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> 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

> 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.

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.