5 ms·

I look back on college, and so many classes seemed like a waste of time. I understand a well rounded education, but so many classes seemed like fluff. I once

I look back on college, and so many classes seemed like a waste of time. I understand a well rounded education, but so many classes seemed like fluff. I once took a Abnormal Psychology class. It sounded interesting being premed. For half a year we sat in a circle, and talked about feelings. I was so shy that was the last place I would open up. I used to think, If I was honest, I would admit I was still a virgin, and had a deathly fear of public speaking. I loved the teacher though. She really meant well. If I had a kid, I would supplement his education. I would make sure he knew mathematics well. I also think physics should be taught much earlier, along with the finance, and the markets. As a kid, I was interested in woodworking, cars, engines, even electricity, but the teachers had us coloring world maps?

908B64B197 6y ago
> As a kid, I was interested in woodworking, cars, engines, even electricity, but the teachers had us coloring world maps? Wait until you read this [0] [1] [0] https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-el... [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/new-course-outlines-prompt-conversations-about-identity-race-in-seattle-classrooms-even-in-math/ https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/new-course-outlin...
- a_t48 6y ago
  Care to give a little bit more context?
- xxpor 6y ago
  As Matt Yglesias put it, the first article makes 0 sense. If they don't like what the school is teaching them, pull their kids out! Isn't that the whole point of private school? It's a choice to go there.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - spazrunaway 6y ago
    As if they're not teaching the same things in public schools. And it's sort of frustrating that the woke teach actively fighting supposed oppression in every institution, every workplace, every household, and really every imaginable part of life in order to be an 'ally', lest your 'white silence' and complicity encourage 'violence'...and the rest of us are told that if we don't like something, we should just shut up and avoid it.
    - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
      They aren't teaching the same things in public schools. (I doubt they're teaching them in that prep school, either, but I haven't looked into it.)
    - 8note 6y ago
      That's got nothing to do with whether a school teaches carpentry? If you want to teach your children to be racist, you'll probably have to do it yourself. You could maybe sign them up to volunteer with the kkk?
      - spazrunaway 6y ago
        Oh, I think they'll be plenty racist after their K-12 education.
- jbroson 6y ago
  It's amazing how conservatives write love letters about the "free market" but despise absolutely anyone in this "free market" who do not follow conservative orthodoxy. It's a PRIVATE SCHOOL! Send your kids elsewhere if they don't teach the kids enough Ayn Rand and Michelle Malkin! None of these conservatives seemed to give a shit 15 years ago when rural PUBLIC schools like mine were teaching anti-science creationism, or historical revisionism in the Lost Cause/Civil War apologia. Many were shrieking their heads off if their kids weren't taught such utter bullshit.
cammikebrown 6y ago
I agree that we should teach math earlier, in elementary school the same math (fractions, percentages) were literally taught repeatedly from 3rd-6th grade. I would have loved to learn some algebra instead. The concept of doing the same thing to both sides of an equation to solve for an unknown is not terribly difficult to grasp. As for finance, I’d rather be coloring world maps. It’s given me a great desire to travel the world. Finance makes my stomach hurt. Then again, I’m poor, so what do I know? I agree we should be taught more about it than we usually are, which is that we aren’t taught anything at all about it.
- 8note 6y ago
  I remember learning algebra between 3rd and 6th grade. It was hidden within word problems, but 7 was exponents and everything after had a Cartesian plane
elmomle 6y ago
Your last statement reminds me of this rather brutal take on the US's (and really the whole world's) educational systems, reposted to HN a few days ago: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html. The main idea is that if you look past the things we're told that school is meant to be for, school is pretty clearly meant to turn humans into compliant drones.
- PebblesRox 6y ago
  Relevant Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/03/14 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/03/14
II2II 6y ago
> I look back on college, and so many classes seemed like a waste of time. I understand a well rounded education, but so many classes seemed like fluff. Even though I believe well rounded interests are important, I felt the same way as you when it came to the distribution requirements. For the most part, people took first year courses that were more about rote memorization than depth of understanding because they were easy. Some university departments even offered special courses that watered things down even further. For the most part, it was a good experience. Things were more lively when a room had a mixture of Science and English/History majors, but that only happened because a few of us were willing to go onto second and third year courses outside of our major. On the other hand, it did feel like it was setting us back relative to those who stuck to the easy course in order to focus upon their major.
Jakobeha 6y ago
Counterpoint: some of the weird classes I took in high school / college ended up being useful, or at least more useful than some of my core CS classes. I took a Psychology class in high school, and now I understand why people feel and react certain ways, because I can connect back to the concepts I learned. I took a music theory class in college, which is helping me make my own music as a hobby, and also appreciate some songs. In contrast, I am researching programming languages in graduate school, I took an undergrad class on PL, and it barely taught me anything I didn't already know. Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful".
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  > Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful". I agree with you here, and mostly because we all exist and make decisions in a historical, experiential, and psychological context, and you have to have some knowledge of contexts that are different from yours if you are to have any hope of being an effective leader.
- Balgair 6y ago
  I'll add my own bit: Best class I ever took was Dinosaur Natural History. A fluff class if there ever was one, but very hard to get a seat in. I really loved the class, but thought it would never really add anything to my life. Because, well, Rexy has been dead a while. I was so wrong. What I learned in the class was mostly the applied basics of biology, geology, and evolution. And presented in such a fun way, I gobbled it all up. Those basics later lead me to a successful career in bioengineering and a dalliance in carbon geology. Like I said, best class I ever took.
  - auto 6y ago
    I went to a small liberal arts school (Ursinus) outside of Philly, who I only mention because it was unique in that part of getting your degree required taking CIE, or "Common Intellectual Experience" classes. Freshmen were required to take CIE I and CIE II, and the classes were scheduled such that it not only tried to mix students up between different disciplines, but they were also taught by faculty from every department, just as much a requirement for them as for the students. The classes focused primarily on classic texts, literature, philosophy, all the big religious works, etc. The point, really, was to foster discussion and to get everyone on an even playing field their first two semesters in terms of intellectual discussion, and really picking apart what you're reading, preparing you for the world of research in academia. A key point here is that I don't know a single person, student or faculty, who didn't feel that CIE was extremely worthwhile set of classes, and a pivotal part of our time there. That said, after I & II, there were CIE III classes that would satisfy different electives. One of the best classes I took was CIE III - Capitalism and Democracy. It was taught by one of my math professors, a man I deeply respected and learned a ton from, and I was one of only four students in the class. The semester was basically split up into 5 or 6 chunks, where each chunk took two countries whose basis of government encompassed (even if it was stretch), capitalistic and democratic ideas. So, we'd read papers and book excerpts from economists and political theorists (think Adam Smith, Keynes, Friedman), along with summaries of the countries, and each chunk culminated in a report comparing the two countries implementations of capitalism and democracy, trying to find the intertwining of the axioms laid down by the theorists, and how those two systems of governance and economics evolved in different political spectrums. I was a math and comp sci double major, and am a firmware engineer today, and never dipped my toes anywhere near economics or anything politically related before or after that class, but it's really stuck with me after all these years.

