Learning what you are interested in is fine when you have the basics and want to fill some time. It doesn't matter to me if you learn to welding or piano - both are interesting and could potentially make you money, but neither is core to life. You could add hundreds of other things to that list.
Learning can start with your interested, but at some time you will realize something is hard. At that point you need something higher to force you to buckle down and study when it isn't fun anymore. I think all great piano players can tell you that there was a time their tried to stop playing completely and their parents didn't allow it.
My oldest who is just about to turn 18 is an amazingly talented artist/designer. She has skills in those areas that blow away anything I've seen from someone her age (or any age) and she has spent a lot more time honing those skills than she would be able to if she went to school. She is going into a product design program (accepted based on her portfolio). She doesn't know any calculus and that's not a problem. She knows what calculus is at least which is more than can be said for a lot of people and if she ever ends up needing that I'm sure she could pick it up.
Forcing someone to learn something they're not interested in generally has a pretty poor outcome. How many great piano players HATE playing the piano? Zero. It's true that some of them might have been forced at some time to practice more but it's definitely not true that if you take the average child and just force them to play the piano they're going to become great. More likely to become psychopaths IMO. And how exactly do you force them?
How would you like if we put you to "piano camp" for the next 6 years? Or pick the subject you're least interested in... We need to respect people's individuality and kids are people too... That doesn't mean you can't push them sometimes.
I just wanted to say that calculus in today's society, for most people, is irrelevant. In day to day stuff for most people it's just not necessary. Unless you're doing something like engineering.
Statistics and probability are infinitely more useful and are what should be emphasized over calculus. Some schools offer that choice but calculus as a requirement is a fail.
I question the value of obligatory education at all in it's current state. What do you get for your 10+ years? The only indispensable skills gained of concrete benefit for most citizens are the ability to read and write. Otherwise, some general notions that may or may not be of use in your life.
I have spent most of my life in education and independent study, and am a proponent of learning and knowledge. But I have also spent time with people without formal education. They are often sharp and inquisitive individuals, and if they don't know about how to prove contorted geometric theorems that we do in high school, so what?
Just a train of thought.
The reasoning is simple: merely being able to "read and write" is not enough to be a functioning citizen of a democracy. Effective citizenship requires the ability to read for comprehension and critique, to write effectively and persuasively, to reason about complex issues for which there may well be insufficient evidence to establish obvious and objective correct answers, to recognize ideas and philosophies and patterns from history.
Merely being able to, say, read a utility bill or restaurant menu, or write a short email, do not suffice. And many people will, left to their own devices, learn to do little more than those, if they even learn as much as that (whether due to inclination or lack of opportunity).
Rigid schooling totally ruined that for me. Mindless repetition of the most boring parts of each subject hammered into you over and over until you lose interest or totally disassociate it with the creative/curious part of your brain.
Luckily, I recovered my love for math, engineering, science in college, but I do wonder how much more I could have learned if I encountered that style of teaching from grades 5-12.
Anyways, my view is they should require certain core subjects, but use periodic testing of knowledge and applied projects rather than having grades be dependent on the teacher's style (pop quizzes, hours of homework a night for one subject).
I totally agree that motivated student studies 100x better, I just think it's impossible to motivate student 100% of time. A teacher that is able to achieve 50% motivation deserves the Medal of Honor. In the end, it all boils down to teachers. Good teachers worth gold by weight.
From my own life example: I was literally forced to learn some subjects in college (I'm mathematician), but 10 years later I'm re-studying the same subjects, now on my own. And it really helps that I learned them previously, as I already have a global overlook of the whole area, and know where I am, what should work, and what must be too hard to try.
