10 ms·

The Sick History of Public Education

51 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

lbriner 5y ago
Some interesting curiosities but in the UK, there are no limits to how inspiring the teaching can be, the challenges are more to do with organisation, energy, teaching mixed groups, consolidating and reusing teaching materials etc. There are many, many teachers who provide education in a way that doesn't match this summary at all.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  I get the feeling that a lot of people who grew up in the US have an especially jaded view of education. Some of the worst stories of incompetence and dysfunction come from Americans. Though I didn't grow up there, I have had some contact with American educators and there's something to it. The bottom end of teachers at my international school tended to have come from the US system. Similarly, American friends tended to have the host horrific stories about their time there. I know a lot of people from around the world, and most of them do not think so negatively about education, it seems like a US thing.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Conservatives have been pushing this narrative for as long as I can remember. Complain about a government service, all the while making that service worse, until the public agrees and service is terminated. It’s GOP Politics 101. In this case, the aim is government funded parochial schools. But only the right kind of parochial schools.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    In the past, schools had a pretty severe element of bullying, both by students and teachers. It was a pretty toxic environment. It seems to have become a lot better though in the 21st century. It seems there are now less bullied outgroups based on class and interests that were endemic in the late 20th century.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  The High School Survey of Student Engagement finds that 66% of high school students are bored in class every day. Seventeen percent say they're bored in every class every day. Two percent claim they're never bored. 82% say the material isn't interesting; 41% that it isn't relevant[1]. Middle school students are bored 36% of the time during schoolwork, versus 17% for other activities. The UK is not different from the US. Most students don't like academics. Some of them hate it. [1]Yazzie-Mintz 2010, pp.6-7 [2] Larson and Richards 1991, pp. 427-29
  - lbriner 5y ago
    I didn't say that education was really interesting in the UK, I was saying that the claims that the problems are foundational due to history are not true. There is nothing stopping those educators with the ideas/resources/energy from doing everything the OP said doesn't happen in education. Having been to a UK school, I wouldn't have referred to teachers as academics, so that is a strange quote but for sure, I found many lessons quite tedious and I think there should be less excuses now because of the internet and much cheaper multi-media.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      As a teacher I also wouldn't refer to most teachers as academics. Most students have little to no interest in most of the subjects taught. This is not a knock on them. It's only a little less true of university students, who have chosen to be there. The internet and cheap multi-media do not change the fact that most students find the subjects they are being taught, and the topics in those subjects boring and irrelevant. It's rewarding to teach the kids who find it interesting, or want to learn the skills that the subjects provide a frame for, or who want to get good grades to get into university but many students don't want to be there. Tedium is unavoidable if you're trying to teach someone who has no interest in learning what you're teaching.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    While I get that things aren't rosy, I think we do have to be fair. High School is supposed to give you a broad basis of education (at least where I went to high school, which is Germany). This means that you have to take a lot classes on topics that you find utterly boring, not interesting and deem irrelevant to your life. Of course I found my German classes irrelevant and boring. I knew the language and grammar very well and having to find meaning in a green "Emergency Exit" sign being mentioned half way down on page one of the book we had to read was completely pointless to me. I wanted to get out of there and go back to the computer lab and learn more about sorting algorithms. But we only had one hour of that each week. And sure, biology class was at least interesting but learning and being tested on how a bee dances to let the hive know where to find the field of flowers definitely is interesting but to I would venture more than 90% of students completely irrelevant. Now reverse everything I said for someone that is interested in language, politics and public speaking. They hate the irrelevant calculus and are bored out of their minds while dreaming of reading and finding meaning in the next Goethe poem.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  Yeah, I guess we are going to cling to the idea of the selfless, heroical teacher who can deal with all of their bosses (direct and indirect), regulations, standardizations, go the extra mile each day for lackluster pay, and maybe even chip in for basic school supplies because the school can’t pay for them. I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, for any of the parties. These mythical everyday heroes can’t fundamentally reform a system of education which is more about control than enlightenment.
the-dude 5y ago
I went to an excellent public high school in the 80s/90s in The Netherlands and I am still grateful to the school and my teachers. They treated us as adults from the first year and always tried to accommodate any specific interest you might have.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Same observation regarding my public school in rural Germany in the same timeframe. We received an excellent education, but all of us thought it was just adequate. High expectations from the public count for something, I suppose.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Maybe for me it was a bit different because my elementary school was in a lower class neighborhood and a bit behind the times ( they only gave me extra stuff in the last year ). Compared to that, my high school was a big relief.
h2odragon 5y ago
Try pulling some of those quotes up in school, for teachers. It pisses them right off.
fake-name 5y ago
