4 ms·

The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. For me,

by blhack 17y ago

The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. For me, summers were spent learning about computers and all the magic spells that I could cast to get them to do whatever I wanted them to. For some students, school is holding them back. If we want to fix things, we need to abandon this psychotic idea that all students are the same, that there are no dumb kids and that you can just dump 20 similarly aged kids into a room that has somebody standing at the front of it talking at them and that they will somehow come out of the situation better for the experience.

likpok 17y ago
I remember seeing an interesting study somewhere (sorry, don't have the link) that found that (IIRC in elementary school) segregating the better students did not help them. It only made the poorer students perform worse. I think that there have been similar studies which show that elementary school is a very different animal from what we think (i.e. similar nonintuitive results) and that it needs some kind of restructuring.
tokenadult 17y ago
The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. That's my take on the issue too. http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ I also tended to learn more in the summer than during the school year. Something needs to be done to make the school year more worthwhile for such students.
- caffeine 17y ago
  Something needs to be done to make the school year more worthwhile for such students Actually, it needs to be done for ALL students. You really think the only kids poorly served by school are those that teach themselves math on the side? Nearly every kid has an innate curiosity about the world and more importantly the people around him. Some prefer symbolic worlds, others the physical, and most the social. Schools are currently poor places to learn about any of those. The bizarre hierarchies in place seriously warp most children - witness the daily cruelty that is normal in an average school (others on the internet have made this point better than I can). To most people, Lockhart's lament is a very minor annoyance compared to the social retardation that goes on in these institutions. Rampant alcohol abuse and unreasonable sexual promiscuity in universities are the inevitable backlash to years of social repression, far beyond the young ages at which it might be called for. It was not unreasonable in earlier times to consider someone a "young man" or "young woman" at 13 or 14, and as a fully functional society member at 16. Why does this seem so completely ludicrous now? Has our genetic lifecycle programming changed? Of course not - but our social lifecycle programming has. All this to say that the kids for whom symbolic systems education is too slow are the lucky ones. For them, there is at least the library as an outlet for that spark. Consider the rest, who have no such thing.
  - spitfire 17y ago
    No. Our world is a thousand times more complex than that of even the 1800's. It used to be that your average young man/woman was in one unskilled job for their entire life. One you could learn by the time you were 15-16. This is no longer the case. Even entry level office jobs jobs now require an understanding of calculus, statistics, excel, etc. When all that used to be required was knowing how to plow a field, recite wives tales or run a loom. It isn't as simple as "oh our education system is too slow".
    - quizbiz 17y ago
      Do you know how to run a loom or plow a field? Maybe oddly, but I consider those much more a skill than knowledge of how to use excel.
      - spitfire 17y ago
        Yes and yes. A loom is actually sort of neat. They're the first programable computers. A plow on the other hand is dull and difficult work. Both are simpler than excel even for their more advanced uses.
        ramidarigaz 17y ago
        I would say yes, the plow is much more simple than excel. However, I disagree that the loom is too. You can do amazing things with a loom if you take the time to learn the complexities of the machine.
    - callmeed 17y ago
      Show me an entry level office job posting/ad where calculus is a requirement ...
