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Comment by _audakel | Hacker News Reader

> cruel

def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it.

Shaming is undesirable, but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works - in sports you see exact stats of how your do, publicly traded companies/CEOs are meticulously analysed publicly on how they perform etc. etc.

There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. I feel like the US has swung far to one side and china the other. Best would be some where in the middle. Maybe have a live list of the top 10-15% of student scores.

I am a parent, and don't want to hurt my daughter, but at the same time a little pain and suffering makes you stronger.

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> There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality.

Yes. Praise can be more damaging than criticism in many cases.[1][2] Certain types of praise in the form of encouragement can be very good things. Certain types of constructive criticism can be empowering.

> a little pain and suffering makes you stronger

What is "stronger"? More emotionally resilient? In my opinion, suffering just results in risk aversion. There is not a lot of positive that emerges from it. Note that I'm not referring to establishing boundaries, which may be what you're referring to with your daughter.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smart-moves/201411/the-...

[2] http://www.parentingscience.com/effects-of-praise.html

"but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works "

This is not true.

A) It's ludicrous to wrap 'personhood' and 'identity' out of how well someone is able to study and write arbitrary tests. Completely wrong.

What if some kid learns better visually, than orally? And he's actually much smarter?

What about the kids that are smart, but poor at taking tests?

What about the kids who have massive advantage over others (i.e. tutors) - does that make the other kids dumb?

'In the real world' - there's no such thing as 'someone being better at taking a test' than others. It makes no difference in the 'real world'.

I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but tech jobs are absolutely allocated on the basis of an extremely contrived test (the whiteboard interview).

"extremely contrived test (the whiteboard interview)"

A) That's only the tech world, which is not 'the world'

B) White board interviews are not 'contrived' - they are reasonable. They just are not perfect.

C) I'll bet that whiteboard interviews and academic success are only somewhat loosely correlated.

Sports are zero-sum games by construction.

Executive jobs wherein you can get fired for losing to your competitors compensate you for this risk by paying fuck-you money on a yearly, sometimes even daily basis. If the CEO of Exxon is fired for failing to overtake BP, he could never work again and still die with more in the bank than I will ever earn.

Ranking in academia does not reflect real-world conditions.

I agree with you here. I used the word cruel since I couldn't find a better word - as a none native speaker my vocabulary is limited :( .

I have the same feelings about the UK public education. Competition is basically non-existence. I wonder why people can't settle in a middle ground.

> def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it. willfully: check; suffering: check (the shaming); no concern: check. Actor: state/school as a whole. So I think it applies.

I think this is sum of the parts different than the whole.

I was just pointing out that cruel has a very negative connotation ie - inhuman, barbaric, sadistic, evil, abominable etc. Applying it in the previous use case seemed excessive and implied a more radical tone than I believe the author (as he mentioned) wanted.

Really seen Ofsted's league tables which are published as are the rankings of the public (private) schools?

Are you saying that a 'cruel' winter is being deliberately cold?

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