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OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context,

• Nursie 2y ago
  I think you're right to start by saying this isn't universal worldwide, or even within Britain. You describe hell. But I don't believe that your experience is dominant or even that common in the UK. Which generation are you from?
  • dijit 2y ago
    I’m 35 now, so, millennial; for additional context I was brought up in a city called Coventry which is a city that was in decline during that period. (just like most of the north of the UK following Thatcher’s closing of the mines). As a consequence of this experience, though, I saw that I wasn’t exactly entirely unique either, as there were other children treated as I was and we sought each other out. So I know that while my experience is not universal: that it is at least shared by a handful of people within my schools alone. - I would hazard to guess more outside of my school have these experiences too.
    • Nursie 2y ago
      I'm around 11 years older than you. I know my experience isn't especially portable as I went to a public school in the home counties, but not all of my friends did, and while I understand they experienced teachers with varying levels of competence and interest, none of them has described it in as harrowing terms as yours, and all came away with friends and a fairly decent education, albeit one that they probably had to have a bit more determination to get than I did. My mum worked in various UK state schools as an assistant from around 2000-2010 and described serious budgetary problems throughout the system, and teachers trying their best in adversity. She also described the many obstacles in the way of getting the bad kids out of classrooms so they couldn't disrupt things so much. I have a friend who teaches at a grammar school, who is fairly intelligent and interested in his subject, and seems to teach well to kids who are interested, though again there seems to be little money to achieve anything. I'm not claiming shitty, prison-like schools don't exist or trying to invalidate your experience, it was clearly terrible, but I'd be wary of drawing too many wide-ranging conclusions about school education as a whole from it.
      • mrcsd 2y ago
        I am often left confused by responses like this. I think it would be fair to suggest that some significant percentage of chidren suffer in schools or have harrowing experiences that they are going to carry with them through life until dealt with. If this is the case, why on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be drawn? I don't believe you are meaning to suggests that the situation as it stands doesn't need change, but that is nonetheless implicit in your statements. From my position, saying: "I'd be wary of drawing too many wide-ranging conclusions about school education as a whole from it." Comes close to invalidating the experience of another.
• bill_joy_fanboy 2y ago
  > forced internment for children Where I live (U.S.), new schools are literally built like prisons... each wing is laid out from a central "observation area" for the administrators. It's just a panopticon design modeled after penitentiaries. I was with my family in our new local high school. My dad and I were the only two who noticed the layout.
  • thih9 2y ago
    The panopticon design was originally intended for schools too, as well as other institutions: > Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon Whether it’s friendly and encourages healthy development is another question.
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      The criticism section of the Wikipedia article focuses on political aspects, but to me, the very idea of keeping someone feeling like they're always watched sounds like psychological torture.
      • Pet_Ant 2y ago
        In fairness if you’ve ever been bullied and corned out of view of the teachers, having someone seeing you may feel like a relief.
        • DrillShopper 2y ago
          That assumes they'll do anything instead of turn a blind eye. In my school experience they turned a blind eye unless you fought back in which case they would punish you for fighting back.
        • whythre 2y ago
          Many of the bullying stories on here involve either a do-nothing response by authorities or both sides being punished. I do not see how constant monitoring ensures any kind of protection or justice.
• globular-toast 2y ago
  I hated school too, but I'm not sure I would have learnt much at home. My parents both lack higher education and frankly haven't been able to keep up with me past the age of 12 or so. Home schooling might work for children of smart people to be accelerated into the exact same field as them. But it won't work for kids like me or those who just aren't good at whatever their parents do.
  • troupe 2y ago
    That may be less true than it was 20 years ago. Even free resources like Khan Academy can go a long ways in helping parents educate their kids beyond what they know themselves. And for parents willing to spend even a fraction of what the public school would spent on education, they can pick and choose curriculum, tutors, or even online live classes with teachers well beyond what they would have in their local high school. That said, parents without much of an education themselves may tend to set the bar too low for their children, but that often appears to be an issue in the public school as well.
• globalise83 2y ago
  The kind of school you went to sounds very different from the grammar school that my working-class father went to in the 1960s and that helped him escape a life of asbestos-breathing drudgery in moribund shipyards.
  • dijit 2y ago
    For non-british readers; state-funded Grammar schools famously, were abolished. (I’m being downvoted, but this just objective fact, and something my grandfather brings up commonly). EDIT: according to a lot of HN comments; they still seem to exist but they aren't evenly distributed. There certainly were none in my city. Despite one being named a grammar school, it does not follow a grammar school curriculum: https://www.coventrypublicschools.org/schools/cgs https://www.coventrypublicschools.org/schools/cgs How messy.
    • simonbarker87 2y ago
      No they weren’t. There are still many (163 according to a very quick google search) selective schools in the UK with entrance based on taking the 11+ exam. Edit to clarify they are state funded and not private.
      • dijit 2y ago
        This is just incorrect information. > By the end of the 1980s, all of the grammar schools in Wales and most of those in England had closed or converted to comprehensive schools. Selection also disappeared from state-funded schools in Scotland in the same period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school There are private schools that call themselves grammar schools (paid schools, not state funded) and some grammar schools still exist in Northern Ireland. But the system that defined what a grammar school is - has long since been abolished, and all free-access grammar schools were completely gone from my area before I was even born. —- EDIT: seems like the some state funded selective grammar schools exist but they are not exactly distributed evenly. So, I am wrong; and this situation is actually significantly more class-enforcing than it used to be. Amazing.