    - apsec112 17y ago
      "Even entry level office jobs jobs now require an understanding of calculus, statistics, excel, etc." This is simply not true. Entry-level office jobs require a piece of paper saying "this dude knows calculus"; they don't actually require the knowledge. If you don't believe me, visit an average office, go around, and ask people to take the derivative of sin(x)*x^2; this is a fairly simple problem which any first-semester calculus student would know how to solve.
timr 17y ago
You're the exception, not the rule. For the other 99% of children, the benefits of longer school years are well documented. Even for the "exceptional" children (who usually aren't as exceptional as they make themselves out to be), longer school years are good -- the question of time spent in school is entirely independent of the subject matter studied, or how it is taught.
- da01 17y ago
  Did the study mention whether or not it mattered if it was a government school or a private school?
- bokonist 17y ago
  Well documented? Where? Links?
  - johnnybgoode 17y ago
    I'm going to guess that whichever study came to this conclusion, it took "good for students" to mean "higher grades" or some other bogus measure.
granular 17y ago
> The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. Actually, that's not enough detail. "School" is a complex system consisting of many parts -- all of which have their issues. Parents play a big role, in so far as what they expect from their children, their local board of ed, and their superintendent. > We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. You'd be amazed at the forces in place that so strongly coerce teachers to stick to the status quo.
- blhack 17y ago
  You'd be amazed at the forces in place that so strongly coerce teachers to stick to the status quo. No, I wouldn't.
- ramidarigaz 17y ago
  It's sad. All of the teachers that are forced to teach to the status quo do so because money is on the line. If a school doesn't conform to the guidelines set down by the government, then they don't get funding. This is a classic example of a law that is meant to help failing miserably, and even making things worse. And you can't really blame the teachers. They need to make a living, and they barely do as it is. I hate the fact that we seem to value our teachers so little.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    And you can't really blame the teachers. They need to make a living, and they barely do as it is. How does the living made by teachers compare to other employed persons with similar qualifications and ability?
    - ramidarigaz 17y ago
      Teachers make about 40k a year. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary I'm of the opinion that we should value our educators more.
  - granular 17y ago
screwperman 17y ago
We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. Asians rarely value individuality. Doesn't the American system do better in teaching kids to be different from the norm?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Asians rarely value individuality. Evidence for this? (How much time have you spent in Asia, and how recently? As a reply above said, Europe has several different countries, and so does Asia, so what specific places are you talking about?)
  - screwperman 17y ago
    I'm in India right now and I've spent a total of 14 years here. The places I'm referring to are the ones the article seems to talk about: China, India, Japan and Korea. A few months ago, there was a discussion on this right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257
- sketerpot 17y ago
  My sample consists almost entirely of engineers, so I'm disregarding most of humanity, but within that limited sample I believe the answer is a definite yes. That's one of the few saving graces of the American educational system. Of course, our educational system still sucks at it. I can't tell you how incredibly soul-crushing all my math classes were until about the time I got to trigonometry. And English classes generally suck royally. And don't get me started on biology classes taught by young earth creationists. Or the culture that looks down on learning. Fuck. I think maybe it's getting better?