This entire essay reeks about whattaboutism, and it seems to basically lead to an attempt to validate conservative anti-mask and anti-covid-lockdown sentiments without actually having any basis for that (yeah, they flip-flopped on masks initially because there were conflicting concerns. If people changing their minds when more information becomes available is "flip flopping", you're rejecting the entirety of the scientific method). It seems to me like the author had a bad experience in school (hey, so did I!), and seems to have massively overgeneralized that into a entire diatribe about how the current entire institution of school is a irredeemable failure. If the author is claiming that the current educational system is irreformable, they're not presenting any alternative other then anarchy. I'm not sure what the point is. The whole thing is basically concern trolling wrapped in ancient references that no longer apply and overgeneralized specious citations. It's a level beyond concern trolling, it's concern masturbation.
- didericis 5y ago
  The author presents more individualized mentoring and apprenticeships as an alternative.
- dav_Oz 5y ago
  Kind of sad that you are left with that impression. I would attribute the style more to our over-polarized conditioning by social media if anything. But beyond the trigger points the author gives you enough of "depolarizing" references (John Gatto, Ivan Illich, Diane Ravitch) The article itself is just a (hopefully for most an enraging constructive rather than merely "anti-") starting point. My on the spot quick fix: This rigid and harmful "educational" system is best to overcome if children til the age of 12-14 are not exposed to it. Most can handle it pretty fine from then on. Starting with something resembling "Montessori pedagogy" and then just enter the formal system at the age of puberty. It has worked out pretty well for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to name a few. Wojcicki's mother is also a very interesting example. Bezos as an different example was heavily influenced by his then retired maternal grandfather (space technology and missile defense systems at Darpa in the late 1950s; in 1964 appointed manager of the Atomic Energy Commission) spending a lot of his forming years at his ranch. And so on.
- 5y ago
hirundo 5y ago
I chatted with two public highschool teachers at Thanksgiving dinner. They are two very liberal ladies that sounded like they have been red-pilled on this subject. "I have always supported public education but ..." They are both beyond saddened by the state of their "collapsing" school systems, and do not recommend that any parent send their kids there who can afford private school. They say that teachers are being treated so badly by the administration, and that the students are so out of control due to no consequences for anything, that teachers are quitting in large numbers, causing the remaining teachers to have much bigger classes. Then those overwhelmed teachers are quiting, and that is snowballing. They say the kids learned next to nothing during remote teaching and are now years behind, and so poorly socialized to the classroom that they disrupt it continually, but cannot be stopped or removed. They both once took a lot of pride in their work but feel that their jobs have become about wharehousing kids rather than teaching them. They let loose with war stories, each one worse than the last. They're both from the Phoenix area. I can only hope it's particularly bad there.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Is the American education system federally run? I'm guessing not. Is it run at a state level? And then how much sway to subdivisions of a state have? (Counties? Towns?)
  - civilized 5y ago
    It's local, but the state and federal government provide funding, and as always, this enables them to pull strings.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    It's very local. The difference between city and suburban schools is day and night. So without this context, I have no idea what the above comments are about.
    - coffeefirst 5y ago
      Right. There are 30,000 different public school systems in the US. It is virtually impossible to make broad generalizations about them. Except that COVID sucked.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
I think he credits the European monarchies with altogether too much power and foresight.
- Jensson 5y ago
  But it is true that back then many planned for many generations ahead. Big structures, monuments, churches etc could take more than the entire lifespan of a human to build, and they were still built. How many such projects are run today?
  - watwut 5y ago
    Some of those basically bankrupted budgets and despite staying until today, they were more of narcistic show of power then actually good decisions. So you have higher taxes or actually needed investments postponed for not other reason then finishing those.
mavhc 5y ago
I'm confused, is this only about USA schools? If so why the history lesson about Prussia? Surely many countries would have the same issues then. > Most pupils are taught collectively rather than individually Err, yeah, because that's cheaper. Anyone want to increase the education budget 10x? > It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people. Yeah, I wish we could go back to the olden days when we grew Intel Core i7 processes on our own farms, much better to be self sufficient > The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input. If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. > Can we honestly say that our accelerating funding of education in this country has been the key to prosperity? Yes, yes we can. > The children in public schools who sit down and agree to absorb information are marked as intelligent and tracked as headed for success – the other ones, who critically reject simply parroting and assenting to what is being told of them are labeled stupid and sent on a path for dejection and exclusion with the intent that it should follow them through life. Has anyone ever politely asked a question about something and been sent to detention? > Lying to the public To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist. In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  > The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input. If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. ... > Lying to the public To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist. In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past. ... The tone of the comment is ridiculously dismissive. If you do not address existing complaints, at best, they will fester. The response provided did not address the complaint, but instead opted for ad hominem variant.
  - mavhc 5y ago
thedream 5y ago