Yeah, I'm gonna call shenanigans here. SO is a HS teacher, her kids really really really do not want to learn. They want to either play Minecraft, snapchat their genitals to each other, watch porn, or just gossip between themselves. Oh and drugs and sex in the bathroom, as usual. Occasionally, they turn to real crime and assault each other (one is still in a coma), pimp themselves out on Instagram for money (either sex), or hurt themselves (suicide clusters, it's 'a thing' now [1]). For about 1/3rd of her kids, if they come to school stoned to Pluto or drunk as skunks, that's a victory; at least they came to school and weren't out committing felonies or having felonies committed against them.
Look, the super-crunchy idea of kids that are naturally curious is really just ... rich and white. Like, kids in an inner city/dense urban environment have waaaaaay more serous shit to deal with. They get raped habitually by their mother's many 'boyfriends', they don't eat all weekend and if they do it's 2 bags of Cheetos, they have drugs forced on them by family members that really do think pot is medicine and can cure everything, their parents think school is nonsense and they should start working the fields to earn something for the family, etc. You ideas are great, but that is not how life is these days, poverty and racism fucking suck.
[1] Not my SO's state, but a good overview: http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-c...
At the High School level, you've got prejudices built from years of engagement with the school system involved. If the schools in general are failing to engage appropriately, by that time large numbers of students are irrevocably alienated.
> Look, the super-crunchy idea of kids that are naturally curious is really just ... rich and white.
No, it's not, though privileged home environment (in rough order of importance, educated, rich, and white) all play a role both in preserving and enhancing that natural trait until hitting school (and through it, when the school experience is negative) and in making it less likely that outside social influences will interfere with realizing it, it's pretty clear that the basic inclination is universal.
> They get raped habitually by their mother's many 'boyfriends', they don't eat all weekend and if they do it's 2 bags of Cheetos, they have drugs forced on them by family members that really do think pot is medicine and can cure everything, their parents think school is nonsense and they should start working the fields to earn something for the family, etc.
Its certainly true (and I'm find of saying it) that the biggest problems in education are outside of the school system.
That does not mean, however, that the problems inside the school systems should be ignored (as difficult as they are, they are often far easier to address than the outside problems.)
So, trying to distance the classroom from the very real problems that these kids have outside of it is nonsense. You just cannot learn math without food in your belly or a 'safe' home, like, this is Maslow 101 stuff. A neighboring school district has a free/reduced breakfast and lunch program and they are kicking ass in SAT scores relative to my SO's school. You can polish the inner workings of a school to a mirror shine, but if the kids got no sleep or their mom just got shot up and died, it is totally mute.
You are saying that by the time the kids reach HS, if they are this damaged, just triage them. Well, this is kinda being put into practice these days. It depends on school district, but yeah, it's kinda charter school or bust now. Those folks that are too damaged to learn about King George from ~250 years ago are kinda just left behind. How that triage method figures into the 2016 election should be obvious in the results we have.
Look, you are on HN, I get the mindset here, you can just 'process' and 'app' your way out of any problem. If you haven't yet done so, work harder, take more LSD micro-doses, Juicero it, like, I get this a lot on here. But if you really are interested in the schools of this country, then you gotta listen to the teachers and admins and the kids.
Shit. Is. Fucked. Yo.
Why? Literally millions of reasons from literally millions of districts and millions of students. Where we are the issue is simple: poverty. Where you are, who knows. Go to your next PTA meeting in August and try to find out.
No, I'm saying that the attitudes of kids currently in high school and their unsuitability for certsin changes in educational methods is not indicative of the utility of changes in educational methods introduced earlier.
You have essentially invented a line of argument entirely unrelated to anything I actually.wrotr to argue against. I don't disagree with any of what you write, it's just entirely irrelevant to the post you are responding to, as it seems to be a rebuttal of an argument that exists in your kind, fueled by expectations driven by a stereotype you explicitly describe yourself as holding of the HN community.
Your point does seem reasonable that many kids would not thrive at all in a self-directed learning environment. But maybe you also (unintentionally) make the point that they shouldn't be in the traditional school either?
