23 ms·

School is a prison and damaging our kids

391 points by gz5 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago
Most schools are awful, and drive any vestige of curiosity out of the students. But... The best teachers I've had have been the ones who knew exactly how hard to push students to master a body of material, and were respected when they told us to suck it up. I couldn't have learned more self directed than I did by those talented taskmasters. But the other 90% of my K-12 (or dare I say K-16?) academic experience? I'm just lucky that I can test well.
- craigyk 13y ago
  IMO, for most people 1-2 really good teachers are all they need. Also, there is some value in teaching people that sometimes you just need to do what you're told... and that's coming from someone who has always been diagnosed as having "problems with authority". The article also doesn't really offer any viable alternatives for the average family. The "democratic schools" it describes sound nice, but I don't see how it can scale affordably given safety considerations. The "prison" system scales, and given how much money society seems willing to spend on schools, it's no surprise things have been pushed that way.
  - jug6ernaut 13y ago
    > IMO, for most people 1-2 really good teachers are all they need. I could not agree with you more. At least this is the exact case for me. When i was in middle school i was considered below average, below my grade level. I changed schools to a new teacher(3rd grade). It quite literally changed my world. To this day I give that teacher a huge amount of credit for the person i am today. TL;dr;, yes, 1-2 teachers can make all the difference in the world for a student.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      But wasn't a lot of money wasted on all those other years? Or are you suggesting that you need to waste that money for each classroom teacher to reach 1 or 2 a year? (And eventually everyone gets caught)
      - jug6ernaut 13y ago
        No i would not say so. Just like any other profession there are those who are better and worse. I am not saying that these other teachers did a bad job, hell a lot of them were great teachers. What i am saying is that even if they had been bad, it would not have made much of a difference as those few awesome teachers had already instilled in me what it takes to learn. I am of the opinion that if someone wants to learn, they will. But i also think it can take someone who tells you, shows you, and helps get to that point so you can know that its possible.
  - HarryHirsch 13y ago
    Also, there is some value in teaching people that sometimes you just need to do what you're told... and that's coming from someone who has always been diagnosed as having "problems with authority". That of course requires that Those In Charge have the right sense of purpose, that they know what they are teaching and why they are doing it. George Polya had some words about is, and then there is this remark in Mark's Gospel, where the people "were astonished at [Jesus'] teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes."
  - mathattack 13y ago
    The prison scales, but they are absolutely awful at what they do, and waste an incredible amount of money. I've seen some online curriculums that are promising, but that requires a parent to be at home. Some charters have some good ideas, but the charters that are scaling and getting high test scores seem to be masters of the prison model. I'm still optimistic on the charter side. Let us take the education dollars elsewhere!
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  And for me, those same teachers were the first to force me to think critically and at a much higher level than I ever thought I could. Unfortunately, standardized tests don't lend themselves to critical thinking.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  This is an excellent point but you have to consider it within the larger context. How much of children's natural enthusiasm for reading, writing, and analysis is burned out of them by other teachers? Moreover, a lot of kids aren't lucky enough to ever have an exceptional teacher of that sort.
  - asiekierka 13y ago
    Like me. 16 here, and I already feel burned out. I used to code as a hobby when I was 13-15, but nowadays, I do nothing... Sad. (Maybe I should blame myself for it, and not school, but it just feels like that's what made me unable to learn for anything other than a need for good grades... that and being naturally good at memorizing information for a short period of time)
    - protomyth 13y ago
      I know the feeling. I lived for coding, but I had one HS teacher that made me absolutely want to stay away from his computer classes. Hobbies are important, keep them even if the them changes How many hours a night are you doing homework?
      - asiekierka 13y ago
        From zero to two. I try to do as much as possible in school, on breaks and even go to school earlier in the morning so I do not lose a valuable amount of time by context switching back and forth. Hobbies... I just don't want to do them. Time feels scarce and I fear no matter what project I start, there might be a better idea in my mind (and I have a few) that would be better worth doing.
        protomyth 13y ago
        Write your ideas down, keep a journal[1], but don't let it paralyze you from doing things. Doing fun side things will make those written ideas better and often will gel into something else. 1) I use an actual paper journal. I'm 43 and the idea behind all the stuff I've written finally became obvious this year (while I was on vacation and not thinking about it). Do wish I had started on the whole journal thing earlier.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
It's not just that I could have told you this. It's that I ranted and screamed this to anyone who would listen at age 14. EDIT: That's ten years ago, folks. And, strangely enough, once I recovered some sanity, I actually did leave high school, I did a lot better for it, and now my parents basically agree with me. It's amazing how people always seem to start at the statement "self-discipline has been good for me" and somehow arrive at the conclusion "optimized regimentation is what's best for everyone!".
- craigyk 13y ago
  When you're 14 though every injustice seems gross and all the broken parts of society seem obvious to you and you don't understand why everyone else doesn't see it too. When you're 14 you're smart enough to recognize hypocrisies, but you're still not wise enough to have perspective and "pick your battles".
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    I agree. The problem is when you arrive to age 24 and much of it turns out to really, truly have been gross, broken, and stupid -- but now you're "wise" enough to know how little chance you've got of fixing any of it! EDIT: On the other hand, most other people don't seem to have the insistent inner child I have who's always asking when it's time to go play, so maybe I'm just fucked-up.
    - candybar 13y ago
      "The problem is when you arrive to age 24" Stopped reading there.
      - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        24 year-olds can also be stupid, yes. Were you just looking for an excuse for a snide remark, though, or do you actually have some N years old I can reach at which point my opinions become valid?
16s 13y ago
If the goal is to teach kids to shut up, sit down and get in line, then it works as expected.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Things which a lot of kids are in dire need to be taught of, anyway...
  - argonaut 13y ago
    Yes, but in the process of pacifying the bottom percentile, you risk pacifying kids in the upper percentile.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  You can't say that living in civilized society doesn't require that ability at times.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    I'd call that a critique of civilized society.
    - unimpressive 13y ago
      Fielding a viable military, as one example, does require some amount of discipline in your troops. Fielding a 21st century military will require even more of it, if the model predicted by the Rand company I read about in a book on Special Operations is anything to go by. (Small teams that group together to complete objectives and then disband to avoid becoming a target.)
      - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        Except that society doesn't need every single citizen in the military. Even we Israelis only need most people in the army for a few years rather than going to total war.
jsnk 13y ago
I think great change in public school system we are looking for will only come when the public finally realize who public school system largely serves, teachers, politicians, education administrators and state government bureaucrats. Needs for students and parents are met marginally just to keep them quiet enough to move along.
- newbie12 13y ago
  Another key constituency are the school builders. Schools are in constant need of construction and renovation (often because they are poorly built). It is one of the larger budget items in any school district.
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  Even when people do recognize this - and I think many do or can be easily led to that conclusion - there is still the intertia based on lack of viable and/or affordable options, plus the competing visions of the parents.
vividmind 13y ago
The obligatory Ken Robinson's TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea... http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_educatio...
- aray 13y ago
  And obligatory PG essay on schools-as-prisons: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html But the Sir Ken Robinson talks are much better. Those fundamentally changed the way I thought about education.
unimpressive 13y ago
Even if this were true, the inertia against it is so great that you'd be better off trying to negate the worst effects of public schools. Sufficiently advanced collaboration is indistinguishable from cheating. Therefore if you want to 'patch' the public school system, create a well designed network of anonymous collaboration sites that lend themselves well to private groups and avoid outright plagiarism.
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  these are always ruined by students too stupid to realize that text is searchable.
- john_b 13y ago
  "Cheating" only exists in a system where tests are treated as sacred. An educational system that minimizes or eliminates tests doesn't need to punish cheating or collaboration at all.
hosh 13y ago
Really!? Wow! I guess the journalist has read John Taylor Gatto too! (http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/)
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Why aren't journalists allowed to write anything that has ever been written before? It's possible for two people to reach the same conclusion independently (Calculus was discovered twice)
  - hosh 13y ago
    I didn't say journalists weren't allowed to write anything that has ever been written before. I do mean though that, this article is not "breaking news", and John Taylor Gatto has substantially more information about this subject than what was covered in the article. It's also too bad that the journalist did not cite Gatto.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      It wasn't presented as breaking news. Salon is not the Associated Press, but a long form journalism publication. Also, if he never read Gatto, he still could have reached the same conclusion.
      - hosh 13y ago
        Heheheh, I find your comments interesting. I am not sure why you feel a need to defend the author's honor. I bring up Gatto's work because his conclusion is more far-reaching and in-depth than what this author wrote about in his article. In any case, according to some of the other comments here, this journalist is less a journalist and more of an author who has done his own research and wrote an extensive book about it. In a way, the article promotes his book, or at least, it promotes his views. Which, if true, would make the failure to cite Gatto's book even more interesting. It's possible that he did all this in-depth research and wrote a book without having once come across Gatto. I find that unlikely though, but hey, the world's a pretty big place. Lots of strange things are possible. Speaking of "ground breaking", I've been reading something about the education system in ancient Sumer. I am not sure if they had compulsory education in Sumer, but they certainly have a sort of disciplinary-based education system that is eerily similar to our modern one. The connection is described in Gatto's book. The US compulsory education system was created and patterned off of the Hindu education system, one where a single upper-caste Brahamin can control a large classroom of lower-caste students. (The implication being, as this author has found out, the US education system is more about control and indoctrination and less about being given the knowledge and rational tools so one can be a free-thinking citizen). There is some interesting evidence that the Hindu people themselves, came out from a Mesopotamia civilization that had itself been derived from the Sumerian high civilization. If that one is true, then we would have been thrashing about with this sort of education system for 6000 years now. Has it been working?