• renegat0x0 2y ago
  This does prepare you to life though. More likely than not you will go to office. You will find yourselves with bullies, and again you can become a victim. Rather than feeling sorry about yourself, school prepares you to fight with bullies, to find inmates, to find friends. I think you could have not understand the life lessons. You will also enter other communities, where again, you will find bullies. God how I hate idea of "safe spaces".
  • woodpanel 2y ago
    Good grief, if the lack of caring for the kids, the indifference of the educators is now reframed as a virtue and core function of the failing school system I guess we are in deep trouble. Nope, if I have to share an office with an ethnic gang that attacks co-workers because of their different ethnicity I will certainly not "deal with bullies" but leave the place.
  • abc-1 2y ago
    I don’t know if this is satire or not, but all research shows bullying to be extremely harmful to youth.
    • rvense 2y ago
      Yes, and I think silly "tough guy" posturing and a lack of empathy as in that comment is one of the common consequences...
  • logicchains 2y ago
    >You will find yourselves with bullies, and again you can become a victim. I don't know what kind of places you've worked at, but everywhere I've worked if anyone behaved even 10% like the average high school bully they'd have been fired on the spot.
    • TrackerFF 2y ago
      Adult bullies tend to be smarter about it. There are unfortunately plenty of ways to bully someone, without explicitly breaking any workplace rule.
• Simplex66 2y ago
  I went to a state school in the North of England with a GCSE pass rate between 30-40% and this is a fair description of what it was like. At the time the performance of all schools was based on the percentage of students achieving at least a C including Maths and English, and as Goodhart’s law suggests this inevitably meant the school’s resources were optimised for getting students around the C grade borderline to pass while all other students didn’t get an education suited to their ability. The Gove reforms included changing how schools are assessed to a value-added measure, that I believe is commonly used in the United States, which has created the incentive for schools to focus on all students rather than just those near an arbitrary passing grade. The deeper underlying issue that’s harder to solve is the anti-aspirational culture that pervades through a lot of schools in deprived areas, in my experience most students didn’t really get the value a good education could bring to their lives and like the original comment treated it like internment rather than a route out of poverty.
  • physicsguy 2y ago
    Frustratingly, under pressure, Bridget Phillipson looks set to roll back most of those reforms.
  • timomaxgalvin 2y ago
    It's not always anti aspiration. It's knowledge that the school system isn't doing anything for them.
  • GardenLetter27 2y ago
    This was exactly my experience in the South too. It's funny that society has the same issue - refusing to expel disruptive students, refusing to imprison or deport criminals, it's all the same.
• JohnCClarke 2y ago
  I've always assumed that the babies grown in test tubes and graded into alphas to epsilons in Huxley's "Brave New World" are simply a metaphor for children going throught the UK school system. In that case the homeschooled are akin to the "savage" in the story. EDIT: corrected spelling!
  • jamiedumont 2y ago
    I've not encountered "Brave New World" but I love (and can see) the metaphor!
    • dgfitz 2y ago
      I read it when I was a kid… a homeschooled kid!
      • ethbr1 2y ago
        It was required reading in my school.
      • jamiedumont 2y ago
        Can’t argue with that! :D
• jamiedumont 2y ago
  34 year old who grew up on Guernsey (small island south and independent of Britain but with very much the same values) and went to a state-funded Grammar school for secondary and can't relate to all of this, but certainly most. The details are different but I agree that the education offered is subpar and the "socialisation" argument is bullshit. School left me feeling more isolated and alone than I've ever been.
• sirodoht 2y ago
  "Chapter 1: Letters from Prison" https://laniakeabooks.org/books/letters-from-prison/part-1/#letter-from-prison https://laniakeabooks.org/books/letters-from-prison/part-1/#...
• A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  I grew up in the US, we're about the same age, and I went to a public school where I had a similar experience. More than anything else, I remember the crushing boredom and the feeling that time had slowed to a crawl. I wasn't beaten or abused, but I felt trapped in amber, and the school really was prison-like, just as you describe it. I've never hated anything so much in my life as I hated school. So I escaped the prison. I dropped out at age 14 and went to work in a book warehouse at the age of 16. Everybody was screaming about how much I'd regret it, but to this day I consider it among the best decisions I've ever made. Now I have young children of my own, and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle their education, but home schooling -- /w private professional tutoring and organized athletic activities -- looks like the best option. There's no way I'd subject them to public school.
  • bell-cot 2y ago
    > Everybody was screaming about how much I'd regret it, but ... In a really healthy society, with really good schools, dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable. Some of those screaming people probably cared about you and your future. Most of them just resented you, for highlighting the actual state of their society and schools. And perhaps making them doubt their own choices.
    • 9rx 2y ago
      > In a really healthy society, with really good schools, dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable. That depends. Those who drop out because they can't hack it will find misplaced regret, blaming future woes on dropping out when in reality the problem is a continuation of the deficiencies that lead them to dropping out. Those who drop out because they have bigger and better plans won't think about it again.
      • petsfed 2y ago
        I think there are two assumptions embedded in the parent comment that I think you're ignoring: 1) The people who are on to bigger and better things are in fact vanishingly rare. Like, yes, Bill Gates dropped out of college, but he dropped out of Harvard, not Evergreen Community College. He wouldn't have been there in the first place if he wasn't already capable of some big things. 2) A really healthy society, with really good schools, would provide a path for those who can't hack it. Its almost definitionally not a good school if the process exposes some deficiencies, then just gives up. Like "well, it turns out your dyslexic, here's your cardboard box and begging pan" sounds like a bad school.
