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As a father of two with a great interest in education I got to say I think this article beautifully articulated everything that is wrong with modern schooling.

As a father of two with a great interest in education I got to say I think this article beautifully articulated everything that is wrong with modern schooling. Sadly judging by various comments here I don't think most people really grasp what the author is talking about. Not that it is odd. I also failed to grasp this most of my life. In fact I ridiculed play oriented schooling. It was not until I became a father myself I got to observe for myself how children learn and see what a disaster school was that I finally understood what a lot of these "radicals" where actually talking about. It is spurred me to discuss this with many other parents. I see so many of the same problems. School really has a nasty habit of killing the joy of learning. In its defense it is an okay substitute when parents have no love of learning themselves and don't encourage creativity and curiosity in their own children. The key problem I see is that schools obsess about teaching X amount of material. Rather than focus on understanding. A child struggling with learning concepts in math will choose memorization as an efficient strategy because covering all the needed material by actually learning to understand it would take too long time. This sort of quantity obsession means memorization almost always gets picked over genuine understanding. Actually learning to think critically and clearly is not prioritized. Sure they always claim that is prioritized. But priority implies something else is prioritized less. And that is never the case. Regardless of the flowery words, getting through the whole curriculum is always prioritized above all else.

davidgl 7y ago
Out of interest, which country are you in ? Approaches to education are quite varied across the world.
barrkel 7y ago
I had read that unschooling had turned out poorly, but while searching for evidence, it seems it goes the other way: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201406/survey-grown-unschoolers-i-overview-findings https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201406... I think it's heavily dependent on the home environment and learning opportunities, though, and it probably can't scale to the industrial daycare that is formalized primary and secondary education.
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  Thanks, that was very interesting. I must read up more on this. Frankly I had never imagined such a radical approach. I never had any intention of unschooling my children. I would have home schooled them essentially. I would have tried to reach minimums on a curriculum but I would have tried to use more of my own material and a more play oriented approach. I also likely would have wanted my kids to occasionally attend school just for the socializing aspect and getting accustomed to the rules and rigidity of the school system, simply because it cannot be avoided later in life. However the link you provided gives food for thought. I had not expected such a radial approach to work. Or at least I don't think it necessarily works in general. I think it depends a lot on parents. A play oriented type of education is hard. It requires creativity and work on part of the parent. If I compare my kids with many others e.g, many think that they do well in school because we are very serious about school work. We are not. The main difference as I see it is that we engage the curiosity and creativity of the children more. When my kids ask a question about something. They tend to get quite a long and detailed answer. I also try to make it somewhat entertaining. Not always easy. I try to find fun analogies related to things I know they like. Far too many parents have the attitude of: "Oh don't worry about that," "that is for grown ups dear," "that is too complicated for a child to understand" etc. I don't think I have ever told my kids that something is too difficult for them so don't even ask. I always try to give some kind of answer to every question. Of course you have to point out that it is a simplification, and as they get older you can give a better explanation. We also try to push the envelope more. We care more about what is fun than what is age appropriate. Our kids always had building toys and board games way ahead of their age. We did not care about that. It was more important if they enjoyed it. If we had e.g. a too advanced board game with a theme they liked, we just simplified the rules. When they grasped simple rules, we expanded the rules.
Amygaz 7y ago
That’s also what I think. Was I a good parrot is also something I said to in a physics class after answering a question (high school). One problem is that teachers don’t always understand either, they’re also parrots. They also don’t have any incentive or margin to not be a parrot. The other problem is that our factory schools have been created by extroverts for extroverts, so participative play rather than understanding is what matters. I didn’t like school, and that also affected in a negative way what I liked and didn’t like outside of school. Now I see the same happening with my kid, and it’s tough to compensate.
conanbatt 7y ago
Have you looked into Montessori schooling? It seems to address this very topic very well, albeit being so alternative a school gives some jitters.
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  Absolutely considered it. It was a kind of school type I used to mock when I was younger. I viewed it as a stupid hippie school. Only after having kids did I realize how prejudice and narrow minded I had been. I am very focused on science and mathematics myself. I view those as some of the most important subjects. That give me some reluctance towards Montessori as they seem very focused on the arts. I like a lot of the philosophy of Montessori, but I supposed I would want more play centered around developing logical and scientific thinking. But I say this as someone who knows minimal about Montessori. Here are some examples of what I would have liked to see more of: We play a bunch of board games at home, and I have seen the kids get to practice a lot of math playing these games. Just exchanging money and adding dice numbers practice a lot of arithmetic. You can see they enjoy this much more than doing exactly the same calculations on paper without any context. I think a lot of early year education in e.g. mathematics could utilize board games more actively.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    or roleplaying games like dungeons and dragons. because of its theme it is pushed into a corner as nerd culture, but if you look at it from another perspective it can also be summed up as improvisation and math. dungeons or monsters are not actually required.
- em-bee 7y ago
  does montessori really come across like that? i find that quite ironic, because from all the alternative systems i have seen, montessori seems to be the most efficient and scaleable. whereas most improvements to schools call for less students per teacher, montessori works well with traditional class sizes because the students learn to be independent and need less teacher attention. in other words, if there is one system that actually has the potential to improve schooling without requiring more teachers, then it is montessori.
Xelbair 7y ago
It is because schools have a different goal than we expect. We expect them to teach, and especially help people understand problems. They do not exists to teach. They exist to cram bare minimum of skills and knowledge so one can work. It is even worse in post-communist countries where schools actively hammer you down to the common level.
- candiodari 7y ago
  They exist to be the cheapest possible day care centers you mean. Both from the perspective of parents and, even more, from the perspective of the state/taxpayer. > A good teacher will not only illustrate the process with a degree of clarity and detail that invites good questions, but also stand up to the resulting interrogation. Outside of private schools, you won't be finding many teachers that can do this at all. This is only possible if IT teacher pay is competitive with FANG. If Chemistry teacher pay is competitive with Chevron. If ... and that's just not the case. So the big problem with "play and experience teaching with 1:1 attention and lots of practical experiments" is that nobody is willing to pay for it. So we can't do that. That brings the question: what, reasonably priced alternatives exist ? And let's assume that "youtube" is not (yet?) a good answer. What can we do with underqualified, and average intelligence at best teachers ... That then makes the answer of "rote learning" perhaps not such a bad answer. It has the big advantage that matters: it is not required for a teacher to actually understand what they're teaching. And since this is a requirement ...
ArtWomb 7y ago
Well said. I also think with math and science, there is trauma that lasts a lifetime. It turns people off forever. They label themselves "bad at math" and it gets reinforced over and over again throughout their lives. This is a bit left field, but another interesting read on an alternative education that seems to have worked out: this Vogue March 2020 cover story on Billie Eilish ;) https://www.vogue.com/article/billie-eilish-cover-march-2020 https://www.vogue.com/article/billie-eilish-cover-march-2020

