pretty well here.
      Up until the 3rd semester I can say that not-so-smart also comes in all shapes. Sometimes it's laziness. Sometimes people aren't really interested. Sometimes they may have problems grasping the material that our courses build on and still try to do it. Maybe sometimes it's because I suck. I can't answer every question they may have on the spot.

      I can only assume that most of your grad students already passed what is supposed to be that "great filter" in academia. Which increases the likelihood that dumber, lazy, and uninterested people were removed already. Keep that in mind when you use your students as your sample group.

    9. Re:Bull by tomhath · · Score: 0

      By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.

      When Einstein finished his PhD in Theoretical Physics he was considered one of the top physicists in the world.

    10. Re: Bull by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?

      They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.

    11. Re:Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He wasn't even much of a physicist.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      "De Pretto used the expression mv^2 for the "vis viva" and the energy store within matter, where he identified v with the speed of light. His formula precedes by two years, and is in agreement with Albert Einstein's later formula E=mc^2 for mass–energy equivalence, which was derived by Einstein as a consequence of special relativity. "

    12. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the smartest people love to hear themselves talk. Haven't you been listening to them?

    13. Re:Bull by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      Einstein derived E=MC^2. That's a neater trick than measuring it.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    14. Re: Bull by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?

      They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.

      The importance of teachers and parents on student achievement, independent of a student's supposed intrinsic intelligence, is confirmed by a whole generation of education research. Education researchers are not common on Slashdot, but my wife was one, after being a math teacher and has a PhD in mathematics education. One trick she pulled while doing research in a central Oregon reservation was to stand in for a pregnant teacher for a term (she was there and still had her teaching license, so why not?). The class which for all time had hit a 100% failure fate (to pass standardized exams), magically attained a 100% pass rate for that term and fell back to a 100% fail rate after she left.

      Pedagogy research has been done. The results tell how teaching should happen. If you know the research and apply the conclusions, students will succeed. A problem is that this is consistently not done in most schools. Schools still get bogged down in stupid stuff like ability tracking and age delineation. They clearly are broadly ignorant of the results of education research.

       

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    15. Re:Bull by epine · · Score: 5, Informative

      By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.

      I know someone very smart, who is currently doing graduate work in logic, who actually bothered to go to a library (perhaps it was Princeton) to take a boo through some of Einstein's original manuscripts.

      Somewhere in there, he found something like nine pages of notes over the course of which Einstein essentially taught himself four-dimensional differential geometry. He said it was an extremely efficient self-course, setting a pace he couldn't imagine himself.

      Not long ago I audited about five hours of Susskind's introduction to GR. (About 200 hours of Susskind's lectures are available on YouTube.)

      Adding the Lorentz transform was pretty straightforward, but then when you add accelerating frames of reference, you're left with a deep problem, which actually stumped Einstein for some while.

      Eventually, he wrote down the Einstein metric:
              G mu nu = R mu nu - 1/2 R g mu nu
      and the rest was history.

      Susskind commented that this was quite a bit worse that QED, because gravitation self-interacts far more than EM (I think his analogy was to imagine photons that also carry charge).

      Neither of these anecdotes in any way supports the idea of Einstein as a weak mathematician, though clearly his intuition in writing down the right problem greatly exceeded his formal abilities.

      My friend concluded that what Einstein really when he commented something to the effect of "if you think you have problems, they're nothing compared to mine" was relative to the task at hand: inventing a whole new metric tensor.

      Furthermore, Einstein probably was Einstein in school, it's just that no teacher ever set a test in writing down the right problems (rather than the right answers). Having such a gift at writing down the right problem, one can imagine why he didn't exert himself in the competition to write down answers to the tired problems of yesterday.

      This can be viewed through the economic lens of comparative advantage at an individual scale. You might just be the best person alive on the planet at writing down the right problem (this is not easy). Should you invest your marginal effort in developing that capacity, or in polishing apple's for your teacher, using a skillset where you are definitively ordinary (formalism) as compared to Poincare or Riemann? Where being merely Poincare or Riemann would be a definite step down, as compared to your one true gift.

    16. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone who has also specialized in collegiate-level formal logic, I agree.

    17. Re:Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Einstein was no Einstein in school

      This claim started because Einstein moved between countries as a child (Switzerland/Germany, I think). The school systems had different grading systems. Both used numbers 1-5 to grade a student, but in opposite directions, so that 5 was the highest score in one country, while in the other 1 was the highest.

      It led to confusion.

    18. Re:Bull by quenda · · Score: 1

      I've taught logic in graduate school. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is determine that smartness is baked in.

      Sure you are not confusing "smartness" with achievement? The bad thing is to let the smart kids slack off and rely on their innate ability. Teachers should praise effort, but acknowledge intelligence.

      Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.

      Bollocks! That is a complete urban legend. Einstein was brilliant at maths in school, though probably not the equal of his friend Marcel Grossmann, who helped with the maths for GR.

      Jeezus, I hope you never get near students.

      Its sad that you got near students if you were unable to recognise talent.

    19. Re:Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the dude got perfect grades for mathematics, physics, history, and geometry. He didn't seem to like French, though. :-)

    20. Re:Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When I taught both UG and Grads, I told my students that as and when their grade improves, all old grades will be thrown out. That is if in the second exam they a B then first exam C will be thrown out. Thus his grade will be "B" in both exam. I reasoned that once you progress in learning you should not be penalized for your past mistakes. A child falls many times and then walks. Can we punish the child.? The second improvement I made was to recognize that students are afraid of exams because of the unknown. So, I told them they will get 10 points for the Q/A assignment - prepare 15 questions and answers of the type “Why, What and How” in bullet form and if two students have identical Q/A they both get zero. With 30 students x 15 questions I had collected from them - they can share, I will ask about 85% of questions in multiple choice etc. After removing duplicate I ended up with about 200 questions, some unique ones. The fear of exam was gone and since they still have to know all the Q/A, they were well prepared. I asked about the application of the concepts with a given scenario and I decided “A” on that extra point added to their total. I received the best teacher award several times. My students are still in touch with me. My colleagues who laughed at my experiments now follow them. Our system including criminal system does not want to forgive the earlier mistakes. In learning, when you move to 2nd grade, the 1st grade material looks simple. Towards the end of each course the first half becomes clear. My approach is a win-win proposition. The questions banks were made available in the next semester so that coping and redoing was avoided. Foreign students, especially Chinese students showed me all the past exams and answers for all the courses that they memorize. So, what is the harm?.Since most instructors just repeat what is in the book, rather than explaining “why” for each chapter and fail to tell the students that there are about 12 to 15 chapters in the book each answering one major question and each subsequent chapter is the continuation of the previous chapters.. they don't build the bridge!.

    21. Re: Bull by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.

      Well, I'm just going to assume you are a budding Einstein. Maybe it will allow you to discover how to learn so that you don't parrot that old rubbish the next time the way you just did!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    22. Re: Bull by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Presumably American universities have systems in place to make sure that grading is fair and consistent between courses.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    23. Re: Bull by LostMyAccount · · Score: 1

      Pedagogy research has been done. The results tell how teaching should happen. If you know the research and apply the conclusions, students will succeed.

      I'm inclined to believe this is true, that by now the research has been done and it's fairly well understood how to teach.

      My question is, if this is the case, why does it seem like there's still such a wide variety of teaching? Why so many charter schools, differing "systems", etc? Shouldn't research-based teaching methods actually just eliminate the so-called achievement gap, with the remaining poor learners actually a product of poor parenting/poverty?

      I feel like how to teach ought to be a fairly solved problem, and that the methods best backed by research should be fairly well taught in teacher education programs. But it seems like on the ground, there's constant churn of new trends/methods/philosophies. It's like if research identified how to cure a disease, but instead of standardizing on that therapy, people kept insisting that it didn't work and that some other newfangled method that contradicted existing research was better.

