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I would rather my children go to a school that challenges our beliefs, because they may be wrong. I don't want the growing up parroting what I believe just beca

I would rather my children go to a school that challenges our beliefs, because they may be wrong. I don't want the growing up parroting what I believe just because I believe it, they should come to their own conclusions.

syshum 5y ago
Good parents should do this, but from what I see this is not what is happening in modern schools. It was starting to change even when I was in public schools 30 years ago, and from what see it has only gotten worse. Lets Critical thinking, and less open questioning, more authority, follow the rules, do not question "The Experts", do as your told (but only what those in Authority tell you not your parents) etc. That is with out getting into any of the "culture war" topics
- com2kid 5y ago
  > Lets Critical thinking, and less open questioning, more authority, follow the rules, do not question "The Experts", do as your told (but only what those in Authority tell you not your parents) etc. People have been saying this about schools since forever. FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority. One time we got new math books in that were horrible. Obvious errors everywhere. The teacher gave us extra credit for spending the day finding math errors in the book. 9th grade European History started off with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In 10th grade sex ed students got to vote on a movie. Nerds and Goths teamed up, we watched Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 3rd grade, a group of students opted stayed inside during recess and construct hot wheels courses (tracks and ramps) out of whatever classroom supplies we could find laying around. 10th grade parents day, my genetics teacher tricked parents into extracting frog sperm from a solution and playing with it. The students were nonplussed, we'd been working with DNA for quite a while by that time. 12th grade final report, I wrote a paper on the future of LED lighting, where I rewrired some incandescent flashlights into LED flashlights (obviously back before LED flashlights where a big thing). 8th grade final report, 30 page history of video games starting in 1970 and up until the mid 90s. 7th grade debate class, Rome VS Greece, on the side of Rome we argued that "Greece doesn't get to take credit for philosophers it had put to death." 8th grade math class, we just went and full on learned college level stats. 6th grade, I read the book Druids. For those not aware, it has sex in it. Quite as bit of sex in fact. Good bit of historical fiction though, I learned about the Romans invading England!
  - notriddle 5y ago
    > People have been saying this about schools since forever. It's been true since forever. > FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority. Those are the values that schoolteachers publicly espouse, but even if they want to live up to it, they can't. It's impossible in an environment where they have to train kids to perform standardized tests, and have to keep an overcrowded classroom from turning into a madhouse. > [the rest of the anecdotes] Yeah, I had cool teachers, too. It really doesn't take away from the extremely rigid structure of the environment. It helps make things bearable, but the best-learned lessons are the ones you experience, not the ones you read, and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do.
    - com2kid 5y ago
      > It's impossible in an environment where they have to train kids to perform standardized tests, IMHO we need to ditch the standardized tests. The more testing we add the worse education seems to get. Or rather, to rephrase that, the more tests we add the more homogenized education gets, which may very well be the point. Without teaching to the test, you have some teachers who don't do much teaching at all, and other teachings who do an amazing job teaching students 3x what the students would otherwise learn in a "normal" classroom. Teaching to a standardized tests ensures that everyone gets at least a basic education, but it also means some kids get a worse education. So that kind of sucks, but it may very well be a net positive measured in "number of gets who get at least a decent education." For society at large, we have to judge if it is worth giving some kids a 3x education and other kids a .5 education, or if we want everyone to get 1x education. Crappy choice honestly. > and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do. I never was much for "do what you're told". I do however support the idea that learning some things is just painful. The only way to get better at writing is to do a lot of it. The only way to get better at presenting is to present. The only way to get better at math is to solve equations. Practice does indeed make perfect. I would not be as good as presenting today if I hadn't been forced to do countless presentations in school, which I hated! Each and every one, I complained that they were a useless exercise and that we'd be better off studying from a book than listening to the poorly done presentation of our peers! But the presentations weren't so we could efficiently learn about the trials and tribulations of the Oregon trail, it was to make us learn how to prepare talking points, go through a topic in a reasonable manner, and speak clearly in front of a group. So, thanks teach. Thank you for making me do the thing that I really didn't want to do.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
