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> In my experience, most people, the world over, are in fact self motivated. In your experience? The world over? Can you tell me your experience. I've been a t

> In my experience, most people, the world over, are in fact self motivated. In your experience? The world over? Can you tell me your experience. I've been a teacher for a long time. I've worked in the UK, the USA, PNG, and Kenya. The vast majority of kids in the developed world don't really care about education. A few do, and they get great grades. Most care more about social status, their cliques, or just surviving the jungle that is school. School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority. You can't get that at home, in front of a screen. Learning stuff is secondary. I'm sure there are plenty of people here that are not working in whatever they majored at.

afarviral 2y ago
I mean ... many people went to school as students for a good 12 years. That's likely tainted experience, less objective perhaps, but nontheless valid experience.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Those same people will say "I wish school taught me <X> (things like how to fill out a check book etc" It did. You didn't pay attention. You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?". My school taught us how to interpret a "source", how to write well defended arguments (even if I don't always rise to that level), how to calculate mortgage interest rates and payments etc etc etc. But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important" because they didn't pay attention to what was taught! The primary problem with education in america today is that a huge proportion of parents do not give a fuck about education, see school as just a thing you have to do instead of a constant opportunity. When a kid sees their parent complaining about education being "Liberal brain washing" every other day, why would they pay attention in class? Education requires emotional and ideological buy in from parents and students for best results.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > It did. You didn't pay attention. It didn't. I specifically remember the hole where my class should've explained what a court case actually determines, how the process runs, because I noticed things were missing / being swept under the carpet (we did some mock jury stuff but without the right context for it to teach us anything). > You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?" Nope. I specifically remember watching movie "making of" videos and my teacher saying "write this down!" about irrelevant technical details that distracted from the more important stuff the director was saying. > But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important" > because they didn't pay attention to what was taught! Nope. I was an engaged, attentive student (indeed a kind of star pupil). I still learnt more in spite of school than because of it. Indeed some of the stuff that's most important for my education and career is stuff I was actively punished for doing at school (poking at the computers to see how they worked). Schools, at least the standard-ish state school that I went to (which had good official ratings) teach the wrong things and teach them badly.
    - afarviral 2y ago
      While I'm thankful for schooling for teaching me a variety of things, occasionally recognizing my passions and helping to hone them, it is amusing the disruptive and annoying things I did with the school computers that ultimately became my carreer.
  - afarviral 2y ago
    Agreed. There's a really specific form of nostalgia where a matured and adhd-managed person would simply LOVE to do school over again now they see the benefit and realise how absolutely fascinating and achievable learning is. Imagine how easy school would be for a mature adult! I wish being held back a couple of years was normal and encouraged, especially for boys. My life satisfaction would be way higher.
elliotbnvl 2y ago
Learning stuff is secondary? Found your problem. School shouldn't be primarily about experiencing social interaction. It's an artificial environment that disappears as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again anywhere else in society. You can learn social interaction in plenty of other settings, most of which are vastly more efficient and realistic. Admittedly, none of them function as daycare... School should be (and used to be) about learning to learn, building mental discipline and a base of knowledge sufficient to bootstrap whatever other studies appeal to the student, even more so than memorizing a particular list of facts. But it seems that that position has been largely abandoned.
- techostritch 2y ago
  This is circular, how do you propose making school about that? If you’re only goal is to maximize the folks who like to obey authority then great, and maybe that’s all you care to do, and maybe you don’t care about losing the kids who don’t have the academics to make it, but you also lose a whole mess of kids at the top end of the spectrum too.
  - elliotbnvl 2y ago
    I'm not sure which part of my comment would result in maximizing folks who like to obey authority. I'm more focused on improving individual outcomes in terms of functional individuals, their quality of life, and the contributions they're able to make to society as a whole. In any case, we homeschool. I haven't really considered how to improve schooling at scale (particularly in an affordable way), but my proposal would be to introduce a _lot_ more granularity to schooling by eliminating the idea of grades and classes and focusing more on individual assessment. Obviously this is likely cost prohibitive, but perhaps promoting and subsidizing homeschooling and homeschool co-ops is a good start in that direction, and could give rise to more cost-effective solutions over time. Not all parents are equipped to homeschool, but homeschooling does make use of resources which could be improved and which others could leverage as well.
    - techostritch 2y ago
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
[flagged]
bmitc 2y ago
If I made be jaded here. I did extremely well in school(s). I was never a trouble maker and was a top athlete, student, and musician. I think education is supremely important. However, school didn't teach me any of what you mentioned. Because what life teaches is that unless you're Type A, you're not going anywhere. Life teaches that hard work and determination and doing the right things does not get you anywhere. Life teaches you that thinking differently is downright discouraged and rejected. We mainly teach either boring material or outright lies about how life works. Because we try to put our education on rails, teaching students that that's how life and education works, that's why it's a complete failure. The fact that students in COVID didn't respond to remote lessons is partly because they weren't even engaged prior to COVID. We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate.
- glial 2y ago
  > We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate. Montessori schools do. Wish they were more common.
BeetleB 2y ago
> Can you tell me your experience. I've been a teacher for a long time. And as a result, your experience is mostly limited to kids who are forced to be where they don't want to be. That's a hugely biased data set. > School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority. And yet it does a worse job at it than those who are home schooled, as most studies show.