908B64B197 6y ago

> As a kid, I was interested in woodworking, cars, engines, even electricity, but the teachers had us coloring world maps? Wait until you read this [0] [1] [0] https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-el... [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/new-course-outlines-prompt-conversations-about-identity-race-in-seattle-classrooms-even-in-math/ https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/new-course-outlin...

a_t48 6y ago
Care to give a little bit more context?
xxpor 6y ago
As Matt Yglesias put it, the first article makes 0 sense. If they don't like what the school is teaching them, pull their kids out! Isn't that the whole point of private school? It's a choice to go there.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- spazrunaway 6y ago
  As if they're not teaching the same things in public schools. And it's sort of frustrating that the woke teach actively fighting supposed oppression in every institution, every workplace, every household, and really every imaginable part of life in order to be an 'ally', lest your 'white silence' and complicity encourage 'violence'...and the rest of us are told that if we don't like something, we should just shut up and avoid it.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    They aren't teaching the same things in public schools. (I doubt they're teaching them in that prep school, either, but I haven't looked into it.)
  - 8note 6y ago
    That's got nothing to do with whether a school teaches carpentry? If you want to teach your children to be racist, you'll probably have to do it yourself. You could maybe sign them up to volunteer with the kkk?
    - spazrunaway 6y ago
      Oh, I think they'll be plenty racist after their K-12 education.
jbroson 6y ago
It's amazing how conservatives write love letters about the "free market" but despise absolutely anyone in this "free market" who do not follow conservative orthodoxy. It's a PRIVATE SCHOOL! Send your kids elsewhere if they don't teach the kids enough Ayn Rand and Michelle Malkin! None of these conservatives seemed to give a shit 15 years ago when rural PUBLIC schools like mine were teaching anti-science creationism, or historical revisionism in the Lost Cause/Civil War apologia. Many were shrieking their heads off if their kids weren't taught such utter bullshit.

cammikebrown 6y ago

I agree that we should teach math earlier, in elementary school the same math (fractions, percentages) were literally taught repeatedly from 3rd-6th grade. I would have loved to learn some algebra instead. The concept of doing the same thing to both sides of an equation to solve for an unknown is not terribly difficult to grasp. As for finance, I’d rather be coloring world maps. It’s given me a great desire to travel the world. Finance makes my stomach hurt. Then again, I’m poor, so what do I know? I agree we should be taught more about it than we usually are, which is that we aren’t taught anything at all about it.

