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The community here on HN seems to have a very negative opinion of school. PG seems to talk about it quite frequently. Here's a different viewpoint. I personal

The community here on HN seems to have a very negative opinion of school. PG seems to talk about it quite frequently. Here's a different viewpoint. I personally really enjoyed school. I enjoyed the social structure of school. I wasn't popular by any means, but I had my group of nerdy, academic friends who shared a passion for learning and building things. Learning how to deal with social conflicts, when they inevitably arose, turned out to be super useful. It was interesting just to observe all the different types of people. I learned a lot about myself by learning about others. The relationships I made through school are much stronger than ones made later on. Maybe it's that I found like-minded people early on. But being put in a high-stress environment and going through shared struggles brought us closer together. I also enjoyed the academic structure of school. It exposed me to a breadth of knowledge that I know I wouldn't have explored otherwise. I found it to be a great stepping stone to learn more on my own. FWIW I went to a public school with decent academic rigor. I had mostly good teachers, a few great, and a few bad. Maybe my experience was "lucky" compared to most others here?

malvosenior 7y ago
> Maybe my experience was "lucky" compared to most others here? I can't speak for anyone else, but this is definitely the polar opposite of the experience I had. School was a huge opportunity cost for me. When I think about the skills that make me successful today, 90% of them were self taught or I picked them up in the industry (programming, sales, marketing, management). I was always a prolific reader and learned so much more in my independent studies during my school years than through the education system. Socially, it was even more dire. I was fairly popular, but I've since had to cut off contact with everyone I went to school with. A lot of them are toxic but most are just very different from me in a way that doesn't make sense for them to be part of my life. People I've met through shared interests are the ones that become a part of my life in a significant way. For me, school was a prison like environment that I'd wish on no one. I'm really happy to see students standing and questioning the fundamental necessity of our antiquated school system. 12 years is a lot of time to waste and I'm excited to see a shift toward actually taking advantage of that time instead of just "keeping kids off the streets" and "training cogs".
watwut 7y ago
I think that negative articles attract people who were unhappy with schools and little bit those who push for homeschooling for ideological reasons. If you was alright with school, you have nothing to contribute to discussion.
- oddity 7y ago
  For what it’s worth, I had a relatively positive experience with school and was a stereotypical “good” student. But, I’m entirely aware that I was motivated to learn because I liked school, because I liked learning, because I had things I was interested in that school taught (math, history, literature, etc...) Others didn’t. I was never taught why school was good for me, I learned why school was good for me on my own, accidentally, and even then, I didn’t learn how to learn until college. Those meta-lessons, to me, are the hardest and most important lessons an education should teach. It seems to me that discussions about school (like the featured article, and sadly, some of the comments) tunnel-vision on the stick and largely overlook the carrot from the student’s perspective (the one any successful education system must guide).
ddingus 7y ago
My experience was similar, and I too enjoyed school. Over time, I feel my experience was an outlier.
TheFiend7 7y ago
I just spent 20 minutes typing out a massive response explaining how utterly terrible my experience was with school. But I realized no one cares about my life story and there is no way I can fully capture my experience in this discussion post. But in short, the structure and expected rigor involved with school often made me want to just quit and eat lead. It was by far the worst time in my life and I went to a very good college prep school. The teachers and most of academia only car about the straight laced kids who do well naturally or because their parents are good about offering structure, or the kids who clearly have a troubled home life. But since I didn't have either of those things, I was a "problem" kid and no one gave a shit about how I was doing. I wasn't being beaten at home so I didn't have an excuse for my poor performance. I was constantly exhausted because I was naturally a night owl and school requires kids to get up way too early. The way lectures and studying were structured never jived with me and I was so tired most times I'd stare at a wall all class, I could never get into the groove of things. Yet even after all of this, I've been very successful in my career even though I never went to college, nearly all of my coworkers have masters or phd's. I taught myself everything I know when it comes to practical application of skills in my field, literally none of it was taught to me by anyone, and a lot of it I taught myself during my highschool years. I take pride in that, but I also hate myself for it. I wish I could of fit into the square peg society nurtures so much, and because of the way I've gone about things, everything I do is harder for me than anyone else around me (except for other people in my situation). This post does a terrible job really capturing my experience, but it isn't worth my time spending a day writing a post on a forum to capture how much I truly loathe the modern education system for making my life so miserable for close to 20 years. I understand most systems are designed for the 90% case, but being an outlier in today's society is rough and I wish it upon no one. EDIT: A big reason why I wanted to post, was mainly because most people try to rationalize about how school isn't "efficient" and is an "opportunity cost" etc etc. I have a completely different take on it, school was depressing and extremely emotional for me. It made me very unstable trying to cope with how different I was compared to other people and was very arduous on my soul so to speak and I have lasting impacts on my mental health because of it. It's less about efficiency to me and more about improving the system to help make people's lives better and more tolerable if they're struggling. Suicide is a big problem today and I strongly believe the way our schooling system is setup has a lot to do with that.
Aeolun 7y ago
(Went to school in the Netherlands) I think I mostly agree. Some of the parts of school sucked, but overal it was a fun experience, with a decent enough balance of bullies and friends. I’m not quite sure I saw it like that at the time, but I never hated it. I also find that everything I learned in high school is used at some point or another (maybe the french is an exception), Biology is great when raising kids, maths are great at any point in life, though the more esoteric ‘resolve this equation’ things have yet to happen, geography is nice because I know what causes the earthquakes, what makes the typhoons that pass by once in a while and so on. It only becomes clear to me by comparison how great and well-rounded my education has been, sometimes I wonder if other people went to school at all, and if they did, what did they do there all day? While I think university might have done a better job of preparing me for work, high school did a great job of preparing me for life (at least academically). And really, work is just a more complex high school socially speaking.