This war has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this planet can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down Pavlovian/Skinnerian education, to accept what those in control want, there will be no more wars. If there are no rights or wrongs, there will be no one wanting to “right” a “wrong.” Robots have no conscience. [1] "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail" by Charlotte Iserbyt
eesmith 5y ago
This is the standard and wrong story of how US education is designed around a factory meant to produce docile students. For a compelling essay against this view, read "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model Here are my comments about this essay: > The first largescale education system put in place in the Western world was in the Prussian and Austrian states in the mid-to-late 18th century. "Large scale" is in the eye of the beholder. In Colonial America, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 required "towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College." (Quoting https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html ). It's not "large scale" because (now quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws ) "By the end of the 1650s, all eight of the 100-family towns and a third of the 50-family towns had met the respective requirements for grammar schools and the hiring of teachers." But it's not like there weren't older systems. Charlemagne "pursued educational reform, requiring monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools to educate boys to read and write in order to make the Bible and other religious texts more accessible and in turn broadening and deepening the spread of Christianity. The schools would also teach religious music, singing and psalms to encourage the spread of the faith, as well as grammar so that religious texts could be revised and edited." in the 700s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis . > or monastery like colleges. "monastery like colleges" is a rather broad brush. The medieval period had cathedral schools in addition to monastic schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school . Or, see how https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-renaissance-and-its-aftermath https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-r... distinguishes between "Monastic schools" and "Urban schools". I think the point is that education was considered as part of religion. But "monastic like" seems too constraining. "Scholastically inclined minds" couldn't help but enter a religious school, because that's all there was. > The teachers will have certificates attesting to their pedagogical competence. Pietist schools were the first to require formal training for elementary schoolmasters, Note here the "elementary" qualifier. Pedagogical competence requirements existed for centuries. Quoting the same Britannica link: ] The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right. > > The pupils you observe use only textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education. That's not true! At least in 2013, "Thirty states allow local agencies or schools to choose textbooks." - https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf Egs: Kansas, "Individual school boards are responsible for adopting appropriate textbooks; Michigan, "The board of each school district shall select, approve,and purchase the textbooks to be used by the district." > Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control But, but, but ... schools have always been about social "control". Colonial Massachusetts started public schools because the Calvinist Puritans believed a literate populace that could read the Bible "was an essential requirement for temporal living and eternal salvation", and they required the education be under the "Puritan leaders, in order to avoid "false glosses of saint seeming deceivers"." (Quoting WP from earlier.) We see that same topic of 'social "control"' in the arguments about laws banning schools from teaching "critical race theory". We see that when Charlemagne wanted to broaden and deepen "the spread of Christianity". So connecting 'social "control"' specifically to Fichte is nonsense. > > “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products… Cherry picked quotes do not make a good history. Again, see "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model ,
EdwardDiego 5y ago
Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain? Did Prussia really influence US education philosophy more than Britain did? I find that a bit hard to believe. Love this "source" in this paragraph: > It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people. The source being a link to a 372 page scanned PDF. No page numbers for that reference. Just a thoroughly unsearchable and massively long PDF. Nice reference bro. > The thread of school being used for ulterior motives runs right up to the present day. In 1967, a book... Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education. Why do I feel like the author had a really bad time at high school?
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  >Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain? Because the essay is about public education, e.g. state funded education. Not the history of all education. Public education in the West was pioneered by Prussia in the 18th Century and then copied by other nations in the late 19th Century: "Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[3] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system Moreover the article traces the history of this movement by Horace Mann, an expert on Prussian education and the acknowledged "Father of public education" in the U.S. > Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education. That's not what the essay says. Let me help in explaining what a period means: it ends one thought and starts another. Let me help explain what a paragraph does: it groups thoughts together. Often the first sentence of the paragraph makes a thesis, and then what follows provides evidence for the thesis. So he says it continues until the present, and then as evidence of this continuation he cites data from 1967, 1976, 1980s, 1998, 2008, 2016. That is meant to show continuation until the present.
nathias 5y ago
I like that he establishes the intellectual history, I don't like that he doesn't know that intellectual history, but still better than nothing I guess. Fichte is pretty cool, fun trivia: he also invented the passport.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
Oh, sweet, I read another article of the author's. https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-safety https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-19-m... > There have been at least 25k deaths due to vaccine We're obviously all going to die as brainwashed corporate drones. Also, Rockefellers, did I mention the Rockefellers enough?
- padseeker 5y ago
