Would you like to see schools change?

[Techno-Druid]

I'm not sure how schools could change to better suit the needs of students in an effective way, but I do remember how it felt in high school, especially in regards to math. Even classes teaching subjects I loved like biology felt needlessly maticulous. I often found myself completing assignments for the purpose of just getting them done, rather than actually learning anything from it with a few exceptions (I loved creative writing). Whether I retained information was largely tertiary to receiving good grades and I often felt forced to take shortcuts and cheat just to get by on things I honestly felt taught me nothing of value sometimes.

I think in the future we will have to modify how we teach students to allow them more autonomy to fields they excel in and/or want to pursue beyond basic information. Perhaps someday, centuries in the future, we may not even have schools in our modern sense, but utilize A.I. and virtual reality as teaching tools.

Either way, I definitely feel like schools have a lot of baggage that needs to be properly addressed eventually. How would you address it? Do you even think there's a problem?

[Katie N]

Schools are not the same in every country. xD What country are you talking about?

[Techno-Druid]

Schools are not the same in every country. xD What country are you talking about?

I was personally referring to modern public schools in America, but this is not an issue that impacts one type of school in one country.

[Kraenen]

Did you ever think kids (such as yourself at the time) just aren't interested in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake? If this is the case, you'll have to do the usual awkward and embarrassing attempt at linking abstract math concepts to something current and useful (usually something they think is 'cool').

Last I checked a few years back, more autonomous self-driven styles of learning were ineffective for all but the more exceptional students. It increases the chances the kid gets lost and frustrated or has false starts. These could be teachable moments, I suppose.

[RickJamesLich]

It's an interesting topic and I find that there's really not going to be a perfect answer here, as there's really only so much you can fund public education, in fact in the US they already spend more money on secondary education compared to the rest of the world. I definitely would like to see some sort of revamp as I'm sure the rest of the forum would too but it's a difficult subject. For example most can accept that school does not prepare you for having a job in most cases, while I would like to see more schools offer training in this type of field for students that choose it, it can be tough for someone in high school to actually make an informed choice on what they want to do for a living.

Part of the problem is that many students don't yet know what they are passionate about, which I'm assuming is why schools teach a wide variety of subjects but at the same time that means that students will inevitably have to deal with many subjects that they have no interest in, and have to hear about them for many years.

[exochaft]

Schools in my area are completely different from what I saw in that video, even the ones I attended over 30 years ago. Though the video has some flaws to it, especially with respect to how much freedom you give to kids. The video impresses the views and levels of maturity of adults onto the kids, and if this was describing adults in a class the concept would work better but certainly not for children. Discipline and structure isn't a bad thing at all for a child, as giving them too much freedom can be counter-productive, and such discipline and structure are still skills that are very useful in the workforce.

Structure aside, rote memorization is viewed as a negative in the video, but it can be insanely good for basic concepts where no thinking is ever really needed (especially math). Besides, unless you're blessed with a photographic memory or an amazing capacity to instantly learn something, you'll have to practice and repeat over and over to learn stuff. Beyond that, I have more issue with the content that is taught or how it is taught, as it can be confusing even for adults. For example, my kid's math homework is incredibly painful and long because there was no memorization of basic multiplication time tables on top of presenting drawn-out processes for problem solving. Instead of the short, sweet, and simple math I was taught in school, my kid has to perform procedures that leave excessive room for making math errors in the entire chain of solving. Simply put, the new age math they teach is overcomplicating the subject when the old methods worked fine. When it comes to knowledge of actual history, kids really aren't learning much anymore (you can see really old school tests and most people would probably fail them with respect to world knowledge), especially after the shift from history to social studies... which is an entire another rant I have, but I'll limit it to something short this time.

Also, something else I saw 30 years ago (not sure how prevalent it is nowadays) is that in my high school you could transition or train into vocations or even vocational schools if you choose to do so, in lieu of the traditional high school route. There were programs for people who wanted to be, for example, electricians or plumbers, but they also had programs for polymer scientists and even chefs (they had an in-school restaurant where they worked, too). I was personally part of a program that let me attend a university instead of attending highschool, and that coursework counted towards my high school diploma... however, you had to prove to the university you could handle it since they'd be accepting you without a diploma, but the option was there. Add on extracurricular activities offered, there were countless options available to students to find something they liked. Also, our class choices beyond freshman year were chosen like universities: you applied for classes with some minimum level of required courses. Yes, this was a public school from 30 years ago.

