5 ms·

> so much of what students actually pick up is how to function in a peer group and society at large, That happens in any social setting, and I do not think sch

> so much of what students actually pick up is how to function in a peer group and society at large, That happens in any social setting, and I do not think school is even a good one. Many schools in the UK limit socialisation and tell students "you are here to learn, not socialise". People learned to social skills at least as well before going to school become normal, in my experience home educated kids are better socialised, etc.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Where else are you going to learn that the system is your enemy and the people around you are your friends? I feel like that was a valuable thing to have learned and as a child I didn't really have anywhere else to learn it.
- ghssds 2y ago
  I actually learned that people around me are very much my enemies and the system don't care. Your school must have been tremendously good quality because I've felt isolated from school's day 1 and the feeling never went away forty years later.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    > Your school must have been tremendously good quality No, it was terrible, that's why I decided it was my enemy. And golly I think we knocked it down a peg or two by the time I was done there. But a few brilliant teachers managed to convince me not to hate the players, just the game.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    Ironically I had the exact same experience in school.
- ben_w 2y ago
  That wasn't my experience at school. I learned that people don't think the way I do, that my peers can include sadists, that adults can make mistakes or be arses and you can be powerless to change their minds. Which was valuable, but it wasn't telling me anything about "the system" being flawed (unless you count the fact it was a Catholic school and that I stopped being Christian while in that school as a result of reading the Bible), which I had to figure out gradually in adulthood.
  - r00fus 2y ago
    I think there should be clarity on the differences between public and private schools. On one hand, funding for public schools precludes some activities and may result in a lower quality of education due to selection bias. On the other hand, private institutions play by their own rules and this can often result in even worse learning environments.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      I should probably add that this particular Catholic school was in the UK, and I was there between 1995 and 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaklands_Catholic_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaklands_Catholic_School I don't know what the rules are in the UK (or what they were at the time), but we did get school inspectors visiting from time to time. I only thought to mention this at all because if you say "public school" in the UK you mean a school you have to pay a fee for, to contrast with "private tuition" (amongst other historical baggage): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > the system is your enemy and the people around you are your friends I am glad I did not attend your school. That lesson is far, far from universal.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    It's quite obvious that it's not universal, and that's a shame. If it were, we'd probably be more open to making changes to longstanding institutions which are no longer serving us.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      Have you considered the possibility that those close to you may not be your friends, and that the system is not actually usefully considered as your enemy?
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        Oh plenty of times, but the system repeatedly talks me out of it by treating humans like trash, and being a human myself, I have to pay attention to that sort of thing. Every time I think I have a real enemy among the people I interact with personally, I eventually come to understand that their problematic behavior is--if not justified--explainable. And once I have that explanation, it never seems like acting against them directly is likely to have any positive effect. If they're playing a role in which we're opposed, the solution is to find a way to rewrite the script such that we're not. That doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows, conflict still happens, but I try not to let it be the kind of conflict that has been designed by some authority to keep me and my "enemy" busy such that we're too distracted with each other to reconsider the legitimacy of that authority--and I think that counts for quite a lot of conflict in the world, which is why I wish more people had come to this conclusion. I think the best place for learning this is a school, where the attempt to make you compete with your peers over "points," whatever those are, is so laughably transparent in its lack of regard for your wellbeing, and where the consequences of failing are so low. Meanwhile, quite a lot of fun and learning can happen because you're all stuck there anyway, might as well make the most of it. One must eventually confront authority somewhere, where else?
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  Shrug. My experience of school was the opposite - society at large is actually set up fairly well but pockets of it and the people in it are absolute dumpster fires.
idiotsecant 2y ago
>my experience home educated kids are better socialised, etc. Phew, gonna do a heavy disagree on that one. There is very little better for learning how to navigate and survive the brutality of human nature than school. Home schooled students almost always are not well equipped to deal with conflict or consensus building, in my experience.
- robocat 2y ago
  > Home schooled students almost always are not well equipped to deal with conflict or consensus building You imply that traditional schooling teaches this, but in my experience plenty of people never learn either skill and perhaps work is where we learn it. I've just been a fly-on-the-wall seeing 3x 20s women trying to resolve a significant conflict - they all seemed to have a horrific struggle because 2 of them were extreme conflict avoiders. I see the same issue in some 50s to 70s friends: an inability to deal with facts or conflicts leading to poor outcomes for themselves. Do most home schooled children lack intuititively learned social skills? Alternatively, some friends with great social skills had lots of siblings (I think that helps too).
- K0balt 2y ago
  Totally depends on what you mean by home schooling. If you mean socially isolated, you may have a good point. I have certainly seen this. But being home schooled can also mean that the kids learn to operate in the adult world, as children, but with expectations of others as adults and an implied sense that they also should strive to meet the bar of mature adult behavior. This happens when children exist in the world side by side with their parents, who have chosen to live a life (for the time being) that will provide a rich environment in which their children can mature. We didn’t have the resources to provide a high quality private education, so we uprooted, sold our stuff, packed up a cargo trailer and a van, and spent a decade getting by on a shoestring while doing the most interesting and challenging things we imagined we might achieve as a family. For the formative years of my children, that is what we did. From an early age, aside from their siblings, they interacted primarily with adults in their world, often from different cultures and speaking different languages, and often in situations where the stakes were high (intrinsic danger imposed by the natural environment and classical physics) . They learned to be a cohesive team, to handle responsibility within the range of their understanding, to seek and accept council, and to ignore immature behavior when it pops up in inappropriate times. This sometimes rugged beginning has served them quite well in their lives. I could never have provided them with the social foundations that they have today in a public school environment, and we didn’t have the money for a high-caliber private education.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