What is the function of the traditional school for students whose motivations are so far apart from the school's? Merely to detain them to avoid the bad behavior near their homes? Do those kids grow up to be adults who think "thank goodness I went to high school otherwise I would have done yet more crime+drugs?"
Yeah, we're bitter, we know.
What you're describing is not a "kids" issue, but a mixture of culture and poor school policies. Schools are likely part of the problem you're describing.
It's not the teachers job to find something interesting for children. I'm advocating for the abandoning of schooling as it is, so you're seeing it backwards to think that what I'm saying means to find this motivation in the current setting. It won't be found there.
> Look, the super-crunchy idea of kids that are naturally curious is really just ... rich and white. Like, kids in an inner city/dense urban environment have waaaaaay more serous shit to deal with.
Yes, and if they didn't have that shit to deal with, then they WOULD be more curious about life. Duh. It's only white because whites often don't have to face that shit. But no, you're wrong here. Every child is naturally curious about SOMETHING. Even playing Minecraft or watching porn involves a curiosity, however un/healthy.
Take those kids out of that environment (which school actually contributes a major part) and yes, they'd discover their own natural interests. Even if that's still Minecraft, that's fine.
Again, I'm advocating abandoning schooling as it is. I don't mean that we should find what motivates kids in the current school setting, but that letting go of the current school setting will allow the space for children to find their own interests.
You assume that only top level knowledge matters. You also assume that every kid will be interested in everything, if only the teacher and environment did everything perfectly. Neither is true.
It is possible to learn things you are not particularly excited about. It is also possible to become later on interested in something you was not excited about initially. Things tend to become easier and more pleasant once you learned basics, learning basics part is the hardest one.
"But in free school settings the focus is first on what you want to accomplish and then how to do that, which most often then involves learning to read, write and math as an avenue to achieve something greater."
I prefer teachers who can make kids interested in math itself and physics itself and history itself and writing itself even if it is not immediately useful. It wont work on every kid and all kids will like some things more then other things, of course. But starting with assumption that it is not possible for them so lets not even try sound like definition of low expectations.
No, I'm saying that the teacher/school environment is contaminated and we don't need it. It's imperfect, so let's get rid of it. It can't be made perfect.
I'm saying that everyone has something they are naturally interested in. Even if that's just being on Facebook. Eventually you'll learn to read if you want to browse Facebook.
> It is possible to learn things you are not particularly excited about. It is also possible to become later on interested in something you was not excited about initially.
Yes, that's true. But it doesn't mean that's the only way.
> I prefer teachers who can make kids interested in math itself and physics itself and history itself and writing itself even if it is not immediately useful.
Uhm, why? There's no real reason.
> But starting with assumption that it is not possible for them so lets not even try sound like definition of low expectations.
I didn't say it's not possible. I said it doesn't work well. There are countless examples of being taught something we don't like and yet we're good at it.
Yes, you're grateful for being encouraged to learn English in school, but you could have just as well learned it through your own motivation.
I only liked to learn math in 9th grade, a little late, relatively speaking. It all came down to me changing teachers, it turns out my high-school math teacher was way better at doing his job compared to the teacher I had previously had. Had I been asked before 9th grade if I had had any interest in math I would had most certainly said "no".
I went from pre-Algebra to Linear Algebra in a few years in a university in my mid-20s before I got into distributed systems etc, but well after I was a notable programmer. If I'd had /any/ early guidance I'd have made many fewer missteps, but I've done extraordinarily well given where I came from thanks to the help of mentors I met along the way. If you keep kicking a dog it will get out of its situation at the first opportunity, with vigor. Fighting for survival is an alien concept to most of us, of course, so it seems insane. And look how shitty I'm doing, it doesn't work!
If I have kids I'm pretty sure I'll be an illegal parent.
I agree with you, although I wonder if that's what the parent is saying because one room school houses did teach all subjects. I think the parent is just advocating a more self-directed style of learning that still includes a full curriculum and some level of adult direction and oversight.
