12 ms·

The education industry is kind of a racket. The state pays to send children to 13 years of schooling, but at the end they haven't learned much of anything. Some

The education industry is kind of a racket. The state pays to send children to 13 years of schooling, but at the end they haven't learned much of anything. Someone here at HN had this comment about their experience: "Really just screw public school in general. The whole place was 95% waste of time followed by a 'congratulatory' piece of paper." -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047919 If a politician was courageous, and didn't care about getting re-elected, they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten, replacing 1st and 2nd grade with structured activities instead of 'classroom time' (prison for children), replacing high school with something more like community college, and allowing the remaining years to be much more flexible - conducted for the learner's benefit, rather than the system's... But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. Children & teachers are both trapped.

loceng 9y ago
In the end this would be more efficient than the existing system, where it only seems efficient because no one's really keeping track of the qualitative.
lukeschlather 9y ago
The system cannot easily be fixed. Some students might be able to get by with just 12 years of schooling, for some jobs. Some students may need 18 years of schooling to be able to effectively hold down a minimum-wage job. Most students who go into skilled trades probably need at least 12 years of schooling. But knowing which 12 years is the hard part. Sure, somebody who knows they want to be an electrician at the age of 10 can probably be competent by 18, but we shouldn't be locking people into that kind of flat job progression. Even if we accept that simple trade schools are the ideal, I'd still argue we should be encouraging people to study a liberal mix of arts taking 17-20 years (just with liberal arts mixing trades instead of academics.)
- fpisfun 9y ago
  This type of stuff is hard to figure out but where I currently live there are a lot of people who would be much better off if they were locked into a career progression to become an electrician at age 10.
  - munin 9y ago
    This is (I'm told by my cousins) what they do in Europe and it terrifies me. When I was 10, I was kind of a shit-head and didn't know what I wanted to do, and wasn't really on a path to go to college. You would have locked me in to a career progression to become an electrician. Instead, I worked part time here and there and went to school on my own time and am now ABD in a PhD program. Who are you to look at 10 year old me and say "no, let's keep this kid in votech and deny them access to higher ed"?
    - mantas 9y ago
      Trade school route doesn't mean you're denied access to university for life. But you'll have to put in some extra effort to get in there. On the other hand, if shitheads-at-10yo stay on university route, they don't get good enough grades to get into university anyway. They'd probably be better off becoming electricians. Once they'd realise they do want education after all, then they could put in extra effort. As a side effect, electrician-headed shitheads don't stop education-oriented kids from making progress. Which is nice too.
      - lukeschlather 9y ago
        They really need better counseling, not better education. People talk about administration as if it were a waste of money, but really most counselor's offices are glorified registrars and can't do any actual counseling (which is really one of the bigger problems.) There's no magic bullet, and at a high level there's no substitute for more 1-on-1 instruction (and counseling is just a little more explicitly 1-on-1 targeted at kids that need it.)
      - fpisfun 9y ago
        The problem I see in the area I grew up is that no one thinks about anything related to their career or future until they're graduating high school. The sole focus seemed to be drinking and getting high and school was considered a place to socialize and get into fights by the average student. I think a lot of places in the US are like this to be honest. The concept of a school that fits everyone does not make sense past grammar school in my opinion. It's led to masses of aimless adults who seem to have no purpose or goals in life.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Germany has a different model for education, but they had to lose World War 2 and had it imposed upon them by the Allies. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-ger...
  - Xorlev 9y ago
    > but they had to lose World War 2 A better way of putting it would be to say that "Germany had a different model for education but when they lost World War 2, the standard model of education was imposed upon them by the Allies." Otherwise it kinda comes off sounding like "if only Germany didn't lose WW2" which most folks agree would have been a poor outcome.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      You are reading it wrong. The GP is saying that they had a pretty conservative system, and could only change it for something that works after losing a war and having change imposed from foreigners.
      - stevenwoo 9y ago
        Thanks, tried too hard to be succinct, and made it slightly ambiguous.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      I guess could see a reading of it like that and will leave the original wording so your comment makes sense, and in 2017 we have to be explicit that I don't mean to condone Nazis, genocide, racial hatred, other things we associated with the German policies of WW 2 or for that matter Japanese atrocities on civilians in occupied territories or Allied prisoners.
markshead 9y ago
There is a huge difference between parents who feel they are responsible for their children's education and see the public school as an important tool in fulfilling that responsibility and parents who feel the government is responsible for educating their kids. Communities with a large number of parents who feel that education is their responsibility tend to still do a good job of educating their kids in their public schools. Without that parental mindset, the quality of education goes down.
- eherot 9y ago
  "Communities with a large number of parents who feel that education is their responsibility tend to still do a good job of educating their kids in their public schools. " Arguably, many of these parents educate their kids completely independent of the public schools they send their kids to five days a week, and the school's job is just to provide that all-important piece of paper at the end.
  - markshead 9y ago
    That is possible, but in smaller communities where everyone knows each other, I see teachers and parents working together to help their kids succeed. I don't want to discount the value of a good teacher, but I think it is very unfair measure someone's teaching ability based on their ability to overcome poor parenting. As far as the important piece of paper, I think that is something of a myth as far as college admissions go. I've heard a lot of parents say that they need their kids to graduate from a public school so they can go to college. All the college admission requirements I've seen are the same for public school graduates and kids who graduated from a non-accredited program. It mostly comes down to your ACT and SAT score.