davidgl 7y ago

Out of interest, which country are you in ? Approaches to education are quite varied across the world.

barrkel 7y ago

I had read that unschooling had turned out poorly, but while searching for evidence, it seems it goes the other way: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201406/survey-grown-unschoolers-i-overview-findings https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201406... I think it's heavily dependent on the home environment and learning opportunities, though, and it probably can't scale to the industrial daycare that is formalized primary and secondary education.

socialdemocrat 7y ago
Thanks, that was very interesting. I must read up more on this. Frankly I had never imagined such a radical approach. I never had any intention of unschooling my children. I would have home schooled them essentially. I would have tried to reach minimums on a curriculum but I would have tried to use more of my own material and a more play oriented approach. I also likely would have wanted my kids to occasionally attend school just for the socializing aspect and getting accustomed to the rules and rigidity of the school system, simply because it cannot be avoided later in life. However the link you provided gives food for thought. I had not expected such a radial approach to work. Or at least I don't think it necessarily works in general. I think it depends a lot on parents. A play oriented type of education is hard. It requires creativity and work on part of the parent. If I compare my kids with many others e.g, many think that they do well in school because we are very serious about school work. We are not. The main difference as I see it is that we engage the curiosity and creativity of the children more. When my kids ask a question about something. They tend to get quite a long and detailed answer. I also try to make it somewhat entertaining. Not always easy. I try to find fun analogies related to things I know they like. Far too many parents have the attitude of: "Oh don't worry about that," "that is for grown ups dear," "that is too complicated for a child to understand" etc. I don't think I have ever told my kids that something is too difficult for them so don't even ask. I always try to give some kind of answer to every question. Of course you have to point out that it is a simplification, and as they get older you can give a better explanation. We also try to push the envelope more. We care more about what is fun than what is age appropriate. Our kids always had building toys and board games way ahead of their age. We did not care about that. It was more important if they enjoyed it. If we had e.g. a too advanced board game with a theme they liked, we just simplified the rules. When they grasped simple rules, we expanded the rules.