    24. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You specialized in formal logic?.... But why? For most people thatâ(TM)s just a piece of the puzzle. What stop somewhere abstract and bizarre?

    25. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who told you that?
      Or, You must be considering TEDx talkers smart?

    26. Re: Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's false. I mean, paedagogy was researched in Renaissance times, and that's that. Jesuits know how to teach, Oxford tutoring system teaches well.

      And , the next fact is that you simply cannot teach the masses well. There cannot be enough resources. You can train and school them like in the industrial times, think Prussian school. You can detain and entertain them like now in US.

      After that comes the modern paedagogicak science and starts selling various snake oils, like teaching and learning styles, nurture, etc.. which is false.

    27. Re: Bull by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >After that comes the modern paedagogicak science and starts selling various snake oils, like teaching and learning styles, nurture, etc.. which is false.

      Nope. A lot of the recent science was fine and the bad stuff is easily identified. There are good and bad ways to teach and we know better what they are than we did in renaissance times. It is known how to teach people across the social spectrum. I described a situation where my wife succeeded with the supposedly most 'unteachable' demographic. What didn't happen is any of it getting deployed in a consistent fashion by states, school districts or even schools.

      It's simple stuff too. Kids learn from each other more than from the teacher. If the teacher facilitates that learning and teaches enough to maximize the learning rate between kids, maximum learning is done.

      If children are stratified into age groups and ability group, the inter-child learning is minimized.

      If the teacher loses control of the class, or controls so tightly that all they do is interact with the teacher, then it'll be the same old distribution of the lucky ones with the opportunities outside school doing the best and everyone else struggling.

      If procedure is taught over understanding, then students hit a brick wall at college.

      Yet we see the uninformed confusing the confirmation-bias of selected 'better' children doing better for better teaching. It isn't. They just have easy kids to teach.

      We see schools continuing to ability group - under pressure from parents who want to carve out an isolated 'better' group for their special snowflakes to be in. In fact that was a central result from my wife's research - that placement of children in ability streams was almost always determined by other things than the child's intrinsic abilities - a teacher or parent pushing that child and pushing the school to place them highly. Here's an explanatory paper derived from the same research. http://groundedtheoryreview.co... . I know the statistics in the thesis are sound because I checked it and I wrote the R code.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  3. Well there you go right there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development."

  4. Re:Gap reduced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Conservatives won't even lift the floor. They just blame the student for poor performance.

  5. common knowledge by SirAstral · · Score: 1, Insightful

    none of this is news, in fact it's well known. The entire reason for institutionalized learning is to make sure people are indoctrinated into a certain world view and this is not a slant at any particular political group. That is how everyone does it.

    One of my absolute favorite proofs of this is Seminary. Every time I meet a preacher than talks about attending seminary I ask them. Why did you attend? Then I ask them, if they would have paid any attention to any of the actual Prophets of the Bible... because God would have absolutely without question chose a Prophet that would never have attended seminary and there is a very good reason for that.

    God chooses His Prophets and declares whom or what is wise, not other men passing around little pieces of paper.

    1. Re:common knowledge by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      You are nuts. Do you think people go to seminary in the hope that they become prophets?

    2. Re:common knowledge by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      He believes in prophets. He is _clearly_ nuts.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:common knowledge by gtall · · Score: 1

      Really? What evidence do you have a G-d choosing anything? Don't hold back, lay it on us.

    4. Re:common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you can accept that God exists in the first place, then the evidence is straightforward: The world exists, therefore God chose to create it.

      Asking for evidence that God exists when the scope of physical reality does not contain sufficient information to encompass the full idea of God is like expecting a picture of a 3-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional piece of paper to literally have a third dimension.

    5. Re:common knowledge by SirAstral · · Score: 0

      I can't speak for all Gods, but if you read any religions there is in the vast majority of cases a prophet or an Avatar of of their choosing.

      Your problem is that you think I need to prove something like this, when the problem is entirely something different.

      Is a person a police officer or lawyer because they graduated college? No they are not... they must first be granted those positions by someone in Actual Authority, the same would be for any god you can think of.... or are you operating under the idea that a god would just approve of anyone claiming to be theirs? There is a mechanism and authority in place that makes people legally lawyers and cops, but there is not one in place for religions other than "people claiming" they are in such a position, without the proof of the being they claim to follow.

    6. Re:common knowledge by SirAstral · · Score: 1

      "Do you think people go to seminary in the hope that they become prophets?"

      There is never any end to straw man arguments you guys have.

      What I believe is not even the point, it is what the person attending seminary believes. I bet some think they might become prophets by attending, but what does that have to do with me?

      I am just using Seminary as an example of nothing more than other people giving other people papers that they somehow are in the know about God or Religion. The entire purpose of institutionalizing this process is for gate-keeping who is or is not considered to be a prophet for any God or Religion.

    7. Re:common knowledge by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      In Christian theology, Prophets are regular humans who are assigned some divine task by God. They are not given any sort of special access to wisdom by this act, though they sometimes receive assistance via miracles.

      It is not even clear that it is any sort of reward. It is clear that they're not selected based on religious learning. It seems to be more that God decides on having a Prophet for some task, and assigns whoever is walking past.

      But good luck even finding a preacher who would put the words of Jesus as quoted in their bible above the words of other preachers that they've listened to! It seems Christians only fall into two camps; those that have no idea what the teachings are, and those that know but do something else anyways. Heck, I even saw this guy on the internet who thinks God declares whom or what is wise, because internet guy speaks for him! LOL Christians don't even differentiate between God's prerogatives and their own, but they claim he's a really big, powerful God.

      There is lots of stuff in the bible about prophets, and what their backgrounds were. But there is nothing at all in there for or against little pieces of paper. If you're not a Christian, it is obvious that according to Christian metaphysics "nobody knows." And if you are a Christian, you know you're gonna go to Hell if you lie and say you have that answer. But you're unlikely to meet any Christians.

    8. Re:common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gobbledygook for "I can't prove a thing." or in the mode of used car salesman "Trust me."

    9. Re:common knowledge by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      It isn't just a piece of paper. The idea is that there is some minimum standard required to achieve in order to become a engineer/priest/whatever. There is nothing wrong with gate-keeping.

    10. Re:common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God chooses His Prophets and declares whom or what is wise, not other men passing around little pieces of paper.

      "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

      This question is older than Christianity. Pop open Plato's Euthyphro for the answer.

    11. Re: common knowledge by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      If you can accept that God exists in the first place, then the evidence is straightforward: The world exists, therefore God chose to create it.

      ...or someone created it for him. Lack of imagination, perhaps?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    12. Re: common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The issue with qualifications for priesthood in Christianity is that all Christian churches that I know of have qualification criteria that would exclude Jesus and most of the apostles and prophets.

      So the founders of the religion and writers of the "Holy Book" would be considered unqualified to give a Sunday sermon.

      I don't have to believe in real apostles or prophets to understand the absurdity of this.

    13. Re:common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are nuts. Do you think people go to seminary in the hope that they become prophets?

      1. Attend seminary
      2. ???
      3. A miracle occurs.
      4. Prophet!

    14. Re:common knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not quite... with a used-car salesman, the salesperson has a personally vested interest in encouraging you to believe them. It is inconsequential to me whether you trust me or not, however.

      But yes, I cannot prove it... not because it isn't true, but because the universe doesn't have sufficient information in it for such a proof to exist inside of it.

  6. Yeah there is nothing more motivating by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    than taking a required class with 500 of your closest friends and than trying to talk to one of the two TAs who are apparently failing English as a second or third language.

    1. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      taking a required class with 500 of your closest friends and than trying to talk to one of the two TAs who are apparently failing English as a second or third language.