jimiray 13y ago
Another article, just basically saying everything Maria Montessori proved years ago, without actually mentioning Montessori. Education has advanced, we just have refused to adopt it. Just ask Larry Paige or Sergey Brin. I'm really happy that I'm in a profession where I can afford to send my kids to a Montessori school.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  He did mention Montessori schools as similar, but that they don't go as far as Sudbury Valley in offering freedom and democratic control to students.
cphuntington97 13y ago
I am always astounded at how quickly and ferociously people will rush to the defense of common practice schooling models. "It worked really well for me!" "Children need to learn to shut up and do what they're told!" - as several comments here attest. I don't think this article is persuasive enough to convince most readers of the benefits of a self-directed learning environment. All I can say is that for me, I really struggled to cope with common practice schooling. I really think I would have flourished in a self-directed environment. I'm not necessarily sure it's best for everyone, but I wish adults, especially parents, would be open to the idea that their success in life happened in spite of their schooling, rather than because of it.
- ArtDev 13y ago
  My favorite reason people give for why kids should not homeschooled or alternative schooled is that it is not "the real world". As an adult, I live in "the real world". When I come to work I don't get degraded, ridiculed, talked down to, insulted, wedgeed or dumped headfirst into the garbage can. Public school is not "the real world" unless, of course, you are referring to a actual prison.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    As much as I agree with your point -- and I bet it gives people pause when you deliver it! -- I think that the reason they're giving is somewhat valid, but just worded very poorly. AIUI, what they actually mean is the social interaction aspect of things... which, coming back to your point, is still pretty twisted. However, things like forming friendships and relationships and dealing with social adversaries, while bastardized, is still real. Of course it's not like these things can't be done outside of a school setting -- it's just the most likely place for a child with little or no options for significant physical mobility.
the_watcher 13y ago
I was a "high achiever" in high school, got into the top public university in my state (top-15-20 overall depending on your rankings), then got into a top 14 law school. By all traditional metrics, school worked for me. However, I now have dropped out of law school and am doing very well professionally in a field entirely unrelated to my undergrad degree, and everything I use at work (it's number and data analysis heavy) are things I learned on my own because I was interested. I wish I'd had time to do this stuff while I was younger.
- digitalsushi 13y ago
  Is 14 a common cutoff for classifying academic institutions? Because I am interpreting this as 'the 14th best law school' and it seems that I shouldn't just assume this. It's an odd manner of delimiting a set and I am curious if there is some sort of legacy/esoteric set that I am oblivious to. Thanks.
  - cmsmith 13y ago
    It appears to be specific to law schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States#Schools_that_rank_in_the_top_14_.28aka_.22T14.22.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_Unit...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    Because lists differ, I have often referred to my having graduated from "one of the forty top-twenty law schools." The other reply just posted at this level appears to correctly explain why the person to whom you are replying chose "top 14," but anyway I don't always take strictly rank-ordered lists of higher education institutions very seriously. Rankings are debatable.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      Agreed. It's just the standard top-X list for law schools. The point of referencing it wasn't to give them credibility.
gkoberger 13y ago
One of pg's best articles talks about this: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html The relevant part starts with "Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society.", however the whole thing is a great read.
newbie12 13y ago
There is a deliberate effort in academia to downplay, or in the case of this piece, distort and even place blame on the Protestant Christian educational movements of early America. The Great Awakenings that spurred the creation of U.S. colleges and universal public education were fueled by a moral tradition and were an enormous success. That tradition has nothing to do with todays failing public schools. The author also fails to note that the current American home school movement has explicitly Christian roots.
- wyclif 13y ago
  I noticed that immediately, too. Gray gets an "F" from me on Church history. I realise he's a psychology professor, but he really should have done his homework and read something that wasn't revisionist scholarship. His remarks on the Protestant Reformation are pretty weak gruel, because the presenting cause of the Reformation was to challenge the authoritarian Italo-Papal hierarchy in Western Europe. The Reformation was precisely about questioning authority. If Martin Luther were to read Gray's remarks today, I think he'd find them patently ridiculous.
  - pekk 13y ago
    Interestingly, anybody were to read Martin Luther's "The Jews and Their Lies" today they would dismiss him as an incredibly hateful, racist crank. Maybe you are being over-sensitive on behalf of Christendom here, as a worldly institution it should not be above criticism.
    - wyclif 13y ago
      Perhaps you should try reading the article and my comment for context, because it's apparent you didn't understand them. I'm saying that Gray is demonstrably wrong about authoritarianism wrt the Reformation, because the Church was not above criticism. The article, and my comment, was on-topic in that regard.
  - charlieflowers 13y ago
    I definitely noted that he made an awfully long string of assertions to not have presented any kind of backing evidence. He presented an entire history of education ... but it could just as easily be a revisionist version as a fact-based one. It strikes me much more as a soapbox than a factual summary.
tekalon 13y ago
I'm current attend Western Governors University, a self motivated/paced program. The most difficulty I've had is learning how to learn (never learned in school). I'm only now (after 10 years from graduating from high school) how to teach myself something new. I'm figuring out what study method works best for me. Now I was in honors all through public so me saying only now I'm having to learn how to learn is troubling. For my future children, I do plan on homeschooling with a backup plan of charter schools that encourage self directed learning, we'll have to see how that goes. My husband agrees also that public and private schools discouraged creativity. Breaking the habits that schools taught us (conformity, obedience, accepting of authority) is hard to break
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Too few people know about WGU. Very low-cost. Non-profit. Not scammy like UoP. I wish they had a wider range of programs. In a few years, lots of university education will look a lot like WGU.
  - tekalon 13y ago
    Many colleges/universities are starting to have pilot programs that have similar themes like WGU (competency based, self paced, online, etc). The biggest thing that some have mentioned about online that is constantly being disproved that online degrees are low value. Some are yes, I won't deny there are some that are only worth the paper they are printed on. That being said, WGU (and similar programs) not only offer accredited degrees but also help give experience. In the case of IT degrees, certificates are part of the program that help many get a step up and good for entry level. Long term value of certificates can be argued but in my opinion, they are worth it for those new to the field or wanting an extra step up. WGU I've also had my current employer (who is doing tuition reimbursement) have no issue with WGU as being worth more or less than any other accredited university.
tokenadult 13y ago
Ah, yes, Peter Gray is the author of the article submitted here (which I think was submitted once or twice before, with no comments). I have read part of his recently published book, in which he extends his argument. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,[1] and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the new members from the last year or two, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues. On my part, I chose the trade-offs of time, energy, and expense to homeschool our children so that they would be in a position to learn in freedom[2] and make a lot of decisions about their own education. So far the one child of ours who has grown up to live independently in the outside world (also an occasional participant here) is glad that he had that kind of education. He wrote to me for Father's Day, saying, "That has made it very easy for me to step into a leadership position and feel very comfortable in positions of responsibility." Some people survive the prison environment of school and go on to great things.[3] That doesn't mean that we have to organize schools as we now do. We should be sensitive to opportunities to organize schools in ways that promote young people having responsibility and freedom to grow while they are still minors. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 [2] http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ [3] http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html
- pekk 13y ago
  This is not aimed at you, but at your wording. Controlling parents keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities, should take care not to be deluded that what they are offering their children is 'freedom'.
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    Well, what you write certainly isn't aimed at me, because I don't do any of "keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities" in my culturally diverse, community-involved, intellectually curious homeschooling family. Most homeschooling families I know, and I know hundreds all around the United States, resemble my open and free family life more than they resemble your caricature of some unknown anecdote you've encountered.
jstalin 13y ago
As a former member of a board of education in a major city, I learned a few things: 1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for education. Everyone is different (duh); 2. Centralization of primary and secondary education institutions is a very bad thing (think fewer and fewer large school districts); 3. Teachers' Unions are possibly the single biggest barrier to innovation; 4. There is no simple, easy answer to improving education. Unfortunately, I don't have a prescription for fixing things, but I'm sure that centralizing both administrative bureaucracy and delivery standards is not it.
- rwmj 13y ago
  1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for education. Everyone is different (duh) Why is that? All able-bodied humans have brains, mouths, eyes, arms etc all of which work in much the same way. If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. For people who have specific disabilities, we should make adjustments, but I don't understand why a single way of teaching would not work for most people. Leaving aside whether schools are the best way of teaching.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. Then why do the rich buy custom-tailored clothes?
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      Because they can pay the substantial premium involved. Collectively, our interest in having as many people as possible moderately well-educated rather than just having a few who are outstandingly well-educated imposes constraints.
      - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
bluedino 13y ago
>> without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. There isn't much debate in reading/writing/arithmetic. >> It’s no wonder that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison), or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein). We're using a genius and one of the most prolific inventors America ever saw to rationalize the idea that school is bad for kids? Not to mention they were in school so long ago. >> even the “best students” (maybe especially them) often report that they are “burned out” by the schooling process. I'd imagine being the best is quite a lot of work. I'd be burned out too.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  There is a lot of debate in writing. Why is it taught exclusively in English classes? Why does academic writing focus mainly on literature until college, and even then, English is the equivalent as a writing major? PG wrote about this once [1], but it makes no sense. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Yeah, I got through my schooling long, long ago and that one is still a mystery to me. I can tell you why there's a debate, though: different contexts have radically different standards for what constitutes good writing. If I attempted to publish some of the stuff I've written or seen written in research literature as a prose nonfiction article, I would be rightfully crucified for crimes against communication. And yet, attempt to write clear, explanatory prose in a research context, and you will be called a sloppy amateur. /grumble /grumble
  - chongli 13y ago
    There is a lot of debate in writing. And in reading. Literary criticism is a big deal! And in math, for that matter. There is a great deal of math research taking place. To suggest that it's all settled and there's no room for debate is pretty silly of the GP.
- 13y ago
chollida1 13y ago
This is a big reason why my wife and I just dropped 5 figures to send our oldest daughter to a Montessori school instead of public school. The larger time outdoors and less strict teacher lecturing to students sitting in desks were the two biggest drivers of the decision.
- jimiray 13y ago
  Have you looked for any public Montessori schools? We have 3 Montessori charter schools in Denver.
jessaustin 13y ago
Many of the people on HN would have done well in a wide variety of different learning environments. Think Abe Lincoln. Most of the others on HN would have done well in a specific subset of learning environments that doesn't happen to include what the USA public education system provides.
- ArtDev 13y ago
  I am a great example. I was raised internationally and born dyslexic. I had a very hard time in school socially. I didn't learn to read till I was ten. Luckily my parents were very dedicated. Homeschooling, international school and a number of different hippie schools (Waldolf & Quaker Friends) saved me. I even went to a hippie college that didn't have grades (The Evergreen State College). The result: I taught myself design and programming and now work at Intel. I love learning. I want my kids to always love learning as much as I do. That is why they are not going to public school either.
zwieback 13y ago
This article is so black and white and elitist to add practically no value to the public school debate. I have two middle schoolers in an affluent public school district and our experience is very different. There are many motivated teachers constantly tweaking their approach to keep students engaged. If anything, I'd want more structure in our schools. The much bigger issue is that alternative schooling approaches work only with a high degree of involvement from parents and the community. Do we really thing "Sudbury Valley" schools would work in inner cities or the deep South? I rather think parents are glad to have someone keep their kids out of trouble while they work overtime to scrape by. Also, self-motivated learning gets you only so far. Without some external pressure I don't think most kids would decide to study calculus or statistics or other dry but important topics.
- mattm 13y ago
  And why is calculus or statistics important. My wife hated math and even would get 0 on some tests and yet she is a very successful nurse today. Math is not important at all for the vast majority of adults today. Why should children be forced to study it? (I say this as someone who did enjoy math and did very well in it)
  - notahacker 13y ago
    I hated maths and wound up with an Economics major and a job where an above average grasp of stats is greatly beneficial. Go figure. I suspect the proportion of adults for whom some form of mathematics assumes at least some basic importance in adulthood vastly exceeds the proportion of kids that would voluntarily turn off MTV to do arithmetic puzzles. Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap. Sure, this doesn't apply to the average Hacker News reading autodidact, but one of the first things you learn in statistics is not to make judgements based on outliers.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap. I think the second statement applies perfectly well to most adults. Our whole system is based on having people maximally specialize into their element of greatest comparative advantage, to the exclusion of most of what we regard as maturity, wisdom, and humanity.
hawkharris 13y ago
I've heard this argument against compulsory education & standardized testing many times, and I'm still not convinced. Look at the countries ranked highest in education, according to the 2012 Pearson study that is often cited by news networks. [0] The top 30 nations have widely different attitudes toward compulsory education & testing. Some embrace it much more strongly the United States. Others deemphasize it. For example, juxtapose Finland and Korea. Before we can categorically dismiss compulsory education & standardized testing, we have to acknowledge that it sometimes produces amazing outcomes — some of the world's best. Some may argue that the rankings focus on standardized testing, which is an inadequate measure of what students know and what they can do. But Pearson's study and similar studies didn't just measure tests; they considered a "wide range of social and economic indicators." In other words, compulsory schooling & testing isn't always the devil, and I don't think there's any magic bullet for improving the U.S. education system. Analyzing the United States' approach to education alongside the approaches of other nations in the world rankings, it's clear that there are other factors at play, which may account for U.S. students' poor performance.
- danielweber 13y ago
  What compulsory education does is put kids who don't want to be in school with kids who do want to be there. And the former don't just sit there quietly. They take it out on the latter. High school was awesome the past two years, once all the kids who wanted to drop out did so.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    The saddest part is that some of the former might be perfectly happy apprenticing for a trade instead -- a chance which has really been destroyed in the last few decades in some areas. The real issue is that we're trying to forcibly prevent delinquent members of society, just like you force small children to eat their vegetables and go to bed -- because as an adult you have the foresight and ability to delay gratification that they lack -- but it doesn't always work. Where do you draw the line? When do you give up on kids and say "fine, screw it, don't go to school, go eat candy and smoke pot behind the 7-11"? There are the kids who, if you force them to go to school at 14 when they don't feel like it, will grow up and realize that playing videogames for 12 hours a day would have been a bad life decision. Then there are the other 14-year-olds who will fight it until they can drop out and become a chronic plague on the rest of society, no matter what sort or form of education you offered them. The problem is that no one wants to admit the politically incorrect truth that there will always be some children left behind.
AznHisoka 13y ago
As an aside, I find it disgusting that public schools are penalizing students who bring their own lunches because it means less subsidization for them when it comes to allocating the budget.
- aasarava 13y ago
  Where is this happening and what is the penalty?
dccoolgai 13y ago
>"The idea that schools might be places for nurturing critical thought, creativity, self-initiative or ability to learn on one’s own — the kinds of skills most needed for success in today’s economy — was the furthest thing from their minds. To them, willfulness was sinfulness, to be drilled or beaten out of children, not encouraged." ... Perhaps that's because you can teach discipline, but you can't teach creativity. You need both to be really successful, but to be at least moderately successful, you need at least discipline... No matter what you do, you can't take creativity away from the kids who are really creative...they will be off making things and designing things and writing things and painting things, because that's what they do... you can't stop them, even if you try. If you teach discipline, you will end up with disciplined creatives and disciplined non-creatives...I can tell you as a person who was kind of a dumbass when I was at school (although a creative dumbass), that I got much more benefit from learning what little discipline they managed to impart than some fruitbat curriculum that tried to "encourage me to be creative"...which I probably would have responded to by intentionally being less creative. ...sometimes the people who designed the things around us are more clever than we give them credit for being...
vacri 13y ago
It’s no wonder that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison), or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein) Hrm, I am using the critical thinking skills that I developed in late high school and university, in a teach-and-test environment, to determine that this is both using weasel words ('many') and is an 'appeal to authority' fallacy. This is an argument where you very much need to present the numbers. Anything else is just an emotive ploy using cherry-picked data points.
atlantic 13y ago
I don't think the only alternative to the current system is home schooling. There are schools in which learning is less curricular and more curiosity-driven, and the pupils go on to be very successful in higher education. In Belgium I came across a schooling system called Decroly, and in Germany the Waldorf schools.
- eriksank 13y ago
  Home schooling is only a fall-back position. As a parent, I don't mind hiring teachers for particular purposes. But let it be clear that I am the "school". I am the employer. It is my money and these are my kids.
debacle 13y ago
The current reality, I think, that everyone is ignoring is that time spent in school and money spent per child are not solving the problem. Teachers, yes, parental involvement is a huge factor, however it should be less of a factor, I think, than you allow it to be. Parents, yes, teachers need to be properly assessed for results, however if a standardized test isn't the best way to gauge your child's ability, why do you think it's the best way to gauge your child's teacher's ability. The reality is that we are spending insane amounts of money on students - sometimes upwards of 20 thousand dollars per student - and the outcome of the education system is not what we expect it to be. This is a societal issue, and part of what I would call America's ignorance - there is an upper limit on how much money you can throw at a problem before they money you threw at the problem attracts the wrong kind of actors and makes the problem worse. I'm not a libertarian, but I like many of the libertarian ideas surrounding education. I also know what "free market" means in my country. I don't like our healthcare situation, and that's all I can picture when I imagine "free market" education. Teachers unions currently have a regulatory capture on school boards across the country in the US, which is a big problem. School boards, in my experience, are dispassionate, dramatic, and exploitative of residents. There are far too many administrators in schools, and far too many passionate teachers, but how can you be passionate about your job when you have so many eyes on your back, so many hoops to jump through, and so many layers of bureaucracy to report to. Education is not an easy problem because it has turned into a self-interested Mexican standoff, with people on all sides unwilling to give an inch, and no one wants to act rationally until it is too late.
- specialist 13y ago
