Chinese lecturer demands his students acquire iPads A Chinese lecturer has raised a storm by demanding students get an iPad, and that anyone unable to raise the funds over the summer shouldn't bother studying the financial industry. Liang Zhenyu teaches at the Shanghai Maritime University and sent out a tweet (over the Weibo service) explaining that he would be using an iPad …
There is a reason why financial services want everyone on the up and up. They are playing with other people's money and no one wants someone dressed like a developer playing with their money. Would you trust your money and your families future to a neckbeard dressed in a Star Wars T-shirt and combat boots?
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My comment was supposed to be about customer perception, I really didn't mean to get everyone so worked up.
I agree that the clothes don't make the person but consider this. If banks didn't have a dress code and operated like they do now (basically all providing the same services at similar costs) would you pick the bank with the staff in street dress or the bank with the well dressed staff?
'And for every teenage tracksuit mugger
There's a guy in a suit who wouldn't lift a finger for anybody else.'
Dress sense says NOTHING about a person whatsoever. I have this argument regularly with a friend who wants me to join his golf club. I tell him until they relax all the Victorian era rules about what you can and cannot wear both in the club and on the course, and when women are allowed equal status* then there is no way I am joining.
He argues that it keeps the riff-raff out and I point out to him that that is the kind of snobbery that I am not willing to put up with. I have met far more people with sharp suits and Audis or Beemers that are complete and utter twats that I wouldn't spend 5 minutes with than I have your everyday nobody who shops at Primark and drives an Astra who tend to be decent people.
But if a sharp suit and a nice car are all it takes for you to trust somebody with your money, I have both so could I interest you in this once in a lifetime investment opportunity......
*The ladies have a room in the clubhouse with times that they are and are not allowed to be there along with times when they are not allowed to play on the course. Totally ridiculous
Ok, so noone would trust someone in a suit either. But that's not the point: if a finance advisor wore a suit (ok, granted) AND (wait for it) also had an iPad, now that's a completely different matter, then surely you'd trust him/her.
If you not agree with that, you have no necessarity be my course.
Who'd want to learn finances from a guy who supports giving out shovel loads of cash for horridly overpriced devices? Sounds like the same teacher the US Gov't had when they drafted the bailouts....
(Don't believe me on "overpriced"? Just look at their operating costs and profit margins)
Forget the iPad, it's the suit wearing rubbish I still dislike most, mainly because I have to wear one for an interview today. It's absolutely shocking that in the modern world interview situation idiots can be judged positively for their smart appearance while geniuses ignored because they turn up in comfortable clothes.
Just smart casual attire. I don't think I'd wear a monkey suit for a programming position unless that's the dress code policy for the place. As far as I know it hasn't hurt any of my employment prospects.
Think of it like a first date. Just because you feel more comfortable being a slob doesn't mean you shouldn't try and make a good first impression.
Whenever I read something like this I am reminded of a comment by record producer Chris Kimsey when asked how to get into the recording industry, "Say you'll do anything in the studio, sweep up, make tea, etc, oh and always, always wear a suit to the interview! Steal one or wear youR Dad's, whatever. You may never wear one again in your life, dress like you slept the same clothes for a week all the time but wearing a suit to be a tea-boy shows you're willing to put yourself out to get that on that ladder and get the job you really, really want in the studio.".
Whilst I agree the Chinese bloke is a nutter, I think you may soon be destined for receive a life-lesson in how society works.
I wouldn't hire any idiot - or give additional plus points - solely because he happened to be wearing a suit. My job as an interviewer is to reject idiots and identify stars by careful questioning.
However, I also wouldn't hire anyone who thought they were too good/clever/"modern" to conform to the dress-standards that prevail in my industry and/or showed complete disrespect to their interviewer by turning up in "something comfortable". Why any firm would wish to hire such an arrogant social misfit is beyond me!
You aren't going down the pub with your mates - dress appropriately to the situation!
Good luck in the interview BTW.
Like it or not, the rules of interviews currently expect all candidates to wear a suit.
If you can't attempt to meet the rules for the interview, what makes the interviewer think you will meet the rules of working for the company.