• f1shy 2y ago
  This is the first comment in the page, the first I read, and I can also say, I learned nothing (if anything lies, bad science and nonsense) in school. Coming from a very different country, lived in many others I know is not better in those places. I do not have time to really teach my kids, but I will be all the way by their side, as they go through the brain washing machine of school. I will send them to the school just because I want them to interact with other people of same age, and also learn how much stupid people is around, and show them it won't get any better later in life. But I do not expect, at all, that they will learn something useful.
  • knicholes 2y ago
    How did you learn to write this paragraph?
    • mrguyorama 2y ago
      It's like all the people that insist "School never taught me anything useful like how to balance a check book" when you learned how to balance a checkbook in the math class that person never paid attention to. I'm sick and tired of being told what school is good and bad for by the very people who never paid attention. A school cannot magically make you motivated to learn things for 16 years. It's drudgery to most humans and always be, because we aren't naturally """meant""" to learn complicated and robust concepts for 16 years. Our options are deal with that and help kids who don't want to learn do things they don't want to do, or have a general populace that knows nearly nothing about the world around them.
    • f1shy 2y ago
      Literally by my own, with books that luckily I had available. I learned no grammar and certainty no spelling in school. As I was 18 nobody could under my writing because of the terrible spelling. I had problems also speaking to people, and understanding what they were saying.
    • drdude 2y ago
      Yah, this paragraph can't be taught at home right? or would taking a few English courses not achieve that, selectively?!
• farrelle25 2y ago
  I'm early 50s and went to school in the Republic of Ireland - late 70s, 80s. I really feel the same as the OP here. It felt like a daily prison, combined with huge amounts of memorisation for exams. (promptly forgotten) Maybe a child could put up with the incarceration if it wasn't for the bullying on top of that too. No escape. Aside: In the 70s the Headmaster had a cane that was used occasionally but at least that died out later. But on a more optimistic note, I think there's some 'alternative schools' becoming more popular in Ireland now, like 'Forest School Ireland' etc... sounds more healthy anyway!
• wccrawford 2y ago
  I went to a school that had a lot of good teachers, and I learned a lot from them. But when it came to bullies, the school was just as you described. Worse, the punishment for being in a fight was the same whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you made the fight get noticed, you got punished. It was quite clear that they had no interest in stopping the fights, just in making sure they didn't get reported. And on the bus, the driver didn't like my family because she once turned the bus around on our grass, tearing up a bunch of it, and my father was angry about that. In retaliation, she let bullies beat me up on the bus for years and turned a blind eye. My education would probably have suffered if I was home schooled because both my parents were forced to work to make enough money to survive. And I'd be even more introverted than I am now. But man, the bullying was bad.
  • dijit 2y ago
    I’m sorry you went through that. I hope life has been kinder to you following this. :(
    • wccrawford 2y ago
      Generally speaking, yeah. Someone else mentioned the system preparing you for life later, and I can see where the bullies made me stronger as well. I definitely don't condone all that as a way to get stronger, but at least I got something from it. Silver linings and all.
      • foobarian 2y ago
        Wish I could say the same. I often wonder how things would turn out if I didn't have the insecurities/other mental handicaps stemming from that period. And fantasize about rewinding time with the current brain and leaving a trail of broken bones in my wake :-D
  • zozbot234 2y ago
    > Worse, the punishment for being in a fight was the same whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you made the fight get noticed, you got punished. I'm not saying that this is anything close to optimal, but it should be noted that under this system (which is reminiscent of the way ancient Chinese criminal law worked, per Legal Systems Very Different from Ours[0]) people who get beat up should still report and take the punishment. Sure, you'll get punished for it once but you'll also build a solid reputation for not letting things slide, so it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to beat you up again. [0] Except that the punishment back then for being involved in a crime (generally a theft or a swindle of some sort) was, guess what-- you got beat up.
• cfn 2y ago
  If there's one thing I was surprised when I moved to the UK from Portugal were the number of stories work colleagues told about bullying in school. Although there were fights and stupid games in the schools I went to in Portugal there was never systematic bullying.
• nvarsj 2y ago
  I live in the UK now, but grew up in the US. My own experience is pretty similar. I was also a highly sensitive kid so took the abuse pretty hard. I was bullied by both other kids _and_ by teachers. I still remember one teacher openly calling me weird in class and picking on me (I was very introverted and shy due to years of bullying/anxiety, which I guess made me "weird"). Both physical and mental abuse from other kids. One "highlight" was being openly sexually assaulted in PE class and the teacher didn't even care. I was messed up psychologically for a very long time after my school experience. Extreme social anxiety, hyper sensitivity to criticism, constant feelings of anxiety and depression. It took a failed marriage and years of therapy until I was able to overcome most of this trauma and kind of start to live normally (in my 40s). As a result, like you, I am incredibly cynical of schooling systems. I see my kids suffering in British schools (in secondary), and it really pains me. They loved primary where there were small classes and secondary just has completely sucked out the joy of school for them. I wish I could just retire from work and full time home school them.
• rayiner 2y ago
  I had a good experience in public K-8 (I went to a specialized STEM high school so I’ll leave that aside) but I didn’t learn anything. Public school is day care. My kids’ expensive private school is day care with better food.