  This guy is pushing invermectin as a treatment for COVID. How is this other article on the front page?
  - slfnflctd 5y ago
    Both articles smack of viewpoints I've seen & heard circulated in right wing religious circles (e.g. my parents) for a long time now. I guess if nothing else it's good to know where people are getting these opinions from, both for general awareness and because the resulting discussion can prompt deeper insights - like in this comment section - but I agree it doesn't exactly seem to be in the spirit of HN.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    If the subject of "schools suck" is worth discussing, the prompt for the discussion may not be that relevant. How many read the articles before commenting? Also, what if you discovered that, say, some astrophysicist whose work was being discussed was also a devout Christian? Would that suddenly make the original work less valuable just because they admit a religion you don't share? How about if they're Satanist? It's possible to disagree with others, about specific subjects, and still interact socially with mutual benefit. It doesn't threaten your purity to do so.
    - padseeker 5y ago
      They author wrote in another article that more than 25K people have died from the vaccine. We're not going back and forth about the merits of christianity and satanism and purity. We're having a fight about is the earth flat. And if you want to advocate for the flat earth position please go right ahead. But flat earth position has zero merit. The author lacks credibility.
biophysboy 5y ago
I guess the alternative is homeschooling, where the parent is the tyrant instead. Sometimes they are benevolent dictators (e.g. more personalized education encouraging methodical exploration and autodidacticism), sometimes they are not (time to teach my son/daughter how the world REALLY works). And a lot of parents don’t have the time to be either.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Or Community schools where the communities set the standards. My specific example is the local Amish school, which is a "one room schoolhouse" old style model and has worked with our local school board to meet the state standards, too. Their example and materials were extremely helpful when we home schooled our daughter for a few years. Some kids won't benefit from a formal school at all. I expect HN has a rather larger proportion of that type than usual in the population. Getting those kids out of prison as early as possible and into a situation where they can develop instead of cramp their potential would be a great boon for humanity, I think.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    That's a similar problem though. Yes, the community may benevolent, or it may be tyrannical, and if you're a kid in the latter community well it just sucks to be you buddy. Maybe you'll get luckier in your next life.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    This becomes a problem (in true Nation-States) if you have some communities that have values that are fundamentally opposed to the values of the Nation itself. To take a recent example : homeschooling is now effectively banned in France due to the (reactionary) Muslim threat. (Personally, I'm still unsure as of whether this was the best way to go about it, especially considering how it comes together with an attempt to create a Muslim clergy, which not only seems to go against the (majority) Sunnite practices (closer to Protestants than the better known Catholics which serve as the model here ?), but also puts at the head of it an association with terrorist ties (ties to the Muslim Brotherhood), and finally violates the core principle of separation of Church and State...)
dsign 5y ago
Totally out of topic, but what is the habitual class size in elementary school? Mine was somewhere between 30 and 40 kids, and teachers were not afraid to use punishment to get kids to behave. Some were better chalk-throwers than us the kids, and used their skills to keep the class focused. Still, it was often complete mayhem. All of this was before the smartphones, kids these days seem from a different species altogether. I have read somewhere that smaller classes are better.
cfoster 5y ago
Homeschooler / semi-unschooler, here. The school system tried to shave down our square-peg for years before we re-arranged our lives so we could bring them home. It’s fair to say we have a highly critical view of the education system (in Canada, but I think it’s reasonably similar to the U.S.). That said: To me, this article is raving. The author is taking real problems and attributing them to the machinations of their own personal hobgoblins. Just because a historical figure had a sinister motive in education, that doesn’t mean that a front-line teacher in the classroom today is using that ideology when interacting with their children. The quality of the relationship between a child and their teacher, produces at least half of that child’s overall experience (with the other half coming from requirements of “the system”). There can be bad things in a system that happen for reasons that aren’t sinister. By and large the “round pegging” of children is not harmful at all to kids who are roundish in shape to begin with. Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, but that path is by no means the only one that leads to success. The key is to note when a particular child doesn’t fit into the available system. Private schools can only provide a slightly more accommodating model, largely because of improved student/teacher ratios (improving that relationship) and less restrictive finances (improving resources). Beyond that it’s a question of how much support the child can be given (by parents, tutors, etc.) to help extract what they can from school, and fill in where it's lacking with other activities. For a more rational look at the education system and the needs for its reform (towards a more individualized educational experience for each child), I’d recommend: The End of Average - Todd Rose Free To Learn - Peter Grey
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  > Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, Someone asked Chomsky what happens to people who are too independent-minded for traditional schooling. He said that they become taxi drivers. I wouldn’t elevate traditional success as the be-all-end-all of personal education.
avgcorrection 5y ago
There is such wild idealization and blind faith in mass education as we know it. Teachers are underpaid saints who are raising the next enlightened generation. Education itself is, of course (wink), an absolute unquestioned good. But is it, really? To me it just looks like 18–30 kids being herded and lectured at for 6–8 hours a day. What’s enlightening about that? We really ought to question mass education as we know it.