Play the game by the rules, or expect to be playing in the lower leagues for the rest of your life. Only once you're in the premiership can you wear your golden boots.
I know I'll get down votes, but then some people just won't accept reality.
All candidates to wear a suit? Not in every industry, or remotely so. I think that you will find that the more technical/specialised the field, the less of a dress code, let alone a formal one. We all tend to know each other anyway, so what would be the point.
By the way, the article is missing an apostrophe:
"an argument with which, sadly, its hard to find fault."
... was when I got married. The next time I put on a suit will be when they put me in a box.
The last 9-5 I interviewed for (in 1989), I was wearing my racing leathers. When the interviewer queried my choice of "uniform", I pointed out that he had asked me to drive up from Palo Alto to South San Francisco by 10AM ... and had called at 9AM. I knew I could make it on the bike, but there was no way I was driving the Bayshore without armor ... I got the job.
The 9-5 prior to that, I wore the same outfit, for similar reasons. When queried, I responded along the lines of "are you hiring an engineer or a fashion plate?" ... They made me an offer. I counter offered, they hired me at my price point ...
Sounds like an ideal task for an Apprentice Task.
<phone rings>
"Hello, Lord Sugar wants you to come to the Apple Store, the cars will arrive in 30 mins"
Candidates gather in Apple store, LordSirAlan descends the stair case
"Ever since I revolutionized the computer and business worlds with the Amstrad PCW and the Em@iler the business world has been looking for the next big idea .... and the iPad is todays big idea. Now, here's a skip load of old em@ilers for you to go and flog to get enough money to buy an iPad. Anyone without an iPad when you get back to the boardroom will be fired!"
""[The] iPad is not an innovation, it's revolution ... without it the teaching process will be paralyzed.""
This Grade A fuckwit must have been very happy teaching while paralyzed for the decades before the iPad, and everyone else was very happy teaching for centuries before. I am very happy teaching without any whizz-bang fluff at all. I use chalk, blackboard, and words.
Here we have in a microcosm, how and why it is that the bankers have completely shafted us. Dress smartly and carry a shiny gadget, and the world will put trillions of dollars in your hands to throw away in any way you think might be a good idea. Wear a pullover and carry a real computer, and you're on your own.
It used to be a joke when we said "come the revolution" ....
The most I had to get at university was the textbook (which happened to be co-authored by the lecturer....).
All other academic materials were platform agnostic, so could be opened with Windows/Linux/Macs (and no doubt new-fangled iTabloids).
Maybe they could get one from one of the fake apple shops?
To say that a student who cannot afford an overpriced tablet computer, and in effect ensuring that only the upper-middle/upper classes can study his course wouldn't happen in the UK surely, where lower and lower-middle classes can afford higher education? hmmm Actually... I'll get my coat....
wish my daughter's software courses were platform agnostic... sadly, as the college she attends sucks the Microsoft tit, all software courses use their development tools etc. and insist on her laptop being capable of running access etc. just to do the programming assignments... Tony Blair has got a lot to answer for... that shady deal where Bill Gates got a knighthood and all public sectors getting a big discount on going fully Microsoft was a serious setback to open source in this country...
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...however after a few words in the right ears, course materials suddenly started being put up on the Intranet as PDF or similar rather than DOCX. Not a massive improvement, but it means you can do the course without ever touching Microsoft Office if you don't want to.
Try seeing if there's any other students interested in making the course a little more platform-agnostic. Either with the formats they send assignments out in, or the tools they'll permit you to use. For instance, do you REALLY need to use Microsoft Expression Web to make a web page? Especially when it's a nothing in the industry compared with, say, Dreamweaver? Or even a half-decent syntax-highlighting text editor.
Believe it or not, professors will listen to their students sometimes! Be polite, don't be demanding, and see how far you get.
I don't know when this stopped happening, but my software engineering course was pretty platform agnostic... in that you didn't *have* to get anything. if you wanted to use a computer, you went to a university computer cluster and used theirs. If you needed to do any development, you went to the 24/7 computer labs and used the stuff in there. They were even windows/linux dual boot dev boxes.