    - analog31 9y ago
      At least in my locale, the necessity of a high school diploma has been easily overcome. Colleges know how to deal with this. I know at least a couple of families that have home-schooled their kids. One of those kids is now on a full ride scholarship at the state university, studying biochemistry.
conanbatt 9y ago
My understanding is that kindergarten radically changes the kids learning. Why eliminate it? Or what is the replacement?
- teslabox 9y ago
  > My understanding is that kindergarten radically changes the kids learning. Why eliminate it? Children are learning machines. I've no doubt that kindergarten radically changes learning, but I don't think this is in a good way. > Or what is the replacement? For parents who need kindergarten as day-care (so they can work), some sort of structured activities might be appropriate. I don't have children, so my interest in this topic stems from being punished with boredom for my entire school experience. Some of the alternative education systems might be better, but I've no experience with those. Someone replied to my earlier comment, "Sudbury and Montessori schools offer a model that seems to encourage students to learn at their own pace" [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693370 To quote myself, "John Gatto says it's better to skip as much of the early years of schooling as possible: some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference. I met a man a few months ago that was traumatized by not being able to "read" on the teacher's schedule when he was in 1st grade. He learned to read eventually, in spite of his school's efforts to force him to read before he was ready." [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693047
- chiaro 9y ago
  Increased investment in early education is remarkably uncontroversial among economists. There's few better ways to even out outcomes. https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-investing-in-early-education-on-economic-growth/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-investing-...
danjoc 9y ago
>The education industry is kind of a racket. Going to college is the original "Everyone needs to know how to code" meme. You won't get a good job, they say. You need a degree, they say. When in truth, some people have no interest or business going to college. The result? Masses of debtors pushed into college education who fail out. Graduation rates are now around 52.9% [1]. Those who fail out are in really bad shape when it comes to trying to repay a five or six figure loan on an education they didn't complete. [1] https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport10/#ExecutiveSummary https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport10/#ExecutiveSu...
- trisimix 9y ago
  Yeah. The argument is more like everyone woyld be better off being the type of person to succeed in college. Which, yeah, being smart is generally good. But is college? How would large attendance to a peer learning center compare to a degree ih terms of skill?
rpmcmurphy 9y ago
My mom was a public school teacher. My parents sent me to a Jesuit school after K-5. Best decision they could have made, and says a _lot_ about public education. She always talks about how they teach for tests and nothing else.
- megy 9y ago
  > My parents sent me to a Jesuit school after K-5. Best decision they could have made, and says a _lot_ about public education. But how would you know that? You can't possibly compare what you did to what might have happened. And maybe your mom is just a bad teacher?
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>She always talks about how they teach for tests and nothing else. That isn't exactly a bad idea, given how much of life is actually a test.
awinder 9y ago
Unpopular opinions: let’s not lose the forest for the trees here, macrologically the US is turning out productive and world-competitive minds and workers. The system can have flaws and gaps without it being a total racket in need of ground-up rehauling. We don’t live in a concrete world so if you end up holding opinions at the extremes, you’re probably missing nuance.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  There is some nuance missing in your claims too. Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. They tend to have had a great deal of socio-economic advantage. The US is the richest global power, so it makes perfect sense that there are a lot of people who have such advantages in the US.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    There also are plenty of good public schools and plenty of successful people who went to public schools. Schools are not all the same, you know? The only thing you can say without diving into the statistics is that it depends on when and where you went.
    - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
      First, plenty of people succeed despite public school, not because of it. Second, how do you define success? If you define success in terms of money, education and intelligence play a very, very small role. The correlation of financial success to who you know and who you are related to is orders of magnitude higher than how smart you are or how much knowledge you have. The vast majority of PHDs are much more intelligent and educated that the vast majority of millionaires.
  - morgante 9y ago
    > Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. That is highly unlikely. Even at elite Ivy universities, a majority of students attended public high schools. Public education is a lot better than people give it credit for. There's wide variation in quality but there are certainly plenty of excellent public schools available.
ixacto 9y ago
You can get out of 11/12 grade in Washington state. Community college is really what hs should be though. http://www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadiness/RunningStart.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadine...
- uiri 9y ago
  In Washington State, you don't have to enroll in school until you are 8 years old either. [0] Washington's constitution states that It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders.[1] It is interesting how this manifests in practice. [0] http://www.k12.wa.us/GATE/Truancy/default.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/GATE/Truancy/default.aspx [1] http://leg.wa.gov/LawsAndAgencyRules/Pages/constitution.aspx http://leg.wa.gov/LawsAndAgencyRules/Pages/constitution.aspx
trisimix 9y ago
Preach.
paulpauper 9y ago
One must realize that the opinions of HN are not representative of the general population. If you have an IQ > 130 or so, school is going to seem like a redundant waste of time, but those those with average IQs need the 12+ years and find the material challenging at times. But I think there is major room for improvement in the public school system, in that smart children are neglected especially or can get by with less schooling.