  time spent in school and money spent per child are not solving the problem. Agreed. Finland v USA and comparative achievement. Etc. The only thing that'll help improve education in the USA is addressing poverty and inequity. Here's a recent first hand account: "I taught at the worst school in Texas" http://www.salon.com/2013/08/25/i_taught_at_the_worst_school_in_texas/ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/25/i_taught_at_the_worst_school... You can guess the story, but TL;DR: Teachers and schools cannot mitigate all the bad stuff happening to their students. Back to the money. While more likely won't help, I would note the giant sucking sound of our tax dollars being diverted to cronies, via standardized tests, text books, charter schools, whatever.
vacri 13y ago
I should also mention that in early high school (grade 7 and 8), I went to a 'community school', where the kids had the freedom to learn at their own pace, and largely what they wanted to learn. Maths and art were self-driven, with teacher direction available. There was cool stuff like classes on massage (very popular!) or aerobics, and a few other things. School was fun, and the teachers were nice... but this being said, I was one of the group of people (~10% of that year level? fuzzy memory) to choose to leave the school (no parental pressure) and go to a regular high school because "I think I am not learning enough". That was my own, personal motivation, not driven by anything external. And I was a kid who would come home and read the encyclopaedia for fun, cover to cover.
benaiah 13y ago
I think one of the most important takeaways from this article is that you can fix this problem, for your own family, now. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 US states and in a number of other countries [1] - Gray mentions it in the article as an alternative. It works, and it's not as impossible as you likely think. Historically, homeschooling is probably the most common form of education - the modern style of compulsory, state-run education traces back to the Prussian education system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anecdotally, I can attest to its strength: I'm a second-generation homeschooled student, currently pursuing a BS in Computer Science. I graduated with a 3.95 GPA, got a 96th percentile SAT score, and made it to the top level (Finalist) of the National Merit Scholarship program. I'm using a scholarship I got because of that to go through school. Without homeschooling, I doubt I would have got into computers and programming. I had the freedom and the time to pursue what I wanted to do - it didn't feel like school, because it wasn't, but it was just as, perhaps more, important than my standard academics. I started teaching myself programming when I was 12, essentially on my own. I started by just creating games, but eventually got bored of that and moved into programming more general-purpose stuff. I basically taught myself, with oversight to make sure I was actually doing it, through the middle school - high school level. The oldest of my brothers will also be graduating soon. He's totally different from me - loves the outdoors and wants to go into smoke-jumping. He dislikes academics, book-learning, and the technical side of computers, for the most part. Certainly doesn't pursue those things for fun. He was 86th percentile on his SATs. We were both (along with our six other younger siblings) taught by our mom, who has very little education beyond a high school diploma (don't get me wrong - she's very smart, just not academically well-credentialed). She taught us alone, while living in a remote part of a remote state. Our social interaction was almost entirely in the church or the occasional homeschooling group. I'm a bit introverted, but my brother is an extrovert, and as socially well-adjusted as they come. Academically, we're both well prepared for life. I know anecdotes aren't data, but I'm simply trying to make the point that it is reasonable and effective to teach your children at home. It doesn't take a college degree, teacher training, or a state program (our homeschool was entirely private). It takes love and hard work - but it provides a safe environment, cultures a love of learning, and gives academic excellence: all tasks that the public schools have proven themselves incapable of in most cases. [1]: For more info on the legality of homeschooling, see http://hslda.com http://hslda.com
totalforge 13y ago
When the nations' school system was founded, it had a goal, which was, and is, to product a compliant work force for industry.
rumcajz 13y ago
The interesting thing is that eduacation by play is not a novel idea. It dates back at least to Comenius and was re-iterated over and over again since. Yet, after almost four centuries it's still not widely implemented. One gets a feeling that there are some strong socio-economic forces acting against it.
bryan11 13y ago
It's interesting that colleges actively recruit homeschool graduates because they are more likely to succeed. They tend to be more able to learn and study independently. They also tend to be better at working with diverse groups of people.
SquareWave 13y ago
I guess they didn't teach you about hyperbole from whatever prison you were in.
quadlock 13y ago
The http://threeriversvillageschool.org/ http://threeriversvillageschool.org/ is based upon these principles. A Free(not as in beer) school that is now in it's first few days of classes that got help starting with successful crowdfunding campaign and a lot of hard work by dedicated smart people.
graycat 13y ago
Here was my solution in grades 1-12: Too soon in the early grades, get dumped on by the teachers, just give up, learn enough just without really trying, and depend on social promotion. When get to the good stuff, math and science in grades 9-12, just sleep in class, ignore the teachers, refuse to submit or admit to doing any homework, have utter contempt for the teachers, study the text largely independently, be one of the best students in the school on the state aptitude and achievement tests, end up with Ivy League SAT scores. In college, do much the same, write a math honors paper, and get good GRE scores. At work find a good problem and on an airplane ride get an intuitive solution. Then back in school, in graduate school, use material in a great course in the first year to make good math out of the intuitive solution, write some illustrative software, submit the work as the Ph.D. dissertation, pass an oral defense, graduate, and be done with formal education. So, do something like in the OP but within the formal system, with a lot of sleeping in class and ignoring that system. There were some great times! (1) In eighth grade general science, the teacher was explaining partial vacuums and applying those to the operation of a traditional farm house lift pump. I glanced at his diagram and put my head down to sleep. He decided to call on me to explain the pump; yup, looked like he was trying to stick me for sleeping in class! So, I just closed my eyes, imagined the pump diagram, and went through the whole pump cycle in excessive detail, with each pressure difference and each valve opening and closing, and he never bothered me again! (2) In plane geometry, I was totally in love with the subject and ate the exercises like popcorn by the hand full. There were some more difficult supplementary exercises in the back of the book, and one of these I didn't get on Friday afternoon so continued and finally got it Sunday evening. I worked 100% of the non-trivial exercises. On Monday in class, the teacher worked an easy exercise with the same figure, and for the first and last time I raised my hand and said that there was an exercise in the back with the same figure. About 20 minutes later the teacher was loudly exhorting the class "Think, class, think! Think about the given ...." Since I didn't want to be accused of ruining the whole class, I raised my hand and started "Why don't we ...", and the teacher screamed "You knew how to do it all along." Of COURSE I knew how to do it; no way would I have asked otherwise. Besides, how'd I know that she wasn't also doing all the exercises? (3) A question on the state test was how to inscribe a square in a semi-circle. I thought, construct a square, circumscribe the circle, and find the crucial length in the given figure by constructing a fourth proportional, and after school wanted to check my solution so started and she said about my square "You can't do that". As I later learned, I'd shown her 'similitude', my reinvention of an advanced technique. Of course the schools are from mostly useless down to really destructive, but, still, it's possible, especially if ignore the teachers and sleep in class, to learn fairly well anyway. Besides, especially here on HN, nearly all of the US software industry depends on self-learning. Yes, in time there will be some good groups for support and guidance for home schooling with, often, some occasional small classes by really well qualified teachers. Then the public K-12 system will be regarded as the cheap, low grade, bottom level, last hope alternative for disadvantaged children and be much less well funded than now because nearly all the good families will be using private alternatives and not care about the public system. Yes, the current public system is a disaster for education and the children, but, you have to remember, it's really expensive!
socrates1998 13y ago
As a former teacher of ten years, I completely agree that school is a waste of time, money and resources. School is a baby sitting service that doubles as an "education". The whole system is flawed. No one wants to be there. The kids hate it, the teachers can love the job, but usually hate the grind, and the administrators are there to stay out of the classroom and not get blamed for anything. Kids go to school so parents can go to work. That is the system. If there is no school, what happens to the kids? Most adults prefer working to being around their kids all day, just ask a home schooling mom with multiple kids. She stays home not because it is easy, but because it is good for the kids. The author of the article completely misses the issue. Kids don't get the best resources in our system. They get bare minimum. He recommends some special kind of school and way of learning. But, this won't happen because it would require re-training, re-designing, and other costs that people just don't want to spend on other people's kids.
juanre 13y ago
"The biggest, most enduring lesson of our system of schooling is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible." Indeed. The antidote for my 13 and 15 years old boys are being Udacity courses. I encourage them to study for school enough to get by, and to spend as much time as possible enjoying what they want to learn online. Udacity's lack of fixed schedules is perfect for them, and the experience is one of challenge and joy.
jheriko 13y ago
"...where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces" wtf? which culture have you been living in recently? most people don't work in your workplace, they work in a factory, department store, supermarket, engineering shop, building site etc. and their freedom is suitably restricted i assure you...
rnernento 13y ago
Prison is a prison and damaging our kids...
hrjet 13y ago
I liked the approach mentioned here: http://beyondschools2.blogspot.in/2013/05/know-think-do.html http://beyondschools2.blogspot.in/2013/05/know-think-do.html In a nutshell, the idea is to teach basic principles within the structure of a school and then let the pupil explore the higher grade subjects by themselves, with the intermittent guidance of a teacher.
anuraj 13y ago
No doubt. But it is the price we pay for our packed lives where we have little time to instruct or even emotionally connect with our kids. So we give it out to the schools to do all the great work - of making schmucks out of potential da Vincis.
rodolphoarruda 13y ago
Along with that school mentioned in the article, the Escola da Ponte[1] in Portugal is also a good example of non-traditional education which lead to great results. [1] http://www.escoladaponte.pt/ponte/projeto http://www.escoladaponte.pt/ponte/projeto ; content in Portuguese, you may need to use a translator.
tbirdz 13y ago
Some of the points about children learning naturally by themselves remind me somewhat of Rousseau's "Emile, or On Education" However, I don't know if anyone had been able to actually pull this off in real life. I think one downside could be for things that you have to learn to function well in society but have no natural interest in. If you are left alone to learn for yourself, then you'll learn about things you want to learn.

