Being able to pass a test is indeed not a sign of mastery of the material (this might come as a shock to some! Just because you got good grades doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the subject! It just means you’re good at the test! But wait, why use tests then? Well, sit down, get comfortable and let me tell you a tale of how we got here…)
The fact this conversation exists highlights that our education system is silly. Without evidence, I subjectively like the ideas in “One World Schoolhouse” as an alternative.
People who are really interested in the subject will not complain. I for example have been programming for the past 15 years and I will still read something like an introduction to C programming, just because there might be some ideas, explainations or examples in it that will help me deepen the fundamentals of what I already know.
Arguably there are topics where this works better and topics where this works worse. In electronics or mechanics groking the fundamentals is so essential to the whole field that you should know them by hard. And the only way to know them by hard is spaced repetition. So having some overlap in the things you learn is not only necessary here, it is crucial.
I know you typed it twice, but I just never heard that expression.
I think/hope you mean "guarantee" rather than "sign", because, yes, someone who has mastered the material is indeed much more likely to pass the test than someone who has not. The existence of non-representative counterexamples does not refute that.
If you pass an earlier test while missing some fundamental concept, then you'll simply spend the time learning it when you do need it. If you never need it, maybe it wasn't that fundamental after all.
When learning, unlike the person teaching you, you don't know what's coming in the next lesson or the one after it, so it's sometimes a good idea to trust them on a curriculum. It's also the one of the biggest downsides of being self-thought (as I am in big part), you always have holes in your perspective that you're not even aware of and it takes years to stumble on something that someone else was told in the 1st year of being a dev.
Only if one knows what they don't know. And fundamental concepts have a habit of hiding in plain sight. It's easy to waste lots of resources because one doesn't know about a fundamental concept.
You can probably find a solution with what you already now (as a junior programmer) as most problems programmers have to solve are not that hard but you may completely miss a better solution because you had no idea it was possible. I may be fine but you may also lose a lot of time later because it wasn't.
I agree that it's possible to self teach almost everything in CS but the point of university is to speed up the discovery of CS from scratch and have solid foundations. You certainly don't know everything graduating university but should now where to look when you have a problem imo.
Given that environment if someone comes to "introduction into analog sound synthesis" I can expect them to want to hear just that (or they need the credits). If people don't come to learn, I will not force them. They are grown ups, it is their decision if they want to learn.
Please also consider that unless you have experience in teaching groups you might have a rose tinted view of what an instructor can practically achieve. If you have a group of 20 people with 10 of those having no clue what you are talking about, 2 that are very advanced and the rest with mixed levels inbetween you must find a way of teaching the 10 that have no clue while also not boring the 2 who are more advanced. This can be a hard problem to solve in a good way as you cannot split yourself. If your group is bigger it gets harder even (and at some point you have to stop worrying).
I am totally for people being able to skip classes where they can demonstrate they already know everything thought in it. But practically it might be a lot of work for anybody working at university to create such an test for e.g. just one person. From the perspective of a student it all looks a lot simpler than it might be. For example even if someone could test a student to make sure they are not sending them into a hail mary be letting them skip fundamentals, maybe that someone has so many other tasks on their shelve that even if they wanted they cannot do that?
Also: for every student where this might make sense you will get 3 or 4 that really overestimate themselves with a nearly narcissistic inability of judging their own ability. You know, the type that would like to construct the equivalent of an iPhone in circuit form while not being able to explain ohms law.
But of course they could. And indeed, considering them narcissists is what many hate about the academia. Maybe they'd be better off taking a less linear path. Sure, in the context of the academia skipping classes is not justified and there's no problem with anything you're doing. But when one is frustrated with schooling, the first instinct is often to try to go faster. Quitting school is supposed to be a very bad thing, that's the one acceptable way to do something different.
For the most part I had the nicest and most accommodating teachers, had no problem with them, they had no problem with myself, can't blame them for anything. But I do strongly dislike the nearly universal borderline religious belief in traditional schooling being the right way. It's okay to not know some thing and not want to know them.
College wouldn’t exist without it.
That seems like a bad reason to err on the side of unconditional speed limits. Opportunity cost is real.
On top of that as an educator you have a real responsibility not to send someone on a hail mary without fundamentals, which might ultimately drive them out of university because it will not get easier after that. This is a real risk.
Another aspect: What so you think how many students will try to skip classes if word gets around it is actually possible to do so? How many of those will cheat to do so? And bow many of those who made it through will be able to face the next exam without cheating?
The thing is: it is hard to tell them apart quickly from those who actually already know, without having them take some test.
And even if you have them take the test, you cannot be sure they miss some fundamental core concept that will be crucial to understand later.
I myself had to go through introductions more than once that I thought will not offer me anything new, but going through the basics once in a while with a better understanding can be of incredible value