Where I live now, most of those complaints in the video are addressed in the charter or private schools in the area as the local public schools are pretty terrible. What people should really ask is why government funded public schools lag behind the charter and private schools despite how much money is thrown at them, although the answers seem to be pretty obvious: more local control of the schools allows them to adjust for the student's needs, because every school has different wants and needs. If anything, just throwing more money at schools won't fix anything as money isn't the problem.

[Techno-Druid]

Did you ever think kids (such as yourself at the time) just aren't interested in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake?

Oh, I love learning, always have and always will. I hated having to do school work and assessments, because it felt like tedious. Much of what I know about history I learned outside of school, largely due to the strong lack of world history.

Pretty much everything I know about history outside of the United States (and even then, a great deal of history was left out of the curriculum) I learned through reading articles online and watching videos in my spare time (sometimes ignoring homework).

[helebelemon]

Difficult to say. I can see the allure having been there and experiencing the frustration of such a linear learning experience. Yet, I see these points used by the like most commonly susceptible to pyramids as well as those with inferiority complexes about their lack of education, as well. You know, the type that are lazy and blame their fuck ups on everything else in life?

[endersblade]

That video really pointed out several things that I hadn't even thought of. And yes, I believe the schooling system (especially here in the US) needs a complete and total revamp.

As the video stated, the current system was put into place back during the Industrial Age, when all we needed to do was crank out worker drones. That isn't how our society, economy, or really the entire world, works anymore. We need people that are good at being social, as many of the low-and middle-class tier jobs are customer service related. We need people who can think outside of the box, as many of the higher jobs involve innovation and research. And we need people who are capable of utilizing the technology we have at our fingertips. Even if you don't know everything in your field, you should be able to look up what you need.

The school system isn't letting us focus on anything, and the information they're feeding us is either completely useless or too specific. I think that the system needs to be broken down into groups, something like Grades 1-3, 6-9, and 10-12, where the information taught starts out general and gets more focused as the grades advance. We need to stop producing generic untrained workers and start focusing students into broad fields that will help them once they hit the working force. Training someone to be computer literate will help them get IT jobs. Training them to be mechanics can help get jobs working on cars, oil rigs, large industrial equipment, etc. Simple aptitude tests and just asking "so, what do you want to do when you grow up?" can help with this. Sure, it's not infallible, not everyone wants to STAY in the field they chose when they were a kid, and some people might not really know what they want. But it's a better system than what we have now, where people get that diploma and spend the next 10 years spinning their wheels in a fast food joint because they don't know what to do with their lives.

Man, I could go on and on and on with this subject. The education system just needs to change, period.

[Kokolums]

What's pretty amazing is how much better Amish society is doing compared to the rest of America despite very little formal education. The Amish have huge families and accumulate lots of wealth. Many are turning into millionaires now. They demonstrate how plenty of self-discipline, co-operation, frugality, humility, and industriousness massively outweighs formal education. I expect American society will be forced to start copying Amish culture (including education styles) because it will become so incredibly obvious it is superior, just not sure when.

[Chinese Bootlickers]

Smaller classes and/or more teaching aides, ditching no child left behind.

[Kheirn]

Structure aside, rote memorization is viewed as a negative in the video, but it can be insanely good for basic concepts where no thinking is ever really needed (especially math). ... For example, my kid's math homework is incredibly painful and long because there was no memorization of basic multiplication time tables on top of presenting drawn-out processes for problem solving. Instead of the short, sweet, and simple math I was taught in school, my kid has to perform procedures that leave excessive room for making math errors in the entire chain of solving. Simply put, the new age math they teach is overcomplicating the subject when the old methods worked fine.

See, here's the disconnect between maths at uni and maths in grade school. Maths at uni requires a lot of thinking, you can completely forget about rote memorization. Sure, you can memorize the formulas and their rules, but applying them is difficult because you have to think. I've looked a bit at Common Core and while it seems weird and confusing at first, it's intended to give you the actual understanding of maths which is helpful in applying it to real life scenarios and extremely helpful for advancing further in maths. The reason why parents struggle with helping their kids with Common Core is because they have no clue how the maths actually worked, so you're stuck with formulas without the ability to break them down and understand them which is what the kids are doing. It may look "overly complicated", but it really isn't. It's teaching a way of thinking that you never learnt.