• lm28469 2y ago
  > I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work Open an history book and look how it was before schooling was free and mandatory. I do agree that the most recent spin on it is far from ideal and that the underlying goals seem to have shifted, but I can clearly and easily imagine an alternative way that doesn't involve home schooling. The problem is the same as in many other industries, once you optimise everything to please the capitalistic beast we created you're set for personal hell
• wink 2y ago
  That sucks and I really don't mean to well actually here.. but in that scenario - which doesn't sound like the default outcome of going to a public school anywhere - would this not be "just" a reason to go for homeschooling later, only after the system has provably failed (long-term). Also maybe I have a false impression but I always thought people decided about homeschooling long before the kid(s) get to normal school age. That said, I don't have a strong opinion here and I can see how it's useful in certain situations, but I guess might have hated it even more than I hated school (after a certain age, I liked it when I was little) - but also none of my parents went to university or something, so I was on my own in math etc after a certain point, so not sure how they would have even managed to get me to finishing.
  • dijit 2y ago
    My argument is that school experiences vary drastically, that everyone commenting before me was saying that homeschooling their children was egotistical, stupid and harmful. When I, have a good reason why I might consider not sending my own kids to state school, because my experiences were so bad.
    • nickd2001 2y ago
      Just because your own school was sadly, terrible, doesn't necessarily mean your kids' would be similar, though? A formula that's worked for us, is - find a school with nice staff, be wary of huge academy chains (UK specific) and above all, seek peers that are very diverse - in terms of class, education level, wealth, race, nationality etc. That way your kids avoid being bullied for being "weird" because there's no such concept of "weird"-ness, kids in such a group have many different perspectives. To me, that's a far better environment for kids to develop and flourish, than siloed in a homeschooling situation.
      • dijit 2y ago
        Kids are excellent at pattern matching, and "weird" doesn't go across racial lines, weird is the kid who's a little on the spectrum, or not emotionally mature enough their first year to deal with circumstances- and instead shuts down. It's easy to be pigeon-holed by the class, and it's self-reinforcing.
• portaouflop 2y ago
  I hated school as well but I would still disagree on almost all points with you. But I was lucky enough to go to a good public school, found many lifelong friends there, learned a ton of aside skills that help me now in my personal and professional life. I think it’s really sad that more and more people opt out of society, either in school or elsewhere. I can understand it to some extent but I think everyone will come of poorer in the end if we all sit in our separate boxes, only thinking about ourselves and how we can profit more. I’m usually optimistic about the future but this is a hella depressing trend.
  • Kubuxu 2y ago
    A lot of people don’t opt-out themselves, but the society opts them out. Be it a bully or stigma in school, not fitting in high-school or uni.
  • viraptor 2y ago
    To be fair to home schooling - a lot of it involves groups and organised activities. It's not really a separation in practice, but opting out if the default system. (There are those that separate too)
• geye1234 2y ago
  I went to grammar school (UK) in the 1990s, and also absolutely loathed it. I think it set me up horribly for life and (especially) for my career. People use the phrase "PTSD" too lightly, but I think it gave me something like it that I often feel in an office full of people, and especially during in-person meetings. Years of CBT and ERP have helped a lot, and now I'm middle-aged I think I've put the worst of it behind me. I remember that horrible feeling that both the bigger kids and the teachers were against you, and the sense of utter helplessness and despair. A few times my parents hired tutors for subjects I was struggling in, and I remember that suddenly I found myself enjoying them. I think I would have benefited greatly from being homeschooled, but of course at that time it was unheard of in the UK. I know it's not for everyone. There's no perfect answer. What's certain is that there's nothing 'normal' about sitting in a room with 30 people who are exactly the same age as you, plus one official authority figure. So school certainly 'socialized' me, but not in a good way. It wasn't entirely bad. I got a reasonably good education, and some of the teachers have left a positive impression. Overall though it was horrible.
  • philk10 2y ago
    Also Grammar school (in the 1980s), I got lucky as I got in the 'express track' and did O-levels after 4 years not 5 so I went to uni at 17. Probably a good thing as some kids were total sh*ts and 5 years of them would have been awful
  • ravenstine 2y ago
    PTSD is misapplied quite a bit these days, though CPTSD (the C stands for complex) seems to be the most appropriate clinical definition for the kind of scattered traumatic damage people experience, especially from childhood. Glad to know you've received the help that you needed and have been able to move on. I compartmentalized and put off working on my traumas for far longer than I should have. People underestimate how much a dysfunctional school environment can mess someone up even when the home environment is mostly healthy. I screwed up great relationships in large part because I still had trust issues and CPTSD triggers that I didn't even realize at the time. No joke, I'd rather have only known the neighborhood kids growing up than have thousands of kids to socialize with while having fucked up things happen to me. So what if I wouldn't experience prom night? If it's not the right environment for me, then it's not worth it.
• sakex 2y ago
  Such an accurate description of what I went through in Switzerland. Kids are mean, and I had to be mean to survive too. It stained my character in ways I am still trying to overcome more than a decade later.
• A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  Thank you. I get irrationally angry, when I hear the 'socialization' argument, precisely because of the experience you described. To be fair, it does, in a weird way, prepare you for some areas of adulthood, but I think those areas are thankfully somewhat avoidable.
  • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
    It prepares you as much as it desensitizes you to accept bad environments because that's all the "adults" can do for you.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      Interesting, if there is one thing that I have learned in my life, it is that you can pick up your stuff and leave. It is depressing that what we teach our kids is that they just have to stay in that bad situation; that there are no options.
• _Algernon_ 2y ago
  Agreed. If I ever have kids, I'm signing them up for MMA classes from the second they have to step onto school grounds.
