4 ms·

The thing I think gets lost is people just assume the school system is natural, and in terms of human evolution its the newest thing, it got created for industr

The thing I think gets lost is people just assume the school system is natural, and in terms of human evolution its the newest thing, it got created for industrial efficiency. Kids used to be raised by all of society and now they're effectively raised by each other. Bullying is a huge problem but its largely because kids raise each other. If you were to strait up ask do I want my neighbors 9 year old to be the most influential person in my kids growth the answer would be obviously no, but thats essentially where were at for efficiency

watwut 6y ago
> Kids used to be raised by all of society and now they're effectively raised by each other. Bullying is a huge problem but its largely because kids raise each other. Contemporary society puts much more effort and individual attention toward raising individual kids then majority of past societies used to. Partly simply because we have those resource, partly because we have less kids and partly because ideas about childraising changed. The "kids raise each other" complain is very modern, precisely because we expect more from childraising.
- overgard 6y ago
  I just don't think that's true, we put so much less effort. We basically leave child raising to the state. See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. Better to toss them at a wildly underpaid person for 6 hours a day who has to watch like 30 kids at once, where their main influences are other kids. We wonder what to do to fix society when part of it is "just stop with the dumb things"
  - watwut 6y ago
    Origin of kindergarten is in German 5 years old being alone whole day on the streets while both parents work 12 hours a day in factory. Or while moms worked as nannies for someone else. That was whole day job too, meaning there are two kids not having attention of parents. The 10 years old kids who also used to work in factories were not "raised" by any contemporary meaning of word. Back to small villages and families with many kids, all adults had to work very hard to just create necessities for everyone. Once the kids were past toddler plus a bit stage, adults simply could not tweak them individually people do with kids now. Aristocratic kids were routinely sent to boarding schools. I could continue on and on as I go through time periods, but kids spent a lot of time literally raising themselves. They also died a lot and were beaten a lot. > we put so much less effort [...] See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. This is definitely not true. And yeah, I found out during pandemic that school teacher is significantly better teacher then me. Triple so while I cant send the kid just outside to play alone as was completely normal generations ago (with exception of isolated periods).
    - overgard 6y ago
      So here's the thing, I speak from personal experience. When I was in sixth grade, I dropped out of school. I wasn't a dumb kid by any means, I dropped out of an expensive gifted and talented program. So my parents educated me for the next two years, and then I went back to high school and college and I was fine. You know what I missed from two years of "education". NOTHING. My dad's most important things were, you're going to be good at writing and math. And when I actually went back to school I was so much better at that shit that I ended up teaching a class in 9th grade. (The teacher and sub were out that day and they were like, who knows these things, and everyone pointed at me) I just think our current school system is vastly ineffective and borderline cruel. But it frees up everyone for 8 hours a day so fuck it! And look nobody is denying the world used to be a way worse place. But if you look at the history of school systems, it was created by oil tycoons that were angry that the working class was a little too opinionated. This has all been normal for 100 years, but it doesn't make it actually normal.
      - watwut 6y ago
        You was not raised in 1914 nor in 1870 with their child raising standards. You was homeschooled in our society with our standards. Your parents educating you is not an argument about child raising in the past by average past family. Your gifted program was not school of the past and neither was your high school environment copy of past high school. You are projecting contemporary experience in the past, but history does not work like that. In most likelyhood you would not had high school in part and would not be educated by parents at such high age either. Lastly, we have actual historical books written about past, about families, childhood and ideas about childhood. That is part of historical research. It differed by class and place, obviously, but neither modern schools nor modern homeschooling are mimicking average historical familly.
        overgard 6y ago
        Hey if you want to understand things read "the underground history of american education", written by the new york state teacher of the year. Our education system is built on creating conformity and crushing peoples spirits, and it has worked! By the way that's not a grumpy opinion from me, those guys literally said that kind of thing out loud on record for history. They were like "how can we crush these uppity free thinkers". Do you really think it's an accident every school is named after like an oil tycoon? That wasn't philanthropy, they weren't nearly as nice as you think.
- whack 6y ago
  > Contemporary society puts much more effort and individual attention toward raising individual kids then majority of past societies used to. The "kids raise each other" complain is very modern, precisely because we expect more from childraising. Not really. If you go back a century or two, that might be true. Parents went off to the office, and the kids were left to their own devices. Often, herded together with tens/hundreds of other kids, with less adult supervision than today. But if you go back many thousands of years to tribal societies, it's the opposite. Caveman kids spent most of their life around adults, and a handful of other kids. It's the equivalent of going to the neighborhood bbq, where there's a wide variety of adults and youths hanging out. Packing hundreds of kids into a confined place with 1 adult for every 30 kids... that is a very modern phenomenon.
  - rcurry 6y ago
    You don’t even have to go that far back - consider that children in the 1700s and 1800s could join the British Navy at age 11 or 12 and become an officer at the ripe old age of 15 or thereabout.
justinclift 6y ago
Probably also worth remembering that the school system in some other countries seems to do much better. From rough memory, perhaps the Nordic countries?
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I would claim most european countries, definitely north, definitely west and from my experience definitely east. Can't comment on the southern part
barrenko 6y ago
School combines incarceration with children.