391 points by gz5 13y ago

Most schools are awful, and drive any vestige of curiosity out of the students. But... The best teachers I've had have been the ones who knew exactly how hard to push students to master a body of material, and were respected when they told us to suck it up. I couldn't have learned more self directed than I did by those talented taskmasters. But the other 90% of my K-12 (or dare I say K-16?) academic experience? I'm just lucky that I can test well.

craigyk 13y ago
IMO, for most people 1-2 really good teachers are all they need. Also, there is some value in teaching people that sometimes you just need to do what you're told... and that's coming from someone who has always been diagnosed as having "problems with authority". The article also doesn't really offer any viable alternatives for the average family. The "democratic schools" it describes sound nice, but I don't see how it can scale affordably given safety considerations. The "prison" system scales, and given how much money society seems willing to spend on schools, it's no surprise things have been pushed that way.
- jug6ernaut 13y ago
  > IMO, for most people 1-2 really good teachers are all they need. I could not agree with you more. At least this is the exact case for me. When i was in middle school i was considered below average, below my grade level. I changed schools to a new teacher(3rd grade). It quite literally changed my world. To this day I give that teacher a huge amount of credit for the person i am today. TL;dr;, yes, 1-2 teachers can make all the difference in the world for a student.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    But wasn't a lot of money wasted on all those other years? Or are you suggesting that you need to waste that money for each classroom teacher to reach 1 or 2 a year? (And eventually everyone gets caught)
    - jug6ernaut 13y ago
      No i would not say so. Just like any other profession there are those who are better and worse. I am not saying that these other teachers did a bad job, hell a lot of them were great teachers. What i am saying is that even if they had been bad, it would not have made much of a difference as those few awesome teachers had already instilled in me what it takes to learn. I am of the opinion that if someone wants to learn, they will. But i also think it can take someone who tells you, shows you, and helps get to that point so you can know that its possible.
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  Also, there is some value in teaching people that sometimes you just need to do what you're told... and that's coming from someone who has always been diagnosed as having "problems with authority". That of course requires that Those In Charge have the right sense of purpose, that they know what they are teaching and why they are doing it. George Polya had some words about is, and then there is this remark in Mark's Gospel, where the people "were astonished at [Jesus'] teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes."
- mathattack 13y ago
  The prison scales, but they are absolutely awful at what they do, and waste an incredible amount of money. I've seen some online curriculums that are promising, but that requires a parent to be at home. Some charters have some good ideas, but the charters that are scaling and getting high test scores seem to be masters of the prison model. I'm still optimistic on the charter side. Let us take the education dollars elsewhere!
RougeFemme 13y ago
And for me, those same teachers were the first to force me to think critically and at a much higher level than I ever thought I could. Unfortunately, standardized tests don't lend themselves to critical thinking.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
This is an excellent point but you have to consider it within the larger context. How much of children's natural enthusiasm for reading, writing, and analysis is burned out of them by other teachers? Moreover, a lot of kids aren't lucky enough to ever have an exceptional teacher of that sort.
- asiekierka 13y ago
  Like me. 16 here, and I already feel burned out. I used to code as a hobby when I was 13-15, but nowadays, I do nothing... Sad. (Maybe I should blame myself for it, and not school, but it just feels like that's what made me unable to learn for anything other than a need for good grades... that and being naturally good at memorizing information for a short period of time)
  - protomyth 13y ago
    I know the feeling. I lived for coding, but I had one HS teacher that made me absolutely want to stay away from his computer classes. Hobbies are important, keep them even if the them changes How many hours a night are you doing homework?
    - asiekierka 13y ago
      From zero to two. I try to do as much as possible in school, on breaks and even go to school earlier in the morning so I do not lose a valuable amount of time by context switching back and forth. Hobbies... I just don't want to do them. Time feels scarce and I fear no matter what project I start, there might be a better idea in my mind (and I have a few) that would be better worth doing.
      - protomyth 13y ago
        Write your ideas down, keep a journal[1], but don't let it paralyze you from doing things. Doing fun side things will make those written ideas better and often will gel into something else. 1) I use an actual paper journal. I'm 43 and the idea behind all the stuff I've written finally became obvious this year (while I was on vacation and not thinking about it). Do wish I had started on the whole journal thing earlier.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

It's not just that I could have told you this. It's that I ranted and screamed this to anyone who would listen at age 14. EDIT: That's ten years ago, folks. And, strangely enough, once I recovered some sanity, I actually did leave high school, I did a lot better for it, and now my parents basically agree with me. It's amazing how people always seem to start at the statement "self-discipline has been good for me" and somehow arrive at the conclusion "optimized regimentation is what's best for everyone!".

craigyk 13y ago
When you're 14 though every injustice seems gross and all the broken parts of society seem obvious to you and you don't understand why everyone else doesn't see it too. When you're 14 you're smart enough to recognize hypocrisies, but you're still not wise enough to have perspective and "pick your battles".
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  I agree. The problem is when you arrive to age 24 and much of it turns out to really, truly have been gross, broken, and stupid -- but now you're "wise" enough to know how little chance you've got of fixing any of it! EDIT: On the other hand, most other people don't seem to have the insistent inner child I have who's always asking when it's time to go play, so maybe I'm just fucked-up.
  - candybar 13y ago
    "The problem is when you arrive to age 24" Stopped reading there.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      24 year-olds can also be stupid, yes. Were you just looking for an excuse for a snide remark, though, or do you actually have some N years old I can reach at which point my opinions become valid?

16s 13y ago

If the goal is to teach kids to shut up, sit down and get in line, then it works as expected.

coldtea 13y ago
Things which a lot of kids are in dire need to be taught of, anyway...
- argonaut 13y ago
  Yes, but in the process of pacifying the bottom percentile, you risk pacifying kids in the upper percentile.
sliverstorm 13y ago
You can't say that living in civilized society doesn't require that ability at times.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  I'd call that a critique of civilized society.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    Fielding a viable military, as one example, does require some amount of discipline in your troops. Fielding a 21st century military will require even more of it, if the model predicted by the Rand company I read about in a book on Special Operations is anything to go by. (Small teams that group together to complete objectives and then disband to avoid becoming a target.)
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Except that society doesn't need every single citizen in the military. Even we Israelis only need most people in the army for a few years rather than going to total war.

jsnk 13y ago

I think great change in public school system we are looking for will only come when the public finally realize who public school system largely serves, teachers, politicians, education administrators and state government bureaucrats. Needs for students and parents are met marginally just to keep them quiet enough to move along.

newbie12 13y ago
Another key constituency are the school builders. Schools are in constant need of construction and renovation (often because they are poorly built). It is one of the larger budget items in any school district.
RougeFemme 13y ago
Even when people do recognize this - and I think many do or can be easily led to that conclusion - there is still the intertia based on lack of viable and/or affordable options, plus the competing visions of the parents.

vividmind 13y ago

The obligatory Ken Robinson's TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea... http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_educatio...

aray 13y ago
And obligatory PG essay on schools-as-prisons: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html But the Sir Ken Robinson talks are much better. Those fundamentally changed the way I thought about education.

unimpressive 13y ago

Even if this were true, the inertia against it is so great that you'd be better off trying to negate the worst effects of public schools. Sufficiently advanced collaboration is indistinguishable from cheating. Therefore if you want to 'patch' the public school system, create a well designed network of anonymous collaboration sites that lend themselves well to private groups and avoid outright plagiarism.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago
these are always ruined by students too stupid to realize that text is searchable.
john_b 13y ago
"Cheating" only exists in a system where tests are treated as sacred. An educational system that minimizes or eliminates tests doesn't need to punish cheating or collaboration at all.

hosh 13y ago

Really!? Wow! I guess the journalist has read John Taylor Gatto too! (http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/)

the_watcher 13y ago
Why aren't journalists allowed to write anything that has ever been written before? It's possible for two people to reach the same conclusion independently (Calculus was discovered twice)
- hosh 13y ago
  I didn't say journalists weren't allowed to write anything that has ever been written before. I do mean though that, this article is not "breaking news", and John Taylor Gatto has substantially more information about this subject than what was covered in the article. It's also too bad that the journalist did not cite Gatto.
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    It wasn't presented as breaking news. Salon is not the Associated Press, but a long form journalism publication. Also, if he never read Gatto, he still could have reached the same conclusion.
    - hosh 13y ago
      Heheheh, I find your comments interesting. I am not sure why you feel a need to defend the author's honor. I bring up Gatto's work because his conclusion is more far-reaching and in-depth than what this author wrote about in his article. In any case, according to some of the other comments here, this journalist is less a journalist and more of an author who has done his own research and wrote an extensive book about it. In a way, the article promotes his book, or at least, it promotes his views. Which, if true, would make the failure to cite Gatto's book even more interesting. It's possible that he did all this in-depth research and wrote a book without having once come across Gatto. I find that unlikely though, but hey, the world's a pretty big place. Lots of strange things are possible. Speaking of "ground breaking", I've been reading something about the education system in ancient Sumer. I am not sure if they had compulsory education in Sumer, but they certainly have a sort of disciplinary-based education system that is eerily similar to our modern one. The connection is described in Gatto's book. The US compulsory education system was created and patterned off of the Hindu education system, one where a single upper-caste Brahamin can control a large classroom of lower-caste students. (The implication being, as this author has found out, the US education system is more about control and indoctrination and less about being given the knowledge and rational tools so one can be a free-thinking citizen). There is some interesting evidence that the Hindu people themselves, came out from a Mesopotamia civilization that had itself been derived from the Sumerian high civilization. If that one is true, then we would have been thrashing about with this sort of education system for 6000 years now. Has it been working?

jimiray 13y ago

Another article, just basically saying everything Maria Montessori proved years ago, without actually mentioning Montessori. Education has advanced, we just have refused to adopt it. Just ask Larry Paige or Sergey Brin. I'm really happy that I'm in a profession where I can afford to send my kids to a Montessori school.

the_watcher 13y ago
He did mention Montessori schools as similar, but that they don't go as far as Sudbury Valley in offering freedom and democratic control to students.

cphuntington97 13y ago

I am always astounded at how quickly and ferociously people will rush to the defense of common practice schooling models. "It worked really well for me!" "Children need to learn to shut up and do what they're told!" - as several comments here attest. I don't think this article is persuasive enough to convince most readers of the benefits of a self-directed learning environment. All I can say is that for me, I really struggled to cope with common practice schooling. I really think I would have flourished in a self-directed environment. I'm not necessarily sure it's best for everyone, but I wish adults, especially parents, would be open to the idea that their success in life happened in spite of their schooling, rather than because of it.