- analog31 9y ago
  Indeed, school will also seem like a redundant waste of time if you happen to be in an occupation that lends itself to people who are largely self taught. Disclosure: I'm self taught in programming, with the exception of a high school course in BASIC that I took in ca. 1981.
- zanny 9y ago
  Its not about challenge. It is about the practical use of information acquired in public school. Young adults leave high school unable to do their own taxes, unknowing of what laws are, with no usable skills in any industry. The public school curriculum today was built around a need for literate men who could do arithmetic working in factories from the 1920s and on. That is why the core "skills" of public education are mastery of basic reading and math. On one hand, reading and math are pretty fundamental to most of the world today. On the other, the original designs of curriculum were to repeat those two concepts for 12 years until everyone who graduated was certainly capable of them to insure any adult was a capable factory drone. Throw in some biased national history in social studies to create some cult patriotism and basic science so they don't blow up half the workplace floor by mixing the wrong chemicals and so they have a basic idea of how things move and that was it. The average high schooler keeps graduating more and more capable of memorizing words and regurgitating them on fill in the blank tests. They are getting better, on average, at more advanced mathematics like algebra. It turns out generations of kids capable of doing math homework didn't dramatically improve the innovative potential of east Asian countries that focused hugely on that from the 80s and on. Japans school system is one of the most rigorous in the world, you have to pass entrance exams just for high school and getting into any university is itself often a several-year long job. But Japans economy is not seeing huge economic growth for all that laser focus on classical lecture and memorized testing. And even then the current k-12 system does not serve those who aren't as quick to pickup on these memorization concepts and fundamentals for reading and math. Huge numbers of kids are "forgotten" in the public school system and are pushed through despite being borderline illiterate. Because grades are age based and not ability based, if you are either too fast or too slow at memorizing the material instructed at you public school will be an awful experience.
Balgair 9y ago
SO is a chem teacher, so I have a little insight to public education in one US state. First, lumping all public schools in the US together is not helpful. We don't have a federal system of education, we barely have a state level, and if we are generous we may have a local level. Massachusetts is a really good place to educate your kids, it's on par with Singapore in wold rankings [0]. Alabama is not. Basically, if your local schools suck, go to more PTA meetings and make them better. Bitching on the web is not a good way to do that. Getting out the message to up some tax in your local mill-levy is. Second, getting rid of kindergarten is insane. Socializing is SUPER important to young kids. Yes, it costs a lot of cash. But so does having a stupid population. I think we all know that a stupid voter base is worse over even a 10 year time scale. Third, classroom time is not prison for children. If your kid thinks it is, find another school or talk to the teacher and the admin. They aren't soulless bureaucrats. They are massively underpaid humans. Especially in those grades. They deal with a LOT of poop and illnesses. Fourth, HS as community college would be a great idea for SOME kids. For the majority, you really have to force them to learn algebra and the 'boring but important as hell' stuff. You really can't have a 'major' in HS for most students. Most HN readers are not most students and probably could have a HS major. But public education is for all citizens, not just the smart ones, but the really dumb ones too. We all have a place in this society, even the dumb people, and we all have a right to be educated. Fifth, the 'system' isn't very well constructed, so tear your's down. I agree that public education is not very well done in the US. But that is YOUR fault. Yes, you, the person reading this. If you think your local school is crappy, go fix it or move. In the US, education is SUPER local (by and large). Talking about US public education like a unified thing is nonsense. The taxes that support your local school are very local and very much something you and a few people can fix. Really, go round up all the patrons in your local bar. That's really all the people it takes to swing an election or get a new tax or measure passed. My SO works at a school that did not exist 6 years ago. The local residents just up and decided to make a new one out of a city park. They built and funded the whole thing. It took maybe 70 people to do this. Now there is a great school. They went out and fixed their local community. Democracy actually fucking works if you do too. Sixth, no, we are not trapped. We trap ourselves. I mean, yeah, some state laws suck. So go change them. Look at fucking eric Cantor's primary sniping. That took like no money and no people to do. They upset in a primary the house minority whip. Like, come on people, this is OUR country and these are OUR schools. Don't get defeated by the shit you read online. Go make YOUR schools better if you want them to be better. [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students... (source not here, but you can get a start there, hey, it's Sunday, ok?)
rndmwlk 9y ago
School, in the US anyway, is daycare. Your typical public school is a terrible environment for learning, and a worse environment for being taught an employable skill set. I say this as someone who went strictly to public school.
ryanmarsh 9y ago
Compared to what is possible at equal or less cost it is quite appalling how bad the system is. The challenge is that most of us are products of it. Homeschoolers sound nuts. Any change to the system feels like a risk. Those who are heavily invested in it feel threatened when we say it has serious problems. It's a special kind of tyranny. We home/online school, people treat us like we're crazy. My kids are getting a way better education than I or my wife did. Once you are ejected from the Matrix only then can you grasp what a prison it is.
limeblack 9y ago
> they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten As some who was not taught the alphabet by either parent but instead by the school starting in Kindergarten I hope you aren't serious. The only place I learned to read was in school.
- lozenge 9y ago
  There's evidence kids are being taught to read too early. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age...
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    That's not at all what your link says. The link is talking about formal vs play-based learning, which is a methodological question that, in the case of reading skills, is mostly orthogonal to what's being learned.
    - lozenge 9y ago
