While the premise is interesting, I really do not buy some of the contemporary examples given at the end of the post. In particular the one about physics exams. It sounds a lot like "kids these days" fallacy which has been the standard complaint of each adult generation since the start of history
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love...I teach university physics. Intro classes are easier and the exams in these classes are meant to test whether you have learnt physics, not uncover "gifted geniuses". Once you have shown interest in the early classes, you can decide to go into the more challenging classes, whether the classical "problem based" ones celebrated in this blog post, or the more recent "project based" ones which are just as challenging, just a different style of challenging. Which is good, we should encourage all types of genius, not only the masters of algebra. However, yes, we should avoid belittling the masters of algebra in these conversations as well, the same way we learnt to stop belittling "nerds" and "geeks".
For what is worth, the bad "problem based" classes that the author bemoans, have always existed.
Edit: A sibling comment explained that the Socrates quote I used is probably wrong. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/
I teach university physics. Intro classes are easier and the exams in these classes are meant to test whether you have learnt physics, not uncover "gifted geniuses". Once you have shown interest in the early classes, you can decide to go into the more challenging classes, whether the classical "problem based" ones celebrated in this blog post, or the more recent "project based" ones which are just as challenging, just a different style of challenging. Which is good, we should encourage all types of genius, not only the masters of algebra. However, yes, we should avoid belittling the masters of algebra in these conversations as well, the same way we learnt to stop belittling "nerds" and "geeks".
For what is worth, the bad "problem based" classes that the author bemoans, have always existed.
Edit: A sibling comment explained that the Socrates quote I used is probably wrong. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/