51 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

Some interesting curiosities but in the UK, there are no limits to how inspiring the teaching can be, the challenges are more to do with organisation, energy, teaching mixed groups, consolidating and reusing teaching materials etc. There are many, many teachers who provide education in a way that doesn't match this summary at all.

lordnacho 5y ago
I get the feeling that a lot of people who grew up in the US have an especially jaded view of education. Some of the worst stories of incompetence and dysfunction come from Americans. Though I didn't grow up there, I have had some contact with American educators and there's something to it. The bottom end of teachers at my international school tended to have come from the US system. Similarly, American friends tended to have the host horrific stories about their time there. I know a lot of people from around the world, and most of them do not think so negatively about education, it seems like a US thing.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Conservatives have been pushing this narrative for as long as I can remember. Complain about a government service, all the while making that service worse, until the public agrees and service is terminated. It’s GOP Politics 101. In this case, the aim is government funded parochial schools. But only the right kind of parochial schools.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  In the past, schools had a pretty severe element of bullying, both by students and teachers. It was a pretty toxic environment. It seems to have become a lot better though in the 21st century. It seems there are now less bullied outgroups based on class and interests that were endemic in the late 20th century.
barry-cotter 5y ago
The High School Survey of Student Engagement finds that 66% of high school students are bored in class every day. Seventeen percent say they're bored in every class every day. Two percent claim they're never bored. 82% say the material isn't interesting; 41% that it isn't relevant[1]. Middle school students are bored 36% of the time during schoolwork, versus 17% for other activities. The UK is not different from the US. Most students don't like academics. Some of them hate it. [1]Yazzie-Mintz 2010, pp.6-7 [2] Larson and Richards 1991, pp. 427-29
- lbriner 5y ago
  I didn't say that education was really interesting in the UK, I was saying that the claims that the problems are foundational due to history are not true. There is nothing stopping those educators with the ideas/resources/energy from doing everything the OP said doesn't happen in education. Having been to a UK school, I wouldn't have referred to teachers as academics, so that is a strange quote but for sure, I found many lessons quite tedious and I think there should be less excuses now because of the internet and much cheaper multi-media.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    As a teacher I also wouldn't refer to most teachers as academics. Most students have little to no interest in most of the subjects taught. This is not a knock on them. It's only a little less true of university students, who have chosen to be there. The internet and cheap multi-media do not change the fact that most students find the subjects they are being taught, and the topics in those subjects boring and irrelevant. It's rewarding to teach the kids who find it interesting, or want to learn the skills that the subjects provide a frame for, or who want to get good grades to get into university but many students don't want to be there. Tedium is unavoidable if you're trying to teach someone who has no interest in learning what you're teaching.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  While I get that things aren't rosy, I think we do have to be fair. High School is supposed to give you a broad basis of education (at least where I went to high school, which is Germany). This means that you have to take a lot classes on topics that you find utterly boring, not interesting and deem irrelevant to your life. Of course I found my German classes irrelevant and boring. I knew the language and grammar very well and having to find meaning in a green "Emergency Exit" sign being mentioned half way down on page one of the book we had to read was completely pointless to me. I wanted to get out of there and go back to the computer lab and learn more about sorting algorithms. But we only had one hour of that each week. And sure, biology class was at least interesting but learning and being tested on how a bee dances to let the hive know where to find the field of flowers definitely is interesting but to I would venture more than 90% of students completely irrelevant. Now reverse everything I said for someone that is interested in language, politics and public speaking. They hate the irrelevant calculus and are bored out of their minds while dreaming of reading and finding meaning in the next Goethe poem.
avgcorrection 5y ago
Yeah, I guess we are going to cling to the idea of the selfless, heroical teacher who can deal with all of their bosses (direct and indirect), regulations, standardizations, go the extra mile each day for lackluster pay, and maybe even chip in for basic school supplies because the school can’t pay for them. I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, for any of the parties. These mythical everyday heroes can’t fundamentally reform a system of education which is more about control than enlightenment.

the-dude 5y ago

I went to an excellent public high school in the 80s/90s in The Netherlands and I am still grateful to the school and my teachers. They treated us as adults from the first year and always tried to accommodate any specific interest you might have.

HarryHirsch 5y ago
Same observation regarding my public school in rural Germany in the same timeframe. We received an excellent education, but all of us thought it was just adequate. High expectations from the public count for something, I suppose.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Maybe for me it was a bit different because my elementary school was in a lower class neighborhood and a bit behind the times ( they only gave me extra stuff in the last year ). Compared to that, my high school was a big relief.

h2odragon 5y ago

Try pulling some of those quotes up in school, for teachers. It pisses them right off.

