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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Our Education System
#19347567 - 12/30/13 05:40 PM (10 years, 1 month ago) |
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In all my classes at the university, without a single exception that I can recall, I learned more on my own, from outside sources, than I ever did in class, with assigned readings. What was the point? What is the point?
Humans would probably learn what they want and need to completely on their own, just as well as if not better than through the formal mandatory curriculum. Remember: the modern school system only came into being in the late nineteenth century. And yet people learned just fine for eons before that.
It occurs to me that the real reasons for our educational system are these: Babysitting children while parents work -- through high school. Then, going through the undergraduate university level these days only makes sense if you're going on to get a graduate degree. Undergraduate degrees by themselves are virtually worthless anymore. And the reason that most people are being driven into graduate school is that there are not enough jobs for everyone. It's serving a cultural evolutionary function as a reducing valve on the entering workforce. Without it, there would be even bigger problems. Employers would be overwhelmed. In ten years you'll probably need a masters degree to manage a McDonald's.
In other words, our education system has become an adjunct to the economy, and there can be no pretense that there is a legitimate concern on the part of the establishment that it is turning out better people. It's exclusively about money.
Fifty years ago a high school dropout could find good work, among a set of choices. Twenty-five years ago someone with a bachelor's degree could find good work, among a set of choices. Now? You have to figure out in high school the specialty that you're going to focus on at the exclusion of everything else under the sun, and then do nothing but that for six or seven years in school and every day for the rest of your life.
Fucked up?
Yeah.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Kickle
Wanderer


Registered: 12/16/06
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I don't know what you have majored in but for me the best part of school was the review process. I can get information a lot of places, but to have an expert in any given area who will look it over, provide feedback and highlight strengths/weaknesses is rare outside of the classroom. The teachers are the real resource, not the textbooks. If you just go to class, listen to a lecture, and then walk out, yah, you're wasting a lot of your money IMO. But if you interact with the teacher and use them to enhance your experience, you get a lot more than reading it on the internet. You can question a teacher, propose ideas to a teacher, and gain access to entry-level jobs through a teacher. IME most students want the teacher to hand them everything, as though life were a one-way street and the teacher is responsible for a student who merely soaks in information but gives nothing back. At the collegiate level it's not strictly about soaking anymore, it's also about contributing, utilizing, and collaborating.
Not to mention that outside of the classroom work usually fills the day, not learning. Have a kid and there goes any spare time that could have been devoted to it. Education is aimed at occurring before you lose your ability to devote time to it.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,534
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Re: Our Education System [Re: Kickle]
#19347712 - 12/30/13 06:13 PM (10 years, 1 month ago) |
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I am working on an idea to recolonize America, in which we take some abandoned mill for a reasonably low price and make a university, mix the social function of education with the opportunity for work and housing for free.
it's still just an egg of an idea but I think it might have legs.
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PocketLady