      The link mentions learning through play, not "deliberate" play-based learning as I read it. Play is available at any daycare, at home, with grandparents etc. The assertion was kindergarten was valuable because it taught reading. I was pointing out that if reading was premature, then kindergarten had no educational value.
      - throwawayjava 9y ago
        No, the link never claims that "[learning to read] was pre-mature". In the developmental literature, "play" is a collection of pedagogical approaches and is not synonymous with what we'd call play time at a typical child care. You fundamentally misunderstand the article. The article isn't advocating not teaching reading. It's advocating a play-based pedagogy for teaching reading. > Play is available at any daycare, at home, with grandparents etc. While this is true, that's not the "play" that the article is referring to. Not all "play" has equal educational value; playing pong all day is different from constructing silly stories based on books with Grandma during reading time. So while this is in principle true, the reality is that educational play is a lot less accessible than your characterization implies. "An extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education was of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households" doesn't describe the typical daycare. Again, the approach is not "no education". The approach is "play-based pre-school education" > then kindergarten had no educational value. Similarly, the article never claims that pre-school/Kindergarten has negative educational value. It claims that formal educational settings focused on instruction sometimes have negative educational value. (Which, BTW, can be found in the involved parent's home as easily as in the typical public classroom.) The idea that this study implies we should just have kids play "kick the can" all day until first grade is a serious and dangerous mis-reading. Kids should be learning to read during the Kindergarten age, and prior. This study does not refute that assertion. Rather, it makes a point about which pedagogical approaches are most effective at achieving that goal. Those approaches -- both good and bad -- could be implemented in a day care, but a grandparent, or in a Kindergarten classroom.
pm90 9y ago
One of my friends who works in Education told me the interesting story of how the American school system is modeled after the German one. And the German system was essentially designed to pump out soldiers for the State. So its not surprising that the system focuses and rewards obedience and conformity rather than individualism.
- afsina 9y ago
  Prussian system to be exact. A libertarian analysis: https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1/html/p/16 https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1/ht... Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQkY_dND7Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQkY_dND7Fo
dennis_jeeves 9y ago
Teslabox - apologies for digressing, but I did not see any way to contact you, hence this post. I saw one of your posts mentioning progesterone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709510 . What is the source/brand of progesterone that you would recommend ? Email is on my profile : https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves
megy 9y ago
> If a politician was courageous, and didn't care about getting re-elected, they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten, replacing 1st and 2nd grade with structured activities instead of 'classroom time' (prison for children), replacing high school with something more like community college, and allowing the remaining years to be much more flexible - conducted for the learner's benefit, rather than the system's... Where are the guarantees that this would actually work? Or just throw out an entire system with no proof.
- teslabox 9y ago
  There are no guarantees in life. But we know that the present system doesn't work especially well - dissatisfaction is widespread. See this comment for my comments on the NPR show I heard after posting my mildly-inflammatory comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15738275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15738275
eighthnate 9y ago
> But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. Children & teachers are both trapped. One purpose of mass public education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to get kids out of the job market because we couldn't produce enough jobs for the adults. Schools were a way of getting kids out of the coal mines and factories to open up jobs for adults. Another purpose of mass public education was to indoctrinate and prepare them to be good unquestionin worker bees. Now, education system and its bureaucracy has become so entrenched, a new purpose has formed - to protect teachers' and administrators' jobs. That's the major gooal of the education system. As for colleges, since we aren't creating enough jobs, we have been trying to push young adults out of the job market by encouraging them to go to college. The loans young people are saddled with are an extra bonus - a chain around the young people so that they will work and give their prime years to corporations by being good worker bees.
rootw0rm 9y ago
dunno about you, but I learned how to read in kindergarten. it was private, of course.
jayd16 9y ago
I see a bunch of edgy posts like this across the web from people who have already benefited from public schooling, but I see very little data backing it up. Can you support these suggestions?
- teslabox 9y ago
  I happen to be somewhat dysfunctional at the present, tyvm. John Gatto and John Holt have both written extensively on the corrupt nature of compulsory schooling. I linked to some of Gatto's works in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760
kamaal 9y ago
>>But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. This is backwards. The school is a jobs project because people have to work to earn money. If that wasn't the case we could let them get busy with creative work full time. The other part would be ridiculous, do you really want to be spending your entire childhood and teenage doing thing that has 0 return on investment at the end.
VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
People who lament how public schooling sucks often want government to fund higher education without realizing results would be horrible. Public schools work only for Asians and white because they live in good neighborhoods and take responsibility of their children's academic performance. For Blacks and Hispanics the situation is very very bleak and these people are simply be defrauded by the government.
derblitzmann 9y ago
Not only that, but undergrad college is slowly turning into what late high school was. Soon if not already, jobs for once high school graduates are now for college grads for the simple degradation of education.
jeffdavis 9y ago
Primary education does serve some basics: reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. It may not be efficient about it, but it's not a complete waste. But yeah, first and second grade are basically prison, especially for boys. I'd cut 'em back to 3 hours per day.