I don't want school to teach my children anything about beliefs or what the teachers/admins believe. I want school to teach my child art and language and facts, and leave the beliefs to me.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  Serious question: do you feel that critical thinking is important and should be taught in schools? If so, consider how that itself is a "belief" that has at times been explicitly rejected by local political parties. In other words, there's no such thing as value-neutral education.
- Inityx 5y ago
  "Facts can be effectively taught without incorporating beliefs" is a sentiment held by people egregiously unaware of their own biases
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    It's a good aim. It's not something you can necessarily encode in law.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Every environment teaches people implicit lessons about the people that create, run, and equally importantly populate the system. From my own experience in public school most of the life lessons on offer were kinda bad because the environment was defective and abusive and the people fucked up. The idea that its possible to get hundreds or thousands of people together and only teach facts is absolutely impossible.
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    It's true, but it's a good aim.
- ertjaet 5y ago
  sure! facts like: - unfair power structures disproportionately harm those without power - including everyone in decisions about the allocation resources is an effective way to solve disparity - communities that form rules to govern themselves are more just and fair than communities where rules are formed by a minority
colechristensen 5y ago
Teaching children does not attract the best and brightest, to be blunt. Some teachers are fantastic despite the lack of incentive, many are not, and the situation seems to be getting worse. >they should come to their own conclusions And if the problem with schooling is a decreasing ability to generate exactly this, what then? Children, people in general should be presented with a diverse set of views and morals (and not just the loudest A vs. B near, but at a small distance from extremists). I took a philosophy class with undergraduates and a few of them were vocally rather upset when confronted with the fact that there wasn't just a "truth" that could be learned and for each topic there were several opposing views. Those students had experienced so little of that in their 20-odd years of life that being presented with it really bothered them.
creato 5y ago
Anyone banning legos in the name of equity values creativity and intuitive understanding of the interactions between physical objects less than their ability to brainwash their students, and thus has no business teaching children. The problem here isn’t challenging your beliefs, it’s blatant stupidity. My guess is the reality here is the legos were a source of conflict and so they got taken away. Just like many has occurred for probably since toys and children existed. Justifying it with an equity argument is just rage bait attention seeking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
devwastaken 5y ago
School does not challenge beliefs. It teaches you not to do that at all, and to respect inefficient unreasonable government systems. U.S. schools don't even teach your basic constitutional rights. They intentionally block that because if people knew their 5th amendment rights the vast majority of policing wouldn't work. Public education, like many government pet projects, attract warm bodies, inefficiency, because there is no incentive to be efficient. It's free money to them.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  We absolutely covered constitutional rights, covered civil rights, and several shitty parts of America's and the worlds history. I don't know how you could possibly believe that teachers just show up for coffee club and free money. Many people even most want to do a good job at whatever it is they are doing because they are intrinsically motivated. Those who choose education are doing a job that requires substantial investment in education and ultimately in working time to earn a modicum of money. In general people interested in those terms have a greater than average chance of being there because of giving a damn. Your analysis is shallow in the extreme.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Hell, I was in High School during 9/11 and my principal lost her son in the explosion... Social studies that year heavily featured discussions on the US's involvement in the middle east, opposition to the russian occupation of Afganistan and the constitutional complications of a lot of the laws we saw coming out to fight terrorism. I think I got an absolutely wonderful education on US governmental systems that year - it was just dry Jeffersonian dialogs.
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    Teachers become teachers not out of passion for teaching but because it is the easiest path to go through if you follow the designed education system. Highschool pushes university hard, university pushes teaching, and teaching is a default path if you're scared of getting skills in anything else. I have met very few teachers whom have life experience outside of being a teacher, and it makes them mindless drones that, yes, collect a paycheck and hand out assignments from Pearson or some other company. Teachers are now largely unnecessary, COVID made everything done online. It turns out in person teachers are largely ineffective and replaced with a YouTube video. Schooling simply has not kept up, and the unions want it that way.
dmonitor 5y ago
I don't think the goal of these teachers is to challenge their beliefs, unless they start enforcing right wing libertarianism on the left leaning kids