Registered: 01/18/10
Posts: 1,773
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Re: Our Education System [Re: Kickle] 1
#19347766 - 12/30/13 06:24 PM (10 years, 1 month ago) |
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As someone who works in education I have to say the whole system is pretty screwed up, especially below degree-level. It's mostly down to a meeting of archaic rules and new systems and rules schools have to follow. I'm mainly talking about high school here as that's where my experience lies.
The first fundamental flaw of the education system in my eyes is that even though the emphasis is now on personalised and differentiated learning, the deciding factor on what class a kid goes into, or indeed when they start school, or any phase of their education, is their age. I mean wtf? Is that really the most important thing when we are trying to group kids together to teach them? How about grouping them by emotional maturity or intelligence, or perhaps their favoured learning style? That would make a lot more sense.
Secondly, and I'm not sure what the system is like in the US, but in the UK kids are forced to sit through stressful exams that will basically decided their entire academic future, at the ages of 16 and 18. These poor kids already have enough going on at that point. Becoming an adult is a pretty big thing and I'm damn sure that at the age of 16-18 my head was not screwed on very well. But they are pretty much screwed if they mess up at this stage.
Looking at the way lessons are actually structured, these days there are just so many boxes to tick before you can even think about trying to teach any of your subject. In the UK teachers of all subjects have to make sure the cover: literacy, numeracy, spiritual/moral/social/cultural, assessment for learning, opportunities for the kids to self/peer assess and set targets, and so much more before they can even think about actually teaching a bit of their subject! The amount of bureaucracy and box-ticking is an absolute joke. I can't really speak for degree-level, but certainly high-school level - lessons are often boring because teachers do not have the opportunity to make lessons fun and engaging, because so much of it is proscribed and all about ticking boxes.
In the UK 50% of teachers leave the job within 5 years of qualifying because it's too stressful and demanding. Sadly it is only getting worse.
Schools are designed to produce lots of hard-working drones who fit neatly into society, with very little freedom. The whole thing needs to change, but until society changes I'm not sure how much hope there is of schools changing. Personally, I'm looking to get out asap. Fed up of fighting a losing battle.
-------------------- Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death. Tomorrow, when resurrection comes, The heart that is not in love will fail the test. ~ Rumi The day we start giving Love instead of seeking Love, we will have re-written our whole destiny. ~ Swami Chinmayanada Saraswatir
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: Our Education System [Re: Kickle]
#19347768 - 12/30/13 06:24 PM (10 years, 1 month ago) |
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Kickle, that is an excellent reply, and I sympathize with your point completely.
I think for me it boils down to the fact that college works well for some people, and not for others. I am better off learning on my own, and if apprenticeships still existed as a viable alternative to school (for truly good jobs), as they did for most of history, I think I would have skipped college altogether and just gone to work.
But...
It appears that it worked (or works) like a charm for you, and I think that's great.
I wanted to make it clear, though, that while the goal of our educational institutions used to be to provide an excellent liberal education and to turn out better people, all it is about these days is money, like it or not. I think the social functions I outlined are the reality.
P.S. RGV, sign me up.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: Our Education System [Re: PocketLady]
#19347810 - 12/30/13 06:31 PM (10 years, 1 month ago) |
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That was fascinating.
Quote:
PocketLady said: ....so much of it is proscribed and all about ticking boxes.
In the UK 50% of teachers leave the job within 5 years of qualifying because it's too stressful and demanding. Sadly it is only getting worse.
Schools are designed to produce lots of hard-working drones who fit neatly into society, with very little freedom. The whole thing needs to change, but until society changes I'm not sure how much hope there is of schools changing. Personally, I'm looking to get out asap. Fed up of fighting a losing battle.
Yes, I didn't even address the situation on the ground! Excellent post PocketLady.
"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” --H.L. Mencken
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Kickle
Wanderer


Registered: 12/16/06
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Last seen: 12 hours, 21 minutes
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: Kickle, that is an excellent reply, and I sympathize with your point completely.
I think for me it boils down to the fact that college works well for some people, and not for others. I am better off learning on my own, and if apprenticeships still existed as a viable alternative to school (for truly good jobs), as they did for most of history, I think I would have skipped college altogether and just gone to work.