afarviral 2y ago

I mean ... many people went to school as students for a good 12 years. That's likely tainted experience, less objective perhaps, but nontheless valid experience.

mrguyorama 2y ago
Those same people will say "I wish school taught me <X> (things like how to fill out a check book etc" It did. You didn't pay attention. You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?". My school taught us how to interpret a "source", how to write well defended arguments (even if I don't always rise to that level), how to calculate mortgage interest rates and payments etc etc etc. But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important" because they didn't pay attention to what was taught! The primary problem with education in america today is that a huge proportion of parents do not give a fuck about education, see school as just a thing you have to do instead of a constant opportunity. When a kid sees their parent complaining about education being "Liberal brain washing" every other day, why would they pay attention in class? Education requires emotional and ideological buy in from parents and students for best results.
- lmm 2y ago
  > It did. You didn't pay attention. It didn't. I specifically remember the hole where my class should've explained what a court case actually determines, how the process runs, because I noticed things were missing / being swept under the carpet (we did some mock jury stuff but without the right context for it to teach us anything). > You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?" Nope. I specifically remember watching movie "making of" videos and my teacher saying "write this down!" about irrelevant technical details that distracted from the more important stuff the director was saying. > But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important" > because they didn't pay attention to what was taught! Nope. I was an engaged, attentive student (indeed a kind of star pupil). I still learnt more in spite of school than because of it. Indeed some of the stuff that's most important for my education and career is stuff I was actively punished for doing at school (poking at the computers to see how they worked). Schools, at least the standard-ish state school that I went to (which had good official ratings) teach the wrong things and teach them badly.
  - afarviral 2y ago
    While I'm thankful for schooling for teaching me a variety of things, occasionally recognizing my passions and helping to hone them, it is amusing the disruptive and annoying things I did with the school computers that ultimately became my carreer.
- afarviral 2y ago
  Agreed. There's a really specific form of nostalgia where a matured and adhd-managed person would simply LOVE to do school over again now they see the benefit and realise how absolutely fascinating and achievable learning is. Imagine how easy school would be for a mature adult! I wish being held back a couple of years was normal and encouraged, especially for boys. My life satisfaction would be way higher.

elliotbnvl 2y ago

Learning stuff is secondary? Found your problem. School shouldn't be primarily about experiencing social interaction. It's an artificial environment that disappears as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again anywhere else in society. You can learn social interaction in plenty of other settings, most of which are vastly more efficient and realistic. Admittedly, none of them function as daycare... School should be (and used to be) about learning to learn, building mental discipline and a base of knowledge sufficient to bootstrap whatever other studies appeal to the student, even more so than memorizing a particular list of facts. But it seems that that position has been largely abandoned.

techostritch 2y ago
This is circular, how do you propose making school about that? If you’re only goal is to maximize the folks who like to obey authority then great, and maybe that’s all you care to do, and maybe you don’t care about losing the kids who don’t have the academics to make it, but you also lose a whole mess of kids at the top end of the spectrum too.
- elliotbnvl 2y ago
  I'm not sure which part of my comment would result in maximizing folks who like to obey authority. I'm more focused on improving individual outcomes in terms of functional individuals, their quality of life, and the contributions they're able to make to society as a whole. In any case, we homeschool. I haven't really considered how to improve schooling at scale (particularly in an affordable way), but my proposal would be to introduce a _lot_ more granularity to schooling by eliminating the idea of grades and classes and focusing more on individual assessment. Obviously this is likely cost prohibitive, but perhaps promoting and subsidizing homeschooling and homeschool co-ops is a good start in that direction, and could give rise to more cost-effective solutions over time. Not all parents are equipped to homeschool, but homeschooling does make use of resources which could be improved and which others could leverage as well.
  - techostritch 2y ago

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

[flagged]

bmitc 2y ago

If I made be jaded here. I did extremely well in school(s). I was never a trouble maker and was a top athlete, student, and musician. I think education is supremely important. However, school didn't teach me any of what you mentioned. Because what life teaches is that unless you're Type A, you're not going anywhere. Life teaches that hard work and determination and doing the right things does not get you anywhere. Life teaches you that thinking differently is downright discouraged and rejected. We mainly teach either boring material or outright lies about how life works. Because we try to put our education on rails, teaching students that that's how life and education works, that's why it's a complete failure. The fact that students in COVID didn't respond to remote lessons is partly because they weren't even engaged prior to COVID. We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate.

glial 2y ago
> We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate. Montessori schools do. Wish they were more common.

BeetleB 2y ago

> Can you tell me your experience. I've been a teacher for a long time. And as a result, your experience is mostly limited to kids who are forced to be where they don't want to be. That's a hugely biased data set. > School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority. And yet it does a worse job at it than those who are home schooled, as most studies show.