      Bah, you think that's bad? When I went to college the first time (at 17) my Algebra instructor himself had an impenetrable Chinese accent, at least to me and several others in the class who would all look at one another in puzzlement when he dropped a particularly mush-mouthed gem. I couldn't understand a goddamn thing he was saying, and eventually had to drop out. I'm still crap at math.

      Another person I know took [teaching] "Engrish as second ranguage" with "Doctor Kah" who would say "Ok, this be on test, this very importan" and then would ramble through several sentences of apparent gibberish.

      If I were going to teach in another country, I'd expect to have to be comprehensible in their language. Why don't people have to do that here? I don't give half of one shit where someone comes from, what their genetic background is, what gender they are, or what color their skin is, I just want to get the information I need to succeed.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by Ichijo · · Score: 2

      I had a similar experience. I took Calculus 2 at the local community college from a native speaker. But he wouldn't assign homework, instead he expected us to study on our own and come to him with any questions. I don't work well without structure, so eventually I had to drop out.

      I took the same class again, with the same result.

      Then I took the class at the University. The teacher was an old Chinese man with a thick accent. But he assigned homework every day and took the time to explain things until we all learned the material really well. I earned an A in that class.

      So I had a similar experience as you, except it was the complete opposite.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    3. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Makes me wonder how these people were hired. Like the The Dictator the woman running the store has the guy with no concept of money running the cash register. Of course this being a liberal institution you can't call him out or you'll be the racist asshole.

    4. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I were going to teach in another country, I'd expect to have to be comprehensible in their language.

      You obviously had not known many English speaking teachers in other countries.

      English speaking expats (including teachers and professors) are most notorious for never ever learning the local language even after working in another country for one or two decades.

    5. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by LostMyAccount · · Score: 1

      This was a problem for me at a major midwestern University in the mid-80s. I had a calculus TA who literally never spoke any intelligible English and generally communicated with grunts, pointing and occasionally a word or two written on the blackboard (either "QUIZ" or "QUESTION"). I actually tried asking questions once and he just did did some sample problem solving in front of me with no actual explanation in any spoken language. We had a professor who was a perfect English speaker the other 3 days a week, so I got some exposure to learning but the 2 days of TA time were a total joke and I barely managed a C in Calc II.

      Surprisingly, it was a controversial subject to require English language skills of TAs even back then. I don't remember it being as manically ideological around race or culture in terms of the controversy, but there was always some inexplicable pushback from the University on this.

      In retrosepct, I think the reason was that the math department had a total labor shortage of grad students for the number of needed TA positions. The IT division (which housed all the math/science/engineering departments) saw all these foreign students as a cash cow, since they paid full tuition. More English speaking TAs would have screwed up their finances and for-profit grad student recruitment.

      Plus I've kind of always felt like most math teachers I've encountered have a binary view of mathematics -- there are two kinds of people, those with math skills and those without. Those with will "get" math with minimal instruction, those without are a lost cause. And I think this mindset was held by most other professors in science and engineering, who then used math as a bullshit filter for their programs, with the idea that if you're not a math whiz, you don't belong in any technology/engineering field. Maybe there's something to this, but the growth in the computer technology field and how little advanced math is required in a lot of practical applications would indicate that it's not that true.

    6. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by blindseer · · Score: 1

      As a senior in college I lived in an apartment off campus with a graduate roommate. He told me of how he applied for a job at the university and part of the application was an English aptitude test. I guess the school got tired of complaints on teaching assistants being unable to speak proper English and tested everyone that applied. He said he scored a bit lower than average because of his dyslexia but still got a job as a teaching assistant. He was from Michigan and the majority of the students would also have been from Midwest USA. The school wanted someone that could speak English to the students.

      The people that scored higher on the English test, but had thick accents, would be doing research instead of teach. In a lab they would have to interact with other international students and the tenured professors that had to grade their work. I was pleased that the school understood the need to have native speakers teach rather than simply take the highest scoring people on a written test to teach classes.

      I guess there's a couple another possibilities. One being the "stupid" kid in class was stuck teaching the undergrads while the "smart" ones (with the higher English scores) got to do the more interesting (and profitable for the school) graduate research. He did get accepted into graduate school, in an electrical engineering program, at a well known state university, so he can't be all that "stupid".

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    7. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by bungo · · Score: 1

      instead he expected us to study on our own and come to him with any questions

      I completed an entire BSc math degree where almost every course was like that. The first year courses had some home work which would count for the final mark, but almost every course after that we were left alone and you didn't need to talk to anyone ever, and had to face a 3 hour final exam. If you were having trouble, there were student course forums, or you could ask your tutor.

      As everyone was an adult, you were expected to study as an adult and you were not spoon fed. I take it that is not the case in US universities? I get the impression, with the general education that you need to take in the early years, that US university starts off more like the end of high school. My math degree had 2 (or maybe 3) optional subject, for one of them I took a math class, the other was French. If there was a 3rd optional subject, then I took another math class.

      --
      "The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
    8. Re:Yeah there is nothing more motivating by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You obviously had not known many English speaking teachers in other countries.

      True.

      English speaking expats (including teachers and professors) are most notorious for never ever learning the local language even after working in another country for one or two decades.

      Well, that's sad, but I'm talking about being understandable. I'd not only want to learn the local language, but also use my best TV news accent (i.e. deaccented) when speaking English so as to be as understandable as possible, and also to teach students to be as understandable as possible. Anything else is irresponsible.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Re: Gap reduced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wish sometimes how grades were handed out was clearer

  8. Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nobody has to prove shit to you. Convincing dumbasses isn't the point of studying something. You're a moron making wild assumptions from the outset and then crying about exactly that. Your complaints have nothing to do with the study.

    1. Re:Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Convincing others is almost entirely the point of this sort of study. It does fuck all good if the authors of the study keep it to themselves.

      The person you are replying to is correct. It could go one of two ways.
      1: Fixed mindset are giving representative grades while the growth mindset are overgrading.
      or
      2: Fixed mindset are undergrading while the growth mindset are giving representative grades.

      Feel free to apologise for being a shit cunt.

    2. Re:Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're also a moron, sorry. Nobody cares if you're convinced or not. They convinced the educated in-field people who were in a position to read it, full stop - ACTUALLY READ IT unlike moron themeuge or yourself.

      1. You're stupid and don't have either an educational background nor a scientific one,
      and
      2. Your opine doesn't matter, deplorable nothing-faggot.

      Kill yourself or don't, that's the only actual say you have left. Find a coal mine asap to bury yourself in, great thinking.

    3. Re: Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3. Believing in your students makes them learn better.

    4. Re: Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4. teachers who believe their students can improve actually work harder/teach better compared to ones who think whats the point, these kids wont get better
      (would be my guess)

    5. Re:Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a fail troll post filled 100% with emotional contents.

    6. Re:Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You're also a moron, sorry."
      You're entitled to your deluded opinion.

      You wrote "Convincing dumbasses isn't the point of studying something"
      I wrote "convincing others" is the point of a study.
      You then wrote "They convinced the educated in-field people who were in a position to read it" (which is "convincing others", or are "educated in-field people" not a subset of "others" somehow?).

      So lets see, who is in a position to read it?
      Anyone with internet access because they published this as an open access paper.
      http://advances.sciencemag.org...

      And who did they convince? You don't know yet you're suggesting it is "the educated in-field people who were in a position to read it".
      I suggest that the paper is much more widely read than that (you know it is - otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion), and I don't know who they convinced or not.

      You don't know, nor can you infer my or anyone else's intelligence through the meager, fleeting interactions on /.. Lol. Keep trying though. I'm sure it's an ego boost for you.

      That said:
      1. I have whatever say left I choose to have. Try and stop me.
      and
      2. You're homophobic.

      Funnily enough I am gay. I'll be here waiting for you with arms wide open my dear homophobic bigot. You obviously need a hug.

      "Kill yourself or don't, that's the only actual say you have left."
      If you believe this (I don't), then you've greatly decreased your options in replying to me. I.e. you can't say shit without being a hypocrite.