But...
It appears that it worked (or works) like a charm for you, and I think that's great.
I wanted to make it clear, though, that while the goal of our educational institutions used to be to provide an excellent liberal education and to turn out better people, all it is about these days is money, like it or not. I think the social functions I outlined are the reality.
P.S. RGV, sign me up.
Well we are a capitalistic society in principle. It only makes sense that education outside of the government will follow suit. They are a part of the economy too and dependent on consumers.
FWIW school didn't pan out for me despite doing what I outlined. I lost interest in my area of expertise and fell back on regular ole unskilled labor. I went part time once my finances were in order and now I enjoy my youth by learning impractical skills for modern society like playing guitar and which plants on the mountain are edible
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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Re: Our Education System [Re: Kickle]
#19352749 - 12/31/13 08:48 PM (10 years, 30 days ago) |
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this is an interesting topic and good contributions 
OP i am not sure if i buy the school is a valve to keep people out of the workforce..?
i find the hyper-specialization of degrees pretty interesting. a lot of jobs are super specialized like engineering, medicine, research etc.. so for them it makes sense.
but getting a masters to work at maccas..
i know there are a lot of adult courses out of school that people do to bolster their cvs and further their careers. perhaps the competitive nature of the workforce means that others need to follow suite or miss out on jobs, and that leads to these pseudo specializations..
it is interesting as well how heavily the education system favours the wealthy. rich private schools way outperform public ones (which in no way reflects student intelligence). i think it is wrong to say they are 'better schools' and they produce 'better well rounded people'. schools focus primarily on final results. they are businesses and they need those high rankings to attract more (and wealthier) customers. their motivation is not primarily to nurture students and cultivate different perspectives, but having them perform.
there are skills students acquire that may help them later in life (when they move on to bigger institutions).. no not algebra, or grammar i meant skills like cramming, and rote learning!
lol i went to an insane school, many of the kids would rote learn the essays their tutors wrote for them and everyone who could afford it would have a tutor for every subject. that school was terrible, the kids treated the teachers like dirt (many of them quit) but it is a very esteemed and high performing school 
it is also interesting when comparing what the school expects of their students, what is reasonable to expect, and what the students actually do..
i only ever met one guy at uni (who was also the smartest man ive ever met) who organised his time according to how a student was supposed to.. and even he had a system of weed, alcohol and amphetamines to help him with the different phases of the essay writing process 
i found at uni the standard 4 subjects a semester was waaaay too much for me to handle and i ended up cutting back and would tend to focus on one subject i found interesting and the others i would just scrape through.
i wish i had done more like kickle suggested but i was too shy and reclusive and probably immature. there no doubt are good things though and teachers that somehow exist despite all the madness.. good on you ppl
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: Our Education System [Re: quinn]
#19352914 - 12/31/13 09:45 PM (10 years, 30 days ago) |
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In describing the reductive valve-like effect of keeping people in school longer, all I meant to say was a point that you made yourself:
"perhaps the competitive nature of the workforce means that others need to follow suit or miss out on jobs"
It's cultural evolution: if employers have far more applicants than jobs, they will find any way possible to try to narrow down the pool. Graduate school is one key way to do that. And thus, graduate school becomes more and more necessary to get a middle-class job.
So essentially, yes, graduate schools are serving a social function by reducing the size of applicant pools. Fifty years ago a high-school dropout could become a chairman of a major company. Things don't quite work that way anymore.
That said, Quinn I thought your comments were quite interesting, especially concerning how the education system favors the wealthy. Well said.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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ah i getcha.. cheers yeh money goes a loooooong way.. i know plenty of sub standard jerks who buy their way into good jobs and seem like real people..
and to have a degree and take on further courses you needs moneys as well... capitalismo 
idk if 50 years ago was any better as there was plenty of racism and whatnot around..
humans 
life
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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Raven Gnosis
𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔞


Registered: 02/10/11
Posts: 1,311
Loc: Necoc Yaotl
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For anyone reading this thread, look into the works of John Taylor Gatto
-------------------- To be human is to be fettered, to endure what one is, in perpetuum, no matter what the debility or perversity.
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: Our Education System [Re: quinn]
#19354088 - 01/01/14 09:36 AM (10 years, 29 days ago) |
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Quote:
quinn said: idk if 50 years ago was any better as there was plenty of racism and whatnot around..
No I agree. Fifty years ago many areas of society were worse in a lot of ways.
All I am doing is illustrating how entry to the workforce has evolved over the years. It's gotten hard and ridiculously unfair for a lot of people.
That's all.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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birdland

Registered: 07/24/11
Posts: 2,202
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The education System is pretty fucked. I don't have a lot of time right now to go in to depth but it's an unfair system that favours particular demographs and particular learning types.
IME school was even worse than university and I've seen it really ruin many people. It sure took it's toll on me in a very, very bad way.
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Roger Wilco
Rusted Identifier

Registered: 06/08/13
Posts: 970
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Quote:
Raven Gnosis said: For anyone reading this thread, look into the works of John Taylor Gatto
I've looked into Gatto's work, and it is quite interesting.
Here is a long video that provides the audience with many excellent points of reference to do meaningful research.
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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i want to rant more about school..
school is the fucking worst. it's an insane thing for a parent to get a kid to an age when they are just coming into their own and then leave them in the care of complete strangers for the rest of their childhood and adolescence.
send them to a place where for 7/8 hours they ordered to sit in sterile rooms & learn about things that seem (and probably are) of zero relevance. yep that's all children want right?
and not only are they ruled by weird creepy teachers but they are also left for the rest of the time, at the disposal of the other children. your child's well being and sense of self worth is largely determined by gangs of other 12 year olds.
wow that sounds like a great idea.
and so you abandon your child to this insanity (and you are most likely a jerkoff yourself) AND THEN just as they hit puberty and their body is starts changing and their entire sense of self is suddenly being overhauled you get all fucking weird about this thing called 'sex' that you have apparently been hiding from them all their life and are unable to talk about normally and at school they are being piled on more and more pressure to knuckle down and perform in an exam that will determine the rest of their life (after which you will likely kick them out)... no wonder everyone is so fucked up.
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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HalfLight
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Registered: 06/03/13
Posts: 2,322
Loc: Black Flag
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Perhaps you should be more specific about what's being talked about. "Our education system" is very vague, and the country/region's educations system that you have experienced isn't stated in the OP.
Having recently experienced American public education, I would say that the most daunting issue within it is absolute apathy. The apathy isn't of the system, a system can't care to begin with, but the public education system makes it so simple to not care about the people it is supposed to be based around, the students.
No Child Left Behind completely fucked the K-12 system. It's basically holding a school's staff hostage over the score which their (possibly thousands of) individual students score on standardized tests. Standardized tests are usually bought from and designed by private companies such as McGraw-Hill. Yes this is one of the companies that publishes high school textbooks. These companies are providing the information used in class curriculum, and providing the tests that measure comprehension of curriculum. So when schools get funding for performing well on tests, they spend it on continuing to improve their test scores. It's an endless money loop for businesses taking direct place in government funded education. In fact, when schools fail to meet requirements under NCLB a common fate for them is being sold as a charter school to private companies.
The high school that I just graduated from this past June is a member of a rather famous district for unfortunate reasons... Actually, I just googled "suicide school district" and it was the second result. There were various changes in policy during my attendance of the district's largest high school, but none of them changed the fact that if someone doesn't pass their annual standardized assessment, they are placed in a class entirely based around earning a passing grade on their retake, when I (and multiple peers) had been heavily patronized by our guidance counselors for something as simple as a schedule change. In my senior year, despite properly signing up for classes the previous year, I was missing two out of the fifteen classes I was to take. When I went to my guidance counselor, they attempted to connect my classroom performance to missing periods and credits, going as far as to call me "lazy" and "ungrateful". I ended up having to see another counselor, who despite being much kinder, was somewhat incompetent. What this means is that the school's counselors had the time and motivation to adjust schedules in order to create test scores that (in the case of this school) would prevent them from getting fired, but required coercion and repeated visits to do their actual job by helping students receive the credits they need to graduate. The only time spent on the topic of suicide during my high school experience was few, individual, caring teachers taking time to discuss the issues of mental illness in the classroom, and the occasional loudspeaker announcement and moment of silence for a dead student. We regularly had hour-long seminars regarding district assessments and final tests.
It's incredibly obvious that private interests dictate the activity in public education. Relevant and useful information is rarely promoted. Throughout the three "sexual education" courses I received in public school, I also received the opportunity to see and hear a guest speaker rant about the value of abstinence three times, not from a health perspective, but a moral perspective. Not once was the value of consent taught to me in sex ed. Why was I never taught how to put on a condom? When reproduction was turned into a moral issue, and lost its value in science and health, we were told that not having sex is more important than not raping.
This is just some perspective of my experience with America's public education. Yours may involve different results, but it all came from the same shitty legislation.
-------------------- dead man walking
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quinn
some kinda love


Registered: 01/02/10
Posts: 6,799
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Re: Our Education System [Re: HalfLight]
#19357241 - 01/02/14 03:54 AM (10 years, 29 days ago) |
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woah good post that's insanely messed..
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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MisterSandman
Neo Nazi



Registered: 03/23/13
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Re: Our Education System [Re: quinn] 1
#19357628 - 01/02/14 09:08 AM (10 years, 28 days ago) |
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I feel like this video is kinda fitting.....
I graduated from High School about a year ago. I didn't end up going to college, my GPA was shit. I was always good at taking tests and writing papers, I got a pretty high ACT score but I was a terrible "student".
I always felt that school wasn't really about acquiring knowledge or just learning for the sake of learning. To me it always felt like everyone was just there to get high marks so they could get into a good college. There were maybe a handful of people I met during my high school career who would read things outside of the curriculum or looked into subjects on their own. I remember this one instants where I was reading this book in one of my classes and the teacher asked "Is that for AP lit" and I was just like "No, I'm just reading it." and they seemed very surprised which I found rather amusing.
There were so many "Smart" kids in my graduating class who were bound for prestigious universities, and I couldn't help but wonder "Do they really belong there?" There were so many 4.0 students who were good at cranking out homework and getting good grades but when it came to anything outside of the curriculum they were dull as a rock.
I've always held some resentment towards the education system because it was so unforgiving to my learning style, but at the same time I can't really think of a better alternative to educating the masses.
Well, there's my 
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Great posts by Quinn, TTT and MisterSandman. I feel like I have very little to add to those posts because they speak for themselves so well.
TTT, I was referring to the American system of education in general, but I think my remarks can probably apply to what is being done in most of the western world. Your comments about NCLB and standardized testing -- which is the final benchmark for everything about how our system is run -- was fascinating, and as you are not too far out, I found your passion quite valuable.
One quick point on Sandman:
Quote:
MisterSandman said:
I've always held some resentment towards the education system because it was so unforgiving to my learning style...
You and literally tens of millions of other perfectly good people.
Quote:
MisterSandman said:
...but at the same time I can't really think of a better alternative to educating the masses.
Good point, but I don't think that absolves us of our failures. The million dollar question is: What can we do with all these children, K-12, who have nowhere else to be during the day? Is there really any way to overhaul the system to something truly effective -- that we can afford? And who's going to agree on what would be "truly effective" in a society that can't seem to agree on anything?
Tough questions to answer.
Meanwhile, millions of good kids are having the very life sucked out of them daily so that they can be rubber-stamped and hopefully not think too independently.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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MisterSandman
Neo Nazi