• ravenstine 2y ago
  I'm both glad and dismayed to hear that I'm not the only one who likens public school to prison. I went to school in California, and I would say my school experience became prison-like between grades 4 and 11. In fairness, I can now look back at my child self and realize that I was delayed in terms of emotional maturity, which contributed to my social problems, but the kind of environment I was in was the wrong one for helping me overcome that delay. Any slight difference about myself, whether it be my body, or my clothes, or my interests, was a target of daily ridicule. The majority of teachers were entirely self serving and didn't give a damn, even when I was being victimized out in the open. Oh yeah, and my property was repeatedly stolen and my belongings destroyed in front of me. Having gone through all that, there is no way I'm ever putting my future children in such a system. The way I think about the socialization argument against home schooling is this: Is it better to be highly socialized but traumatized or modestly socialized by not traumatized? I think it's more valuable for children to be socialized with a smaller number of other children while being in a safe environment. Tossing children into an ocean of other children that is poorly controlled with callous teachers, creating an unsafe environment, has a rapidly diminishing returns on socialization and a greater chance of being counterproductive.
  • geye1234 2y ago
    This is a major reason (but far from the only reason) that we homeschool. Knowing what I know about the school system, about my own experience thereof, and about my kids' personalities, it would be grossly immoral for me to put them through it. The risk of long-term trauma would be too high. There is some risk of their being isolated (but very low, since they are with other kids three days a week), and a slightly higher risk of missing chunks of learning (which we aim to mitigate in the obvious ways). But ultimately I'd rather my kids have a few gaps in their knowledge than be traumatized by the school system.
    • honzabe 2y ago
      > I'd rather my kids have a few gaps in their knowledge than be traumatized by the school system I went through a normal school system (the first 8 years still during the communist regime in my country, so take that "normal" with a grain of salt), and the gaps in my knowledge are enormous, in some cases subject-wide. I know literally nothing about chemistry, except the bits you learn here and there from TV shows and such. I vaguely remember some kind of equations, but nothing stuck. Biology - everything I know I know from somewhere else, mostly from that TV show with talking blood cells [1]. Surprisingly, I had pretty good grades, but it had nothing to do with knowledge - I was able to quickly scan the textbook before an exam and somehow it was sufficient, but there was no retention, I forgot everything after the exam. I was forced to learn Russian for 4 years and I remember literally nothing, not even the alphabet. Those are mostly just anecdotes - I am sure that modern schooling can do better than rote memorization in a toxic environment. What I want to say is that motivation, a friendly environment, and fun learning are a lot more important than how well the teacher knows, say, chemistry. It is entirely possible that your kids will retain more knowledge, not less. I am only talking about elementary school, college was different - I loved it and learned a lot. [1] Il était une fois... la vie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284735/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284735/
• JJMcJ 2y ago
  The book Lord Of The Flies made a lot more sense when I realized it was a satire of British elite schools, rather than a real exploration of what cast away young people would actual do in that situation.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • endoblast 2y ago
    What six real castaway boys did in 1966: https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-flies-true-story-boys-island-william-golding-humankind-human-nature-rutger-bregman-1503204 https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-flies-true-story-boys-isl... >The boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination
• greenthrow 2y ago
  I grew up in the US and I hated every single day of school. I don't have a favorite teacher I remember fondly, I don't have friends from school, etc. I absolutely hated it. But I still am against home schooling. I still got social skills from going to public school that homeschooled kids lack. I still don't think your average parent is equipped to give their children a good education. I have people I know who have homeschooled their kids. Without exception these people are narcissists with insane views who are using it as a way to indoctrinate their children into having the same worldview that they hold. Homeschooling should be illegal. It is child abuse.
  • dijit 2y ago
    Because what I was literally forced by the state to endure, is not child abuse. Come one.
    • greenthrow 2y ago
      Yes some kids face abusive situations in public schools. But all kids are by definition facing abuse when home schooled imho.
      • dijit 2y ago
        > by definition My mum never punched me in my face, followed me around the playground trying to put dog shit in my backpack, steal my books and piss on them or make rumours about me to ensure I was ostracised by the other children. All the while the adults were helpless and continually told me to be a man- and worse, the adults leaning in on it being my problem. A true hopeless feeling. You will never know how much I can despise you for your presumption that my home-life could possibly be correlated with my school life. “by definition”. Honestly, go fuck yourself.
        • greenthrow 2y ago
          Lots of kids home lives are worse than your school life. But that's not the point I was making. You are letting your personal horrible experience define the whole discussion for you. But that is completely beside the point I was making. Yes some kids are physically abused even tortured at school, some kids are physically abused even tortured at home. You don't make policy decision based on outlier cases that are already illegal.
• otikik 2y ago
  I'm sorry you had a bad time at school. > give an appreciable reason You might not have succeeded at that. You did a very good job at denigrating school though :) Let me try to tell you my view: both homeschooling and schools have risks. A child can suffer mistreatment both at school and at home. School however offers something that homeschooling can't: options. If you have a bad teacher, you will have another 4 which are average, and 1 or 2 which are actually decent. There will be bullies, yes, but you also have opportunities to make friends. At home, all you have is a single adult. If that adult happens to be a psycho, there's no escape. I say this as someone who suffered at school. My ADHD got completely unnoticed, being of the inattentive kind. I didn't know how to relate with others, I had no friends. I would pick up a book and read in a corner during recess. I got bullied. For me school was something I "endured", not something I enjoyed. I also happen to be the elder of 4 children. My younger brothers and sister went to the same school I went to. They had different teachers, different co-students. All of them were happy at school, and they turned up just alright. Now, my parents. My mum is ok (for someone who has raised 4 people) but my dad is a self-absorbed narcissist. My brothers and sister stopped talking to him 20 years ago. He doesn't know his own grandchildren. I still talk with him, but out of pity. There's no love left. So yeah. I suffered at school. It happens. My siblings didn't. I think homeschooling with my mum would have been ok, she's decent. But homeschooling with my dad? I would be way worse than I am now. So, there. Options.
