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Given that you quoted a post advocating for intelligence over work ethic, I think it is rather safe to assume the latter.</p>
<p>By the way, I would have a 4.0 if I studied/did homework.</p>
<p>Homework should be an option for people to raise their GPA if they don’t “get it” quickly. That allows people with a work ethic to overcome any lack of intelligence. Work ethic is great, but if hard work is not needed to understand a subject, then hard work is a waste.</p>
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<p>The problem is in the implementation of such a system. For the students who need to do homework to do well, graded homework functions as a source of motivation to do the homework and learn the material. For the students who don’t, it is unnecessary. However, it is difficult to determine which students need it and which don’t, and it could be seen as preferential treatment if some students are exempt from homework while others are not. The current solution, in which all students are required to do homework, avoids most moral issues that would arise from differing homework requirements. Personally, I believe that morality and education should be entirely separate, but that’s not the current opinion.</p>
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Aren’t you advocating for people who have work ethic? Like, discipline?</p>
<p>What if I have a 4.0 and I don’t study/do my homework?</p>
<p>You’re missing the point. Work ethic is great!! It’s the fact that homework is frankly a waste of time for some students in some classes.</p>
<p>Agreed. Work ethic is good when applied correctly. Working your ass off to do work when you can get 100s while sleeping in the class is just plain stupid. If you’re smart enough to continue having that mentality in college and the work force, more power to you.</p>
<p>The problem with people advocating an optional-hw system is that they cannot see beyond themselves. The current system, which employs a mandatory homework assignment designed to aid the understanding of the class, benefits the majority of the class. People like FunStuff want special treatment and have optional homework, which would benefit a few people like him and screw the majority of the class over. This system is clearly terrible and self centered. FunStuff still has yet to justify it.</p>
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You’re claiming that:
- Most people wouldn’t do homework if it weren’t required.
- That isn’t their fault.</p>
<p>You haven’t given any warrant for either of those claims. Why is the smart kid who slacks off when homework is graded any more responsible for their action than the “average” kid who slacks off when the homework is not graded?</p>
<p>Just as I have no sympathy for people who don’t do homework and then whine about not having a 4.0, I also have no sympathy for people who don’t do homework and then whine about how they would have done it if it were graded.</p>
<p>Shout out to yalefanboy for the Christopher Langan Outliers reference on page 1.</p>
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<p>In the first case, not doing homework will not significantly affect the school’s performance. In the second case, not doing homework will significantly lower the school’s performance. Which do you think the administrators and teachers would choose to correct?</p>
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This is exactly right, but SharkSAT was - or at least appeared to be - making a normative argument regarding homework policies that benefit the average student. There’s no reason the first group is morally inferior to the second, regardless of the pragmatic consequences that cause school administrators to prefer homework.</p>
<p>Do I really need to? Overall, only a very small percentage of people will actually have a significant effect on the world. These people will likely be the most intelligent ones who also work hard. I do NOT advocate the optional homework system. I advocate increasing the difficulty, depth, and speed of classes to the point where homework becomes necessary even for people like me. At that point, homework would actually benefit me, and I would do it. I would have to.</p>
<p>Such a system would maximize the potential of our species’ elite, advancing the human race faster than the current system or the optional homework system. It would also literally push the average student to their full potential. For the kids who cannot keep up, they can either redouble their efforts and show the true utility of work ethic or they can drop out and go to a tech school or a remedial school (which would be much like high school is now.)</p>
<p>This statement does not bother me at all. To me, a statement just that, a statement, until the individual issuing the statement has accomplished what he or she is boasting of achieving. There is absolutely no tangible reason to take mere ‘talk’ seriously. </p>
<p>As many have already brought up, there are two stereotypical ‘smart’ students: the lazy, yet intuitively intelligent student, and the mediocre or average, yet hard-working student. </p>
<p>For the first, which I would assume to be the one you are referring to in the OP, school is a trivial task; the student feels like there is no need to memorize anything, because he or she can simply utilize deductive/inductive/intuitive reasoning to answer problems. However, it is obvious from the commodity of the statement quoted in your OP that there are some problems on exams that simply require the retention of knolwedge gleaned during class, as in facts memorized. No matter how adaptive a student is, he or she will not be able to substitute essential knowledge with mere creativity. </p>
<p>I do believe that these intuitively intelligent students are justified in boasting that if they were to become dedicated, they could easily earn a 4.0 GPA. However, that is all it is, a possibility. The existance of a possibility does not guarantee the existance of an outcome, and it is in this lack of execution in which the student fails to achieve greatness. No matter how frequently and rationally they can prove their potential, if that potential is left unrealized, they never were ‘smart’, in that they did not recieve that 4.0 GPA. </p>
<p>So it’s just talk. And to that end, simply ask them, “Why don’t you have a 4.0 GPA?” That should silence them.</p>
<p>Agreed with funstuff. I know it sounds elitist, because it is. Boost up the top, give the rest an opportunity to achieve and extra help and encouragement if they need it.</p>
<p>I don’t particularly like Joel Stein, but this was very well done.</p>
<p>[Bring</a> On the Elites! - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2010191,00.html]Bring”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2010191,00.html)</p>
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<p>Exciting conversation…</p>
<p>@Funstuff</p>
<p>That’s kind of what gifted/advanced/private high schools are for. If you are really that much superior to your peers, chances are you would have applied and been accepted to one of these. Now, let’s go with your hypothesis here and change every public high school’s curriculum to the caliber of a gifted school’s.</p>
<p>(The following has happened in real life)
Person A studies for 5 minutes a day and has a B in the class.
Person B studies for 3 hours a day and has a B in the class.</p>
<p>What you’re basically saying is to amp up the difficulty. Let’s say this makes Person A study for 1 hour a day, which is his previous effort multiplied by a factor of 12. Then Person B would have to study 36 hours a day. Very plausible, right?</p>
<p>The optimal choice would be to not radically mess with the current placement system.</p>
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<p>are you implying that our current educational system is sufficient?</p>
<p>Easy solution: Person who is smart and does not studies goes and finds something that challenges them.</p>
<p>Do your homework you dungers.</p>