> Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions
Isn't this part of life? Learning to excel anyway?
Life doesn't tend to take place under exam conditions, either.
I believe parent is making a more general point, and as someone who would also be considered "neurodivergent" I would agree with that point. There were plenty of times growing up where special consideration would have been a huge help for me, but I'm deeply grateful that I learned in a world where "sometimes life is unfair" was considered a valuable lesson.
In my adult life I had a coworker who constantly demanded that she be given special consideration in the work environment: more time to complete tasks, not working with coworkers who moved too quickly, etc. She was capable but refused to recognize that even if you have to do things in a way that don't work for you, sometimes you either have to succeed that way or find something else to do.
Today she's homeless living out of her car, but still demands to that be hired she needs to be allowed to work as slowly as she needs and that she will need special consideration to help her complete daily tasks etc.
We recently lived through an age of incredible prosperity, but that age is wrapping up and competition is heating up everywhere. When things are great, there is enough for everyone, but right now I know top performers that don't need special consideration when doing their job struggling to find work. In this world if you learned to always get by with some extra help, you are going to be in for a very rude awakening.
Had I grown up in the world as it has been the last decade I would have a much easier adolescence and a much harder adult life. I've learned to find ways to maximize my strengths as well as suck it up and just do it when I'm faced with challenges that target my weaknesses and areas I struggle. Life isn't fair, but I don't think the best way to prepare people for this is to try to make life more fair.
On the other hand, I look at it in a more “a rising tide raises all boats” situation. Learning how to accommodate people who fall outside the norm not only helps them, but helps everyone, much like the famous sidewalk “curb cuts” for wheelchairs ended up helping everyone with luggage, strollers, bikes, etc.
We as a society have a lot of proxies for evaluating real world value. Testing is a proxy for school knowledge. Interviews are a proxy for job performance. Trying to understand and decouple actual value from the specific proxies we default to can unlock additional value. You said yourself that you do have strengths, so if there are ways society can maximize those and minimize proxies you aren’t strong in, that is a win win.
Your coworker sounds like they have an issue with laziness and entitlement more than an issue with neurodivergence. Anyone can be lazy and entitled. Even if someone has a weakness with quick turn production but excels in more complex or abstract long-term projects could be a value added for a company. Shifting workloads so that employees do more tasks they are suited towards, rather than a more ridged system, could end up helping all employees maximize productivity by reducing cognitive load they were wasting on tasks they were not as suited for, but did just because that was the way it was always done and they never struggled enough for it to become an actual “issue”.
I really like your take on this, but disagree with your conclusion. I do think that trying to "make life more fair" is essentially the main goal of civilization, codified as early (and probably much earlier) as The Code of Hammurabi.
My take is that we need to tread a thin line such that we teach young people to accept that life is inherently unfair, while at the same time doing what we can as a society to make it more fair.
> My take is that we need to tread a thin line such that we teach young people to accept that life is inherently unfair, while at the same time doing what we can as a society to make it more fair.
Agreed. Teaching that life is unfair (and how to succeed despite that) is an important lesson. But there's an object-meta distinction that's important to make there. Don't teach people that life is unfair by being unfair to them in their education and making them figure it out themselves. Teach a class on the topic and what they're likely to encounter in society, a couple times over the course of their education.
The important parts of life (like interviews) do.
> The important parts of life (like interviews)
Interviews shouldn't be "exam conditions" either. See the ten thousand different articles that regularly show up here about why not to do the "invert a binary tree on a whiteboard" style of interview.
There are much better ways to figure out people's skills. And much better things to be using in-person interview time on.
You're confusing the way things are with the way things ought to be.
The reality is life is full of time boxed challenges.
Other than a subset of interviews, what do you have in mind that has a structure similar to an exam? Because I'd agree with the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44106325 .
> what do you have in mind that has a structure similar to an exam?
All of life! An exam is a time boxed challenge. Sometimes it's open notes, sometimes it's not. I've had exams where I have to write an essay, and I've had exams where I've had to solve math problems. All things I've had to do in high pressure situations in my job.
Solving problems with no help and a clock ticking happens a million times per day.
We even assign grades in life, like "meets expectations" and "does not meet expectations".
Even still, you missed the point of my comment. You keep focusing on how interviews should be done, not how they're conducted in reality.
I understood the point of your comment; I disagreed with it. I think there's a meaningful distinction between high-pressure situations at work and exams in school, sufficiently so that the latter is poor preparation for the former. More to the point, everyone is subjected to the latter, while "thrives under pressure" is not a universal quality everyone is expected to have or use. It's a useful skill, and it's more useful to have than to not have, but the same can be said of a thousand skills, and many of them are things I'd prioritize higher in a colleague or employee, given the choice.
> I think there's a meaningful distinction between high-pressure situations at work and exams in school
Sure, in school there is no real consequence. That's why it's important. School exams are orders of magnitude easier than the real world.
> "thrives under pressure" is not a universal quality everyone is expected to have or use
School isn't intended to imbue everyone with universal qualities. Some people will excel and some wont. The ones that excel will go on to work in situations where you must thrive under pressure.
> It's a useful skill, and it's more useful to have than to not have, but the same can be said of a thousand skills
This is a different discussions then.
It seems like you have equated "excel" with "must thrive under pressure". That is precisely the point I am disputing. It's a skill, like any other. It is not the single most important skill everyone must have and everyone must be filtered on.
> It seems like you have equated "excel" with "must thrive under pressure"
Thriving and excelling are not that far apart :).
Thrive: grow or develop well Excel: be exceptionally good at or proficient in an activity
> It is not the single most important skill
Nobody said it was!
> everyone must be filtered on
It's a data point. Exam scores don't matter when you apply for a job, or do anything else in life.
It’s really just interviews, and even those are nothing like any exam I’ve ever taken. They’re closest, in terms of the kind of stress and the skills required to look good, to some kind of solo public speaking performance.
… which most people come out of 17+ years of school having done very little of, with basically a phobia of it, and being awful at it.
They are probably something like oral exams that a few universities use heavily, or the teaching practices of many elite prep schools.
[edit] oh and interviews in most industries aren’t like that. Tech is especially grueling in the interview phase.
It's more about the meta-skill of learning to adapt. Learning to be uncomfortable sometimes.
Right. The hardest things you encounter in your life will not adapt themselves to make you more comfortable, so it's critical that you gain experience in doing things outside of your comfort zone. Getting stressed during an exam is nothing compared to some of the bumps life will throw at you.
And it'll make you happier in the long run.
I don't think so? I teach maths, not survival or social pressure. If a student in my class is a competent mathematician why should they not be acknowledged to be that?
real life first, math second. taking tests is a skill that must be learned, especially now with AI faking quite literally everything that can be shown on a screen. (unless your students are learning purely for the joy of it and not for having a chance to get hired anywhere.)
> taking tests is a skill that must be learned
Why? It's a useless skill that you will literally never have to use after your schooling.
>taking tests is a skill that must be learned
"I had to suffer so you must too."
You understand the world actually has difficult problems, right? Like life and death challenges, without video game restarts. You don't get to pause things when it gets hard.
Yes, working under pressure is a skill that should be learned. It's best to learn it on a history exam when nobody is at risk.