Why do you guys hate school so much?(samstack.io)
samstack.io
Why do you guys hate school so much?
https://www.samstack.io/p/why-do-you-guys-hate-school-so-much
25 comments
Trying to write off schools as a bad idea entirely seems pretty dumb to me. I’ve got young kids in school, and I understand the criticisms, but I’m also constantly amazed at how quickly they are learning. Having free quality public education is a massive success for a civilization. The failure to recognize this has to come from ignorance or privilege.
This suits the government very well. Pay one teacher to teach say 25 kids. That frees up 24 mom's to enter the work force and pay taxes. And it's a big bonus that the kids get educated in the basics of the three R's, so the economy is boosted a lot. It's a win, win, win. Parents win (free education for their kids), government wins with youth educated to grade 12 level and the kids get educated and learn to socialize with their peers. Oh and the police can pick out the future psychopaths very early on before they get older and learn to cover their tracks. What's not to like?
not really since school only covers 9-3, no summers and a ton of that money goes to upper level bureaucracy, real estate and corporate interests (like the companies that create standardized exams)
I'm in the 'schools are a moral disaster' camp. The final paragraph sums it up:
> So, I’m a sceptic of the ‘school is a moral disaster that we’ll look back on with shame’ position. Or at least, I think it seems weird to hold the view that schools are a moral disaster without thinking that most employment is a moral disaster.
That's exactly the point. I think that a lot of people who think school is a moral disaster would agree that most employment is too. The only thing that mitigates this somewhat is that you have choice once you are out of school. However school has a lot to do with setting us up for the moral disaster that is employment - that is its primary purpose, and it is very effective at it.
> So, I’m a sceptic of the ‘school is a moral disaster that we’ll look back on with shame’ position. Or at least, I think it seems weird to hold the view that schools are a moral disaster without thinking that most employment is a moral disaster.
That's exactly the point. I think that a lot of people who think school is a moral disaster would agree that most employment is too. The only thing that mitigates this somewhat is that you have choice once you are out of school. However school has a lot to do with setting us up for the moral disaster that is employment - that is its primary purpose, and it is very effective at it.
Personally I would call schools missocialization machines that extend into and shape employement. High school bullshit is echoed in office politics. Keeping up with the Joneses into debt is an extension of other bad habits.
In schools, there is a lot of violence and aggressivity. Kids hit, lie, steal, call names, harass. When two kids are fighting, they frequently are both punished even if actually one was only defending themselves and was in the right. Sometimes the whole class is punished for the misbehaving of a few.
We would not accept being treated like this as adults, but yet we have no problems putting our kids through this.
We would not accept being treated like this as adults, but yet we have no problems putting our kids through this.
It's definitely a bad set up for healthy socialization. Kids have little adult supervision to help them learn social skills or protect them from harm. Plus, kids need mixed age environments to learn, not 30 kids their age thrown into a closed classroom and 30 minutes of recess.
As a teacher for 20 years in 3 countries, I saw an education system broken at every level from failing public schools to pricey private schools.
In private schools, I saw schools answering to their boards, which meant a focus on SAT scores and IVY league admissions.
In public schools, curriculum is geared towards standardized tests created by private corporations. Quality varies enormously based on the cost of real estate in the area (meaning amount of tax dollars going in)
unfortunately, a lot of microschools are still trying to re-create school, this in spite of the fact that compulsory schooling was an experiment, that just stuck around, in spite of its failings.
Both systems put little emphasis on the individual child and their needs.
By design, schools serve a system, and not individual children. They're oriented towards standardization so that everyone can hit one mediocre level that justifies taxpayers dollars. We need a public education system that's flexible and oriented towards serving the needs of individual children and communities, not a standardized 9-3 schedule and curriculum that takes decades to tweak and change.
Furthermore, there's a fine line between indoctrination and education, but they are opposites, in fact. In my opinion, schools are more on the indoctrination side of things, not the love and passion for learning side.
Maybe we should also ask why we're outsourcing education at all? Why shouldn't it be the parent's role and why shouldn't we give them resources to do it well?
In private schools, I saw schools answering to their boards, which meant a focus on SAT scores and IVY league admissions.
In public schools, curriculum is geared towards standardized tests created by private corporations. Quality varies enormously based on the cost of real estate in the area (meaning amount of tax dollars going in)
unfortunately, a lot of microschools are still trying to re-create school, this in spite of the fact that compulsory schooling was an experiment, that just stuck around, in spite of its failings.
Both systems put little emphasis on the individual child and their needs.
By design, schools serve a system, and not individual children. They're oriented towards standardization so that everyone can hit one mediocre level that justifies taxpayers dollars. We need a public education system that's flexible and oriented towards serving the needs of individual children and communities, not a standardized 9-3 schedule and curriculum that takes decades to tweak and change.
Furthermore, there's a fine line between indoctrination and education, but they are opposites, in fact. In my opinion, schools are more on the indoctrination side of things, not the love and passion for learning side.
