4 ms·

I hope you don't have kids. Whether you do or don't like school is immaterial. The fact is, schools take up a majority of your kids' time until they graduate an

by yardie 17y ago

I hope you don't have kids. Whether you do or don't like school is immaterial. The fact is, schools take up a majority of your kids' time until they graduate and get a life of their own. By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning. No one is asking you to sit in class 8 hours a day, but at least get to know what it is they are learning. If my kid takes an interest in music, I'm there, wrestling? me too, football/soccer/hockey? I'm game. God forbid I have to get up from the keyboard because junior wants to go to the park. As for rote learning. Every other nation has stuck to rote learning or some form of it. It's only the US that has taken a method of education that has worked for hundreds of years in many nations and manage to completely fuck it up. And every few years some academic will invent some new form of learning, convince the school board to buy into, and then after 10 years of "experimenting" on kids they might have gained/lost 0.5% on the academic test compared to rote learning. I'm not sure where the skill of learning will be replaced by another, except maybe unlearning. Rote is just a baseline, if you can't work your way through a basic problem set then you certainly aren't qualified to handle something that might require a bit of brainpower. I hope your still young because you'll realize, after many years, that in high school no one truly fit in. That is why John Hughes films (RIP) and shows like Freeks and Geeks were so popular. Everyone was awkward and that was the point. High school is a microcosm not a career, there was no skill to learn there.

Tichy 17y ago
"By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning." I hope they would learn interesting stuff, but if they don't, should I really try to make them believe it is interesting? I personally hated school for most of my life, and I have a hard time putting my kids through the same thing. Maybe it would help them more if I told them that I understand why they hate school so much. My goal would be to teach them how to get through school with the minimum possible effort - hopefully with reasonable grades, though, as they do help later in life. But only so much. "Every other nation has stuck to rote learning or some form of it." Sure, one probably needs to know how to do it - but is it necessary to practice it for 12+ years to get the hang of it? I rather doubt it. Obviously it is not all so black and white, but lately I see a tendency of putting way to much importance on school. When can kids be kids?
- yardie 17y ago
  "My goal would be to teach them how to get through school with the minimum possible effort" This is commendable. You don't have to agree with what they are teaching, but declaring school as evil sets a bad tone. Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity. Unless you enjoy homeschooling* then schools will always have aspects of it you won't like. You don't practice the same learning for the 12 years. You reach a level and move onto the next challenge. Just like no one takes 12 years of handwriting or 12 years of algebra. A good school would recognize you've mastered the subject and send you on to the next one. I finished 3rd grade reading 5th grade books. In the 4th and 5th grade I was outside playing basketball while the rest of class had to complete their reading assignments. I agree that the importance of being a kid seems to be lost on the current generation. Schools are expanding and playgrounds are being paved over. 24-hour news has turned child abductions into a national epidemic instead of what they really are, isolated incidents. * I don't mind homeschooling, but I don't have the time nor expertise to commit to it.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    "Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity." True, that needs to be avoided. I guess I hope they would have a good time at school - basically, that they would figure out how to make the best out of a miserable situation. Even most of the stuff that is being taught can be interesting or useful - just not always in the way it is being taught. I guess going away from "I have to learn this to get good grades" to move to "hm, while I have to do this, I might as well have fun and learn as much as I can" is what I really have in mind. I just wouldn't count on schools getting this right. So the kids would have to find a way to learn independently of school.
  - nitrogen 17y ago
    I finished 3rd grade reading 5th grade books. In the 4th and 5th grade I was outside playing basketball while the rest of class had to complete their reading assignments. I commend your accomplishments. Still, it seems there was an opportunity lost here. Instead of allowing you to continue to advance, you were held back (in a way) until the rest of the kids caught up to you. Similar experiences in my own earlier education soured my taste for school, though in my case I remember being given explicit directions to stop working ahead and wait for the class to catch up, on multiple occasions.
randallsquared 17y ago
"I hope you don't have kids" is, as far as I can see, very nearly the worst thing you can say to someone, if you mean it seriously. So far, everyone dies, but at least there's a chance that part of them will live on through their children; saying you'd prefer that they never have any legacy is even worse than flatly wishing they'd die.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  You can have a legacy without having kids.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    That's true, you can. How many adults of 100 years ago have a legacy today without considering their kids? A few million? How many of 1000 years ago? Thousands, at most? Kids are more reliable than making the history books or being involved in building or monument that happens to stand for a while.
- mahmud 17y ago
  "I hope you don't have kids" could have two completely different meanings: 1) I hope you're not a parent at the moment. and 2) I hope you never conceive! The first is a lament over the fate of any children that the addressed might have parented. The later is wishing ill fate upon the addressed.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    could have two completely different meanings Ah, I actually had missed the sense in which yardie might have meant "I hope you don't already have kids", and they've actually said that that's how it was meant (approximately), so I was a bit out of line, above.
- yardie 17y ago
  It was meant in the sense that if he/she is a parent at the moment than he is a poor one. I would never tell someone not to have kids, it would be hypocritical on my part.

