Bartosz about Chapel

[Walter Bright]

On 11/11/2011 4:37 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> In my school experience (both high school and college), the students who
> were well versed in and heavily focused on rote regurgitation were
> consistently the ones with the best grades, and the ones who where therefore
> considered to be "smart" even though they couldn't have reasoned to save
> their lives. That *needs* to change.

That was true of my high school, but not my college (Caltech). At Caltech, rote 
memorization would get you precisely nowhere. Exams were (by institute policy) 
open book and open note. This did have the interesting effect of forcing the 
profs to come up with exams that could not be completed by rote.

I came to attend Caltech mostly by accident, and it was a most fortunate 
accident. The attitude and culture of Caltech suited my personality almost 
perfectly.

(For another example, professors were not allowed to take attendance at 
lectures, not allowed to make attendance part of the grade, not allowed to 
proctor exams (100% honor system), etc. I loved being treated like an adult for 
the first time.)

One might ask, isn't it easy to cheat under such a system? Yes, it is. But such 
a system had an unexpected effect. The students did not regard themselves as the 
adversaries of the professors. The students liked the honor system so much that 
if someone did cheat, they'd get ostracized. Ostracism is a powerful and very 
effective means of getting conformance. Almost nobody cheated (to my knowledge).