Having your own computer was handy, but not a requirement. You didn't even need to buy the course textbooks if you didn't want to, as the library stocked a good number of each of them.
Heh.
Yes, the uni I'm at has quite excellent computing facilities and a lab dedicated entirely to the games course that I'm on. Playstation dev kits look teh sexay. Not 24/7 but close enough.
Unfortunately I'm here and the computers are there. The terminal server and RDP works but it's not really suitable for trying to chunk lots of images over a broadband connection. It's just nice to be able to read notes and write up essays and reports using whatever I have to hand, rather than having to buy overpriced word processors or bloat my home computer up with gigabytes of shite from the MSDNAA that suddenly becomes illegal the moment I leave the course.
As an iPad user, and a student I can say an iPad is a great thing to have, a PDF copy of all the textbooks, assessment guides, readings, etc (thank you OV). A lot lighter and more convenient to carry around, and heck you can even do a little essay writing on it.
But if this guy can't teach without it, then he cannot teach. The iPad is a crutch, an aide; it's not absolutely necessary to teach...
How often do you need to carry around all of your textbooks, assessment guides and everything else? Nobody seemed to need to do that before the Ipad (grammar before marketing), and I don't recall doing it except when I went home at the end of the year. I also prefer reading a hard-copy of such things, but I may be unusual in this respect.
I used a rucksack to carry things around in. Not only did it hold my course materials for the day, it also held my pencilcase and a bottle of water :-)
When I was a student I considered it a good day if I left the house with a biro in my pocket!
Agree with the rest of your sentiments though. Personally I think encouraging students to bring in /any/ electronic device is probably going to result in less attention from classmates. Especially if he's not a very good lecturer, which this article lends me to believe.
First Year at university, learning to code in an obscure implementation of an obscure language for which the only textbook was co-written by the guy at the front of the class. Mind you, he was a nice chap so I didn't begrudge him the £30-or-so the book cost.
(Like hell, £30 was serious money on a student income in 1990...)
Oh, and the snobbery thing works both ways. I generally look askance at a "techie" contact who rocks up in a shiny suit with iStuff in his bindle. In the same way that Stephen Fry is "a stupid person's idea of a clever person", iTech is a non-techie's idea of tech. Sort of thing.
Bull, I spent 2 years* using old edition engineering books. They'd barely changed from the current editions, apart from everything being in imperial, which was actually a bonus, seeing as we used and were examined in both SI and imperial units.
* Like a sucker I bought shit load of books in 1st year, I then realised I could check them out from the library - not a single other person requested them in 2 years.
"If you are teaching a course based on what you know, and you've already put that into a book, using that book as course material saves a lot of repetition."
Not a very convincing argument unless we're talking about some highly esoteric subject, The reality is most undergraduate courses comprise fairly generic modules (e.g. for me databases, C programming, graphics, engineering mathematics, electronics etc.) and each has books which are widely regarded as the best ones around. Books which have ongoing value, either second hand as reference materials.
When lecturers choose to eschew a well regarded text for their own vanity project, they're doing their students a gross disservice. First they're bilking them of money (stuff students aren't exactly overflowing with), second they're using second rate teaching material, and third students are left with a book with practically zero resale value or use as a reference outside the course.
I'm glad that not all my lectures went down this path but a few most certainly did. The perverse part is the course rarely if ever even referred to their stupid books. I would recommend new students do not buy any book written by the person about to teach their course. Wait a few weeks and see if its even necessary. At worst you can buy it then.
I suspect in the age of ebooks that the danger of lecturers foisting vanity crap on their students is even greater. To "publish" these days all you need do is print your powerpoint slides through a PDF distiller or an ebook tool, slap an arbitrary price on it and then compel your students to buy it through Amazon or Apple.
"females don light makeup"
Because as we know, women are only there to look pretty for the men - it's not as if they were real people, is it? Horrors, they might start expecting equal treatment!
Oy, China, how about doing *better* than the west for once and getting rid of the mediaeval garbage?
We should be worried about China...within 20 years it *will* be better than us at *everything*.
If their strategy is mediaeval garbage, then sign me up for some garbage...nothing we're doing here in the UK will get-us-to-and-keep-us-at the front...we can't even feed ourselves anymore FFS (we can only produce enough food to feed London).