  • PaulHoule 2y ago
    Bullying is not just something that one does to another person. It's the social destruction of self that is mediated by a group: https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-Martocci/dp/1439910731 https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-Mar... Bullies couldn't do what they do if they did not have the support of the other students, teachers, administration, etc. As late as college I was harassed by criminally minded person who led a criminal gang that was not held in check until they finally smashed somebody in the face with a rock in front of many witnesses. Two people were driven to suicide. The leader has been to prison and if he got out and went straight I could forgive him, even celebrate him, because it is so hard to get out of being justice involved. I'm still angry at the college administrator who told me "my hands are tied" who many see as a hero because he really did a lot of great things for our school -- but I wonder who else was driven to suicide and I fantasize about going to his funeral and dumping over his casket. An apology from him would go a long way, I've asked for it, I never expect to get it. If you're being bullied in elementary school you don't get friends. It could be that the bullying drives away friends, or if you had friends you wouldn't get bullied, or the same deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause you not to get friends. Just being in a safe environment is a basic human right.
• mschuster91 2y ago
  > I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a functional understanding. I would not be surprised if this feeling is shared among many of my generation and social class, the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest amount of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent. The problem is, when you allow homeschooling, a non-insignificant number of children will have to endure the same, just the wardens and torturers will be their own parents. There have been more than enough cults who actually promote that parents keep their children from "outside influence", and on top of that come the pedophiles, again especially in religious circles. Even private schools suffer from such issues, again mostly religious ones, but there also have been a fair share of scandals surrounding "ordinary" esoteric schools. I would rather fight for government-run schools to have proper budgets for a high quality learning experience, adequate staff, modern curricula and teaching methods and actually sensible policies against bullying of all kinds than to allow systems to thrive that are even worse than what you went through.
• drdude 2y ago
  I agree with you. This is coming from Saudi. I don't have any friend from my school times. Bullying was the norm back in late 80's and the 90's till I am in college on '99. The real friends? the real education? started at college. School was a 12 years full of non sense useless stuff to someone's practical life and improvement (to me and many of people around me. The most I remember of these days were math and science lessons that were beneficial and my father alone was more than capable teaching me that... other than language lessons, religious teaching that were just a formality for us (we learn religion the best from home, our extended family) etc etc. At the end? We lost most of 12 years that are the best for internalizing more engineering and professional education. Yes we are capable of that at that age, I and my younger brother at the least built some robots and actual cars with suspension and steering etc although using old Lego collections (since we grew poor we couldn't afford actual tools) and that was ALL on our own at home and we didn't have internet or anything. We modified RC cars to go faster by soldering capacitors to give that boost to the motor (at the expense of battery life and potentially burning the motor) when we were in middle school. Programming you say? my love for computers and computer games? all at home too, with some help from my older cousin (that I will visit in 30 minutes, he is 67 years old now and without him I wouldn't even dream of getting a PhD in CS, and of course my professors who I revere and respect). Nearly all my useful skills, other than math and science as I mentioned), I and my brother learned on our own... at home. It all started at home. The school? was torture and a formality we had to go through or no one will hire us. I am for minimal formal schooling with specialization starting from day 1, each one can choose a MUCH shorter path and more focused on what they want to do... switching between specializations and/or profession shouldn't be like collapsing a sky scraper we have built with hay (like it is now the case). wasting people's lives, causing them trauma for whatever miss function (e.g. students being beaten for silly missed homeworks etc). This system is age old and not effective, and there are more effective ways. Most of those who changed the world were school drop outs for a reason... they focused on what really matters and connected it to reality.
• scarmig 2y ago
  The people who say "it's to make you interact with normal people!" miss a key point. In the real world, you meet a person, and if they treat you like shit, you walk away. If they physically assault you in the workplace, you can report them to HR, and there's a good chance you'll never have to see them again. In school, you get told you need to have empathy for their propensity to beat you, get subtly or not-so-subtly victim blamed, and you still have to interact with them for at least a year, and maybe years. Exit is probably the most powerful strategy to dealing with certain kinds of situations, and schools deny you that.
  • nickd2001 2y ago
    Agreed but what about the person that doesn't exactly treat you like s** but they are difficult to work with, but in order for you to achieve the thing you need at work you have to work with them daily? Then walking away isn't an option - perhaps just going to work somewhere else is not feasible. So then, a certain amount of experience of dealing with idiots at school can be useful can't it? (within reason... ;) )
• sanitycheck 2y ago
  This was my reaction upon seeing the question in the post title, too. I've chosen not to have kids (my childhood experience of other kids being one contributing factor) but if I did I would not want them to be anywhere near a UK state school.
• teeray 2y ago
  > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education. There’s so many classes that I want a refund on my wasted childhood time. Reading the “classics” in English, studying foreign language, Theology (Catholic schools), History (yes, History). I hated all these classes, didn’t learn much from them beyond what it took to pass the tests, then quickly forgot what they taught. Anything useful that would have come from those subjects I learned later, through alternate more enjoyable means (e.g. Assassin’s Creed was way more effective in teaching me the history those games covered).
  • gabruoy 2y ago
    I never read pretty much any book written before 1970, never learned a foreign language beyond a single semester of Spanish, and certainly had no Theology in a US Public school. Now as an adult, I do want to learn all those things (to some degree) and feel like I missed out on it; “If only I had a better education.” But I probably would have been more like you, uninterested and equally as dismissive of my childhood education if I were forced to learn all of those things at that age. Is it a problem with educators, families, or just the children themselves that they will grow up and realize the opportunities they’ve lost?