fake-name 5y ago

This entire essay reeks about whattaboutism, and it seems to basically lead to an attempt to validate conservative anti-mask and anti-covid-lockdown sentiments without actually having any basis for that (yeah, they flip-flopped on masks initially because there were conflicting concerns. If people changing their minds when more information becomes available is "flip flopping", you're rejecting the entirety of the scientific method). It seems to me like the author had a bad experience in school (hey, so did I!), and seems to have massively overgeneralized that into a entire diatribe about how the current entire institution of school is a irredeemable failure. If the author is claiming that the current educational system is irreformable, they're not presenting any alternative other then anarchy. I'm not sure what the point is. The whole thing is basically concern trolling wrapped in ancient references that no longer apply and overgeneralized specious citations. It's a level beyond concern trolling, it's concern masturbation.

didericis 5y ago
The author presents more individualized mentoring and apprenticeships as an alternative.
dav_Oz 5y ago
Kind of sad that you are left with that impression. I would attribute the style more to our over-polarized conditioning by social media if anything. But beyond the trigger points the author gives you enough of "depolarizing" references (John Gatto, Ivan Illich, Diane Ravitch) The article itself is just a (hopefully for most an enraging constructive rather than merely "anti-") starting point. My on the spot quick fix: This rigid and harmful "educational" system is best to overcome if children til the age of 12-14 are not exposed to it. Most can handle it pretty fine from then on. Starting with something resembling "Montessori pedagogy" and then just enter the formal system at the age of puberty. It has worked out pretty well for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to name a few. Wojcicki's mother is also a very interesting example. Bezos as an different example was heavily influenced by his then retired maternal grandfather (space technology and missile defense systems at Darpa in the late 1950s; in 1964 appointed manager of the Atomic Energy Commission) spending a lot of his forming years at his ranch. And so on.
5y ago

hirundo 5y ago

I chatted with two public highschool teachers at Thanksgiving dinner. They are two very liberal ladies that sounded like they have been red-pilled on this subject. "I have always supported public education but ..." They are both beyond saddened by the state of their "collapsing" school systems, and do not recommend that any parent send their kids there who can afford private school. They say that teachers are being treated so badly by the administration, and that the students are so out of control due to no consequences for anything, that teachers are quitting in large numbers, causing the remaining teachers to have much bigger classes. Then those overwhelmed teachers are quiting, and that is snowballing. They say the kids learned next to nothing during remote teaching and are now years behind, and so poorly socialized to the classroom that they disrupt it continually, but cannot be stopped or removed. They both once took a lot of pride in their work but feel that their jobs have become about wharehousing kids rather than teaching them. They let loose with war stories, each one worse than the last. They're both from the Phoenix area. I can only hope it's particularly bad there.

EdwardDiego 5y ago
Is the American education system federally run? I'm guessing not. Is it run at a state level? And then how much sway to subdivisions of a state have? (Counties? Towns?)
- civilized 5y ago
  It's local, but the state and federal government provide funding, and as always, this enables them to pull strings.
- temp8964 5y ago
  It's very local. The difference between city and suburban schools is day and night. So without this context, I have no idea what the above comments are about.
  - coffeefirst 5y ago
    Right. There are 30,000 different public school systems in the US. It is virtually impossible to make broad generalizations about them. Except that COVID sucked.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

I think he credits the European monarchies with altogether too much power and foresight.

Jensson 5y ago
But it is true that back then many planned for many generations ahead. Big structures, monuments, churches etc could take more than the entire lifespan of a human to build, and they were still built. How many such projects are run today?
- watwut 5y ago
  Some of those basically bankrupted budgets and despite staying until today, they were more of narcistic show of power then actually good decisions. So you have higher taxes or actually needed investments postponed for not other reason then finishing those.

mavhc 5y ago

I'm confused, is this only about USA schools? If so why the history lesson about Prussia? Surely many countries would have the same issues then. > Most pupils are taught collectively rather than individually Err, yeah, because that's cheaper. Anyone want to increase the education budget 10x? > It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people. Yeah, I wish we could go back to the olden days when we grew Intel Core i7 processes on our own farms, much better to be self sufficient > The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input. If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. > Can we honestly say that our accelerating funding of education in this country has been the key to prosperity? Yes, yes we can. > The children in public schools who sit down and agree to absorb information are marked as intelligent and tracked as headed for success – the other ones, who critically reject simply parroting and assenting to what is being told of them are labeled stupid and sent on a path for dejection and exclusion with the intent that it should follow them through life. Has anyone ever politely asked a question about something and been sent to detention? > Lying to the public To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist. In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
> The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input. If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. ... > Lying to the public To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist. In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past. ... The tone of the comment is ridiculously dismissive. If you do not address existing complaints, at best, they will fester. The response provided did not address the complaint, but instead opted for ad hominem variant.
- mavhc 5y ago

thedream 5y ago

This war has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this planet can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down Pavlovian/Skinnerian education, to accept what those in control want, there will be no more wars. If there are no rights or wrongs, there will be no one wanting to “right” a “wrong.” Robots have no conscience. [1] "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail" by Charlotte Iserbyt