Where else are you going to learn that the system is your enemy and the people around you are your friends? I feel like that was a valuable thing to have learned and as a child I didn't really have anywhere else to learn it.

ghssds 2y ago
I actually learned that people around me are very much my enemies and the system don't care. Your school must have been tremendously good quality because I've felt isolated from school's day 1 and the feeling never went away forty years later.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  > Your school must have been tremendously good quality No, it was terrible, that's why I decided it was my enemy. And golly I think we knocked it down a peg or two by the time I was done there. But a few brilliant teachers managed to convince me not to hate the players, just the game.
- UltraSane 2y ago
  Ironically I had the exact same experience in school.
ben_w 2y ago
That wasn't my experience at school. I learned that people don't think the way I do, that my peers can include sadists, that adults can make mistakes or be arses and you can be powerless to change their minds. Which was valuable, but it wasn't telling me anything about "the system" being flawed (unless you count the fact it was a Catholic school and that I stopped being Christian while in that school as a result of reading the Bible), which I had to figure out gradually in adulthood.
- r00fus 2y ago
  I think there should be clarity on the differences between public and private schools. On one hand, funding for public schools precludes some activities and may result in a lower quality of education due to selection bias. On the other hand, private institutions play by their own rules and this can often result in even worse learning environments.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I should probably add that this particular Catholic school was in the UK, and I was there between 1995 and 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaklands_Catholic_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaklands_Catholic_School I don't know what the rules are in the UK (or what they were at the time), but we did get school inspectors visiting from time to time. I only thought to mention this at all because if you say "public school" in the UK you mean a school you have to pay a fee for, to contrast with "private tuition" (amongst other historical baggage): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> the system is your enemy and the people around you are your friends I am glad I did not attend your school. That lesson is far, far from universal.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  It's quite obvious that it's not universal, and that's a shame. If it were, we'd probably be more open to making changes to longstanding institutions which are no longer serving us.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    Have you considered the possibility that those close to you may not be your friends, and that the system is not actually usefully considered as your enemy?
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Oh plenty of times, but the system repeatedly talks me out of it by treating humans like trash, and being a human myself, I have to pay attention to that sort of thing. Every time I think I have a real enemy among the people I interact with personally, I eventually come to understand that their problematic behavior is--if not justified--explainable. And once I have that explanation, it never seems like acting against them directly is likely to have any positive effect. If they're playing a role in which we're opposed, the solution is to find a way to rewrite the script such that we're not. That doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows, conflict still happens, but I try not to let it be the kind of conflict that has been designed by some authority to keep me and my "enemy" busy such that we're too distracted with each other to reconsider the legitimacy of that authority--and I think that counts for quite a lot of conflict in the world, which is why I wish more people had come to this conclusion. I think the best place for learning this is a school, where the attempt to make you compete with your peers over "points," whatever those are, is so laughably transparent in its lack of regard for your wellbeing, and where the consequences of failing are so low. Meanwhile, quite a lot of fun and learning can happen because you're all stuck there anyway, might as well make the most of it. One must eventually confront authority somewhere, where else?
naming_the_user 2y ago
Shrug. My experience of school was the opposite - society at large is actually set up fairly well but pockets of it and the people in it are absolute dumpster fires.

idiotsecant 2y ago

>my experience home educated kids are better socialised, etc. Phew, gonna do a heavy disagree on that one. There is very little better for learning how to navigate and survive the brutality of human nature than school. Home schooled students almost always are not well equipped to deal with conflict or consensus building, in my experience.

robocat 2y ago
> Home schooled students almost always are not well equipped to deal with conflict or consensus building You imply that traditional schooling teaches this, but in my experience plenty of people never learn either skill and perhaps work is where we learn it. I've just been a fly-on-the-wall seeing 3x 20s women trying to resolve a significant conflict - they all seemed to have a horrific struggle because 2 of them were extreme conflict avoiders. I see the same issue in some 50s to 70s friends: an inability to deal with facts or conflicts leading to poor outcomes for themselves. Do most home schooled children lack intuititively learned social skills? Alternatively, some friends with great social skills had lots of siblings (I think that helps too).
K0balt 2y ago
Totally depends on what you mean by home schooling. If you mean socially isolated, you may have a good point. I have certainly seen this. But being home schooled can also mean that the kids learn to operate in the adult world, as children, but with expectations of others as adults and an implied sense that they also should strive to meet the bar of mature adult behavior. This happens when children exist in the world side by side with their parents, who have chosen to live a life (for the time being) that will provide a rich environment in which their children can mature. We didn’t have the resources to provide a high quality private education, so we uprooted, sold our stuff, packed up a cargo trailer and a van, and spent a decade getting by on a shoestring while doing the most interesting and challenging things we imagined we might achieve as a family. For the formative years of my children, that is what we did. From an early age, aside from their siblings, they interacted primarily with adults in their world, often from different cultures and speaking different languages, and often in situations where the stakes were high (intrinsic danger imposed by the natural environment and classical physics) . They learned to be a cohesive team, to handle responsibility within the range of their understanding, to seek and accept council, and to ignore immature behavior when it pops up in inappropriate times. This sometimes rugged beginning has served them quite well in their lives. I could never have provided them with the social foundations that they have today in a public school environment, and we didn’t have the money for a high-caliber private education.