by blhack 17y ago

likpok 17y ago

I remember seeing an interesting study somewhere (sorry, don't have the link) that found that (IIRC in elementary school) segregating the better students did not help them. It only made the poorer students perform worse. I think that there have been similar studies which show that elementary school is a very different animal from what we think (i.e. similar nonintuitive results) and that it needs some kind of restructuring.

tokenadult 17y ago

The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. That's my take on the issue too. http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ I also tended to learn more in the summer than during the school year. Something needs to be done to make the school year more worthwhile for such students.

caffeine 17y ago
Something needs to be done to make the school year more worthwhile for such students Actually, it needs to be done for ALL students. You really think the only kids poorly served by school are those that teach themselves math on the side? Nearly every kid has an innate curiosity about the world and more importantly the people around him. Some prefer symbolic worlds, others the physical, and most the social. Schools are currently poor places to learn about any of those. The bizarre hierarchies in place seriously warp most children - witness the daily cruelty that is normal in an average school (others on the internet have made this point better than I can). To most people, Lockhart's lament is a very minor annoyance compared to the social retardation that goes on in these institutions. Rampant alcohol abuse and unreasonable sexual promiscuity in universities are the inevitable backlash to years of social repression, far beyond the young ages at which it might be called for. It was not unreasonable in earlier times to consider someone a "young man" or "young woman" at 13 or 14, and as a fully functional society member at 16. Why does this seem so completely ludicrous now? Has our genetic lifecycle programming changed? Of course not - but our social lifecycle programming has. All this to say that the kids for whom symbolic systems education is too slow are the lucky ones. For them, there is at least the library as an outlet for that spark. Consider the rest, who have no such thing.
- spitfire 17y ago
  No. Our world is a thousand times more complex than that of even the 1800's. It used to be that your average young man/woman was in one unskilled job for their entire life. One you could learn by the time you were 15-16. This is no longer the case. Even entry level office jobs jobs now require an understanding of calculus, statistics, excel, etc. When all that used to be required was knowing how to plow a field, recite wives tales or run a loom. It isn't as simple as "oh our education system is too slow".
  - quizbiz 17y ago
    Do you know how to run a loom or plow a field? Maybe oddly, but I consider those much more a skill than knowledge of how to use excel.
    - spitfire 17y ago
      Yes and yes. A loom is actually sort of neat. They're the first programable computers. A plow on the other hand is dull and difficult work. Both are simpler than excel even for their more advanced uses.
      - ramidarigaz 17y ago
        I would say yes, the plow is much more simple than excel. However, I disagree that the loom is too. You can do amazing things with a loom if you take the time to learn the complexities of the machine.
  - callmeed 17y ago
    Show me an entry level office job posting/ad where calculus is a requirement ...
  - apsec112 17y ago
    "Even entry level office jobs jobs now require an understanding of calculus, statistics, excel, etc." This is simply not true. Entry-level office jobs require a piece of paper saying "this dude knows calculus"; they don't actually require the knowledge. If you don't believe me, visit an average office, go around, and ask people to take the derivative of sin(x)*x^2; this is a fairly simple problem which any first-semester calculus student would know how to solve.

timr 17y ago

You're the exception, not the rule. For the other 99% of children, the benefits of longer school years are well documented. Even for the "exceptional" children (who usually aren't as exceptional as they make themselves out to be), longer school years are good -- the question of time spent in school is entirely independent of the subject matter studied, or how it is taught.

da01 17y ago
Did the study mention whether or not it mattered if it was a government school or a private school?
bokonist 17y ago
Well documented? Where? Links?
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  I'm going to guess that whichever study came to this conclusion, it took "good for students" to mean "higher grades" or some other bogus measure.

granular 17y ago

> The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself. Actually, that's not enough detail. "School" is a complex system consisting of many parts -- all of which have their issues. Parents play a big role, in so far as what they expect from their children, their local board of ed, and their superintendent. > We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. You'd be amazed at the forces in place that so strongly coerce teachers to stick to the status quo.

blhack 17y ago
You'd be amazed at the forces in place that so strongly coerce teachers to stick to the status quo. No, I wouldn't.
ramidarigaz 17y ago
It's sad. All of the teachers that are forced to teach to the status quo do so because money is on the line. If a school doesn't conform to the guidelines set down by the government, then they don't get funding. This is a classic example of a law that is meant to help failing miserably, and even making things worse. And you can't really blame the teachers. They need to make a living, and they barely do as it is. I hate the fact that we seem to value our teachers so little.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  And you can't really blame the teachers. They need to make a living, and they barely do as it is. How does the living made by teachers compare to other employed persons with similar qualifications and ability?
  - ramidarigaz 17y ago
    Teachers make about 40k a year. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary I'm of the opinion that we should value our educators more.
- granular 17y ago

screwperman 17y ago

We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel. Asians rarely value individuality. Doesn't the American system do better in teaching kids to be different from the norm?

tokenadult 17y ago
Asians rarely value individuality. Evidence for this? (How much time have you spent in Asia, and how recently? As a reply above said, Europe has several different countries, and so does Asia, so what specific places are you talking about?)
- screwperman 17y ago
  I'm in India right now and I've spent a total of 14 years here. The places I'm referring to are the ones the article seems to talk about: China, India, Japan and Korea. A few months ago, there was a discussion on this right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482257
sketerpot 17y ago
My sample consists almost entirely of engineers, so I'm disregarding most of humanity, but within that limited sample I believe the answer is a definite yes. That's one of the few saving graces of the American educational system. Of course, our educational system still sucks at it. I can't tell you how incredibly soul-crushing all my math classes were until about the time I got to trigonometry. And English classes generally suck royally. And don't get me started on biology classes taught by young earth creationists. Or the culture that looks down on learning. Fuck. I think maybe it's getting better?