loceng 9y ago

In the end this would be more efficient than the existing system, where it only seems efficient because no one's really keeping track of the qualitative.

lukeschlather 9y ago

The system cannot easily be fixed. Some students might be able to get by with just 12 years of schooling, for some jobs. Some students may need 18 years of schooling to be able to effectively hold down a minimum-wage job. Most students who go into skilled trades probably need at least 12 years of schooling. But knowing which 12 years is the hard part. Sure, somebody who knows they want to be an electrician at the age of 10 can probably be competent by 18, but we shouldn't be locking people into that kind of flat job progression. Even if we accept that simple trade schools are the ideal, I'd still argue we should be encouraging people to study a liberal mix of arts taking 17-20 years (just with liberal arts mixing trades instead of academics.)

fpisfun 9y ago
This type of stuff is hard to figure out but where I currently live there are a lot of people who would be much better off if they were locked into a career progression to become an electrician at age 10.
- munin 9y ago
  This is (I'm told by my cousins) what they do in Europe and it terrifies me. When I was 10, I was kind of a shit-head and didn't know what I wanted to do, and wasn't really on a path to go to college. You would have locked me in to a career progression to become an electrician. Instead, I worked part time here and there and went to school on my own time and am now ABD in a PhD program. Who are you to look at 10 year old me and say "no, let's keep this kid in votech and deny them access to higher ed"?
  - mantas 9y ago
    Trade school route doesn't mean you're denied access to university for life. But you'll have to put in some extra effort to get in there. On the other hand, if shitheads-at-10yo stay on university route, they don't get good enough grades to get into university anyway. They'd probably be better off becoming electricians. Once they'd realise they do want education after all, then they could put in extra effort. As a side effect, electrician-headed shitheads don't stop education-oriented kids from making progress. Which is nice too.
    - lukeschlather 9y ago
      They really need better counseling, not better education. People talk about administration as if it were a waste of money, but really most counselor's offices are glorified registrars and can't do any actual counseling (which is really one of the bigger problems.) There's no magic bullet, and at a high level there's no substitute for more 1-on-1 instruction (and counseling is just a little more explicitly 1-on-1 targeted at kids that need it.)
    - fpisfun 9y ago
      The problem I see in the area I grew up is that no one thinks about anything related to their career or future until they're graduating high school. The sole focus seemed to be drinking and getting high and school was considered a place to socialize and get into fights by the average student. I think a lot of places in the US are like this to be honest. The concept of a school that fits everyone does not make sense past grammar school in my opinion. It's led to masses of aimless adults who seem to have no purpose or goals in life.
stevenwoo 9y ago
Germany has a different model for education, but they had to lose World War 2 and had it imposed upon them by the Allies. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-ger...
- Xorlev 9y ago
  > but they had to lose World War 2 A better way of putting it would be to say that "Germany had a different model for education but when they lost World War 2, the standard model of education was imposed upon them by the Allies." Otherwise it kinda comes off sounding like "if only Germany didn't lose WW2" which most folks agree would have been a poor outcome.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    You are reading it wrong. The GP is saying that they had a pretty conservative system, and could only change it for something that works after losing a war and having change imposed from foreigners.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Thanks, tried too hard to be succinct, and made it slightly ambiguous.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    I guess could see a reading of it like that and will leave the original wording so your comment makes sense, and in 2017 we have to be explicit that I don't mean to condone Nazis, genocide, racial hatred, other things we associated with the German policies of WW 2 or for that matter Japanese atrocities on civilians in occupied territories or Allied prisoners.

markshead 9y ago

There is a huge difference between parents who feel they are responsible for their children's education and see the public school as an important tool in fulfilling that responsibility and parents who feel the government is responsible for educating their kids. Communities with a large number of parents who feel that education is their responsibility tend to still do a good job of educating their kids in their public schools. Without that parental mindset, the quality of education goes down.

eherot 9y ago
"Communities with a large number of parents who feel that education is their responsibility tend to still do a good job of educating their kids in their public schools. " Arguably, many of these parents educate their kids completely independent of the public schools they send their kids to five days a week, and the school's job is just to provide that all-important piece of paper at the end.
- markshead 9y ago
  That is possible, but in smaller communities where everyone knows each other, I see teachers and parents working together to help their kids succeed. I don't want to discount the value of a good teacher, but I think it is very unfair measure someone's teaching ability based on their ability to overcome poor parenting. As far as the important piece of paper, I think that is something of a myth as far as college admissions go. I've heard a lot of parents say that they need their kids to graduate from a public school so they can go to college. All the college admission requirements I've seen are the same for public school graduates and kids who graduated from a non-accredited program. It mostly comes down to your ACT and SAT score.
  - analog31 9y ago
    At least in my locale, the necessity of a high school diploma has been easily overcome. Colleges know how to deal with this. I know at least a couple of families that have home-schooled their kids. One of those kids is now on a full ride scholarship at the state university, studying biochemistry.