by yardie 17y ago

Tichy 17y ago

"By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning." I hope they would learn interesting stuff, but if they don't, should I really try to make them believe it is interesting? I personally hated school for most of my life, and I have a hard time putting my kids through the same thing. Maybe it would help them more if I told them that I understand why they hate school so much. My goal would be to teach them how to get through school with the minimum possible effort - hopefully with reasonable grades, though, as they do help later in life. But only so much. "Every other nation has stuck to rote learning or some form of it." Sure, one probably needs to know how to do it - but is it necessary to practice it for 12+ years to get the hang of it? I rather doubt it. Obviously it is not all so black and white, but lately I see a tendency of putting way to much importance on school. When can kids be kids?

yardie 17y ago
"My goal would be to teach them how to get through school with the minimum possible effort" This is commendable. You don't have to agree with what they are teaching, but declaring school as evil sets a bad tone. Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity. Unless you enjoy homeschooling* then schools will always have aspects of it you won't like. You don't practice the same learning for the 12 years. You reach a level and move onto the next challenge. Just like no one takes 12 years of handwriting or 12 years of algebra. A good school would recognize you've mastered the subject and send you on to the next one. I finished 3rd grade reading 5th grade books. In the 4th and 5th grade I was outside playing basketball while the rest of class had to complete their reading assignments. I agree that the importance of being a kid seems to be lost on the current generation. Schools are expanding and playgrounds are being paved over. 24-hour news has turned child abductions into a national epidemic instead of what they really are, isolated incidents. * I don't mind homeschooling, but I don't have the time nor expertise to commit to it.
- Tichy 17y ago
  "Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity." True, that needs to be avoided. I guess I hope they would have a good time at school - basically, that they would figure out how to make the best out of a miserable situation. Even most of the stuff that is being taught can be interesting or useful - just not always in the way it is being taught. I guess going away from "I have to learn this to get good grades" to move to "hm, while I have to do this, I might as well have fun and learn as much as I can" is what I really have in mind. I just wouldn't count on schools getting this right. So the kids would have to find a way to learn independently of school.
- nitrogen 17y ago
  I finished 3rd grade reading 5th grade books. In the 4th and 5th grade I was outside playing basketball while the rest of class had to complete their reading assignments. I commend your accomplishments. Still, it seems there was an opportunity lost here. Instead of allowing you to continue to advance, you were held back (in a way) until the rest of the kids caught up to you. Similar experiences in my own earlier education soured my taste for school, though in my case I remember being given explicit directions to stop working ahead and wait for the class to catch up, on multiple occasions.

randallsquared 17y ago

"I hope you don't have kids" is, as far as I can see, very nearly the worst thing you can say to someone, if you mean it seriously. So far, everyone dies, but at least there's a chance that part of them will live on through their children; saying you'd prefer that they never have any legacy is even worse than flatly wishing they'd die.

silentbicycle 17y ago
You can have a legacy without having kids.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  That's true, you can. How many adults of 100 years ago have a legacy today without considering their kids? A few million? How many of 1000 years ago? Thousands, at most? Kids are more reliable than making the history books or being involved in building or monument that happens to stand for a while.
mahmud 17y ago
"I hope you don't have kids" could have two completely different meanings: 1) I hope you're not a parent at the moment. and 2) I hope you never conceive! The first is a lament over the fate of any children that the addressed might have parented. The later is wishing ill fate upon the addressed.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  could have two completely different meanings Ah, I actually had missed the sense in which yardie might have meant "I hope you don't already have kids", and they've actually said that that's how it was meant (approximately), so I was a bit out of line, above.
yardie 17y ago
It was meant in the sense that if he/she is a parent at the moment than he is a poor one. I would never tell someone not to have kids, it would be hypocritical on my part.