• kerkeslager 2y ago
  > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education. I hear your overall point, but treating this issue as a dichotomy undermines your point. Critics of homeschooling aren't claiming that schools are perfect, or that schools educate ideally. The claim is that, as poorly as our teachers are equipped to educate students, parents are, on average, worse equipped. You're insinuating here that you were not educated in school. You're making that claim in a text-based format. How did you learn to read and write? Are you making the claim that your mother taught you how to read and write, and the school had nothing to do with it? Here's the problem with what you're saying: a lot of homeschooled children don't know how to read and write. Or add, subtract, multiply, and divide. And contrary to your theory of education, memorisation is useful in learning these skills. A kid who has memorized how to do addition and subtraction can make change at a cash register, and a lot of homeschooled adults can't do that. There are outliers in both schoolchild and homeschooled child experiences. I am one myself: my mom homeschooled me for kindergarten and first grade, and did a great job, but she had the advantage that she was a schoolteacher. And maybe your experience was an outlier in that you really did learn nothing in school. But the averages, at a systemic level, are that homeschooled children are at a large disadvantage compared to children educated in a school.
• barbazoo 2y ago
  This shows how vastly different people's experiences are with their school system at their location. It's probably either extremes we hear most about.
• lbrito 2y ago
  >I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a functional understanding. Institutional childcare in general is mostly this; a necessity driven by an economic imperative. Both parents must work. School is a continuation of that logic, although as the kids get older and more independent this becomes less important.
• adamc 2y ago
  I didn't enjoy my (US) public school experience, but it gave me a lot of skills for interacting with other people, including people I disliked. Based on the people I've met who were home-schooled, they lacked a lot of those skills.
  • computerdork 2y ago
    I agree with this (as the bloggers seems to too). Yeah, dealing with all the different personalities you see at school is an important skill, as is dealing with difficult situations. Yeah, would like to think I was in general a nice kid, but had some share of being bullied, and unfortunately have also bullied another kid (neither were common in my life, but you had to learn how to handle these situations, and also make mistakes to learn from them). Yeah, this understanding of people is super useful, and for me at least, the corporate world can be just as ruthless as a school playground. Need to know how to navigate all those egos.
• Boogie_Man 2y ago
  To heavily paraphrase a short of stature comedian: Childhood and School is basically jail. You're confined with a bunch of violent sociopaths, have minimal agency over what you do everyday, spend most of your free time trying to smoke weed out of improvised pipes, and the greatest reward you can obtain is like a bag of Doritos.
• graemep 2y ago
  Also British, although i was living abroad when I started home educating (the correct term in UK law, and more accurate because the whole point is that its not HE). > It took becoming an adult to learn for myself that I enjoyed learning. My school was not learning This is why I stuck with home educating up to GCSEs. I wanted my kids to enjoy learning and they do. They have a very wide range of interests and good academic results and IMO are better prepared for A levels and university than they would have been at school (even really good schools). > find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, This is why we have so much after school stuff and breakfast clubs. Yes, it means some kids get fed in the morning, but a lot of them seem to get given junk food. > for those saying it was good for socialisation with other children IMO home education is better for socialisation. What skills do you learn from meeting the same group of people your own age in the same place everyday? My kids had more time to do things by themselves (anything from going to a shop to taking a bus to meet up with a friend). They did (between them) guides, dance, sea cadets, sailing, D & D, art classes, singing classes piano classes, drama, stage fighting and more. They had both remote (which develops a useful skill set these days) and face to face tutors at for some GCSE subjects. it would be really hard for kids tied by school hours plus home work to do as much. > the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest amount of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent. The chasing of metrics has been a disaster. My younger daughter is at sixth form college for A levels and it has deteriorated since her older sister went there. it is still good but they have become a lot more rigid and I feel they are less focused on students best interests and more on the metrics. I went to one of the best schools in the UK (consistently top 10 academically), with no bullying problems, no corporal punishment (it had abolished it in Victorian times IIRC), excellent facilities - and I still think my kids had a better education than I did
  • nickd2001 2y ago
    Interesting story and very good points :) I certainly have concerns, that much of the curriculum in school here in UK is basically pointless box-ticking (metrics as you refer to it), and a certain part of the day is just a waste of time and/or at a pace that doesn't suit brighter kids. OTOH there's some great stuff at school that'd otherwise be hard to replicate. I know people that do homeschool or private school with good reason, due to the limitations of state school. Sounds like you've done a lot to ensure your kids have friends and go to things where they meet other kids. So in your case, probably the lack of social side is less of an issue... however, isn't that quite an investment of your time? (and to some extent cost). you list a lot of things your kids go to, that must mean quite a lot of "ferrying" / "taxi-ing" around? Or are they very independent and using public transport? To me , it sound like you've done homeschooling right, but I kind of wonder whether a lot of people would be unable or not enlightened enough to do all the social side you've done.
• cbsmith 2y ago
  I hear everything you are saying, but... Now imagine that all that is true, except it's your home.
• paxiongmap 2y ago
  As another product of the British 'education' system, this is all very familiar. If you're interested in some content that really helped me understand why I hated school so completely, I recommend "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto, and "Free to Learn" by Peter Gray. Peter Gray also has a very nice blog called "Play Makes Us Human" at https://petergray.substack.com/ https://petergray.substack.com/ As a parent of a toddler, deciding on schooling options is one of the most serious decisions I'll have to make with my partner over the coming years and it terrifies me. Home schooling is a very attractive option from my perspective, but only due to lack of alternatives that offer the sort of nurturing and positive environment that I want my child to have.
