7 ms·

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one w

by bedobi 5y ago

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like my schooling was mostly a giant waste of my time and energy. I was waaaay ahead in subjects I liked, because those things I learned myself out of innate interest. Rather than the system accommodating and encouraging being ahead, in those subjects I was held back and forced to sit through material I already knew, because "in year x we learn this and in year y we learn that". Don't get ahead. Zero agency. In other subjects that didn't interest me, I was forced to sit through stuff only to forget everything I "learned" soon after. It really begs the question, what's the point? And while I'm no genius at anything, surely a system like this will kill many, many actual geniuses, just like the article says.

tvanantwerp 5y ago
Through the confines of scheduling, I once found myself in the lowest level of biology and AP biology in the same high school semester with the same teacher. At first she was perplexed, wondering what the hell was going on. But once she got to know me, she realized it was a scheduling thing and that I did not really belong in the low-level class. It got to the point where I just napped through that low level course and she didn't care at all. She was a good teacher.
jkhdigital 5y ago
Daycare. The point is that school is, first and foremost, a daycare. All the talk about education is just marketing.
- benrbray 5y ago
  Unfortunately college puts up the same barriers. Much of the time I spent in high school learning to code was for nothing, because my university wouldn't let me even attempt to test out of the first- and second-year courses. In another instance they also wouldn't let me count a graduate statistics course for a baby-stats elective requirement. "We WoULdn'T bE an AccREdiTeD iNStiTutION if wE lEt yOU do THat!" I ended up majoring in math instead of compsci as a result. It ended up being a good choice, because now I have skills in both areas. But I was pretty disappointed as an incoming freshman, enthusiastic about computer science, that college was nothing like what my parents and teachers made it out to be.
  - daniellarusso 5y ago
    I had a similar experience, with my university and AP classes. University would not accept the AP classes, and basically two years of college to learn what I had already been taught in high-school.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Wow had the same problem with my CS department. I think part of the problem is that there was much more demand for slots in the CS department from people who were woefully unqualified but looking to make bank. I transferred over to the maths department who welcomed me with open arms, took all my credits, and then beat the every living shit out of my brain so much harder than the CS department ever would have.
  - trostaft 5y ago
    I think this depends on the college. Because mine barely gave a shit about pre-reqs and frequently let me swap requirements / graduate for undergraduate courses. It's a culture thing, and how annoying the admin culture is there.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  It's not, though. Kids with stay-at-home parents are still required to go to school. Compulsory education is near universal at this point, but at least in the American tradition, the first publicly-funded, mandatory schools were mostly for instilling community values into kids, and this was in communities where women weren't even allowed to work outside the home. Kids were actually expected to learn reading and math at home before they even started school. History isn't the present, but the reason most laws exist today is just inertia, not some principled stand of the legislative bodies that might otherwise be able to repeal them.
  - aarongray 5y ago
    Kids can homeschool and cover all the same courses taught in school in 1/3 of the time, which leaves a lot of extra agency for the things the author talks about - doing meaningful work from a young age, exploring the world, self-directed learning, etc. etc.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> giant waste of my time and energy Telling people not to go to school is bad life advice. > I was [in school and thriving] I don't, would you go into the time machine and like, not go to school, as a young person?
- manmal 5y ago
  There are other types of schooling which are more tailored to the individual. You won’t find them in a public school though, with one teacher schooling 25-30 kids. It’s just not possible to cater to every individual‘s needs in that context. The only way to get more individual schooling is to have well-off parents who send you to a school with smaller classes, and ideally with a more relaxed schedule, like Montessori (I personally find them a little cult-like, there are other approaches too). Or, get born in Finland or Sweden, they invest heavily into their public education system, and it shows.
  - bedobi 5y ago
    Haha hate to break your bubble but I am born, raised and schooled in Sweden :) I don't live there anymore though, I left as soon as I could, can't stand the place, but that's kind of a side note, lol. Finland and Sweden's schooling systems are very, very different. I wouldn't have enjoyed the Finnish one either, just saying.
    - gizmondo 5y ago
      It must be weird to read all the fetishization of Scandinavia here? :)
      - bedobi 5y ago
        For sure! It gets talked about every now and then, this one generated a bunch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886659
        5y ago
sangnoir 5y ago
> It really begs the question, what's the point? To educate the highest number of children possible, as a reasonable cost, to assure a steady supply of capable labor year after year. Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention.
- bjornsing 5y ago
  > Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention. In my view/experience the real outliers need only to not be held back (implicitly by culture, or explicitly).
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    Gentle reminder that there are outliers on both ends of a normal curve who are being let down - sometimes, it is the the same student at different ages. Catering to the needs of both top-/bottom Xth percentile requires additional resources, effort, time or money, in a field that is already under-resourced.
    - bjornsing 5y ago
      I’m not too fond of that narrative, partly because I don’t think it’s true (top percentile don’t need much more than some encouragement / acceptance), and partly because “we have to prioritize our resources and it’s more important to help the bottom percentile” is used as an excuse to hold the top percentile back (or used to be, in Sweden at least).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
david927 5y ago
My daughter, three years ago at age 12, felt that she could go at a faster pace on her own, so she asked to be home-schooled. We were really nervous at first but it's been great and agency is the reason. She still takes math at school but that's usually her only class. Otherwise she's doing things. She's gone to Florence (with us) to take art classes there. (She wants to be an artist or author.) That first year she made a video game (#17 here https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-01-02 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-01-02), and this last year she wrote an 80,000 word crime novel. If she can get the kind of score on the SAT that she's getting on practice tests, she has a good chance of going to one of the schools that she wants. (Her early application choice is Yale.) She's doing things and that gives her meaning to what she's learning. It's not just words on a page but something that she sees value in knowing. We get a lot of eye-rolls when we say she's home-schooled but for her, it's been a game changer. And agency is a big part of that.