      Good luck, I'm waiting for your hypocritical homophobic reply with bated breath.

    7. Re: Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It may. I don't have the data to prove it - do you?

      It doesn't really follow on as number 3 since it isn't part of the logical options.

    8. Re: Anti science troll whines, news at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Possibly. I don't have the data to prove it - do you?

      It doesn't really follow on as number 4 since it isn't part of the logical options.

  9. God chose me as His prophet... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: APK Hosts File Engine 1.0++ 64-bit for MacOS h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r M a c O S . z i p

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing you hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition loaded w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation!

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 MacOS!

    (Better vs. Windows model in speed/efficiency)

    APK

    P.S.=> Protects against ALL known & unknown vulnerabilities. Now supports port filters in hosts. My work is world-class & China copied it because they can't do better. I am God's gift to Slashdot... apk

  10. Re: Not all are created equal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem with your example of the fry cook is that you're assuming that's all they can do because they're not smart. Sometimes really smart people need to take those jobs too because they need to survive until they can do something better.

    Other people confuse the anecdote of the person who was already smart but in bad circumstances and "got out" with the myth that anyone could do that, and they blame the fact that not everyone does on a conspiracy to keep people down.

    I'd like to see the results of the same study done in other countries. This does seem like bullshit.

  11. Interesting to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I am a college instructor, and can understand the concern here. I will admit to being surprised by the quiet student who does not seem to get the material and then nails the exam.

    1. Re:Interesting to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was me in calculus. To conserve effort I never did the homework, instead I paid attention in class as the professor went over the previous day's homework. Also I was good at cramming and taking tests.

    2. Re: Interesting to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instructors are usually morons, they simply cannot tell a good student from a bad one. And for undergrads thee is usually simply too many of them to distinguish.

  12. Hidden Accidental Truth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by "growth mindset" instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points.

    So whichever type the instructor was, Latino, African-American, and Native American students average grades were lower than white and Asian-American students... Fetches popcorn.

  13. Who to hire? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    When looking over people who have "graduated" and what level of actual education was offered?
    Want a person who can code?
    Who was able to learn to code?
    Who entered college with the skills to study and who has the ability to study?
    Could pass real exams under exam conditions and show they had real academic ability over years of education?
    Who will enter the workforce ready with new skills and the ability to learn new skills?
    With a real degree and the ability to code as their professional qualifications show.
    Who can be given a new task and do the task given without constant support and help?

    vs

    A student who entered on non academic considerations?
    Who did not have the ability to study.
    Who only just passed their "exams" and who needed further consideration over years of study?
    What do they bring to your brand? The full wage of an average person with few academic skills?
    Cant code? Cant do math? Cant study? Wont study? Wants a huge wage due to their given "education"?
    A very average person who will need the full support of your skilled workers everyday?
    Skilled workers who get taken away from profit making work to further fully support new average workers?

    Education, merit and a professional education was to allow a brand to elect form the best workers.
    Not have to wonder if a new person is below average and will need constant supervisions and support at "work".

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:Who to hire? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut the fuck up, Ivan.

  14. Online education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What can explain the fact that people study by themselves, regardless of motivations? What about self-education? Am I missing something?

    1. Re:Online education by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      None of these types of professors believe that anyone can learn anything without their personal assistance.

    2. Re: Online education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation needed. Professors virtually never think that. In fact you'd likely fail those classes if it were true.

      Professors and teachers are the to limit and focus the leaning on whatever the accrediting body expects to be learned.

      Nobody over with education thinks that students can't learn in their own, it's just far less efficient to do so.

    3. Re: Online education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Professors virtually never think that.

      Oh horse shit they don't. When I told one the largish list of OSs and languages I was familiar with, his response was "Where did you study all that?"

      And no, it is not less efficient to do so. You're just projecting.

  15. Re: Not all are created equal by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    AC the fry cook still has to show they are smart and can pass the needed exams to show they can study at a degree and college level.
    Thats why the USA did all that decades of academic and IQ testing.
    To ensure every fry cook with academic ability could get a full academic scholarship on merit.
    Lots of great smart people did part time and night work to pay for college.
    They showed they could study and kept on doing great when at college.
    Their professional US qualifications reflected real academic ability for decades.

    Now that will be replaced with attendance and a list of non academic consideration?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  16. Not exactly by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Informative

    the original purpose of institutionalized learning was to prepare farm workers to work in factories. They kept walking off the assembly lines because they couldn't understand the concept of a job that was never done. Plow the fields and plant the crops? Done. Build a widget? Build the next one. This is why we have bells in schools, btw. They're to condition you for factory bells.

    Over time education like I described above (intended for the working class) was mixed with principles of an entirely different branch of education: what the ruling class gets. This is where "well rounded" educations came from. The idea was to teach critical thinking skills to people who didn't think critically by nature. You typically did this with the liberal arts instead of STEM because while there's no value in getting a math problem half right there _is_ value in being half right on your critical understanding of a book.

    The "well rounded" education is used to make sure your offspring can go off and effectively run your dynasty when your old/dead. You needed them to think critically or they'd get killed by an ambitious member of your court.

    In an proper world without the constant meddling of the ruling class everyone would get both a practical (working class) education and the "well rounded" one that was usually reserved for the ruling class. You might not know this, but you want this. You want this a lot. Ignorant people make bad decisions. If you're a member of the ruling class you can exploit those bad decisions for your gain. If you're not those people become an angry mob and kill you. Or you join the mob, which sounds fun until you stop and think about the decades of poverty that lead up to you joining that mob.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Not exactly by SirAstral · · Score: 1

      You are fairly spot on!

      And you are right, I do want ALL people to receive both a practical and well rounded education. But the problem is that most people do not want this. They will say that they do, but they don't. They do want indoctrination, they want people to be raised by a specific belief system. Why do you think they don't want religion discussed in schools? I want all possible religions to be taught and freely discussed, this can be done without indoctrination. I want all ideas to be discussed scientific and unscientific. We work through problems by actually discussing them not by trying to kill each other because we don't believe in them.

      Most people won't really even notice that they paradoxically oppress themselves under the guise of "fighting the man". The proof is as simple as people trying to use rich and powerful politicians to control other rich and powerful people. The only thing it does is give the rich and powerful group of victors even more riches and power built upon the ashes of the fallen rich and powerful. And yet the original problem was not even resolved, only made worse!

    2. Re:Not exactly by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The story is all so nice and neat, but a lot of is back-fitted crap, like the stuff about bells.

      School was often taught in Churches, they were already using the Church bells for whatever events happened at the school. Later, electricity made bells easy to install everywhere. It is a basic aid for group activities, used by nearly every type of human activity. The only reason to connect it to factory bells is when you're just making up history as imagined by a popular narrative.

      More real was that basic education was seen as being needed so that workers grow up able to read instructions, and weigh, measure, and time things. But there was never really a gap where it wasn't understood that a well-rounded education was more effective even at teaching to weigh and measure. That was always understood. It is simply that the schools were being provisioned from different sources of money than the traditional upper class education; a teacher who can read and write is enough when you want to save money. And some of them will be good anyways, so you'll end up with lots of educated workers.

      Even now with all the access to information it is difficult to get people to separate what they imagine from what they know. They don't bother to think about, "if I was hired as a school teacher in that era, what instructions would I be given?" Where does the conspiracy to condition children to bells come from? How would the instruction be given? How would a teacher who had to purchase supplies out of the budget for their pay know that they were required to purchase the bell? Or would they only buy it because it was a major convenience for them? Is it possible that the rich kids didn't have bells, because they had private tutors and it didn't serve any purpose?