ArtDev 13y ago
My favorite reason people give for why kids should not homeschooled or alternative schooled is that it is not "the real world". As an adult, I live in "the real world". When I come to work I don't get degraded, ridiculed, talked down to, insulted, wedgeed or dumped headfirst into the garbage can. Public school is not "the real world" unless, of course, you are referring to a actual prison.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  As much as I agree with your point -- and I bet it gives people pause when you deliver it! -- I think that the reason they're giving is somewhat valid, but just worded very poorly. AIUI, what they actually mean is the social interaction aspect of things... which, coming back to your point, is still pretty twisted. However, things like forming friendships and relationships and dealing with social adversaries, while bastardized, is still real. Of course it's not like these things can't be done outside of a school setting -- it's just the most likely place for a child with little or no options for significant physical mobility.

the_watcher 13y ago

I was a "high achiever" in high school, got into the top public university in my state (top-15-20 overall depending on your rankings), then got into a top 14 law school. By all traditional metrics, school worked for me. However, I now have dropped out of law school and am doing very well professionally in a field entirely unrelated to my undergrad degree, and everything I use at work (it's number and data analysis heavy) are things I learned on my own because I was interested. I wish I'd had time to do this stuff while I was younger.

digitalsushi 13y ago
Is 14 a common cutoff for classifying academic institutions? Because I am interpreting this as 'the 14th best law school' and it seems that I shouldn't just assume this. It's an odd manner of delimiting a set and I am curious if there is some sort of legacy/esoteric set that I am oblivious to. Thanks.
- cmsmith 13y ago
  It appears to be specific to law schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States#Schools_that_rank_in_the_top_14_.28aka_.22T14.22.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_Unit...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Because lists differ, I have often referred to my having graduated from "one of the forty top-twenty law schools." The other reply just posted at this level appears to correctly explain why the person to whom you are replying chose "top 14," but anyway I don't always take strictly rank-ordered lists of higher education institutions very seriously. Rankings are debatable.
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    Agreed. It's just the standard top-X list for law schools. The point of referencing it wasn't to give them credibility.

gkoberger 13y ago

One of pg's best articles talks about this: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html The relevant part starts with "Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society.", however the whole thing is a great read.

newbie12 13y ago

There is a deliberate effort in academia to downplay, or in the case of this piece, distort and even place blame on the Protestant Christian educational movements of early America. The Great Awakenings that spurred the creation of U.S. colleges and universal public education were fueled by a moral tradition and were an enormous success. That tradition has nothing to do with todays failing public schools. The author also fails to note that the current American home school movement has explicitly Christian roots.

wyclif 13y ago
I noticed that immediately, too. Gray gets an "F" from me on Church history. I realise he's a psychology professor, but he really should have done his homework and read something that wasn't revisionist scholarship. His remarks on the Protestant Reformation are pretty weak gruel, because the presenting cause of the Reformation was to challenge the authoritarian Italo-Papal hierarchy in Western Europe. The Reformation was precisely about questioning authority. If Martin Luther were to read Gray's remarks today, I think he'd find them patently ridiculous.
- pekk 13y ago
  Interestingly, anybody were to read Martin Luther's "The Jews and Their Lies" today they would dismiss him as an incredibly hateful, racist crank. Maybe you are being over-sensitive on behalf of Christendom here, as a worldly institution it should not be above criticism.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Perhaps you should try reading the article and my comment for context, because it's apparent you didn't understand them. I'm saying that Gray is demonstrably wrong about authoritarianism wrt the Reformation, because the Church was not above criticism. The article, and my comment, was on-topic in that regard.
- charlieflowers 13y ago
  I definitely noted that he made an awfully long string of assertions to not have presented any kind of backing evidence. He presented an entire history of education ... but it could just as easily be a revisionist version as a fact-based one. It strikes me much more as a soapbox than a factual summary.

tekalon 13y ago

I'm current attend Western Governors University, a self motivated/paced program. The most difficulty I've had is learning how to learn (never learned in school). I'm only now (after 10 years from graduating from high school) how to teach myself something new. I'm figuring out what study method works best for me. Now I was in honors all through public so me saying only now I'm having to learn how to learn is troubling. For my future children, I do plan on homeschooling with a backup plan of charter schools that encourage self directed learning, we'll have to see how that goes. My husband agrees also that public and private schools discouraged creativity. Breaking the habits that schools taught us (conformity, obedience, accepting of authority) is hard to break

Zigurd 13y ago
Too few people know about WGU. Very low-cost. Non-profit. Not scammy like UoP. I wish they had a wider range of programs. In a few years, lots of university education will look a lot like WGU.
- tekalon 13y ago
  Many colleges/universities are starting to have pilot programs that have similar themes like WGU (competency based, self paced, online, etc). The biggest thing that some have mentioned about online that is constantly being disproved that online degrees are low value. Some are yes, I won't deny there are some that are only worth the paper they are printed on. That being said, WGU (and similar programs) not only offer accredited degrees but also help give experience. In the case of IT degrees, certificates are part of the program that help many get a step up and good for entry level. Long term value of certificates can be argued but in my opinion, they are worth it for those new to the field or wanting an extra step up. WGU I've also had my current employer (who is doing tuition reimbursement) have no issue with WGU as being worth more or less than any other accredited university.

tokenadult 13y ago

Ah, yes, Peter Gray is the author of the article submitted here (which I think was submitted once or twice before, with no comments). I have read part of his recently published book, in which he extends his argument. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,[1] and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the new members from the last year or two, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues. On my part, I chose the trade-offs of time, energy, and expense to homeschool our children so that they would be in a position to learn in freedom[2] and make a lot of decisions about their own education. So far the one child of ours who has grown up to live independently in the outside world (also an occasional participant here) is glad that he had that kind of education. He wrote to me for Father's Day, saying, "That has made it very easy for me to step into a leadership position and feel very comfortable in positions of responsibility." Some people survive the prison environment of school and go on to great things.[3] That doesn't mean that we have to organize schools as we now do. We should be sensitive to opportunities to organize schools in ways that promote young people having responsibility and freedom to grow while they are still minors. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 [2] http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ [3] http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html

pekk 13y ago
This is not aimed at you, but at your wording. Controlling parents keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities, should take care not to be deluded that what they are offering their children is 'freedom'.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Well, what you write certainly isn't aimed at me, because I don't do any of "keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities" in my culturally diverse, community-involved, intellectually curious homeschooling family. Most homeschooling families I know, and I know hundreds all around the United States, resemble my open and free family life more than they resemble your caricature of some unknown anecdote you've encountered.

jstalin 13y ago

As a former member of a board of education in a major city, I learned a few things: 1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for education. Everyone is different (duh); 2. Centralization of primary and secondary education institutions is a very bad thing (think fewer and fewer large school districts); 3. Teachers' Unions are possibly the single biggest barrier to innovation; 4. There is no simple, easy answer to improving education. Unfortunately, I don't have a prescription for fixing things, but I'm sure that centralizing both administrative bureaucracy and delivery standards is not it.

rwmj 13y ago
1. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that could possibly work for education. Everyone is different (duh) Why is that? All able-bodied humans have brains, mouths, eyes, arms etc all of which work in much the same way. If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. For people who have specific disabilities, we should make adjustments, but I don't understand why a single way of teaching would not work for most people. Leaving aside whether schools are the best way of teaching.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  If you are making clothing, you don't say "everyone is different", you make clothes based on the same pattern in a relatively small range of sizes. Then why do the rich buy custom-tailored clothes?
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Because they can pay the substantial premium involved. Collectively, our interest in having as many people as possible moderately well-educated rather than just having a few who are outstandingly well-educated imposes constraints.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago

bluedino 13y ago

>> without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. There isn't much debate in reading/writing/arithmetic. >> It’s no wonder that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison), or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein). We're using a genius and one of the most prolific inventors America ever saw to rationalize the idea that school is bad for kids? Not to mention they were in school so long ago. >> even the “best students” (maybe especially them) often report that they are “burned out” by the schooling process. I'd imagine being the best is quite a lot of work. I'd be burned out too.