syshum 5y ago

Good parents should do this, but from what I see this is not what is happening in modern schools. It was starting to change even when I was in public schools 30 years ago, and from what see it has only gotten worse. Lets Critical thinking, and less open questioning, more authority, follow the rules, do not question "The Experts", do as your told (but only what those in Authority tell you not your parents) etc. That is with out getting into any of the "culture war" topics

com2kid 5y ago
> Lets Critical thinking, and less open questioning, more authority, follow the rules, do not question "The Experts", do as your told (but only what those in Authority tell you not your parents) etc. People have been saying this about schools since forever. FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority. One time we got new math books in that were horrible. Obvious errors everywhere. The teacher gave us extra credit for spending the day finding math errors in the book. 9th grade European History started off with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In 10th grade sex ed students got to vote on a movie. Nerds and Goths teamed up, we watched Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 3rd grade, a group of students opted stayed inside during recess and construct hot wheels courses (tracks and ramps) out of whatever classroom supplies we could find laying around. 10th grade parents day, my genetics teacher tricked parents into extracting frog sperm from a solution and playing with it. The students were nonplussed, we'd been working with DNA for quite a while by that time. 12th grade final report, I wrote a paper on the future of LED lighting, where I rewrired some incandescent flashlights into LED flashlights (obviously back before LED flashlights where a big thing). 8th grade final report, 30 page history of video games starting in 1970 and up until the mid 90s. 7th grade debate class, Rome VS Greece, on the side of Rome we argued that "Greece doesn't get to take credit for philosophers it had put to death." 8th grade math class, we just went and full on learned college level stats. 6th grade, I read the book Druids. For those not aware, it has sex in it. Quite as bit of sex in fact. Good bit of historical fiction though, I learned about the Romans invading England!
- notriddle 5y ago
  > People have been saying this about schools since forever. It's been true since forever. > FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority. Those are the values that schoolteachers publicly espouse, but even if they want to live up to it, they can't. It's impossible in an environment where they have to train kids to perform standardized tests, and have to keep an overcrowded classroom from turning into a madhouse. > [the rest of the anecdotes] Yeah, I had cool teachers, too. It really doesn't take away from the extremely rigid structure of the environment. It helps make things bearable, but the best-learned lessons are the ones you experience, not the ones you read, and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do.
  - com2kid 5y ago
    > It's impossible in an environment where they have to train kids to perform standardized tests, IMHO we need to ditch the standardized tests. The more testing we add the worse education seems to get. Or rather, to rephrase that, the more tests we add the more homogenized education gets, which may very well be the point. Without teaching to the test, you have some teachers who don't do much teaching at all, and other teachings who do an amazing job teaching students 3x what the students would otherwise learn in a "normal" classroom. Teaching to a standardized tests ensures that everyone gets at least a basic education, but it also means some kids get a worse education. So that kind of sucks, but it may very well be a net positive measured in "number of gets who get at least a decent education." For society at large, we have to judge if it is worth giving some kids a 3x education and other kids a .5 education, or if we want everyone to get 1x education. Crappy choice honestly. > and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do. I never was much for "do what you're told". I do however support the idea that learning some things is just painful. The only way to get better at writing is to do a lot of it. The only way to get better at presenting is to present. The only way to get better at math is to solve equations. Practice does indeed make perfect. I would not be as good as presenting today if I hadn't been forced to do countless presentations in school, which I hated! Each and every one, I complained that they were a useless exercise and that we'd be better off studying from a book than listening to the poorly done presentation of our peers! But the presentations weren't so we could efficiently learn about the trials and tribulations of the Oregon trail, it was to make us learn how to prepare talking points, go through a topic in a reasonable manner, and speak clearly in front of a group. So, thanks teach. Thank you for making me do the thing that I really didn't want to do.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

I don't want school to teach my children anything about beliefs or what the teachers/admins believe. I want school to teach my child art and language and facts, and leave the beliefs to me.