eesmith 5y ago

This is the standard and wrong story of how US education is designed around a factory meant to produce docile students. For a compelling essay against this view, read "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model Here are my comments about this essay: > The first largescale education system put in place in the Western world was in the Prussian and Austrian states in the mid-to-late 18th century. "Large scale" is in the eye of the beholder. In Colonial America, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 required "towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College." (Quoting https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html ). It's not "large scale" because (now quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws ) "By the end of the 1650s, all eight of the 100-family towns and a third of the 50-family towns had met the respective requirements for grammar schools and the hiring of teachers." But it's not like there weren't older systems. Charlemagne "pursued educational reform, requiring monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools to educate boys to read and write in order to make the Bible and other religious texts more accessible and in turn broadening and deepening the spread of Christianity. The schools would also teach religious music, singing and psalms to encourage the spread of the faith, as well as grammar so that religious texts could be revised and edited." in the 700s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis . > or monastery like colleges. "monastery like colleges" is a rather broad brush. The medieval period had cathedral schools in addition to monastic schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school . Or, see how https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-renaissance-and-its-aftermath https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-r... distinguishes between "Monastic schools" and "Urban schools". I think the point is that education was considered as part of religion. But "monastic like" seems too constraining. "Scholastically inclined minds" couldn't help but enter a religious school, because that's all there was. > The teachers will have certificates attesting to their pedagogical competence. Pietist schools were the first to require formal training for elementary schoolmasters, Note here the "elementary" qualifier. Pedagogical competence requirements existed for centuries. Quoting the same Britannica link: ] The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right. > > The pupils you observe use only textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education. That's not true! At least in 2013, "Thirty states allow local agencies or schools to choose textbooks." - https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf Egs: Kansas, "Individual school boards are responsible for adopting appropriate textbooks; Michigan, "The board of each school district shall select, approve,and purchase the textbooks to be used by the district." > Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control But, but, but ... schools have always been about social "control". Colonial Massachusetts started public schools because the Calvinist Puritans believed a literate populace that could read the Bible "was an essential requirement for temporal living and eternal salvation", and they required the education be under the "Puritan leaders, in order to avoid "false glosses of saint seeming deceivers"." (Quoting WP from earlier.) We see that same topic of 'social "control"' in the arguments about laws banning schools from teaching "critical race theory". We see that when Charlemagne wanted to broaden and deepen "the spread of Christianity". So connecting 'social "control"' specifically to Fichte is nonsense. > > “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products… Cherry picked quotes do not make a good history. Again, see "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model ,

EdwardDiego 5y ago

Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain? Did Prussia really influence US education philosophy more than Britain did? I find that a bit hard to believe. Love this "source" in this paragraph: > It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people. The source being a link to a 372 page scanned PDF. No page numbers for that reference. Just a thoroughly unsearchable and massively long PDF. Nice reference bro. > The thread of school being used for ulterior motives runs right up to the present day. In 1967, a book... Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education. Why do I feel like the author had a really bad time at high school?

rsj_hn 5y ago
>Wait, so, you're going to start with Prussia's rather, shall we say, statist education system, and completely ignore Britain's similar industrial age education system? Why focus on Prussia, not Britain? Because the essay is about public education, e.g. state funded education. Not the history of all education. Public education in the West was pioneered by Prussia in the 18th Century and then copied by other nations in the late 19th Century: "Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[3] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system Moreover the article traces the history of this movement by Horace Mann, an expert on Prussian education and the acknowledged "Father of public education" in the U.S. > Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education. That's not what the essay says. Let me help in explaining what a period means: it ends one thought and starts another. Let me help explain what a paragraph does: it groups thoughts together. Often the first sentence of the paragraph makes a thesis, and then what follows provides evidence for the thesis. So he says it continues until the present, and then as evidence of this continuation he cites data from 1967, 1976, 1980s, 1998, 2008, 2016. That is meant to show continuation until the present.

nathias 5y ago

I like that he establishes the intellectual history, I don't like that he doesn't know that intellectual history, but still better than nothing I guess. Fichte is pretty cool, fun trivia: he also invented the passport.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

Oh, sweet, I read another article of the author's. https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-safety https://aproposofnothing.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-19-m... > There have been at least 25k deaths due to vaccine We're obviously all going to die as brainwashed corporate drones. Also, Rockefellers, did I mention the Rockefellers enough?