the_watcher 13y ago
There is a lot of debate in writing. Why is it taught exclusively in English classes? Why does academic writing focus mainly on literature until college, and even then, English is the equivalent as a writing major? PG wrote about this once [1], but it makes no sense. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Yeah, I got through my schooling long, long ago and that one is still a mystery to me. I can tell you why there's a debate, though: different contexts have radically different standards for what constitutes good writing. If I attempted to publish some of the stuff I've written or seen written in research literature as a prose nonfiction article, I would be rightfully crucified for crimes against communication. And yet, attempt to write clear, explanatory prose in a research context, and you will be called a sloppy amateur. /grumble /grumble
- chongli 13y ago
  There is a lot of debate in writing. And in reading. Literary criticism is a big deal! And in math, for that matter. There is a great deal of math research taking place. To suggest that it's all settled and there's no room for debate is pretty silly of the GP.
13y ago

chollida1 13y ago

This is a big reason why my wife and I just dropped 5 figures to send our oldest daughter to a Montessori school instead of public school. The larger time outdoors and less strict teacher lecturing to students sitting in desks were the two biggest drivers of the decision.

jimiray 13y ago
Have you looked for any public Montessori schools? We have 3 Montessori charter schools in Denver.

jessaustin 13y ago

Many of the people on HN would have done well in a wide variety of different learning environments. Think Abe Lincoln. Most of the others on HN would have done well in a specific subset of learning environments that doesn't happen to include what the USA public education system provides.

ArtDev 13y ago
I am a great example. I was raised internationally and born dyslexic. I had a very hard time in school socially. I didn't learn to read till I was ten. Luckily my parents were very dedicated. Homeschooling, international school and a number of different hippie schools (Waldolf & Quaker Friends) saved me. I even went to a hippie college that didn't have grades (The Evergreen State College). The result: I taught myself design and programming and now work at Intel. I love learning. I want my kids to always love learning as much as I do. That is why they are not going to public school either.

zwieback 13y ago

This article is so black and white and elitist to add practically no value to the public school debate. I have two middle schoolers in an affluent public school district and our experience is very different. There are many motivated teachers constantly tweaking their approach to keep students engaged. If anything, I'd want more structure in our schools. The much bigger issue is that alternative schooling approaches work only with a high degree of involvement from parents and the community. Do we really thing "Sudbury Valley" schools would work in inner cities or the deep South? I rather think parents are glad to have someone keep their kids out of trouble while they work overtime to scrape by. Also, self-motivated learning gets you only so far. Without some external pressure I don't think most kids would decide to study calculus or statistics or other dry but important topics.

mattm 13y ago
And why is calculus or statistics important. My wife hated math and even would get 0 on some tests and yet she is a very successful nurse today. Math is not important at all for the vast majority of adults today. Why should children be forced to study it? (I say this as someone who did enjoy math and did very well in it)
- notahacker 13y ago
  I hated maths and wound up with an Economics major and a job where an above average grasp of stats is greatly beneficial. Go figure. I suspect the proportion of adults for whom some form of mathematics assumes at least some basic importance in adulthood vastly exceeds the proportion of kids that would voluntarily turn off MTV to do arithmetic puzzles. Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap. Sure, this doesn't apply to the average Hacker News reading autodidact, but one of the first things you learn in statistics is not to make judgements based on outliers.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap. I think the second statement applies perfectly well to most adults. Our whole system is based on having people maximally specialize into their element of greatest comparative advantage, to the exclusion of most of what we regard as maturity, wisdom, and humanity.

hawkharris 13y ago

I've heard this argument against compulsory education & standardized testing many times, and I'm still not convinced. Look at the countries ranked highest in education, according to the 2012 Pearson study that is often cited by news networks. [0] The top 30 nations have widely different attitudes toward compulsory education & testing. Some embrace it much more strongly the United States. Others deemphasize it. For example, juxtapose Finland and Korea. Before we can categorically dismiss compulsory education & standardized testing, we have to acknowledge that it sometimes produces amazing outcomes — some of the world's best. Some may argue that the rankings focus on standardized testing, which is an inadequate measure of what students know and what they can do. But Pearson's study and similar studies didn't just measure tests; they considered a "wide range of social and economic indicators." In other words, compulsory schooling & testing isn't always the devil, and I don't think there's any magic bullet for improving the U.S. education system. Analyzing the United States' approach to education alongside the approaches of other nations in the world rankings, it's clear that there are other factors at play, which may account for U.S. students' poor performance.

danielweber 13y ago
What compulsory education does is put kids who don't want to be in school with kids who do want to be there. And the former don't just sit there quietly. They take it out on the latter. High school was awesome the past two years, once all the kids who wanted to drop out did so.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  The saddest part is that some of the former might be perfectly happy apprenticing for a trade instead -- a chance which has really been destroyed in the last few decades in some areas. The real issue is that we're trying to forcibly prevent delinquent members of society, just like you force small children to eat their vegetables and go to bed -- because as an adult you have the foresight and ability to delay gratification that they lack -- but it doesn't always work. Where do you draw the line? When do you give up on kids and say "fine, screw it, don't go to school, go eat candy and smoke pot behind the 7-11"? There are the kids who, if you force them to go to school at 14 when they don't feel like it, will grow up and realize that playing videogames for 12 hours a day would have been a bad life decision. Then there are the other 14-year-olds who will fight it until they can drop out and become a chronic plague on the rest of society, no matter what sort or form of education you offered them. The problem is that no one wants to admit the politically incorrect truth that there will always be some children left behind.

AznHisoka 13y ago

As an aside, I find it disgusting that public schools are penalizing students who bring their own lunches because it means less subsidization for them when it comes to allocating the budget.

aasarava 13y ago
Where is this happening and what is the penalty?

dccoolgai 13y ago

>"The idea that schools might be places for nurturing critical thought, creativity, self-initiative or ability to learn on one’s own — the kinds of skills most needed for success in today’s economy — was the furthest thing from their minds. To them, willfulness was sinfulness, to be drilled or beaten out of children, not encouraged." ... Perhaps that's because you can teach discipline, but you can't teach creativity. You need both to be really successful, but to be at least moderately successful, you need at least discipline... No matter what you do, you can't take creativity away from the kids who are really creative...they will be off making things and designing things and writing things and painting things, because that's what they do... you can't stop them, even if you try. If you teach discipline, you will end up with disciplined creatives and disciplined non-creatives...I can tell you as a person who was kind of a dumbass when I was at school (although a creative dumbass), that I got much more benefit from learning what little discipline they managed to impart than some fruitbat curriculum that tried to "encourage me to be creative"...which I probably would have responded to by intentionally being less creative. ...sometimes the people who designed the things around us are more clever than we give them credit for being...

vacri 13y ago

It’s no wonder that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison), or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein) Hrm, I am using the critical thinking skills that I developed in late high school and university, in a teach-and-test environment, to determine that this is both using weasel words ('many') and is an 'appeal to authority' fallacy. This is an argument where you very much need to present the numbers. Anything else is just an emotive ploy using cherry-picked data points.

atlantic 13y ago

I don't think the only alternative to the current system is home schooling. There are schools in which learning is less curricular and more curiosity-driven, and the pupils go on to be very successful in higher education. In Belgium I came across a schooling system called Decroly, and in Germany the Waldorf schools.

eriksank 13y ago
Home schooling is only a fall-back position. As a parent, I don't mind hiring teachers for particular purposes. But let it be clear that I am the "school". I am the employer. It is my money and these are my kids.

debacle 13y ago

The current reality, I think, that everyone is ignoring is that time spent in school and money spent per child are not solving the problem. Teachers, yes, parental involvement is a huge factor, however it should be less of a factor, I think, than you allow it to be. Parents, yes, teachers need to be properly assessed for results, however if a standardized test isn't the best way to gauge your child's ability, why do you think it's the best way to gauge your child's teacher's ability. The reality is that we are spending insane amounts of money on students - sometimes upwards of 20 thousand dollars per student - and the outcome of the education system is not what we expect it to be. This is a societal issue, and part of what I would call America's ignorance - there is an upper limit on how much money you can throw at a problem before they money you threw at the problem attracts the wrong kind of actors and makes the problem worse. I'm not a libertarian, but I like many of the libertarian ideas surrounding education. I also know what "free market" means in my country. I don't like our healthcare situation, and that's all I can picture when I imagine "free market" education. Teachers unions currently have a regulatory capture on school boards across the country in the US, which is a big problem. School boards, in my experience, are dispassionate, dramatic, and exploitative of residents. There are far too many administrators in schools, and far too many passionate teachers, but how can you be passionate about your job when you have so many eyes on your back, so many hoops to jump through, and so many layers of bureaucracy to report to. Education is not an easy problem because it has turned into a self-interested Mexican standoff, with people on all sides unwilling to give an inch, and no one wants to act rationally until it is too late.

specialist 13y ago
time spent in school and money spent per child are not solving the problem. Agreed. Finland v USA and comparative achievement. Etc. The only thing that'll help improve education in the USA is addressing poverty and inequity. Here's a recent first hand account: "I taught at the worst school in Texas" http://www.salon.com/2013/08/25/i_taught_at_the_worst_school_in_texas/ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/25/i_taught_at_the_worst_school... You can guess the story, but TL;DR: Teachers and schools cannot mitigate all the bad stuff happening to their students. Back to the money. While more likely won't help, I would note the giant sucking sound of our tax dollars being diverted to cronies, via standardized tests, text books, charter schools, whatever.