      In Merry Olde England, when the peasants were gathered around the square waiting for alms, (a free cup of soup and a beer, basically) did the church ring the bell to tell them it was time? Did pre-industrial American farm kids come running when a dinner bell was rung? Can you imagine living on a farm with people spread out all over the place and not being used to banging on a noise-maker at dinner time?!

    3. Re:Not exactly by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      That isn't where institutionalized learning came from. The idea of institutionalized learning was to create a ruling class, not factory workers. Do you think factory workers were educated? Institutionalized learning came way before factories.

  17. Honestly by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I can get serious for just a moment, I believed that coming from a place of love and respect made for better student outcomes. I didn't teach STEM or anything, but I was considered a hard grader and expected a fair amount from students (especially grad students). When I was just a newly-minted lecturer, back in the '80s, I had a colleague tell me that it's important to be invested in the success of your students. You're not just pumping gas. That always stuck with me.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  18. I know folks bullied by their teachers by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    for being nerdy or just plain weird & ugly. Growing up a nerd I hung out with nerds but I was relatively normal. I hadn't noticed it but a lot of the extreme nerds (or worse, the LGBTQ kids had it rough) were being actively shit on by their teachers... up to and including the school principal.

    It wasn't all the time. The Gym teachers almost always did it. I just happened to be at a school where it didn't happen much, but I was pretty horrified years later when some nerd friends of mine talked about it. It's one thing to get bullied by POS kids. It's a whole new world of hell when your teachers join in.

    Post Columbine at least the teachers seem to have stopped. But it literally took a near constant threat of mass murder to do it. Man, what a screwed up world.

    --
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    1. Re:I know folks bullied by their teachers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wear a MAGA hat and see if anyone in the humanities and you'll see that the attitude was never dropped.

    2. Re:I know folks bullied by their teachers by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      for being nerdy or just plain weird & ugly. Growing up a nerd I hung out with nerds but I was relatively normal. I hadn't noticed it but a lot of the extreme nerds (or worse, the LGBTQ kids had it rough) were being actively shit on by their teachers... up to and including the school principal.

      My first notably negative experience in school was in third grade. We had a teacher there for literally only one year (so I got to experience him) who was a lazy asshole. I'd regularly finish my work before everyone else (and got great marks, mind you) and then I'd be expected literally to lay my head on my desk and wait quietly for the other children to catch up. He didn't have any more work to give me, because that would be work for him. Problem is, I was already growing to be larger than the other kids, and it literally caused me physical pain to do that. As a result, I got in trouble for looking at the other children. Not an exaggeration.

      I could no longer go to school in the town I grew up in when we moved in sixth grade, but I couldn't just not go to school (or so I thought) so I just showed up for abuse. What's worse, it was a middle school, so I went from K-6 to being lumped in with jr. high students two weeks into the start of the year, which separated me even further from everyone else. I was physically attacked on literally a daily basis, and my complaints fell on deaf ears. I got kicked out of that school when I finally was attacked by a kid who couldn't beat me up, and I blackened both of his eyes and beat his head into the ground for good measure. I felt sick and cried about it even while I did it. The next day when I came to school, the other kids were literally congratulating me and slapping me on the back... on my way to the principal's office to be expelled, and sent across town to a jr. high, where the abuse continued because I was still a nerd, and those kids hadn't seen me beat anyone up.

      I got OK to good grades from there up to my first semester of high school, but high school was where the bullying got especially bad (it was a total jock school) and I couldn't get any help from educators, administration, etc. And the teachers would openly deride me in class for my lack of involvement. If I'd had access to a gun, I might well have brought it in and employed it. Instead, I just dropped participating, got straight Fs, and then got sent to an alternative school which was dramatically less abusive. But there was bullying even there, so I took the CHSPE and got the hell out of there, too.

      The students take their cues from the instructors as to who it's okay to abuse, the insightful little lord of the flies fucks, so when teachers treat students with disrespect it encourages bullying. And that's exactly what happened to me, time and again. And that's why I have very limited respect for teachers in the pre-college system. I know there are good ones out there, I even studied with a couple in my day, but as far as I'm concerned most of them (at least in the public school system) are bullies themselves. They don't actually care about students, they only want to make themselves feel good, and exert control over others. And the administration is even worse. It's literally their job to stop such things, but they don't seem to have much interest, or at least they didn't when I was in school.

      I got along with pretty much everyone just great by the time I hit college. Suddenly, my willingness to be helpful was an asset, not something that set me up for abuse. I had only one asshole of an instructor, who was on his last year, and just killing time before retirement. He didn't want to be there, he didn't like me for whatever reason, and I learned fuck-all in his welding classes. I learned more about welding in auto body than I did in welding.

      My hat's off to the instructors who actually take the time and effort to care about students, and make sure they're learning. You know, those who do their jobs. Their job is hard, and I wouldn't want it. The rest, those who make excuses instead of a difference, are letting the side down hard. If children are the future, they're the ones making sure it sucks.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  19. Standardised tests? by quenda · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are they hinting at assessment bias? Are these scores given by professors for written answers, projects, theses - from standardised multi-choice tests - or both?
      Why is this not mentioned?

    A hint is that the article uses "underrepresented minorities" as a euphemism for lower-intelligence minorities - Asians and Jews not included. So IQ is likely to be key here. If you control for SAT scores, does the racial "bias" disappear? My guess would be "yes".

    It is true that intelligence, at least the measurable part, is fairly fixed for individuals, so the professors teaching the hardest subjects (advanced maths and physics) are more likely to express the "fixed mindset", while those teaching the more wishy-washy liberal arts subjects like biology and chemistry, where attitude and hard work achieve more, are more likely to lean in the "growth mindset" direction. This would yield the reported results.

    But why speculate when comparing standardised test scores, and aptitude scores (SAT, IQ) would help answer these questions?
    Were the authors careful to only compare professors teaching the same subjects?
    Was affirmative action involved in the admissions process?

      Would the authors prefer hinting at racial bias to giving actual facts?

    Far too little information is given to infer a causal relationship between teacher attitude and score gap.

    1. Re:Standardised tests? by Solandri · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I thought the implication that the "growth mindset" professors were right, and the "fixed mindset" professers were wrong was unwarranted. With the data they've given, you can't tell if the problem is the fixed mindset professors are grading non-white/asians low, or the growth mindset professors are grading non-white/asians high.

      The most interesting result I saw wasn't mentioned in the summary and barely mentioned in TFA. The fixed mindset professors graded about 0.2 points lower than the growth mindset professors. -0.15 for whites/asians, -0.24 for non-white/asians compared to the growth mindset professors. That would seem to suggest it's the growth minded professors who are inflating grades (unless you want to advocate the theory that fixed minded professors are grading too hard - which would be counter to the general belief that schools grade too easy).

      Unfortunately the paper is paywalled. I'd love to see the raw data.

    2. Re:Standardised tests? by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Standardized tests can work well or fail absolutely, it has a lot to do with the methods of teaching, and the subject at hand as well. Subject-fact tests generally are better, because they require you to understand the knowledge that's been gained and apply it to the problem. Regurgitation of information doesn't get you any points. The most difficult exams I've ever taken are open-book subject fact tests. Not only do you have to understand the content of the question being asked, you need to reference the section in the book that you are studying and apply reasoning to it as well.

      To add in, here in Ontario back oh 15ish years ago the Liberal government implemented three big changes. First was standardized tests, the second was standardized teaching, the third was standardized methods of teaching relating to group learning. Needless to say, it's been an absolute shit show in terms of students passing the tests. The method that they picked works very good for girls, very shit for boys, and super shit for K-9 students. Around 65% of all students fail the standardized math tests now, 60% of boys fail all standardized tests, while it's only around 25% for girls. There's a reason why there's been a big push around tutors, and whatnot here the last decade and change.