padseeker 5y ago
This guy is pushing invermectin as a treatment for COVID. How is this other article on the front page?
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  Both articles smack of viewpoints I've seen & heard circulated in right wing religious circles (e.g. my parents) for a long time now. I guess if nothing else it's good to know where people are getting these opinions from, both for general awareness and because the resulting discussion can prompt deeper insights - like in this comment section - but I agree it doesn't exactly seem to be in the spirit of HN.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  If the subject of "schools suck" is worth discussing, the prompt for the discussion may not be that relevant. How many read the articles before commenting? Also, what if you discovered that, say, some astrophysicist whose work was being discussed was also a devout Christian? Would that suddenly make the original work less valuable just because they admit a religion you don't share? How about if they're Satanist? It's possible to disagree with others, about specific subjects, and still interact socially with mutual benefit. It doesn't threaten your purity to do so.
  - padseeker 5y ago
    They author wrote in another article that more than 25K people have died from the vaccine. We're not going back and forth about the merits of christianity and satanism and purity. We're having a fight about is the earth flat. And if you want to advocate for the flat earth position please go right ahead. But flat earth position has zero merit. The author lacks credibility.

biophysboy 5y ago

I guess the alternative is homeschooling, where the parent is the tyrant instead. Sometimes they are benevolent dictators (e.g. more personalized education encouraging methodical exploration and autodidacticism), sometimes they are not (time to teach my son/daughter how the world REALLY works). And a lot of parents don’t have the time to be either.

h2odragon 5y ago
Or Community schools where the communities set the standards. My specific example is the local Amish school, which is a "one room schoolhouse" old style model and has worked with our local school board to meet the state standards, too. Their example and materials were extremely helpful when we home schooled our daughter for a few years. Some kids won't benefit from a formal school at all. I expect HN has a rather larger proportion of that type than usual in the population. Getting those kids out of prison as early as possible and into a situation where they can develop instead of cramp their potential would be a great boon for humanity, I think.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  That's a similar problem though. Yes, the community may benevolent, or it may be tyrannical, and if you're a kid in the latter community well it just sucks to be you buddy. Maybe you'll get luckier in your next life.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  This becomes a problem (in true Nation-States) if you have some communities that have values that are fundamentally opposed to the values of the Nation itself. To take a recent example : homeschooling is now effectively banned in France due to the (reactionary) Muslim threat. (Personally, I'm still unsure as of whether this was the best way to go about it, especially considering how it comes together with an attempt to create a Muslim clergy, which not only seems to go against the (majority) Sunnite practices (closer to Protestants than the better known Catholics which serve as the model here ?), but also puts at the head of it an association with terrorist ties (ties to the Muslim Brotherhood), and finally violates the core principle of separation of Church and State...)

dsign 5y ago

Totally out of topic, but what is the habitual class size in elementary school? Mine was somewhere between 30 and 40 kids, and teachers were not afraid to use punishment to get kids to behave. Some were better chalk-throwers than us the kids, and used their skills to keep the class focused. Still, it was often complete mayhem. All of this was before the smartphones, kids these days seem from a different species altogether. I have read somewhere that smaller classes are better.

cfoster 5y ago

Homeschooler / semi-unschooler, here. The school system tried to shave down our square-peg for years before we re-arranged our lives so we could bring them home. It’s fair to say we have a highly critical view of the education system (in Canada, but I think it’s reasonably similar to the U.S.). That said: To me, this article is raving. The author is taking real problems and attributing them to the machinations of their own personal hobgoblins. Just because a historical figure had a sinister motive in education, that doesn’t mean that a front-line teacher in the classroom today is using that ideology when interacting with their children. The quality of the relationship between a child and their teacher, produces at least half of that child’s overall experience (with the other half coming from requirements of “the system”). There can be bad things in a system that happen for reasons that aren’t sinister. By and large the “round pegging” of children is not harmful at all to kids who are roundish in shape to begin with. Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, but that path is by no means the only one that leads to success. The key is to note when a particular child doesn’t fit into the available system. Private schools can only provide a slightly more accommodating model, largely because of improved student/teacher ratios (improving that relationship) and less restrictive finances (improving resources). Beyond that it’s a question of how much support the child can be given (by parents, tutors, etc.) to help extract what they can from school, and fill in where it's lacking with other activities. For a more rational look at the education system and the needs for its reform (towards a more individualized educational experience for each child), I’d recommend: The End of Average - Todd Rose Free To Learn - Peter Grey

avgcorrection 5y ago
> Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, Someone asked Chomsky what happens to people who are too independent-minded for traditional schooling. He said that they become taxi drivers. I wouldn’t elevate traditional success as the be-all-end-all of personal education.

avgcorrection 5y ago

There is such wild idealization and blind faith in mass education as we know it. Teachers are underpaid saints who are raising the next enlightened generation. Education itself is, of course (wink), an absolute unquestioned good. But is it, really? To me it just looks like 18–30 kids being herded and lectured at for 6–8 hours a day. What’s enlightening about that? We really ought to question mass education as we know it.