[ExI] Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

[William Flynn Wallace]

Yes to everything Dave and Will and Spike said.  I think maybe we need a
bit of research looking at future jobs since they seem to be changing so
rapidly.  One little bit of trouble I have is trying to force kids into a
career path before they even know much about the world or what they want or
are good at.  The trade school option does that more than the college
option.  I didn't know I was rabid about gardening until my 30s.  If I had
known that earlier I would have had an excellent alternative to what I did,
but that's impossible to measure.  I did not know until my junior year in
college that I loved psychology.

What we really need are aptitude tests and we don't have any.  Oh, we have
some  named that, but they are really achievement tests.  And all, I think,
are paper and pencil (Henry??).  How do we measure emotional and social
intelligence with paper and pencil?  Not well, I suspect.

bill w

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 9:49 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *Dave Sill via extropy-chat
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> >…Yes to all of that. Once upon a time, when kids reached high school they
> gravitated toward one of two tracks: college prep or trade school (prep).
> That's kind of degraded since every parent seems to want their kids to get
> a degree, and trades are looked down upon. …Where high school really needs
> to improve, though, is in the teaching of life skills like: managing
> finances, decision making/problem solving/critical thinking, parenting,
> negotiating, studying, communication, finding and keeping a job, etc. Those
> are areas where a little education could yield significant improvement in
> quality of life.  -Dave
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> Dave, consider how we have used the term escape velocity.  Orbit mechanics
> guys use it the literal way: the velocity needed to escape the surly bonds
> of earth, get up there, coast around indefinitely, etc.
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> We starry-eyed dreamers and future gazers talk about forms of immortality,
> a time when medical technology advances so quickly that lifespans and
> health spans increase a year every year, so we achieved escape velocity in
> medicine, in a figurative sense.
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> Your commentary above reflects a very traditional view of life and
> society, the one which has served us so long and so well, the one I
> certainly grew up with and know.  Think now about what escape velocity
> means to a lot of young people today.  They are dreaming of ways to escape
> the dreary 9 to 5 their parents and grandparents knew and accepted.  There
> are plenty of alternate paths today, and some of them are not dreadfully
> uncomfortable really.  I wouldn’t choose those alternatives, but I ain’t
> young.  Were I a teenager now looking at my options, I might well choose an
> alternative path, and it wouldn’t require very much of the kinds of things
> schools have to offer.
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> Society today is making it ever easier to be a freeloader, particularly if
> one is young, capable, self-sufficient and healthy.  We are collectively
> approaching escape velocity from office life, at least for some.
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> spike
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