"We should be worried about China...within 20 years it *will* be better than us at *everything*."
Really? Does this mean that we are doing everyhing so abysmally badly that our Eastern cousins can beat us at it with us having a head start, or are they somehow better endowed than us in every way? Or maybe you are talking bollocks, and as they become more industrialised and westernised, they will be bound by the same limitations as the rest of the planet, and rather than living in some sort of la-la-wonderland where unlimited growth with no consequences is possible, they will have to cope with the same economic and practical issues as everyone else?
I'm out by the University on a regular basis. Most of the women you see "away from sorority row anyway" are in comfortable clothes and natural faces. Perhaps its a regional thing. I don't know.
Anyway, if YOU want to wear makeup YOU do it. There is no good reason for mandatory makeup.
... he's a partner in the closest Apple retail outlet to the campus?
If not, he's not just a bad teacher, he's a bad businessman too.
In the distant past, I taught college students, and while I've nothing against giving handouts, I always believed teaching is about quality, not quantity. You shouldn't need a tablet for the course material, because it shouldn't ever be that big. Keep the weight of paper small, and the students will have enough time after reading it to be able to analyse the material and develop questions (and then go out on the piss for two days solid, but that's students...).
It's that "develop questions" bit that frightens bad teachers. Many don't know their field very well, and don't want to lose face by being stumped in a lecture by a student question. The easiest way to prevent this is to bombard them with documentation, so they're too busy annotating, summarising and memorising to actually learn... moving the same shitty process to an iPad just accelerates the harm.
If you're not going to put the effort in to edit your course notes down to their core, then you'll never gain the insight into what's fundamental to your field, and what's fluff; without that insight, you can't teach well, because when it comes down to it, you'll never know much more than the fastest reader in your class.
The very best teachers I had in college gave no formal notes at all. Everything was done interactively, on whiteboard (blackboard, actually, and I'm showing my age), with them pausing to field questions. They also set the toughest exams, but nearly everyone passed.
So the more information that was given to me, the less I did. Shit lecturers and ones that didn't give much away in their lecture slides (No, they're not the same thing at all) forced me to get off my arse and do some studying for myself, meaning I tended to do better in those subjects, irrespective of other factors such as how interested in the subject I was.
How many, exactly, are vying for ElReg's Ford Focus test-drive?
And how many, exactly, know how to tune up a 1965 Mustang's 260ci V8?
There is a big difference between "interface user" and "technologically competent" ... unfortunately I fear that, thanks to Madison Avenue, the first is becoming more important than the second ...
He says: "if I'm late for class, even if late for a minute, I will [do] self-punishment in front of the classroom ... 50 push-ups."
It will be interesting to see if there are strange things happening to his car, his elevators, his commute route, etc. It would be sooooo very tempting to make him late for as many classes as possible, by any non-lethal means I could think of.
Nobody in the real world is such a massive cock.
Actually this is nothing new. I know an academic who was adamant that his students all needed laptops and the taxpayer should fund them. Which is why the rest of us think academices live in a dream world.
But as has been said, in this thread and many other times on this site, people seem to think that the more "techy" gear you own, the more knowledgable you are. When in reality it means you have more money than sense. And if you don't have a lot of money, then, well you've proven the point even more.
"My computer now runs too slow. I need a new one". Really? Your computer has somehow aged over the years? Or maybe you're just so ****ing stupid that you keep installing applications, sorry "apps" without giving a moment's thought about the effect.
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Seriously if you think about it, the only thing the US can do to regain economical importance is to make China fail. And what better way then making them repeat all the mistakes the US did. Once China is run by MBAs, they will start wasting their productivity and fail.
Oddly enough, this man is probably doing more with these rules to get his students ready for the real world. BOFH's Boss and Dilbert's PHB *are* reflective of the real world and *do* think like this. These kids are studying to be bean counters (poor bastards) because they obviously can't hack real work. Being the boss' yes-man and putting yourself in debt to pander to his crazy image of what a 'professional' looks like is how an up and coming bean-counter gets ahead.
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