8note 6y ago
I remember learning algebra between 3rd and 6th grade. It was hidden within word problems, but 7 was exponents and everything after had a Cartesian plane

elmomle 6y ago

Your last statement reminds me of this rather brutal take on the US's (and really the whole world's) educational systems, reposted to HN a few days ago: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html. The main idea is that if you look past the things we're told that school is meant to be for, school is pretty clearly meant to turn humans into compliant drones.

PebblesRox 6y ago
Relevant Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/03/14 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/03/14

II2II 6y ago

> I look back on college, and so many classes seemed like a waste of time. I understand a well rounded education, but so many classes seemed like fluff. Even though I believe well rounded interests are important, I felt the same way as you when it came to the distribution requirements. For the most part, people took first year courses that were more about rote memorization than depth of understanding because they were easy. Some university departments even offered special courses that watered things down even further. For the most part, it was a good experience. Things were more lively when a room had a mixture of Science and English/History majors, but that only happened because a few of us were willing to go onto second and third year courses outside of our major. On the other hand, it did feel like it was setting us back relative to those who stuck to the easy course in order to focus upon their major.

Jakobeha 6y ago

Counterpoint: some of the weird classes I took in high school / college ended up being useful, or at least more useful than some of my core CS classes. I took a Psychology class in high school, and now I understand why people feel and react certain ways, because I can connect back to the concepts I learned. I took a music theory class in college, which is helping me make my own music as a hobby, and also appreciate some songs. In contrast, I am researching programming languages in graduate school, I took an undergrad class on PL, and it barely taught me anything I didn't already know. Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful".

jschwartzi 6y ago
> Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful". I agree with you here, and mostly because we all exist and make decisions in a historical, experiential, and psychological context, and you have to have some knowledge of contexts that are different from yours if you are to have any hope of being an effective leader.
Balgair 6y ago
I'll add my own bit: Best class I ever took was Dinosaur Natural History. A fluff class if there ever was one, but very hard to get a seat in. I really loved the class, but thought it would never really add anything to my life. Because, well, Rexy has been dead a while. I was so wrong. What I learned in the class was mostly the applied basics of biology, geology, and evolution. And presented in such a fun way, I gobbled it all up. Those basics later lead me to a successful career in bioengineering and a dalliance in carbon geology. Like I said, best class I ever took.
- auto 6y ago
  I went to a small liberal arts school (Ursinus) outside of Philly, who I only mention because it was unique in that part of getting your degree required taking CIE, or "Common Intellectual Experience" classes. Freshmen were required to take CIE I and CIE II, and the classes were scheduled such that it not only tried to mix students up between different disciplines, but they were also taught by faculty from every department, just as much a requirement for them as for the students. The classes focused primarily on classic texts, literature, philosophy, all the big religious works, etc. The point, really, was to foster discussion and to get everyone on an even playing field their first two semesters in terms of intellectual discussion, and really picking apart what you're reading, preparing you for the world of research in academia. A key point here is that I don't know a single person, student or faculty, who didn't feel that CIE was extremely worthwhile set of classes, and a pivotal part of our time there. That said, after I & II, there were CIE III classes that would satisfy different electives. One of the best classes I took was CIE III - Capitalism and Democracy. It was taught by one of my math professors, a man I deeply respected and learned a ton from, and I was one of only four students in the class. The semester was basically split up into 5 or 6 chunks, where each chunk took two countries whose basis of government encompassed (even if it was stretch), capitalistic and democratic ideas. So, we'd read papers and book excerpts from economists and political theorists (think Adam Smith, Keynes, Friedman), along with summaries of the countries, and each chunk culminated in a report comparing the two countries implementations of capitalism and democracy, trying to find the intertwining of the axioms laid down by the theorists, and how those two systems of governance and economics evolved in different political spectrums. I was a math and comp sci double major, and am a firmware engineer today, and never dipped my toes anywhere near economics or anything politically related before or after that class, but it's really stuck with me after all these years.