• briffle 2y ago
  > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education. Funny enough, in the US, most states changed their methods of teaching (especially math) 10-20 years ago. And facebook is still filled with parents (although probably mostly grandparents) bitching about not understanding "common core math" without trying to understand it, and expressing how they learned via rote memorization and that is what we should use instead.
  • boringg 2y ago
    To be fair - the US changing their mathematics education system has been worse for the mathematics program. The kids learning math now who don't learn from outside networks will be significantly worse off in mathematics by far. Also there is no other way for people to learn mathematics then without doing the work to learn. This utopian idea that's bled into the education stream that we can teach math without significant amount of problems to practice on is kind of nuts.
• dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  >I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. >However, school, for me, was by far the single worst mandatory system I have been exposed to in my life. Hey this is more or less the universal experience world over. Be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise.
• graycat 2y ago
  In one word, yup. My solution: In class put head down and just ignore the teacher. I DID want to learn the good material (math and science) so DID that in the one hour of daily 'study hall' and when I got home. And, with this approach, in math and science did quite well in aptitude tests and achievement tests. Those test results, and NOT what the teachers said about me, got some higher-ups to send me to summer advanced math/science programs. That self-learning approach served me well in school, work, and life to the present. The plane geometry teacher was one of the worst. We had a disagreement: She thought that in her subject she was superior, a lot better than the students were (actually, not for long!), regarded the students as subordinates, and tried to intimidate us. So, I communicated with her only a few times but then was showing that I was better in the subject than she was. I.e., one reason I worked hard and DID learn well was to show up the teachers, show that they were NOT better, even in their own subject, and keep them from being nasty to me, trying to subordinate me. Since my brother wanted me to go for the football team, I did. The coach was no help at all and treated me with contempt. I was not any good at football, didn't try self-learning, but the coach was no help. As part of dumping on me, the coach gave me an old helmet, not effective, unique on the team. One day another player gave his elbow to my head, and I hit the ground maybe a little hurt. In one word, the coach was a bully. To heck with that: I quit the team.
• polski-g 2y ago
  Youth polling consistently ranks public schooling middle-high school as the literal worst time in their life. However, I still think they should do it as it gives them exposure to the bottom quartile of the population. It gives them motivation and reason to structure the rest of their life to do anything and everything to never have to interact said population group again.
• Fricken 2y ago
  I became progressively more withdrawn throughout my school years and for most of high school I was a ghost. I talked to no one and hid in the library during lunch hours, and for all the kinds of reasons that have already been mentioned here. My experience in school contrasts dramatically with my experience going through the scout movement. We had an active and healthy group. we would do 10 weekend camps a year and on those weekends I would hit the ground running when we arrived on friday evening and wouldn't stop until I was back in the van to go home on Sunday afternoon. I rose to the rank of troop leader, I won the youth of the year award, I would lead the campfires on the group weekends for 150 kids and their parents. I'm 49 and still in touch with the core group I went through the scout movement with, we're all lifelong friends. I probably would have killed myself if I didn't have Scouts.
  • giardini 2y ago
    School was OK, but Boy Scouts was great! We learned to organize into groups, to obey orders and coordinate as groups, play games, watch the Scout Masters (all adult men) discuss and decide matters and then try to do the same ourselves. I also learned how different fathers can be: some with few friends, some with many, each having different abilities, etc. All were wonderful people ready to help us learn. I was never bullied (in school or out) and I can think of only a few instances where I saw it. So I am always disappointed to see numerous claims of bullying "pile up" online whenever there is a discussion of school. One gets the impression that everyone has been bullied always and that school was/is hell. But my experience was that bullying was truly rare: rarer than snakebite, rarer than black widow spider bite, indeed, rarer than actual death! My conversations with others with whom I associate indicate similar experiences. School was fun and rarely boring.
    • dijit 2y ago
      I like your anecdote about the boy scouts being a healthy environment- that could well be true and I have no reason to think otherwise. But I think being blind to the other kids being bullied is probably a common thing, you’re likely better adjusted as an adult and can’t possibly comprehend how common or how helpless kids can be to being bullied. You can imagine then, a person like you becoming a teacher might not be looking for signs that kids are being bullied, because its rarer than death after all- and all you’d see is the built-up backlash of the bullied kid finally hitting the bully back (because, being a bullied kid fighting back for once is dramatic). This is a large part of why the the bullied kids end up being punished when finally acting out in zero-tolerance scenarios. Bullying is definitely more common than death.
• stonecharioteer 2y ago
  I was schooled in Bangalore India and I particularly loathe and revile both the school and most of my teachers. My school did nothing except make me believe I was a horrible child with no future. I believe in homeschooling but it isn't very fashionable here.
• anelson 2y ago
  Yes, 1000x this! School for me was a gladiator academy. Useful for producing gladiators I suppose but at the expense of any genuine intellectual curiosity or love of learning. Thankfully I had an informal opportunity to stay after school when the budding gladiators all went home to torment small animals or whatever it was they did, when I could sit in peace and play on the school’s Apple II. That opened my eyes to an entirely different world, which I now have the privilege of inhabiting. Some of my siblings liked school, and my parents were wise enough to make the homeschool/government school decision on a child by child basis. I’m very grateful that they had the courage to make that decision in my case against fierce opposition by all of polite society.
• Sateeshm 2y ago
  I hated school. Probably did more harm than good. I remember feeling incredibly bored most of the time.