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>Based on my experience, nothing quite kills the joy for exploration and learning like school. I thought I hated Math till I got to university. I had to take a

>Based on my experience, nothing quite kills the joy for exploration and learning like school. I thought I hated Math till I got to university. I had to take a bunch of remedial courses on high school level math but ultimately ended up with a math minor in addition to my CS major because I enjoyed the subject so much. The K-12 school system is fundamentally broken but I don't know what the solution is.

bradleyankrom 7y ago
I had a similar experience. Ended up changing my major from English to Econ after discovering that math is actually pretty fun.
solumos 7y ago
Montessori as an option is a good start.
- Twisol 7y ago
  I had some pretty authoritarian teachers at the Montessori school I went to. Maybe you could argue that they weren't really Montessori, but they were advertised as such and attracted families on that basis.
beatgammit 7y ago
School should be about discovery of things that may be interesting to study, not about passing tests and turning homework in on time. Personally, I think we should: - abolish most tests (especially standardized tests) until high school - encourage more electives - run classes like a democracy, not a dictatorship (students choose what to focus on next) - separate introverts from extroverts instead of forcing introverts to learn like extroverts - grade based on engagement, whatever that means for the student - pay teachers based on the number of students they can handle, and let students select their teachers And to top it off, we should be encouraging and facilitating trades in high school so students that would prefer to go that route anyway can skip college. We should also try to eliminate the private sector's obsession with degrees and instead find better ways for people to showcase their qualifications. These are all fairly radical changes, though I think we need to fundamentally change how we think about schooling to improve it. At the very least, we should be encouraging experimentation by making it easier to run a charter school.

bradleyankrom 7y ago

I had a similar experience. Ended up changing my major from English to Econ after discovering that math is actually pretty fun.

solumos 7y ago

Montessori as an option is a good start.

Twisol 7y ago
I had some pretty authoritarian teachers at the Montessori school I went to. Maybe you could argue that they weren't really Montessori, but they were advertised as such and attracted families on that basis.

beatgammit 7y ago

School should be about discovery of things that may be interesting to study, not about passing tests and turning homework in on time. Personally, I think we should: - abolish most tests (especially standardized tests) until high school - encourage more electives - run classes like a democracy, not a dictatorship (students choose what to focus on next) - separate introverts from extroverts instead of forcing introverts to learn like extroverts - grade based on engagement, whatever that means for the student - pay teachers based on the number of students they can handle, and let students select their teachers And to top it off, we should be encouraging and facilitating trades in high school so students that would prefer to go that route anyway can skip college. We should also try to eliminate the private sector's obsession with degrees and instead find better ways for people to showcase their qualifications. These are all fairly radical changes, though I think we need to fundamentally change how we think about schooling to improve it. At the very least, we should be encouraging experimentation by making it easier to run a charter school.