conanbatt 9y ago

My understanding is that kindergarten radically changes the kids learning. Why eliminate it? Or what is the replacement?

teslabox 9y ago
> My understanding is that kindergarten radically changes the kids learning. Why eliminate it? Children are learning machines. I've no doubt that kindergarten radically changes learning, but I don't think this is in a good way. > Or what is the replacement? For parents who need kindergarten as day-care (so they can work), some sort of structured activities might be appropriate. I don't have children, so my interest in this topic stems from being punished with boredom for my entire school experience. Some of the alternative education systems might be better, but I've no experience with those. Someone replied to my earlier comment, "Sudbury and Montessori schools offer a model that seems to encourage students to learn at their own pace" [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693370 To quote myself, "John Gatto says it's better to skip as much of the early years of schooling as possible: some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference. I met a man a few months ago that was traumatized by not being able to "read" on the teacher's schedule when he was in 1st grade. He learned to read eventually, in spite of his school's efforts to force him to read before he was ready." [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693047
chiaro 9y ago
Increased investment in early education is remarkably uncontroversial among economists. There's few better ways to even out outcomes. https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-investing-in-early-education-on-economic-growth/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-investing-...

danjoc 9y ago

>The education industry is kind of a racket. Going to college is the original "Everyone needs to know how to code" meme. You won't get a good job, they say. You need a degree, they say. When in truth, some people have no interest or business going to college. The result? Masses of debtors pushed into college education who fail out. Graduation rates are now around 52.9% [1]. Those who fail out are in really bad shape when it comes to trying to repay a five or six figure loan on an education they didn't complete. [1] https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport10/#ExecutiveSummary https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport10/#ExecutiveSu...

trisimix 9y ago
Yeah. The argument is more like everyone woyld be better off being the type of person to succeed in college. Which, yeah, being smart is generally good. But is college? How would large attendance to a peer learning center compare to a degree ih terms of skill?

rpmcmurphy 9y ago

My mom was a public school teacher. My parents sent me to a Jesuit school after K-5. Best decision they could have made, and says a _lot_ about public education. She always talks about how they teach for tests and nothing else.

megy 9y ago
> My parents sent me to a Jesuit school after K-5. Best decision they could have made, and says a _lot_ about public education. But how would you know that? You can't possibly compare what you did to what might have happened. And maybe your mom is just a bad teacher?
kamaal 9y ago
>>She always talks about how they teach for tests and nothing else. That isn't exactly a bad idea, given how much of life is actually a test.

awinder 9y ago

Unpopular opinions: let’s not lose the forest for the trees here, macrologically the US is turning out productive and world-competitive minds and workers. The system can have flaws and gaps without it being a total racket in need of ground-up rehauling. We don’t live in a concrete world so if you end up holding opinions at the extremes, you’re probably missing nuance.

kiliantics 9y ago
There is some nuance missing in your claims too. Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. They tend to have had a great deal of socio-economic advantage. The US is the richest global power, so it makes perfect sense that there are a lot of people who have such advantages in the US.
- skybrian 9y ago
  There also are plenty of good public schools and plenty of successful people who went to public schools. Schools are not all the same, you know? The only thing you can say without diving into the statistics is that it depends on when and where you went.
  - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    First, plenty of people succeed despite public school, not because of it. Second, how do you define success? If you define success in terms of money, education and intelligence play a very, very small role. The correlation of financial success to who you know and who you are related to is orders of magnitude higher than how smart you are or how much knowledge you have. The vast majority of PHDs are much more intelligent and educated that the vast majority of millionaires.
- morgante 9y ago
  > Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. That is highly unlikely. Even at elite Ivy universities, a majority of students attended public high schools. Public education is a lot better than people give it credit for. There's wide variation in quality but there are certainly plenty of excellent public schools available.

ixacto 9y ago

You can get out of 11/12 grade in Washington state. Community college is really what hs should be though. http://www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadiness/RunningStart.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadine...

uiri 9y ago
In Washington State, you don't have to enroll in school until you are 8 years old either. [0] Washington's constitution states that It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders.[1] It is interesting how this manifests in practice. [0] http://www.k12.wa.us/GATE/Truancy/default.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/GATE/Truancy/default.aspx [1] http://leg.wa.gov/LawsAndAgencyRules/Pages/constitution.aspx http://leg.wa.gov/LawsAndAgencyRules/Pages/constitution.aspx

trisimix 9y ago

Preach.

paulpauper 9y ago

One must realize that the opinions of HN are not representative of the general population. If you have an IQ > 130 or so, school is going to seem like a redundant waste of time, but those those with average IQs need the 12+ years and find the material challenging at times. But I think there is major room for improvement in the public school system, in that smart children are neglected especially or can get by with less schooling.