Maybe we should also ask why we're outsourcing education at all? Why shouldn't it be the parent's role and why shouldn't we give them resources to do it well?
In one word: bullying. However, I don't think we should stop schools. In my case, homeschooling would have prevented a lot of suffering, but that didn't happen.
Another thing I hate is how school and teachers are glorified all the time. Sure, I had some great teachers. I also had terrible ones, and the final balance is negative. But they can't accept that, so in my country you need to have a reason to homeschool kid, and ask the administration.
Someone asked what "school" is here, for me it would be everything up until high school (included).
Another thing I hate is how school and teachers are glorified all the time. Sure, I had some great teachers. I also had terrible ones, and the final balance is negative. But they can't accept that, so in my country you need to have a reason to homeschool kid, and ask the administration.
Someone asked what "school" is here, for me it would be everything up until high school (included).
What is “school” in these discussions? I assume high school, but does it include uni and post graduate schools as well? There’s a whole lot of interesting fields that requiring training to participate and that requires some kind of organized setup to occur (ie, we’re not English lords with money and infinite tree (edit, free, sorry) time).
Are you all saying that school should start later, after kids get being kids out of their system? There’s just not that much of a need for blue collar work (which also has training) and how many artists are successful? Hacking, yeah, that’s ok in that doing >> knowing in the age of stack overflow.
Are you all saying that school should start later, after kids get being kids out of their system? There’s just not that much of a need for blue collar work (which also has training) and how many artists are successful? Hacking, yeah, that’s ok in that doing >> knowing in the age of stack overflow.
Not being English, what is "tree time"?
Probably meant “free time”?
Author already made an edit, but it also could have been some arcane British thing just as well.
Yeah, sorry. I can’t catch all of my iPad’s corrections to what I type.
Lol that makes a lot more sense. I thought it was some historical thing that lords would do with their purebred hounds or something, like hunting while discussing startup ideas.
> I can’t find equivalent data for sexual assaults in schools in the United States, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is almost certainly much lower - one small survey in the UK showed that 22% of kids said they’d been shown unwanted pornographic images at least once.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center: "almost one in four undergraduate women experienced sexual assault or misconduct at 33 of the nation's major universities".
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center: "almost one in four undergraduate women experienced sexual assault or misconduct at 33 of the nation's major universities".
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
Grouping assault and misconduct is extremely disingenuous here. “Misconduct” could be as insipid as some woman “feeling uncomfortable”.
There's a coordinated, well-funded FUD campaign sponsored by the neofeudalists to undermine public schooling. The messages are everywhere within a certain podcasting bubble. I think the author might be adjacent to said bubble, which is why they probably feel confused at the intensity of the vitriol.
"Out of public schools grows the greatness of a nation." - Mark Twain
Well, the fact that Twain said it doesn't prove it's absurd nonsense, but it certainly suggests the possibility.
He was the wisest mortal man to walk the Earth after King Solomon, and one of the most righteous also.
Counterexample: school teaches you all kind of useless shit that you will NEVER need in life but when you question that they shoot you down like you're stupid. This is the greatest sin of teachers and schools. Kids are NOT stupid, they see this very well.
Do you know what schools don't teach? How much $$$ money you lose through taxes.
>> "Out of public schools grows the greatness of a nation."
"Out of public schools grows the indoctrinated masses of a nation".
Do you know what schools don't teach? How much $$$ money you lose through taxes.
>> "Out of public schools grows the greatness of a nation."
"Out of public schools grows the indoctrinated masses of a nation".
> all kind of useless shit that you will NEVER need in life
Let’s see, looking back:
Anything past basic mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Physical Science.
In fact, most of the hard science and STEM related classes have turned out to be totally useless in my day to day and professional life.
The things/skills from classes that I have continually utilized:
Public Speaking, Debate Club, Professional Writing, Philosophy, Logic, Sociology, I even attended a single symposium on FBI negotiation tactics.
The older I get the more I come to understand C. West’s position that “the removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe.”
Let’s see, looking back:
Anything past basic mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Physical Science.
In fact, most of the hard science and STEM related classes have turned out to be totally useless in my day to day and professional life.
The things/skills from classes that I have continually utilized:
Public Speaking, Debate Club, Professional Writing, Philosophy, Logic, Sociology, I even attended a single symposium on FBI negotiation tactics.
The older I get the more I come to understand C. West’s position that “the removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe.”
Guess you make websites. Those doing numerical modelling use chemistry, physics and/or mechanical engineering along with calculus and probability. The quants use a bunch of this as well. These might be niche markets to the HN audience but there’s a whole lot of cpu spent on aircraft or auto design (fluid dynamics or finite element analysis), drug design (chemistry or physics) and other type of econometric modeling.
I hate school because it has the History of %host-country-name%. I do not believe this data can be given honestly, without flag-waving bullshit.