malvosenior 7y ago

> Maybe my experience was "lucky" compared to most others here? I can't speak for anyone else, but this is definitely the polar opposite of the experience I had. School was a huge opportunity cost for me. When I think about the skills that make me successful today, 90% of them were self taught or I picked them up in the industry (programming, sales, marketing, management). I was always a prolific reader and learned so much more in my independent studies during my school years than through the education system. Socially, it was even more dire. I was fairly popular, but I've since had to cut off contact with everyone I went to school with. A lot of them are toxic but most are just very different from me in a way that doesn't make sense for them to be part of my life. People I've met through shared interests are the ones that become a part of my life in a significant way. For me, school was a prison like environment that I'd wish on no one. I'm really happy to see students standing and questioning the fundamental necessity of our antiquated school system. 12 years is a lot of time to waste and I'm excited to see a shift toward actually taking advantage of that time instead of just "keeping kids off the streets" and "training cogs".

watwut 7y ago

I think that negative articles attract people who were unhappy with schools and little bit those who push for homeschooling for ideological reasons. If you was alright with school, you have nothing to contribute to discussion.

oddity 7y ago
For what it’s worth, I had a relatively positive experience with school and was a stereotypical “good” student. But, I’m entirely aware that I was motivated to learn because I liked school, because I liked learning, because I had things I was interested in that school taught (math, history, literature, etc...) Others didn’t. I was never taught why school was good for me, I learned why school was good for me on my own, accidentally, and even then, I didn’t learn how to learn until college. Those meta-lessons, to me, are the hardest and most important lessons an education should teach. It seems to me that discussions about school (like the featured article, and sadly, some of the comments) tunnel-vision on the stick and largely overlook the carrot from the student’s perspective (the one any successful education system must guide).

ddingus 7y ago

My experience was similar, and I too enjoyed school. Over time, I feel my experience was an outlier.

TheFiend7 7y ago

I just spent 20 minutes typing out a massive response explaining how utterly terrible my experience was with school. But I realized no one cares about my life story and there is no way I can fully capture my experience in this discussion post. But in short, the structure and expected rigor involved with school often made me want to just quit and eat lead. It was by far the worst time in my life and I went to a very good college prep school. The teachers and most of academia only car about the straight laced kids who do well naturally or because their parents are good about offering structure, or the kids who clearly have a troubled home life. But since I didn't have either of those things, I was a "problem" kid and no one gave a shit about how I was doing. I wasn't being beaten at home so I didn't have an excuse for my poor performance. I was constantly exhausted because I was naturally a night owl and school requires kids to get up way too early. The way lectures and studying were structured never jived with me and I was so tired most times I'd stare at a wall all class, I could never get into the groove of things. Yet even after all of this, I've been very successful in my career even though I never went to college, nearly all of my coworkers have masters or phd's. I taught myself everything I know when it comes to practical application of skills in my field, literally none of it was taught to me by anyone, and a lot of it I taught myself during my highschool years. I take pride in that, but I also hate myself for it. I wish I could of fit into the square peg society nurtures so much, and because of the way I've gone about things, everything I do is harder for me than anyone else around me (except for other people in my situation). This post does a terrible job really capturing my experience, but it isn't worth my time spending a day writing a post on a forum to capture how much I truly loathe the modern education system for making my life so miserable for close to 20 years. I understand most systems are designed for the 90% case, but being an outlier in today's society is rough and I wish it upon no one. EDIT: A big reason why I wanted to post, was mainly because most people try to rationalize about how school isn't "efficient" and is an "opportunity cost" etc etc. I have a completely different take on it, school was depressing and extremely emotional for me. It made me very unstable trying to cope with how different I was compared to other people and was very arduous on my soul so to speak and I have lasting impacts on my mental health because of it. It's less about efficiency to me and more about improving the system to help make people's lives better and more tolerable if they're struggling. Suicide is a big problem today and I strongly believe the way our schooling system is setup has a lot to do with that.

Aeolun 7y ago

(Went to school in the Netherlands) I think I mostly agree. Some of the parts of school sucked, but overal it was a fun experience, with a decent enough balance of bullies and friends. I’m not quite sure I saw it like that at the time, but I never hated it. I also find that everything I learned in high school is used at some point or another (maybe the french is an exception), Biology is great when raising kids, maths are great at any point in life, though the more esoteric ‘resolve this equation’ things have yet to happen, geography is nice because I know what causes the earthquakes, what makes the typhoons that pass by once in a while and so on. It only becomes clear to me by comparison how great and well-rounded my education has been, sometimes I wonder if other people went to school at all, and if they did, what did they do there all day? While I think university might have done a better job of preparing me for work, high school did a great job of preparing me for life (at least academically). And really, work is just a more complex high school socially speaking.