[liberationtech] Thiel Fellowship

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/26/2016 11:38 PM, Carolyn Santo wrote:
> Thank you for sharing this!  I'll keep it in mind for my 14 year old
> son.  He is definitely an out-of-the-box type of thinker.  132 IQ, but
> doesn't do his homework. . . ugh!
> 
> Happy weekend!
> 
> Carolyn Santo
> CO '81
> 
> On 2/26/2016 8:06 PM, Yosem Companys wrote:
>> From: *Amrit Kandel* <amrit at himanchal.org <mailto:amrit at himanchal.org>>
>>
>> I'm looking for a Software Engineering student that would be
>> interested in submitting an application to The Thiel Fellowship. The
>> applicant must be 22 years or under.
>>
>> I will help with every step of the application.
>>
>> To learn more about The Thiel Fellowship, please
>> visit <http://thielfellowship.org/>http://thielfellowship.org/
>>
>> Thanks
>> Amrit 
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 

Sorry to go tangential but…

If his homework is like *most* homework, it's at least half bureaucratic
busy work that just tests whether people follow all the rules of the
system and isn't at all the most productive way to spend his time…
There's some moves in our society to end the insane trends of so much
homework. At the very least, anyone wanting to get their kid to do their
homework would have the best start to the discussion by acknowledging
the degree of bullshit it includes rather than pretending it's valid
top-priority activity. Of course, it depends on the exact case.

I went through school getting A's on all my math tests and basically
doing zero of the homework. Instead of reflecting my understanding of
the subjects, my grades reflected the variations in how much portion of
the grade the teachers made homework. Some teachers agreed to count only
tests for me and drop the homework portion of the grade as long as it
was clear I understood all the lessons and passed all the tests.

The best way to actually practice skills is to put them to use on
real-world issues that matter, not to just do tedious busy-work.