watwut 6y ago

> Kids used to be raised by all of society and now they're effectively raised by each other. Bullying is a huge problem but its largely because kids raise each other. Contemporary society puts much more effort and individual attention toward raising individual kids then majority of past societies used to. Partly simply because we have those resource, partly because we have less kids and partly because ideas about childraising changed. The "kids raise each other" complain is very modern, precisely because we expect more from childraising.

overgard 6y ago
I just don't think that's true, we put so much less effort. We basically leave child raising to the state. See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. Better to toss them at a wildly underpaid person for 6 hours a day who has to watch like 30 kids at once, where their main influences are other kids. We wonder what to do to fix society when part of it is "just stop with the dumb things"
- watwut 6y ago
  Origin of kindergarten is in German 5 years old being alone whole day on the streets while both parents work 12 hours a day in factory. Or while moms worked as nannies for someone else. That was whole day job too, meaning there are two kids not having attention of parents. The 10 years old kids who also used to work in factories were not "raised" by any contemporary meaning of word. Back to small villages and families with many kids, all adults had to work very hard to just create necessities for everyone. Once the kids were past toddler plus a bit stage, adults simply could not tweak them individually people do with kids now. Aristocratic kids were routinely sent to boarding schools. I could continue on and on as I go through time periods, but kids spent a lot of time literally raising themselves. They also died a lot and were beaten a lot. > we put so much less effort [...] See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. This is definitely not true. And yeah, I found out during pandemic that school teacher is significantly better teacher then me. Triple so while I cant send the kid just outside to play alone as was completely normal generations ago (with exception of isolated periods).
  - overgard 6y ago
    So here's the thing, I speak from personal experience. When I was in sixth grade, I dropped out of school. I wasn't a dumb kid by any means, I dropped out of an expensive gifted and talented program. So my parents educated me for the next two years, and then I went back to high school and college and I was fine. You know what I missed from two years of "education". NOTHING. My dad's most important things were, you're going to be good at writing and math. And when I actually went back to school I was so much better at that shit that I ended up teaching a class in 9th grade. (The teacher and sub were out that day and they were like, who knows these things, and everyone pointed at me) I just think our current school system is vastly ineffective and borderline cruel. But it frees up everyone for 8 hours a day so fuck it! And look nobody is denying the world used to be a way worse place. But if you look at the history of school systems, it was created by oil tycoons that were angry that the working class was a little too opinionated. This has all been normal for 100 years, but it doesn't make it actually normal.
    - watwut 6y ago
      You was not raised in 1914 nor in 1870 with their child raising standards. You was homeschooled in our society with our standards. Your parents educating you is not an argument about child raising in the past by average past family. Your gifted program was not school of the past and neither was your high school environment copy of past high school. You are projecting contemporary experience in the past, but history does not work like that. In most likelyhood you would not had high school in part and would not be educated by parents at such high age either. Lastly, we have actual historical books written about past, about families, childhood and ideas about childhood. That is part of historical research. It differed by class and place, obviously, but neither modern schools nor modern homeschooling are mimicking average historical familly.
      - overgard 6y ago
        Hey if you want to understand things read "the underground history of american education", written by the new york state teacher of the year. Our education system is built on creating conformity and crushing peoples spirits, and it has worked! By the way that's not a grumpy opinion from me, those guys literally said that kind of thing out loud on record for history. They were like "how can we crush these uppity free thinkers". Do you really think it's an accident every school is named after like an oil tycoon? That wasn't philanthropy, they weren't nearly as nice as you think.
whack 6y ago
> Contemporary society puts much more effort and individual attention toward raising individual kids then majority of past societies used to. The "kids raise each other" complain is very modern, precisely because we expect more from childraising. Not really. If you go back a century or two, that might be true. Parents went off to the office, and the kids were left to their own devices. Often, herded together with tens/hundreds of other kids, with less adult supervision than today. But if you go back many thousands of years to tribal societies, it's the opposite. Caveman kids spent most of their life around adults, and a handful of other kids. It's the equivalent of going to the neighborhood bbq, where there's a wide variety of adults and youths hanging out. Packing hundreds of kids into a confined place with 1 adult for every 30 kids... that is a very modern phenomenon.
- rcurry 6y ago
  You don’t even have to go that far back - consider that children in the 1700s and 1800s could join the British Navy at age 11 or 12 and become an officer at the ripe old age of 15 or thereabout.

justinclift 6y ago

Probably also worth remembering that the school system in some other countries seems to do much better. From rough memory, perhaps the Nordic countries?

saiya-jin 6y ago
I would claim most european countries, definitely north, definitely west and from my experience definitely east. Can't comment on the southern part

barrenko 6y ago

School combines incarceration with children.