alt Hacker NewsI'm not opposed to the use of test scores, it's more the requirement that kids have the whole package of grades+activities+honors societies+test scores consistently through a phase of life that is widely understood as tumultuous for many. We're selecting for robots.
There's a reason the west was so productive in terms of new scientific and technological discoveries in the twentieth century, and it's not that our scientists were the most consistent conscientious students who prepared extensively for exams and padded their resumes in just the right way.
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> We're selecting for robots.
And to add to this, learning itself is a _skill_. Working on a complex problem, looking at it from different angles, spending time memorizing facts, working on learning to paint fine lines - these are all skills that you need to master.
By not motivating children to do that during their formative years, you set them up for failure later in life.
Yes, there will always be exceptions, humans are extremely variable. But for the general case just letting children float along without any goals or competition is not a great general strategy.
> There's a reason the west was so productive in terms of new scientific and technological discoveries in the twentieth century
> it's not that our scientists were the most consistent conscientious students who prepared extensively for exams and padded their resumes in just the right way.
Instead, a large portion were immigrants or the children of immigrants who arrived in the US as part of trans-national brain drain from countries with strict education systems (eg. Hungarian Jewish Americans in WW2, Eastern Europeans in the 1980s to present, Asian Americans today).
There's a reason Asian Americans, Eastern European Americans, and immigrant African Americans are overrepresented in leadership and white collar industries despite the very real handicap of having extended periods time without US citizenship or a greencard.
Instead of optimizing for feel-happy edge cases, we should be optimizing for building the best talent where possible, and that requires being competitive.
> We're selecting for robots.
Frankly, this is insulting as well. Yes there are some late bloomers, but they are outliers. If they can truly succeed they would stil find a non-beaten path to succeed in a competitive ecosystem.
> consistently through a phase of life that is widely understood as tumultuous for many
Only to y'all "heritage" Americans. For those of us who are kids of immigrants, we learnt that life is a race, either you compete or you fall to the wayside.
> the whole package of grades+activities+honors societies+test scores
This is _also_ a very US thing. Without true competition, students have to fluff their "resumes" with nonsense to get admitted into good colleges.
Other countries have tougher tests that can provide a better signal.
> We're selecting for robots.
I disagree. We're selecting for people who can set a goal and follow it.
Apply the same arguments to sports. Should we not stop all the competitions until the age of 25?