      It also doesn't help that various schools that were very specialized in particular areas of education, were effectively stripped of their budgets then closed when they became "under performing" and whatnot.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Standardised tests? by NicBenjamin · · Score: 2

      Why are you assuming that any of the grades are inflated? It's entirely possible that the fixed professors grade lower because they are worse at teaching.

      Let's say we have a class that has multiple sections taking the same tests. If your belief is that your student's abilities are fixed, and the first quiz has your kids doing worse then the growth-minded-guy teaching the other section, you are not likely to change your teaching style. It's not your fault your kids cannot comprehend your brilliance. OTOH if the growth guy's students lose he's likely to decide his job involves changing his teaching style to suit his students, and (assuming he's not a total incompetent) he's likely to improve his student's results. Statistically speaking, Growth Prof will end up with higher-graded students regardless of who actually does the damn grading.

      Note that this will disproportionately help people getting low grades. The right teacher can turn a 50% student into a 75% student, but you cannot turn a 95% student into a 120% student. So if there's a correlation between under-represented minority status and low grades the better/Growth Professors will tend to improve their URM students more then their non-URM students.

    4. Re:Standardised tests? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      A hint is that the article uses "underrepresented minorities" as a euphemism for lower-intelligence minorities

      Ah, the old supremacist myth that some arbitrary races are just inherently dumber. Rather undermined by the fact that the mere fact that the professor thought they might be able to improve resulted in a significant narrowing of the gap.

      It is true that intelligence, at least the measurable part, is fairly fixed for individuals, so the professors teaching the hardest subjects (advanced maths and physics) are more likely to express the "fixed mindset", while those teaching the more wishy-washy liberal arts subjects like biology and chemistry, where attitude and hard work achieve more, are more likely to lean in the "growth mindset" direction.

      Except that, again, here we have results in non-wishy-washy STEM subjects, including hard ones like maths and physics. As the study notes, the actual course doesn't seem to have any effect, the only variable that caused a significant change was the belief by the teacher that the students could improve.

      But why speculate when comparing standardised test scores, and aptitude scores (SAT, IQ) would help answer these questions?

      Because that wouldn't account for other factors like economic and social background, which are know to have large effects too. This study accounted for those things, and your desire to ignore them is a common supremacist tactic to try to imply that some races are just naturally less intelligent.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Standardised tests? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, the old supremacist myth that some arbitrary races are just inherently dumber. Rather undermined by the fact that the mere fact that the professor thought they might be able to improve resulted in a significant narrowing of the gap.

      From TFS:

      In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by "growth mindset" instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points.

      Latino, African-American, and Native American students average grades were lower than white and Asian-American students with both sets of instructors. The biggest problem here is your squalid little religion that refuses to acknowledge facts and dishonestly labels them something like a "supremacist myth".

  20. Lower or Higher? by tomhath · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I find it odd that the "growth mindset" instructors didn't have an equal effect on all students. Perhaps they were cutting Latino, African-American, and Native American students a break. Or maybe they made more of an effort to help them because they are minority students. It wouldn't surprise me if it was some of both.

    1. Re:Lower or Higher? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

      It's possible, but not necessary. Performance scales of any kind are generally nonlinear, usually something like a logistic curve. So a beneficial effect tends to create more of a boost in the middle than at the top. Also, poorer students might not have good influences from home, so a great teacher makes more of a difference.

      A 90% student might go up to 95% with a great teacher, but a 50% student might jump much more than 5%.

    2. Re:Lower or Higher? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Could just be compensation for a prior lifetime of lack of encouragement and negative stereotypes.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  21. Did the same profs studied issue the grades? by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 1

    If I understand the article correctly, the grades that are being compared were issued to the students by the very same professors who were being categorized as "fixed" or "growth" mindset.

    I expect that a "fixed mindset" professor would obviously assign a lower grade to students they considered of lower intelligence.

    If that really is the takeaway from this study then I fail to see cause for surprise in the result.

  22. 0,09 Grade point difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    0.09 grade point difference is making a b instead of a b+ on one course.

    1. Take a vast sample
    2. Slice and dice and try to show correlation to neat demographic groups
    3. If no correlation is found, add more data to the survey
    4. Report in a social sciences journal

    Need to break down the data by true/false if there is a father in the home or not. There's a correlation between better math skills and having a father in the house.

  23. What I noticed by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I got my BA in '81 or so.

    Teachers that took attendance every day and docked you for absences tended to be the teachers who's handouts were copies of copies of copies of 20 year old crap. Not to mention the lectures were useless. Best plan was to find out when the tests and quizzes were and what they covered, and skipped class. But skipping class cost you big time.

    Teachers who's lectures were not to be missed. Fark the tests and quizzes, if you wanted to understand the subject you went to the lectures.

    Goes without saying the first group of teachers had tenure and didn't care, the second group did not have tenure and did care.

    YMMV, there was variation in mine.

    1. Re:What I noticed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Universities and colleges, in general , do not reward best teaching. So you have crappy professors who are jealous of best teachers with basic research background. Survey shows only about 25 univ. degrees are worth anything and dollar paying companies want only them. This applies in general, to Indian IITs and those who study further in the USA. Memorizing vomit students from India, according to my industrial colleagues, do not have any practical knowledge of any thing. They know to add and multiply better than most US under graduates. IIT boys and girls area top knotch!.

  24. How about the non minority students? by oic0 · · Score: 1

    Did standard deviation increase across the board? If so, wouldn't you just assume that the fixed intelligence teachers have harder classes that allow for more differentiation between students based on intelligence? I find it hard to believe that only minority students grades decreased and not those of white students who are at the same academic level. That should be easy to check by comparing the grade differences based on similar GPAs.

  25. You're confusing 'prophet' and 'teacher' by Bruce66423 · · Score: 1

    Which the NT clearly separate.

    1. Re:You're confusing 'prophet' and 'teacher' by SirAstral · · Score: 0

      I confuse nothing.

      John 14:26 - "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

      Prophets are sent to lead you to the path, which leads you to the Holy Ghost, whereby you are then instructed. Are you saying humans are the teachers and refute what Christ said as written in the bible?

      The search for truth is like a teacher, not a human passing around little pieces of paper. Today's generation is so enamored with other peoples papers that they don't even care for the truth at all, but instead what another with a piece of paper says.... that is their truth now.

      You know the truth the moment you hear it, even when you do everything you can to refuse it.

    2. Re:You're confusing 'prophet' and 'teacher' by Bruce66423 · · Score: 1

      Acts 17 records Agabus as a prophet. 1 Cor 12, 2 Peter 2 and Eph 4 all clearly separate the two ministries. It is the role of the evangelist - yet another ministry - to lead people to the path.

      We need churches where all these ministries are active and healthy; the alternative - too often seen in churches led by a single person - is that only that person's ministry is well developed in the life of the church, and much else fails to happen. That's not the route to a healthy church.

  26. Institionalised learning dates back to Babylon by Bruce66423 · · Score: 1

    So you're making the usual American mistake of forgetting anything OLD OLD. Greece and Rome had academies of learning, and the kids of the upper classes went to school etc etc.

  27. Racist and misleading summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The summary and the article only talks about the 0.19 vs 0.10 gap between while and Latino, African-American, and Native American. If you read the actual study you will (or at least should) notice that this is just a tiny detail in a number of results.

    The study defines URM students as "Black, Latino, and Native American" (that's a direct quote. It doesn't use the word African) and "White and Asian" as non-URM. URM stands for "underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities".

    Impact from going from fixed intelligence to growth instructors:
    URM students went from 2.71 to 2.96, up by 0.25.
    Non-URM students went from 2.90 to 3.06, up by 0.16.

    All the scores are on a scale with a max of 4.

    It's far more interesting to see the growth of each group than it is to see the difference between the groups. If we find some other teaching method where non-URM goes from 2.90 to 2.30 and URM goes from 2.71 to 2.25, then the difference would go from 0.19 to 0.05. This would appear even better in a summary, but each student would end up getting a worse grade as a result. At the same time if non-URM students had gone up to 3.16, then the gap would increase from 0.19 to 0.20, making the non-growth instructors look like they would do the best job.