Registered: 03/23/13
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: One quick point on Sandman:
Quote:
MisterSandman said:
I've always held some resentment towards the education system because it was so unforgiving to my learning style...
You and literally tens of millions of other perfectly good people.
Quote:
MisterSandman said:
...but at the same time I can't really think of a better alternative to educating the masses.
Good point, but I don't think that absolves us of our failures. The million dollar question is: What can we do with all these children, K-12, who have nowhere else to be during the day? Is there really any way to overhaul the system to something truly effective -- that we can afford? And who's going to agree on what would be "truly effective" in a society that can't seem to agree on anything?
Tough questions to answer.
Meanwhile, millions of good kids are having the very life sucked out of them daily so that they can be rubber-stamped and hopefully not think too independently.
Yeah, that is the million dollar question isn't it?
The thing is, most kids, In my opinion, are not "Independent Learners". If you you tell them to just go and learn something they are interested in they will be lost. Most of them need rigid structure, specific direction, a carrot on a stick and all that jazz. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, the problem is that it's really the only learning style public schools use, and that leaves people like me lagging behind. I suppose I'm probably in the minority though so it's kind of selfish to demand an overhaul of the entire education system just to cater to my needs, I dunno
My favorite teacher in High School was very keen on independent learning. He didn't care very much about the grades, he encouraged kids to seek out the answers for themselves and not just regurgitate info back onto a piece of paper, and that's why I liked him so much. Most of the other kids HATED him, thought he was a terrible teacher because he wouldn't just serve them up the answers on a silver platter. The straight A students especially hated him because he would actually made you earn your grades.
I dunno what the answer to all this is. I've always played around with the idea of opening up some sort of experimental school so that I can maybe help a handful of kids like myself and perhaps make a small difference. I doubt it'll ever come to fruition though.
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Roger Wilco
Rusted Identifier

Registered: 06/08/13
Posts: 970
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said:
The million dollar question is: What can we do with all these children, K-12, who have nowhere else to be during the day?
The "we" is the problem. "All these children"....? Which children? How many do you have????
Your million dollar question is being postulated and answered every day via the centralization and collectivization of education. It costs much more than a million dollars.
The free answer is to take your kids out of school, and approach post secondary education with careful planning and case by case scrutiny. I still hope veterinarians, electricians, welders, and many other professions are educated well, presently they frequently attain their skills from post secondary institutions.
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Quote:
Roger Wilco said:
Quote:
DividedQuantum said:
The million dollar question is: What can we do with all these children, K-12, who have nowhere else to be during the day?
The "we" is the problem. "All these children"....? Which children? How many do you have????
Your million dollar question is being postulated and answered every day via the centralization and collectivization of education. It costs much more than a million dollars.
The free answer is to take your kids out of school, and approach post secondary education with careful planning and case by case scrutiny. I still hope veterinarians, electricians, welders, and many other professions are educated well, presently they frequently attain their skills from post secondary institutions.
I was being completely idealistic. I was pondering whether "we" -- i.e., society -- could find a way to utilize people better. It has almost no bearing on reality, but to my mind, most children, at least K-12, would be better off doing anything rather than sitting through school every day. It's essentially babysitting. To claim there is even the pretense of "real learning" is nonsense.
And don't forget -- the modern school system only goes back a little over a hundred years. What was everybody doing before that?
I just think it's a shame that so many people are thrown into the same hopper, to drugde away against their will through what should be the most carefree and fun years of their lives. School takes that away from a lot of people.
And learning should be fun.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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