crooked-v 5y ago
Serious question: do you feel that critical thinking is important and should be taught in schools? If so, consider how that itself is a "belief" that has at times been explicitly rejected by local political parties. In other words, there's no such thing as value-neutral education.
Inityx 5y ago
"Facts can be effectively taught without incorporating beliefs" is a sentiment held by people egregiously unaware of their own biases
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  It's a good aim. It's not something you can necessarily encode in law.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Every environment teaches people implicit lessons about the people that create, run, and equally importantly populate the system. From my own experience in public school most of the life lessons on offer were kinda bad because the environment was defective and abusive and the people fucked up. The idea that its possible to get hundreds or thousands of people together and only teach facts is absolutely impossible.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  It's true, but it's a good aim.
ertjaet 5y ago
sure! facts like: - unfair power structures disproportionately harm those without power - including everyone in decisions about the allocation resources is an effective way to solve disparity - communities that form rules to govern themselves are more just and fair than communities where rules are formed by a minority

colechristensen 5y ago

Teaching children does not attract the best and brightest, to be blunt. Some teachers are fantastic despite the lack of incentive, many are not, and the situation seems to be getting worse. >they should come to their own conclusions And if the problem with schooling is a decreasing ability to generate exactly this, what then? Children, people in general should be presented with a diverse set of views and morals (and not just the loudest A vs. B near, but at a small distance from extremists). I took a philosophy class with undergraduates and a few of them were vocally rather upset when confronted with the fact that there wasn't just a "truth" that could be learned and for each topic there were several opposing views. Those students had experienced so little of that in their 20-odd years of life that being presented with it really bothered them.

creato 5y ago

Anyone banning legos in the name of equity values creativity and intuitive understanding of the interactions between physical objects less than their ability to brainwash their students, and thus has no business teaching children. The problem here isn’t challenging your beliefs, it’s blatant stupidity. My guess is the reality here is the legos were a source of conflict and so they got taken away. Just like many has occurred for probably since toys and children existed. Justifying it with an equity argument is just rage bait attention seeking.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

devwastaken 5y ago

School does not challenge beliefs. It teaches you not to do that at all, and to respect inefficient unreasonable government systems. U.S. schools don't even teach your basic constitutional rights. They intentionally block that because if people knew their 5th amendment rights the vast majority of policing wouldn't work. Public education, like many government pet projects, attract warm bodies, inefficiency, because there is no incentive to be efficient. It's free money to them.

michaelmrose 5y ago
We absolutely covered constitutional rights, covered civil rights, and several shitty parts of America's and the worlds history. I don't know how you could possibly believe that teachers just show up for coffee club and free money. Many people even most want to do a good job at whatever it is they are doing because they are intrinsically motivated. Those who choose education are doing a job that requires substantial investment in education and ultimately in working time to earn a modicum of money. In general people interested in those terms have a greater than average chance of being there because of giving a damn. Your analysis is shallow in the extreme.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Hell, I was in High School during 9/11 and my principal lost her son in the explosion... Social studies that year heavily featured discussions on the US's involvement in the middle east, opposition to the russian occupation of Afganistan and the constitutional complications of a lot of the laws we saw coming out to fight terrorism. I think I got an absolutely wonderful education on US governmental systems that year - it was just dry Jeffersonian dialogs.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  Teachers become teachers not out of passion for teaching but because it is the easiest path to go through if you follow the designed education system. Highschool pushes university hard, university pushes teaching, and teaching is a default path if you're scared of getting skills in anything else. I have met very few teachers whom have life experience outside of being a teacher, and it makes them mindless drones that, yes, collect a paycheck and hand out assignments from Pearson or some other company. Teachers are now largely unnecessary, COVID made everything done online. It turns out in person teachers are largely ineffective and replaced with a YouTube video. Schooling simply has not kept up, and the unions want it that way.

dmonitor 5y ago

I don't think the goal of these teachers is to challenge their beliefs, unless they start enforcing right wing libertarianism on the left leaning kids