The first one can be read here .
In today's chapter, we will talk about the practical side of learning and some of the moral features that were not touched on in the last part. Let me remind you that the observations described in the article are relevant as of docoid closure, i.e. 2019 year. What awaits the school in the future after the pandemic, we can only guess.
The school time paradox
One of the fundamental principles of the school was the idea of collective learning. The opportunity to be close to other students and explore new topics, helping each other, was realized in the arrangement of an entire wing of the school building exclusively for the needs of the pool students. Long rows of Macintosh computers are available for any student to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To enter the system, it was necessary to enter individual student credits, which are set personally by the students on the first day of enrollment.
One of the statistics collected about a student during his studies at the pool is the number of hours spent working in the system. Pay attention to the wording: it is in the system. The good old tracking comes into play, from which every seasoned IT worker (and not only) brings cheekbones like a lemon. The system records your activity under the session of this or that computer and sums up all hours in the total value for the day. On average, diligent pool students log into the system 10+ hours every day. This is considered a normal value, but some students can log more than 12 - who has enough strength.
You can organize study groups in separate rooms or brainstorm at the whiteboard, but this time will not be counted as spent on training. There is also the opposite effect: some students who are not particularly involved in the process keep the session active with random mouse movements or scripts that prevent the computer from going into sleep mode. I personally saw several of these scripts in action - it looks creepy, but the clock keeps track. The goal has been achieved.
This raises a paradox: is it so important to be at the workplace, if physical presence is not always equivalent to productive work? Is the number of logged hours so important if the system cannot determine their quality? With the arrival of COVID, the school transferred cadets to distance learning, and the pools were eliminated. Which is logical - the cornerstone postulate of community in a pandemic will no longer be achieved.
The paradox of exam honesty
In addition to the tasks that must be closed every school day (I talked about this in detail in the previous part ), there is an exam every Friday. There are 4 of them (along the length of the monthly course of the pool): the first three cover the material of the completed academic week, and the last one is the final, a kind of graduation, offers tasks from the entire course of study. To be admitted to the exam, you must first register for it. If you forget to do this, you miss the exam. your account is simply blocked from any computer. Before the exam, cadets inspect the classroom and restrooms for hidden cribs and notes. Anything "illegal" found is destroyed.
Before entering the classroom, you need to hand over your phones and smart watches to volunteer cadets and let yourself be examined for cribs and notes. They are immediately disqualified from the exam. You can take only 1 sheet of A4 paper and one pen or pencil for the exam. Bags and water bottles are also not allowed. The final exam lasts about 10 hours and is allowed to take small containers of dry (non-spillable) snacks and fruits with you. There is also a volunteer cadet in front of the latrines, who makes sure that only 1 student is in the latrine at a time, excluding the possibility of a few words or discussing the solution of tasks. They are different for everyone, the system assigns them in a random order within the framework of the topic, so the probability of coincidence of tasks for randomly encountered students is extremely small.
With all this rigorous preparation to ensure the integrity of the writing of exams, students still manage to copy and carry cheat sheets. The explanation is simple: “surrender at any cost”. The approach to the assessment of exam tasks is similar to the school day: for successful delivery, you must score a minimum score. And students desperate to get into cadets are willing to take risks in the name of their IT "American Dream."
Moreover, the final exam is also difficult morally: the allotted 10 hours are enough to find a solution to even those problems that you do not know how to solve on school days. But is it enough for a student to really spend almost half a day solving the exam problems? Some break down and leave the hall after an hour. There were a couple of enthusiasts in my pool who were intent on solving every single task and left the audience after 8 hours. There is another paradox here, of exam honesty. What becomes a priority: ultimate knowledge or successful passing of exams? Each student decides for himself. To be fair, I will note that I failed the final exam miserably.
The pool passage paradox
From the first day of school until the last minutes of the final exam, controversy and conspiracy theories continue among the pool students. What is actually required to successfully pass the pool and be enrolled in cadets?
The school deliberately does not disclose the system by which it rates each student in the pool, leaving students driven by uncertainty to speculate and play deduction. There are several common theses that really seem to be not unfounded, on which students are mainly guided.
- Log every day for at least 10 hours.
- Pass all exams.
- Close as many school days as possible (and preferably not at minimum values).
Each pool is added to this list with new speculations of varying degrees of persuasion. In my set it was “Be socially active and help other students” and “Be courteous with cadets, because they can give a bad characterization. " At the end of each basin, an active generalization of special cases begins to confirm or refute one theory or another. In reality, it is really difficult to identify a general strategy for “successful swimming”. There was a girl in my pool who failed all exams, but passed the pool. There was also another student who passed all four exams with high scores, but was not enrolled in cadets. The pattern is not found in any way, there are too many special cases.
Studying in such a suspended state, when you do not know where you are sailing and whether you are doing it right at all, puts pressure on psychologically and makes you question your every action. Perhaps understanding the minimum pool requirements would be helpful, but would then the school be what it is now? Answer 42. Next question.
Conclusion
I successfully passed the pool and was enrolled in cadets, but decided to return home and start my studies a little later. The school made it possible to enroll on other dates for the start of cadetism, not necessarily immediately starting behind the pool. Alas, the world is covered by the COVID-19 pandemic. School 42 Silicon Valley moved active students to online learning, canceled all new pools, and closed a lab in Fremont. The future of the school in sunny California is uncertain and uncertain.
This concludes my second part of the story about Xavier Niel's school of programming. I will be glad to tell you more and answer any questions in the comments or in private messages. I hope in the future I will still have the opportunity to return to Fremont and continue my studies within the already familiar gray walls of the school. Until better times, the incredible 42 is closed, but the memories of her are in my heart forever.