Amygaz 7y ago

That’s also what I think. Was I a good parrot is also something I said to in a physics class after answering a question (high school). One problem is that teachers don’t always understand either, they’re also parrots. They also don’t have any incentive or margin to not be a parrot. The other problem is that our factory schools have been created by extroverts for extroverts, so participative play rather than understanding is what matters. I didn’t like school, and that also affected in a negative way what I liked and didn’t like outside of school. Now I see the same happening with my kid, and it’s tough to compensate.

conanbatt 7y ago

Have you looked into Montessori schooling? It seems to address this very topic very well, albeit being so alternative a school gives some jitters.

socialdemocrat 7y ago
Absolutely considered it. It was a kind of school type I used to mock when I was younger. I viewed it as a stupid hippie school. Only after having kids did I realize how prejudice and narrow minded I had been. I am very focused on science and mathematics myself. I view those as some of the most important subjects. That give me some reluctance towards Montessori as they seem very focused on the arts. I like a lot of the philosophy of Montessori, but I supposed I would want more play centered around developing logical and scientific thinking. But I say this as someone who knows minimal about Montessori. Here are some examples of what I would have liked to see more of: We play a bunch of board games at home, and I have seen the kids get to practice a lot of math playing these games. Just exchanging money and adding dice numbers practice a lot of arithmetic. You can see they enjoy this much more than doing exactly the same calculations on paper without any context. I think a lot of early year education in e.g. mathematics could utilize board games more actively.
- em-bee 7y ago
  or roleplaying games like dungeons and dragons. because of its theme it is pushed into a corner as nerd culture, but if you look at it from another perspective it can also be summed up as improvisation and math. dungeons or monsters are not actually required.
em-bee 7y ago
does montessori really come across like that? i find that quite ironic, because from all the alternative systems i have seen, montessori seems to be the most efficient and scaleable. whereas most improvements to schools call for less students per teacher, montessori works well with traditional class sizes because the students learn to be independent and need less teacher attention. in other words, if there is one system that actually has the potential to improve schooling without requiring more teachers, then it is montessori.

Xelbair 7y ago

It is because schools have a different goal than we expect. We expect them to teach, and especially help people understand problems. They do not exists to teach. They exist to cram bare minimum of skills and knowledge so one can work. It is even worse in post-communist countries where schools actively hammer you down to the common level.

candiodari 7y ago
They exist to be the cheapest possible day care centers you mean. Both from the perspective of parents and, even more, from the perspective of the state/taxpayer. > A good teacher will not only illustrate the process with a degree of clarity and detail that invites good questions, but also stand up to the resulting interrogation. Outside of private schools, you won't be finding many teachers that can do this at all. This is only possible if IT teacher pay is competitive with FANG. If Chemistry teacher pay is competitive with Chevron. If ... and that's just not the case. So the big problem with "play and experience teaching with 1:1 attention and lots of practical experiments" is that nobody is willing to pay for it. So we can't do that. That brings the question: what, reasonably priced alternatives exist ? And let's assume that "youtube" is not (yet?) a good answer. What can we do with underqualified, and average intelligence at best teachers ... That then makes the answer of "rote learning" perhaps not such a bad answer. It has the big advantage that matters: it is not required for a teacher to actually understand what they're teaching. And since this is a requirement ...

ArtWomb 7y ago

Well said. I also think with math and science, there is trauma that lasts a lifetime. It turns people off forever. They label themselves "bad at math" and it gets reinforced over and over again throughout their lives. This is a bit left field, but another interesting read on an alternative education that seems to have worked out: this Vogue March 2020 cover story on Billie Eilish ;) https://www.vogue.com/article/billie-eilish-cover-march-2020 https://www.vogue.com/article/billie-eilish-cover-march-2020