Same thing with passing a football or nailing a technical ice skating routine. You can either do it, or you can't. Practice helps but is not a panacea, unfortunately. Find another occupation, friend. You are owed nothing.
Sometimes this is true. But sometimes the limiting factor really is the student.
In my own experience I've seen fellow students put in less than half the effort I did (I watched them copy homework assignments in groups 30 minutes before class, spend a lot of time trying to track down last years exams, etc etc), and then have the nerve to complain afterwards that the exams were too hard.
I’ve seen fellow students put a quarter of time on studying that I did (they spent the rest studying all the other advanced stuff that I didn’t even have time to look at), and get top scores on exams and effortlessly explain everything to us mere mortals. Life simply is not fair.
No, I find that position rather absurd. I'm not talking about entitlement. I was reacting to a train of thought started two posts up:
> There just was not enough time dedicated to dissecting how to parse word problem, look for patterns, map it to a framework. It was basically left to the student to figure it out in 1 week based on 3-4 homework problems.
My position is that, perhaps, it is counterproductive to tell people who have some trouble in this environment to "find another occupation" based on such a limited measure of performance. We've never defined what the occupation is in this exchange, so perhaps I'm just unintentionally talking past you. I'm certainly biased. The autodidacts I've worked with (who intentionally dropped out of the rigid, unforgiving environment of academia) have been among the biggest contributors on teams I've participated in. In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out.
> In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out.
You're assuming it's the teacher's fault. That will be true in some cases, but it may impossible to tell at the time. What will be true in others is that the person (like me) was far more motivated by work than academia, and university at the age of 18 wasn't appropriate.
Yeah dawg! That sounds like basic decency that doesn’t cost much to anyone who’d be harmed. Also it’s a general principle of meritocracy. You can’t merit anything without access to merit it!
Your objection was to equal opportunity to lessons. We’re not talking about operating ice skating rinks for the public. We’re talking about allowing all people to be taught by teachers.
Backup NFL quarterback is a pretty damn elite job. There are what, 50 or 60 of them in the world? Vs dozens of NCAA div 1 starters who graduate every year.
Backup quarterbacks in the NFL is actually the worst possible example you could've given here. How many of those do you think they need relative to the population ? What level of play do you imagine they have to exhibit?
The point is that even in the NFL, there's a wide and very visible gap between the top and bottom levels of quarterback play, and that's taking into account that these players (including the backups) are already considered the best of the best.
I only mentioned the NFL because I was riffing on your comment about throwing footballs, but agree that it's generally a stretched analogy. The extreme scarcity at the top of most professional sports and the resulting lack of utility/career viability outside of the big leagues doesn't compare well to most vocations.
The argument also assumes the only reason someone plays football is to play in the NFL. I invested significant time learning to skate because I enjoy it, not because I think I'll become a professional hockey player.