vacri 13y ago

I should also mention that in early high school (grade 7 and 8), I went to a 'community school', where the kids had the freedom to learn at their own pace, and largely what they wanted to learn. Maths and art were self-driven, with teacher direction available. There was cool stuff like classes on massage (very popular!) or aerobics, and a few other things. School was fun, and the teachers were nice... but this being said, I was one of the group of people (~10% of that year level? fuzzy memory) to choose to leave the school (no parental pressure) and go to a regular high school because "I think I am not learning enough". That was my own, personal motivation, not driven by anything external. And I was a kid who would come home and read the encyclopaedia for fun, cover to cover.

benaiah 13y ago

I think one of the most important takeaways from this article is that you can fix this problem, for your own family, now. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 US states and in a number of other countries [1] - Gray mentions it in the article as an alternative. It works, and it's not as impossible as you likely think. Historically, homeschooling is probably the most common form of education - the modern style of compulsory, state-run education traces back to the Prussian education system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anecdotally, I can attest to its strength: I'm a second-generation homeschooled student, currently pursuing a BS in Computer Science. I graduated with a 3.95 GPA, got a 96th percentile SAT score, and made it to the top level (Finalist) of the National Merit Scholarship program. I'm using a scholarship I got because of that to go through school. Without homeschooling, I doubt I would have got into computers and programming. I had the freedom and the time to pursue what I wanted to do - it didn't feel like school, because it wasn't, but it was just as, perhaps more, important than my standard academics. I started teaching myself programming when I was 12, essentially on my own. I started by just creating games, but eventually got bored of that and moved into programming more general-purpose stuff. I basically taught myself, with oversight to make sure I was actually doing it, through the middle school - high school level. The oldest of my brothers will also be graduating soon. He's totally different from me - loves the outdoors and wants to go into smoke-jumping. He dislikes academics, book-learning, and the technical side of computers, for the most part. Certainly doesn't pursue those things for fun. He was 86th percentile on his SATs. We were both (along with our six other younger siblings) taught by our mom, who has very little education beyond a high school diploma (don't get me wrong - she's very smart, just not academically well-credentialed). She taught us alone, while living in a remote part of a remote state. Our social interaction was almost entirely in the church or the occasional homeschooling group. I'm a bit introverted, but my brother is an extrovert, and as socially well-adjusted as they come. Academically, we're both well prepared for life. I know anecdotes aren't data, but I'm simply trying to make the point that it is reasonable and effective to teach your children at home. It doesn't take a college degree, teacher training, or a state program (our homeschool was entirely private). It takes love and hard work - but it provides a safe environment, cultures a love of learning, and gives academic excellence: all tasks that the public schools have proven themselves incapable of in most cases. [1]: For more info on the legality of homeschooling, see http://hslda.com http://hslda.com

totalforge 13y ago

When the nations' school system was founded, it had a goal, which was, and is, to product a compliant work force for industry.

rumcajz 13y ago

The interesting thing is that eduacation by play is not a novel idea. It dates back at least to Comenius and was re-iterated over and over again since. Yet, after almost four centuries it's still not widely implemented. One gets a feeling that there are some strong socio-economic forces acting against it.

bryan11 13y ago

It's interesting that colleges actively recruit homeschool graduates because they are more likely to succeed. They tend to be more able to learn and study independently. They also tend to be better at working with diverse groups of people.

SquareWave 13y ago

I guess they didn't teach you about hyperbole from whatever prison you were in.

quadlock 13y ago

The http://threeriversvillageschool.org/ http://threeriversvillageschool.org/ is based upon these principles. A Free(not as in beer) school that is now in it's first few days of classes that got help starting with successful crowdfunding campaign and a lot of hard work by dedicated smart people.

graycat 13y ago

Here was my solution in grades 1-12: Too soon in the early grades, get dumped on by the teachers, just give up, learn enough just without really trying, and depend on social promotion. When get to the good stuff, math and science in grades 9-12, just sleep in class, ignore the teachers, refuse to submit or admit to doing any homework, have utter contempt for the teachers, study the text largely independently, be one of the best students in the school on the state aptitude and achievement tests, end up with Ivy League SAT scores. In college, do much the same, write a math honors paper, and get good GRE scores. At work find a good problem and on an airplane ride get an intuitive solution. Then back in school, in graduate school, use material in a great course in the first year to make good math out of the intuitive solution, write some illustrative software, submit the work as the Ph.D. dissertation, pass an oral defense, graduate, and be done with formal education. So, do something like in the OP but within the formal system, with a lot of sleeping in class and ignoring that system. There were some great times! (1) In eighth grade general science, the teacher was explaining partial vacuums and applying those to the operation of a traditional farm house lift pump. I glanced at his diagram and put my head down to sleep. He decided to call on me to explain the pump; yup, looked like he was trying to stick me for sleeping in class! So, I just closed my eyes, imagined the pump diagram, and went through the whole pump cycle in excessive detail, with each pressure difference and each valve opening and closing, and he never bothered me again! (2) In plane geometry, I was totally in love with the subject and ate the exercises like popcorn by the hand full. There were some more difficult supplementary exercises in the back of the book, and one of these I didn't get on Friday afternoon so continued and finally got it Sunday evening. I worked 100% of the non-trivial exercises. On Monday in class, the teacher worked an easy exercise with the same figure, and for the first and last time I raised my hand and said that there was an exercise in the back with the same figure. About 20 minutes later the teacher was loudly exhorting the class "Think, class, think! Think about the given ...." Since I didn't want to be accused of ruining the whole class, I raised my hand and started "Why don't we ...", and the teacher screamed "You knew how to do it all along." Of COURSE I knew how to do it; no way would I have asked otherwise. Besides, how'd I know that she wasn't also doing all the exercises? (3) A question on the state test was how to inscribe a square in a semi-circle. I thought, construct a square, circumscribe the circle, and find the crucial length in the given figure by constructing a fourth proportional, and after school wanted to check my solution so started and she said about my square "You can't do that". As I later learned, I'd shown her 'similitude', my reinvention of an advanced technique. Of course the schools are from mostly useless down to really destructive, but, still, it's possible, especially if ignore the teachers and sleep in class, to learn fairly well anyway. Besides, especially here on HN, nearly all of the US software industry depends on self-learning. Yes, in time there will be some good groups for support and guidance for home schooling with, often, some occasional small classes by really well qualified teachers. Then the public K-12 system will be regarded as the cheap, low grade, bottom level, last hope alternative for disadvantaged children and be much less well funded than now because nearly all the good families will be using private alternatives and not care about the public system. Yes, the current public system is a disaster for education and the children, but, you have to remember, it's really expensive!

socrates1998 13y ago

As a former teacher of ten years, I completely agree that school is a waste of time, money and resources. School is a baby sitting service that doubles as an "education". The whole system is flawed. No one wants to be there. The kids hate it, the teachers can love the job, but usually hate the grind, and the administrators are there to stay out of the classroom and not get blamed for anything. Kids go to school so parents can go to work. That is the system. If there is no school, what happens to the kids? Most adults prefer working to being around their kids all day, just ask a home schooling mom with multiple kids. She stays home not because it is easy, but because it is good for the kids. The author of the article completely misses the issue. Kids don't get the best resources in our system. They get bare minimum. He recommends some special kind of school and way of learning. But, this won't happen because it would require re-training, re-designing, and other costs that people just don't want to spend on other people's kids.

juanre 13y ago

"The biggest, most enduring lesson of our system of schooling is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible." Indeed. The antidote for my 13 and 15 years old boys are being Udacity courses. I encourage them to study for school enough to get by, and to spend as much time as possible enjoying what they want to learn online. Udacity's lack of fixed schedules is perfect for them, and the experience is one of challenge and joy.

jheriko 13y ago

"...where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces" wtf? which culture have you been living in recently? most people don't work in your workplace, they work in a factory, department store, supermarket, engineering shop, building site etc. and their freedom is suitably restricted i assure you...

rnernento 13y ago

Prison is a prison and damaging our kids...

hrjet 13y ago

I liked the approach mentioned here: http://beyondschools2.blogspot.in/2013/05/know-think-do.html http://beyondschools2.blogspot.in/2013/05/know-think-do.html In a nutshell, the idea is to teach basic principles within the structure of a school and then let the pupil explore the higher grade subjects by themselves, with the intermittent guidance of a teacher.

anuraj 13y ago

No doubt. But it is the price we pay for our packed lives where we have little time to instruct or even emotionally connect with our kids. So we give it out to the schools to do all the great work - of making schmucks out of potential da Vincis.

rodolphoarruda 13y ago

Along with that school mentioned in the article, the Escola da Ponte[1] in Portugal is also a good example of non-traditional education which lead to great results. [1] http://www.escoladaponte.pt/ponte/projeto http://www.escoladaponte.pt/ponte/projeto ; content in Portuguese, you may need to use a translator.

tbirdz 13y ago

Some of the points about children learning naturally by themselves remind me somewhat of Rousseau's "Emile, or On Education" However, I don't know if anyone had been able to actually pull this off in real life. I think one downside could be for things that you have to learn to function well in society but have no natural interest in. If you are left alone to learn for yourself, then you'll learn about things you want to learn.