[Dsonsion]

I'm gonna speak only about primary schools in Colombia, because that's what I had to deal with when helping raise my sister.
I think the very idea of homework is abhorrent as an educational concept. It makes the kids feel as if they're being chased by the school everywhere, and turn a potentially interesting topic into another chore. And I think the amount of homework is related to those goals and deadlines teachers are given for their subjects. Which leads me to one of the core issues of modern education: the approach to knowledge.

More knowledge is not necessarily a good thing in terms of taxing children and I don't know who possibly thought it was a good idea to just measure if a kid has learned to do powers and root squared by the third year of primary, all taught by a person who barely understands the theoretical concepts behind the topic in question.
I think it's mostly the parents' fault, for being lame unaccomplished sods who think they can claim any pride on their child's learning, thus wanting the kid to learn EVERYTHING, so that they can later brag about it when meeting their friends.
As usual, feelings of inferiority and need for validation in adults lead to worse conditions for the whole society, in this case, the children in their charge.
Again, this is only from the standpoint of Colombian primary schools, but I think it may apply to other third world countries, like the USA.

[Teleros]

Either way, I definitely feel like schools have a lot of baggage that needs to be properly addressed eventually. How would you address it? Do you even think there's a problem?

Switch to a voucher system* and privatise the school system. I trust parents to see to the education of their children more than a bunch of bureaucrats in [insert capital city here].

*Ie, parents get a voucher per child they can give to a school that's worth, say, £5k in education. The school teaches the child in return, and hands the voucher to the government, who pay the £5k to the school. Besides cutting practically the entire budget/staff of the Department of Education or w/e it's called, you give parents full choice in where to send their kids, basically setting up a pretty free market in school choice (note: the voucher won't cover education at Eton, but it'll help cover it). Every year/term/whatever you hand over a new voucher per child. A more complex scheme might also allow money for home schooling.

[klepp0906]

yea. imagine if schools went back to teaching academics as opposed to political indoctrination.

imagine if teachers were given back the authority they once had to straight up knock the shit out of some little entitled punk that cusses at and threatens them.

id guess wed have a sizeablely smaller portion of entitled punks and man-children running around at worst.

[Techno-Druid]

yea. imagine if schools went back to teaching academics as opposed to political indoctrination.

Primary schools usually have bans or heavy regulations on politics in the classroom. I believe that teachers and students may discuss it in an academic light, but teachers are pretty expressly forbidden from trying to politically influence or challenge a student's political beliefs.

imagine if teachers were given back the authority they once had to straight up knock the shit out of some little entitled punk that cusses at and threatens them.

Sounds like a diaster waiting to happen, especially in high school. Hormonal teenage boys at 16-17 aren't just going to accept being hit and teachers are still largely female. So you would either have male teachers beating the shit out of students or Juniors and Senior students assaulting female teachers, which are both pretty bad images for any school to have.

[P for Pancetta]

Schools in the Netherlands are even worse, they’re much the same except extra curricular activities are almost none-existent. In good American school they have a lot of clubs that drive students to compete and excell, I think that’s a great system.

[XangXu]

New Rules should be,

- No smart phones
- No internet (use the school library)
- Homework every night
- Bullshitters get thrown out, no acceptions.

[Thrif]

Sounds like a diaster waiting to happen, especially in high school. Hormonal teenage boys at 16-17 aren't just going to accept being hit and teachers are still largely female. So you would either have male teachers beating the shit out of students or Juniors and Senior students assaulting female teachers, which are both pretty bad images for any school to have.

Not if we give teachers back the authority they had in general. Hitting a teacher back in the day would get you straight up expelled.

[Teleros]

Primary schools usually have bans or heavy regulations on politics in the classroom.

Leaving aside teachers flouting this rule, topics like climate change, sex ed and so on are all very political. Hell even plain old history is.

Sounds like a diaster waiting to happen, especially in high school. Hormonal teenage boys at 16-17 aren't just going to accept being hit and teachers are still largely female. So you would either have male teachers beating the shit out of students

Used to be a lot more men in the profession back when corporal punishment was a common thing to be fair. Also, aren't there some parts of the US that still allow corporal punishment? Might be able to get stats from them.