analog31 9y ago
Indeed, school will also seem like a redundant waste of time if you happen to be in an occupation that lends itself to people who are largely self taught. Disclosure: I'm self taught in programming, with the exception of a high school course in BASIC that I took in ca. 1981.
zanny 9y ago
Its not about challenge. It is about the practical use of information acquired in public school. Young adults leave high school unable to do their own taxes, unknowing of what laws are, with no usable skills in any industry. The public school curriculum today was built around a need for literate men who could do arithmetic working in factories from the 1920s and on. That is why the core "skills" of public education are mastery of basic reading and math. On one hand, reading and math are pretty fundamental to most of the world today. On the other, the original designs of curriculum were to repeat those two concepts for 12 years until everyone who graduated was certainly capable of them to insure any adult was a capable factory drone. Throw in some biased national history in social studies to create some cult patriotism and basic science so they don't blow up half the workplace floor by mixing the wrong chemicals and so they have a basic idea of how things move and that was it. The average high schooler keeps graduating more and more capable of memorizing words and regurgitating them on fill in the blank tests. They are getting better, on average, at more advanced mathematics like algebra. It turns out generations of kids capable of doing math homework didn't dramatically improve the innovative potential of east Asian countries that focused hugely on that from the 80s and on. Japans school system is one of the most rigorous in the world, you have to pass entrance exams just for high school and getting into any university is itself often a several-year long job. But Japans economy is not seeing huge economic growth for all that laser focus on classical lecture and memorized testing. And even then the current k-12 system does not serve those who aren't as quick to pickup on these memorization concepts and fundamentals for reading and math. Huge numbers of kids are "forgotten" in the public school system and are pushed through despite being borderline illiterate. Because grades are age based and not ability based, if you are either too fast or too slow at memorizing the material instructed at you public school will be an awful experience.

Balgair 9y ago

SO is a chem teacher, so I have a little insight to public education in one US state. First, lumping all public schools in the US together is not helpful. We don't have a federal system of education, we barely have a state level, and if we are generous we may have a local level. Massachusetts is a really good place to educate your kids, it's on par with Singapore in wold rankings [0]. Alabama is not. Basically, if your local schools suck, go to more PTA meetings and make them better. Bitching on the web is not a good way to do that. Getting out the message to up some tax in your local mill-levy is. Second, getting rid of kindergarten is insane. Socializing is SUPER important to young kids. Yes, it costs a lot of cash. But so does having a stupid population. I think we all know that a stupid voter base is worse over even a 10 year time scale. Third, classroom time is not prison for children. If your kid thinks it is, find another school or talk to the teacher and the admin. They aren't soulless bureaucrats. They are massively underpaid humans. Especially in those grades. They deal with a LOT of poop and illnesses. Fourth, HS as community college would be a great idea for SOME kids. For the majority, you really have to force them to learn algebra and the 'boring but important as hell' stuff. You really can't have a 'major' in HS for most students. Most HN readers are not most students and probably could have a HS major. But public education is for all citizens, not just the smart ones, but the really dumb ones too. We all have a place in this society, even the dumb people, and we all have a right to be educated. Fifth, the 'system' isn't very well constructed, so tear your's down. I agree that public education is not very well done in the US. But that is YOUR fault. Yes, you, the person reading this. If you think your local school is crappy, go fix it or move. In the US, education is SUPER local (by and large). Talking about US public education like a unified thing is nonsense. The taxes that support your local school are very local and very much something you and a few people can fix. Really, go round up all the patrons in your local bar. That's really all the people it takes to swing an election or get a new tax or measure passed. My SO works at a school that did not exist 6 years ago. The local residents just up and decided to make a new one out of a city park. They built and funded the whole thing. It took maybe 70 people to do this. Now there is a great school. They went out and fixed their local community. Democracy actually fucking works if you do too. Sixth, no, we are not trapped. We trap ourselves. I mean, yeah, some state laws suck. So go change them. Look at fucking eric Cantor's primary sniping. That took like no money and no people to do. They upset in a primary the house minority whip. Like, come on people, this is OUR country and these are OUR schools. Don't get defeated by the shit you read online. Go make YOUR schools better if you want them to be better. [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students... (source not here, but you can get a start there, hey, it's Sunday, ok?)

rndmwlk 9y ago

School, in the US anyway, is daycare. Your typical public school is a terrible environment for learning, and a worse environment for being taught an employable skill set. I say this as someone who went strictly to public school.

ryanmarsh 9y ago

Compared to what is possible at equal or less cost it is quite appalling how bad the system is. The challenge is that most of us are products of it. Homeschoolers sound nuts. Any change to the system feels like a risk. Those who are heavily invested in it feel threatened when we say it has serious problems. It's a special kind of tyranny. We home/online school, people treat us like we're crazy. My kids are getting a way better education than I or my wife did. Once you are ejected from the Matrix only then can you grasp what a prison it is.

limeblack 9y ago

> they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten As some who was not taught the alphabet by either parent but instead by the school starting in Kindergarten I hope you aren't serious. The only place I learned to read was in school.

