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I am reminded of a story from Alan Kay, who said that an English woman told him, “Americans have the best high school education in the world. It’s a shame they

I am reminded of a story from Alan Kay, who said that an English woman told him, “Americans have the best high school education in the world. It’s a shame they have to go to university to get it.” I could’ve benefited from a more rigorous education that taught me how to study for mastery. As someone who was considered “gifted” in elementary school who skipped middle school, had a 4.0 GPA in high school, and started university at 16, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t truly learn how to study until graduate school, where doing research requires absolute mastery of the topic being researched. I was never challenged in high school or even at the community college courses I took as a high school student. I was challenged during my undergrad years at Cal Poly and started earning grades I’ve never seen before (the only grade below an A- I earned before Cal Poly was a B+ I earned in sixth grade for math, which saddened me and instilled a dislike for the subject until high school when I had some wonderful math teachers). But I chalked this up not to my study habits, but due to the higher standard of education at the school. I was able to eke by with a > 3.0 GPA that was good enough for admission to a PhD program, but I was unprepared for the even tougher level of rigor, and then family drama pulled the rug under me..., but I digress. I have no regrets; I have a good job and I know how to learn things much more efficiently than during my student days. But I wish I learned how to truly study during my childhood instead of coasting on my good memory; I’d probably be further in my career had I learned this much earlier.

tnecniv 3y ago
That was basically the same as my experience. However what I should have included more explicitly is that, if we’re failing a lot of “successful” high school students, what are we doing for the average student, let alone the below average one? Due to the expense, college seems to dominate a lot of educational conversations we have in this country. However, I feel like the issues start way earlier than that. It seems like we fail at getting the average student in primary and secondary school to internalize the point of a lot of why we’re teaching things, what they’re useful, how they apply to life, and, maybe most importantly, why there interesting. It doesn’t help that the life value of a lot of subjects have more than one value: history and English class seem on face value to just teach you about our cultural forces, but the real value in the subject is to read and write in a critical manner. Math seems totally useless to a lot of people after you learn long division because the word problems we deal with are incredibly contrived, and we don’t teach the most important part of math, formal reasoning very well. In my opinion, fewer people should go to college but because their K-12 education should leave them with a much stronger toolset to face challenges in work and personal life.

tnecniv 3y ago

That was basically the same as my experience. However what I should have included more explicitly is that, if we’re failing a lot of “successful” high school students, what are we doing for the average student, let alone the below average one? Due to the expense, college seems to dominate a lot of educational conversations we have in this country. However, I feel like the issues start way earlier than that. It seems like we fail at getting the average student in primary and secondary school to internalize the point of a lot of why we’re teaching things, what they’re useful, how they apply to life, and, maybe most importantly, why there interesting. It doesn’t help that the life value of a lot of subjects have more than one value: history and English class seem on face value to just teach you about our cultural forces, but the real value in the subject is to read and write in a critical manner. Math seems totally useless to a lot of people after you learn long division because the word problems we deal with are incredibly contrived, and we don’t teach the most important part of math, formal reasoning very well. In my opinion, fewer people should go to college but because their K-12 education should leave them with a much stronger toolset to face challenges in work and personal life.