    The study itself seems like it's a serious study and the result is interesting (though not unexpected). The summary and the article about it seems to be political spin.

  28. No shit. by Chas · · Score: 2, Funny

    Why to you think colleges are such intersectional, communist crybaby spaces now?

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  29. Umm, he almost got into college at 16 by NotSoHeavyD3 · · Score: 1

    At a fairly good one too. The reason he didn't get in was his French grades weren't good enough so he spent his time working on that and got in when he was 17 so it's kind of hard to seriously argue he wasn't a good student.

    --
    Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
  30. Huge study finds.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Huge study finds that if you don't eat, you starve to death.

  31. Could it be this? by Evtim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

    If memory serves there is the opposite effect, i.e. you can stunt the growth of someone if you act as if they are "lost cause".

    Teacher should be aware of those and be carefully not to let the talented become lazy or the less talented to give up...

  32. Aha. "Fixed mindset" it is? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good to know the politically correct term for "fucking racist".

  33. Or maybe: tough courses cause poor grades by bradley13 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here is the full article: STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes

    Being a teacher, this kind of thing is important to me. And this article irritates me, because I think they get things exactly backwards. The article specifically examines the performance of two groups of students: white/asian vs. black/latino/native-american. The latter group is implicitly assumed to be disadvantaged by the fact that their average, group intelligence is lower than the first group. The hypothesis being that, if your teacher thinks you're less intelligent, you will do more poorly in class that you should.

    Interestingly: the article states that there was no discernable grouping amongst the teachers. Teachers and their beliefs were evenly distributed across all ethnicities, genders, ages, etc.. So this isn't a claim of racism or genderism, but simply a claim that teachers with particular views are poorer teachers. This is measured by the fact that their students received poorer grades.

    I think this is the critical flaw in the study: Those grades are assigned by the teachers themselves. There is no objective measure of student capability. Teachers with "tough" courses will, on average, give out lower grades. And lower still to the less capable students.

    I teach introductory courses - filter courses - at my university. An essential part of my job is to fail students who are unlikely be unable to complete the course of study. Hence, I give lower grades than instructors in other courses later in the program, after the incapable students have been eliminated. I've been doing this a long time, and I have come to the view that students either have certain aptitudes, or they don't. I submit that I have come to this "fixed mindset" view by observation: teaching thousands of students, failing those who cannot develop the necessary skills, and passing those who can. My role as a teacher is precisely that: to help them develop skills. If they are incapable of doing so despite my best efforts? Then they are in the wrong program of study.

    In other words, it's not a "fixed mindset" that causes an instructor to hand out poor grades, but the other way around: someone who teaches teaches tough courses will come to recognize that student aptitudes are largely inherent. There are exceptions: I've seen talented students fail through laziness, and marginal students get through with sheer grit and determination. Those exceptions, by their very rarity, serve to underscore the general pattern.

    Finally, one must comment on the student evaluations. Students in courses that handed out better grades were more likely to have liked the course. That's not a surprise, that comes close to a law of nature. However, the study misses a great opportunity here. The authors admit that my theory (about tough courses being the root cause) might be true:

    "It is possible that faculty who endorse fixed mindset beliefs create more demanding coursesâ"requiring students to spend more time studying and preparing for their course. If this is true, then differences in studentsâ(TM) performance and psychological experiences might be explained by the demands of these courses (instead of professorsâ(TM) mindset beliefs)."

    One of the questions in student evaluations ("how much time did this course require?") would have been a good indication of course difficulty. Unfortunately, the study does not seem to have tested this hypothesis, or at least, the paper makes no mention of it. A cynic might wonder if they did do the analysis, but perhaps it didn't support the desired results. After all: "tough courses lead to lower grades" would hardly be a conclusion worthy of publication.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Or maybe: tough courses cause poor grades by retroworks · · Score: 1

      Or maybe, the summary mixes correlation and causation. A professor who has experienced students whose minds grow becomes more optimistic. A professor whose students are just punching the clock and don't care about learning has a more jaundiced view of students.

      --
      Gently reply
  34. wrong assumption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It does not matter if intelligence is fixed or not. The kind of things learned and tested for depend on how much work is spent to be able to reproduce information. They don't depend on intelligence.

    A good test is designed to provide all the answers in the question. Leaving it to the test subjects intelligence to extract them, showing intelligence. Good tests are rare, favoring people who can reproduce information.

  35. What a stupid headline by Abe677 · · Score: 1

    What a stupid headline to see this morning. I'm waiting for the following studies to get some attention: "Huge study says husband's attitude affects quality of marriage." "Huge study says chef's attitude affects quality of food severed." "Huge study says manager's attitude affects subordinate's career."

  36. No it isn't by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    Einstein derived E=MC^2. That's a neater trick than measuring it.

    First, he actually derived E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4. E=mc^2 is the special case of a body at rest. Secondly deriving an expression is certainly not any neater than testing it experimentally. It is only when we have both theory and experiment consistent with each other that our knowledge advances and devising an experiment to test theory can be just as hard, if not harder, than coming up with the theory in the first place. The Higgs boson is an excellent example of this.

    1. Re:No it isn't by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >he actually derived E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4

      Yes, professor Moore. Thank you for picking that nit.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  37. An alternate possibility is that those with the "fluid" belief subtly alter their teaching and grading activities to produce the results they want to see (or at least results that are closer to what they want to see).

    But who knows. It could be that, on average, holding an irrational belief actually produces better classroom results.

  38. You're missing the point by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    go read "A people's history of the United States" for a start.

    Anyway, yes, they came running for Alms. Got them. Left.

    The point was regimentation. Bells were just the most obvious example of that. The entire education was to get you ready to work in a factory.

    Yeah, Churches taught a bit too. Go look up pre-Industrial revolution literacy rates sometime. They were very few, very far between. A few religious kooks spreading the word of God. The ones who taught kids to read were sometimes killed because you're not supposed to teach the lower caste to read the bible. They might get ideas.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:You're missing the point by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      The entire purpose, the reason, for education the kids was so they could be better factory workers.

      There is no need to backfit nonsense about regimentation, when regimentation is how you manage to teach groups. There is no mystery there to solve with a conspiracy. There is no dishonest purpose, or surprising element. There is simply modern ignorance, and the back-fitting of data-points that for some odd reason seem surprising to you, but are actually required elements in the first place for basic reasons.

      That book is the Atlas Shrugged of History; it appeals to many people disillusioned with the low general quality of history books, and then they treat it like a bible.

  39. Yep, and I'm not Babylonian by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    and neither are you. Ancient history is interesting, but Modern history has a much bigger impact on my life. The Dark Ages wiped out most of what the Babylonians did. And the progress in the last 200 years was so insanely rapid that it's almost moot.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  40. Also reverse cause and effect - teachers see fact by raymorris · · Score: 2

    It's also *possible* that the teachers are observing what happens in their classes, would mean the study is reversing cause and effect. Teachers who see students learn, perhaps because they teach an interesting subject, will think students can learn - because they do. Teachers who see students say "I'm bad at math" - and then proceed to be bad at math, will notice that. It may be both sets of teachers are observing what does happen in their classes - their particular subject in a particular field at a particular grade level, etc.

    That said, I think the most likely explanation is that teachers who don't think they *can* make a difference, don't.

    Teaching is one part of my job and I tend to think students can learn faster / better than they actually can. I'm a major nerd whose main hobby is learning. I read 1,200 page "textbooks" for fun. I forget that not everyone is like me.

  41. New sells. Especially new research in academia by raymorris · · Score: 0

    Try selling a weight loss program based on the insight that:

    Calories in - calories burned = weight gain/loss

    It's a very simple well-known fact. If you burn more calories than you ate, where did the extra calories coke from? From burning fat.