by bedobi 5y ago

tvanantwerp 5y ago

Through the confines of scheduling, I once found myself in the lowest level of biology and AP biology in the same high school semester with the same teacher. At first she was perplexed, wondering what the hell was going on. But once she got to know me, she realized it was a scheduling thing and that I did not really belong in the low-level class. It got to the point where I just napped through that low level course and she didn't care at all. She was a good teacher.

jkhdigital 5y ago

Daycare. The point is that school is, first and foremost, a daycare. All the talk about education is just marketing.

benrbray 5y ago
Unfortunately college puts up the same barriers. Much of the time I spent in high school learning to code was for nothing, because my university wouldn't let me even attempt to test out of the first- and second-year courses. In another instance they also wouldn't let me count a graduate statistics course for a baby-stats elective requirement. "We WoULdn'T bE an AccREdiTeD iNStiTutION if wE lEt yOU do THat!" I ended up majoring in math instead of compsci as a result. It ended up being a good choice, because now I have skills in both areas. But I was pretty disappointed as an incoming freshman, enthusiastic about computer science, that college was nothing like what my parents and teachers made it out to be.
- daniellarusso 5y ago
  I had a similar experience, with my university and AP classes. University would not accept the AP classes, and basically two years of college to learn what I had already been taught in high-school.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Wow had the same problem with my CS department. I think part of the problem is that there was much more demand for slots in the CS department from people who were woefully unqualified but looking to make bank. I transferred over to the maths department who welcomed me with open arms, took all my credits, and then beat the every living shit out of my brain so much harder than the CS department ever would have.
- trostaft 5y ago
  I think this depends on the college. Because mine barely gave a shit about pre-reqs and frequently let me swap requirements / graduate for undergraduate courses. It's a culture thing, and how annoying the admin culture is there.
nonameiguess 5y ago
It's not, though. Kids with stay-at-home parents are still required to go to school. Compulsory education is near universal at this point, but at least in the American tradition, the first publicly-funded, mandatory schools were mostly for instilling community values into kids, and this was in communities where women weren't even allowed to work outside the home. Kids were actually expected to learn reading and math at home before they even started school. History isn't the present, but the reason most laws exist today is just inertia, not some principled stand of the legislative bodies that might otherwise be able to repeal them.
- aarongray 5y ago
  Kids can homeschool and cover all the same courses taught in school in 1/3 of the time, which leaves a lot of extra agency for the things the author talks about - doing meaningful work from a young age, exploring the world, self-directed learning, etc. etc.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> giant waste of my time and energy Telling people not to go to school is bad life advice. > I was [in school and thriving] I don't, would you go into the time machine and like, not go to school, as a young person?

manmal 5y ago
There are other types of schooling which are more tailored to the individual. You won’t find them in a public school though, with one teacher schooling 25-30 kids. It’s just not possible to cater to every individual‘s needs in that context. The only way to get more individual schooling is to have well-off parents who send you to a school with smaller classes, and ideally with a more relaxed schedule, like Montessori (I personally find them a little cult-like, there are other approaches too). Or, get born in Finland or Sweden, they invest heavily into their public education system, and it shows.
- bedobi 5y ago
  Haha hate to break your bubble but I am born, raised and schooled in Sweden :) I don't live there anymore though, I left as soon as I could, can't stand the place, but that's kind of a side note, lol. Finland and Sweden's schooling systems are very, very different. I wouldn't have enjoyed the Finnish one either, just saying.
  - gizmondo 5y ago
    It must be weird to read all the fetishization of Scandinavia here? :)
    - bedobi 5y ago
      For sure! It gets talked about every now and then, this one generated a bunch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886659
      - 5y ago

sangnoir 5y ago

> It really begs the question, what's the point? To educate the highest number of children possible, as a reasonable cost, to assure a steady supply of capable labor year after year. Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention.

bjornsing 5y ago
> Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention. In my view/experience the real outliers need only to not be held back (implicitly by culture, or explicitly).
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Gentle reminder that there are outliers on both ends of a normal curve who are being let down - sometimes, it is the the same student at different ages. Catering to the needs of both top-/bottom Xth percentile requires additional resources, effort, time or money, in a field that is already under-resourced.
  - bjornsing 5y ago
    I’m not too fond of that narrative, partly because I don’t think it’s true (top percentile don’t need much more than some encouragement / acceptance), and partly because “we have to prioritize our resources and it’s more important to help the bottom percentile” is used as an excuse to hold the top percentile back (or used to be, in Sweden at least).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

david927 5y ago

My daughter, three years ago at age 12, felt that she could go at a faster pace on her own, so she asked to be home-schooled. We were really nervous at first but it's been great and agency is the reason. She still takes math at school but that's usually her only class. Otherwise she's doing things. She's gone to Florence (with us) to take art classes there. (She wants to be an artist or author.) That first year she made a video game (#17 here https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-01-02 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-01-02), and this last year she wrote an 80,000 word crime novel. If she can get the kind of score on the SAT that she's getting on practice tests, she has a good chance of going to one of the schools that she wants. (Her early application choice is Yale.) She's doing things and that gives her meaning to what she's learning. It's not just words on a page but something that she sees value in knowing. We get a lot of eye-rolls when we say she's home-schooled but for her, it's been a game changer. And agency is a big part of that.