lozenge 9y ago
There's evidence kids are being taught to read too early. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age...
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  That's not at all what your link says. The link is talking about formal vs play-based learning, which is a methodological question that, in the case of reading skills, is mostly orthogonal to what's being learned.
  - lozenge 9y ago
    The link mentions learning through play, not "deliberate" play-based learning as I read it. Play is available at any daycare, at home, with grandparents etc. The assertion was kindergarten was valuable because it taught reading. I was pointing out that if reading was premature, then kindergarten had no educational value.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      No, the link never claims that "[learning to read] was pre-mature". In the developmental literature, "play" is a collection of pedagogical approaches and is not synonymous with what we'd call play time at a typical child care. You fundamentally misunderstand the article. The article isn't advocating not teaching reading. It's advocating a play-based pedagogy for teaching reading. > Play is available at any daycare, at home, with grandparents etc. While this is true, that's not the "play" that the article is referring to. Not all "play" has equal educational value; playing pong all day is different from constructing silly stories based on books with Grandma during reading time. So while this is in principle true, the reality is that educational play is a lot less accessible than your characterization implies. "An extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education was of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households" doesn't describe the typical daycare. Again, the approach is not "no education". The approach is "play-based pre-school education" > then kindergarten had no educational value. Similarly, the article never claims that pre-school/Kindergarten has negative educational value. It claims that formal educational settings focused on instruction sometimes have negative educational value. (Which, BTW, can be found in the involved parent's home as easily as in the typical public classroom.) The idea that this study implies we should just have kids play "kick the can" all day until first grade is a serious and dangerous mis-reading. Kids should be learning to read during the Kindergarten age, and prior. This study does not refute that assertion. Rather, it makes a point about which pedagogical approaches are most effective at achieving that goal. Those approaches -- both good and bad -- could be implemented in a day care, but a grandparent, or in a Kindergarten classroom.

pm90 9y ago

One of my friends who works in Education told me the interesting story of how the American school system is modeled after the German one. And the German system was essentially designed to pump out soldiers for the State. So its not surprising that the system focuses and rewards obedience and conformity rather than individualism.

afsina 9y ago
Prussian system to be exact. A libertarian analysis: https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1/html/p/16 https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1/ht... Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQkY_dND7Fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQkY_dND7Fo

dennis_jeeves 9y ago

Teslabox - apologies for digressing, but I did not see any way to contact you, hence this post. I saw one of your posts mentioning progesterone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709510 . What is the source/brand of progesterone that you would recommend ? Email is on my profile : https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves

megy 9y ago

> If a politician was courageous, and didn't care about getting re-elected, they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten, replacing 1st and 2nd grade with structured activities instead of 'classroom time' (prison for children), replacing high school with something more like community college, and allowing the remaining years to be much more flexible - conducted for the learner's benefit, rather than the system's... Where are the guarantees that this would actually work? Or just throw out an entire system with no proof.

teslabox 9y ago
There are no guarantees in life. But we know that the present system doesn't work especially well - dissatisfaction is widespread. See this comment for my comments on the NPR show I heard after posting my mildly-inflammatory comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15738275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15738275

eighthnate 9y ago

> But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. Children & teachers are both trapped. One purpose of mass public education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to get kids out of the job market because we couldn't produce enough jobs for the adults. Schools were a way of getting kids out of the coal mines and factories to open up jobs for adults. Another purpose of mass public education was to indoctrinate and prepare them to be good unquestionin worker bees. Now, education system and its bureaucracy has become so entrenched, a new purpose has formed - to protect teachers' and administrators' jobs. That's the major gooal of the education system. As for colleges, since we aren't creating enough jobs, we have been trying to push young adults out of the job market by encouraging them to go to college. The loans young people are saddled with are an extra bonus - a chain around the young people so that they will work and give their prime years to corporations by being good worker bees.

rootw0rm 9y ago

dunno about you, but I learned how to read in kindergarten. it was private, of course.

jayd16 9y ago

I see a bunch of edgy posts like this across the web from people who have already benefited from public schooling, but I see very little data backing it up. Can you support these suggestions?

teslabox 9y ago
I happen to be somewhat dysfunctional at the present, tyvm. John Gatto and John Holt have both written extensively on the corrupt nature of compulsory schooling. I linked to some of Gatto's works in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760

kamaal 9y ago

>>But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. This is backwards. The school is a jobs project because people have to work to earn money. If that wasn't the case we could let them get busy with creative work full time. The other part would be ridiculous, do you really want to be spending your entire childhood and teenage doing thing that has 0 return on investment at the end.

VeronicaJJ123 9y ago

People who lament how public schooling sucks often want government to fund higher education without realizing results would be horrible. Public schools work only for Asians and white because they live in good neighborhoods and take responsibility of their children's academic performance. For Blacks and Hispanics the situation is very very bleak and these people are simply be defrauded by the government.

derblitzmann 9y ago

Not only that, but undergrad college is slowly turning into what late high school was. Soon if not already, jobs for once high school graduates are now for college grads for the simple degradation of education.

jeffdavis 9y ago

Primary education does serve some basics: reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. It may not be efficient about it, but it's not a complete waste. But yeah, first and second grade are basically prison, especially for boys. I'd cut 'em back to 3 hours per day.