    If you eat more food than you burn, whwrw does the extra food go? It stays in your body, which therefore gets bigger.

    Yet the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry is centered on "new ideas" to avoid this plainly obvious (and old) fact. Fad diets. Fad workouts. Fad machines. Old facts don't sell, new ideas sell. Pedagogy is in many ways led by old gray academia, which is obsessed with new research. If it's not new, it's worthless.

    Which is one reason they keep re-inventing ideas that have failed over and over and over. Economic ideas that have a shiny new package (and don't involve hard work) are great, to them. It doesn't matter that it failed 1950s, failed in the 1960s, failed in the 1970s, failed in the 1980s, and failed in thr 1990s, because the repeated failure is old. AOC is new.

    1. Re:New sells. Especially new research in academia by LostMyAccount · · Score: 2

      It's funny, but nutrition and weight loss is one field where the "proven" theory of calories in/calories out has been shown to be at least less axiomatic than it's been thought to be if not less effective than ketogenic diets.

    2. Re:New sells. Especially new research in academia by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      The ci-co=weight delta, that does not show the arrows of causation.

      What changes CI? Hunger.
      What changes hunger? Exercise, Hormones, superoxide satiety signalling from the reverse electron transport at the mitochondrial boundary when processing saturated fats.

      What changes hormones? The diet composition of carbs, protein, different fat types, different sugar types, sunlight,

      What changes CO? Exercise using calories, hormones driving body temperature, hormones signaling muscle building etc.

      So exercise alone isn't enough. It increases CO and CI. So doesn't help much. You must also change your diet to change hormones and satiety signals so CI reduces and CO increases.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  42. IQ is genetic by blindseer · · Score: 1

    In sports we recognize that different genetics correlate to performance. We also recognize that while someone is generally athletic different genetics leads to different physical attributes which correlate to performance in different sports, or different positions within a team sport.

    Take building a football team as an example. A coach would want the guys doing the defending to be big and strong, but not necessarily fast. The people doing the catching would have to be fast, but not necessarily strong. The guy that throws the ball would need a different build than the guy that kicks the ball. What does this mean for the genetic makeup on a team? Different tasks mean different genetics, at the higher levels of performance this genetic difference becomes difficult to ignore.

    The brain is just as much influenced by our genetics as our physical attributes. There is a gradient of intelligence as there is a gradient of athleticism. Within that gradient there is a difference on which tasks this intelligence is optimized. In a university, especially at the graduate level, this genetic difference becomes difficult to ignore.

    Where politics is ruining our universities is that people equate this genetic difference with racism. Time and time again we see different "families" that we call "races" score differently. That doesn't mean people from these different families cannot excel in any field of choice, only that statistically there may be more or fewer individuals from these families that excel.

    People of Asian ancestry always did excel in STEM. That does not mean someone from a different "family" cannot excel. The bell curve still applies, there's always going to be someone from some different family that will do far better than someone from an Asian family.

    In other words, if people are serious about ending racism then stop looking at races. Treat people as individuals and we'd all be far better off. Inflating grades of minorities doesn't help them, it only sets them up for failure in the future. This also applies to racial quotas on university admissions. This sets up two people on a path of a less successful future, first is the person that got admitted in spite of a lower score, second is the person that scored higher and was denied entry because of race.

    STOP THE RACISM! Having a racial quota is still racism. Claiming this is penance for some past sin does not mean it's not racism. The European or Asian student that was denied admittance didn't own any slaves, and this is likely true going back many generations. The African student that was admitted this year wasn't a slave, and did not likely have even a grandparent that was a slave.

    Different genetics means different attributes. These tend to run along family lines. Denying this and forcing people into roles that they are not best suited is bad for society. STOP IT!

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  43. Work at it by GerryHattrick · · Score: 1

    My 'professors' (at LSE we called them tutors) gave very sound advice. It was entirely my fault that I did not book enough tutorials, or take that advice when I did. We also got allocated 'big name' 'Professorial Tutors': mine was a splendid, serious (famous) guy who would have recommended me for a job, but I'd found one already. Hogwarts works, even around Aldwych.

  44. Damaging teachers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Possibly, Europeans can't understand the level of neglect felt by minorities, The U.S. screams a message to them. Those that don't hear it, think the message doesn't exist.

    I taught physics at a couple of universities with top world-wide rankings. I have many examples of students raising their grades in classes in and out of physics due to the way I taught. I have letters from parents and department chairmen expressing thanks.

    I've seen damaging professors. I attribute their attitude to arrogance and fear. Anyone who doesn't believe teachers can affect performance need to do something else.

  45. Probably a sign of weakness by zkiwi34 · · Score: 1

    Professor is a hard ass. Student doesn't step up. Result.

    Why should everyone be expected to be "positive, encouraging, nurturing" etc.

    Why can't we expect people to step up, to show up rather than expect someone else to bust themselves to help them?

  46. Real world calling, it hopes you join it by Texmaize · · Score: 1

    I am sorry to say, but your arrogance and harshness are the reason why the American education system and society as whole are so screwed up.

    The key statement is that your "life" experience in teaching is with graduate students, who have already been selected to be budding Einsteins. So, your assumption would hold true in that case. However, you are not seeing the broader world beyond your own, limited experience.

    Now, I am going out on a limb and asserting like so many on these forums, you claim to care deeply about people, but never actually sacrificed the time or income to teach in an inner city school. If you had, you would realize that not everyone is a budding Einstein, and it is actually detrimental to treat them that way.

    Some people really are born not as smart, some, are behind due to various life circumstances. In any case, if you treat them like Einstein, they will get material too fast, become humiliated and frustrated. They will quit on you and scholastics in general, since they feel frustrated and ashamed. The key is to feed information at the rate they can handle it, and try to get the student to buy in. If you make progress, it is a good day.

    Now, the elephant in the room is that the authors of the study, and I suspect the above poster are simply soft-racists. They fundamentally see race as a factor in all things, and oddly assume various sub-groups have limits. This is why they immediately equated a constant intelligence approach to race. That is a completely separate idea from, do certain races have an intelligent limit. I suspect most of the people in survey felt was the case. Interjecting intelligence and race into the study is simply a dark part of your personality.

    For example, there are several explanations for the difference between the two groups. Since they did not break the sample pool into academic discipline, the differences might simply reflect that scientists understand genetics, and understand for ALL things we have fixed ability, that can be improved to some extent by practice. I will never be Mozart, no matter how much a practice. For a myriad of reasons, various minorities underperform in math and science. The reasons of why are debatable, but the fact remains. So, taking the two together, professors who think intelligence is biologically not limitless and have a group underperform are going to show up. Or, it could simply be that well meaning but soft-racist professors simply grade their students higher, to give a helping hand. and that accounts for the difference. I am sure you can come up with others.

    Trying to make a real difference, I have taught at high minority colleges and high schools for my life's work. Personally, I have found a great deal success by simply treating people as people.

    It turns out students respond honor and earned respect. The soft-racist teaches, who approach life with the assumption that minorities need the playing field leveled, and should be handed things do not fare as well. I have the state scores and college entrance rates to prove this. Just last year, I taught algebra to a class of failing students who had never passed the state exam before. I did not go in thinking I am getting them ready for calculus. I had to get them to believe in themselves by first giving them work they could do, and then continue to fill in the holes that were missing. There was likely not an Einstein in the room, but at the end of the year, they all passed the state exam for the first time. To treat them as brilliant would have come across as patronizing, but they did accept that I made it real and got them to better.

    To me, this is not some stupid intellectual exercise for forum masturbation. It is real life with real consequences. Fallacious studies like this and the attitudes of the above poster cause such great harm.

    --
    "Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
  47. help for students by KolesnikovaAnna · · Score: 0

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