I will never become a toolsmith, but forcing people is bad- every creature has intrinsic motivation for something, you need to hack that motivation, and piggyback the thirst for knowledge to that.
> Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller;
Oh, "Einstein was bad at math! and I'm bad at math ... so I can be a genius too!". Farragut, Edison and Rockefeller would have probably excelled anywhere. Schooling, no schooling, home-schooling or Montessori schooling. What about the millions of people who were not schooled, and remained philistines their whole life?
If you are trying to solve your own smart child's education, his arguments make perfect sense. If you are trying to optimise the overall level of education of a country with a limited budget, things are more nuanced. There is, without question, lots of room for improvement in education. But suggesting that anybody can be a star if you take away that pesky schooling is disingenuous.
It's not entirely uncommon that people feel they learn way better outside of school. I'd say that's a pretty huge indication of failure, given the fact that the entire purpose of school is learning.
In which case you'd expect (student-lead) learning outside of school would be superior, as you mentioned.
The "prussian model" strikes me as an urban legend.
i did fine in school, but until my upper-level college courses, i learned much more and more thoroughly from internet research and self-guided reading. i'm a millenial, so maybe things were different for older generations, but i also lived in what was considered a very good school district. i can hardly remember anything i learned in high school 10-15 years ago, but i can easily talk about the books i read at the time.
well, i can think of an exception -- i had an excellent english teacher that taught me how to write much better essays.
> Her name is Elizabeth and she is a parent to three girls that are being unschooled.
Merriam webster says
> to make (one) disregard schooling or training
I don't think the well-written article and the dictionary are on the same page.
Not really; for most people for most of time education, such as it was, has been narrowly directed from outside at a particular pre-ordained social role.
The luxury of self-directed education has been rare, and mostly available in fairly narrow social strata where it has been available at all (and often some high-middle stratum more than actual highest elites, because the latter often had stricter expectations with less flexibility.)
I also highly recommend "How Children Fail" by John Holt. It's one of those books that I keep thinking about, even years after I first read it.
I have two kids in a public school. The teachers thus far have been extremely child-focused to the extent possible while still adhering to the common-core standards. The school has a number of mixed grade classes, e.g K-1, 1-2, 2-3, and the mix changes each year based on the needs of the kids. So my experience does not support your generalization of modern schooling.
Nor does it support the ideas in Gatto's main thesis. Perhaps in the 90's his thesis was true, but these teachers are up to date on recent research and know how to build non-provisional self esteem, for example. They encourage the expression and self-management of emotions. Curricula are often built around a central unifying topic, for example unifying math, reading, and writing around a core event. Rote memorization plays a minimal role - often built in to the daily activities in a why that the students may not realize.
I have also observed, during my weekly parent-volunteer hours, that the teachers are highly specialized and well trained. There is so much more to it than just 'learning styles' and such. They truly excel at managing behaviors and emotions, and creating engaging and multi-subject curricula. Most students do not show up ready to learn on any given day - and getting through to them requires extreme patience and tremendous creativity. Perhaps Gatto had unengaged and indifferent teachers - it seems that these would 'dumb down' students. Fortunately this has not been my experience.
It's quite possible that in the decades since his work that his criticisms have caused change to occur.
Finland has an education program that goes along the same lines that cuts across all of the subject matters.
The downside is that common core is great for neurotypical kids ... and not a kid on the Autism spectrum.
Common core is also weak on drills and practice. It's great for learning but not for mastery. That's me being raised in a first-generation Taiwanese family and my martial arts experience in my 20s talking. Without the drilling that happens after learning, the kid never develops sufficient grit and discipline. There is a tendency to short-circuit. You think you can stop when you "learned" it, and never dive deeper. You fool yourself into thinking you know the material, but you don't. (Personal experience). Basic skills are not practiced to the point of effortlessness, so building advanced skills on top of basic skills is fraught.
Common Core is a set of standards that curricula need to meet, not a curriculum. It may seem nitpicky, but it's an important distinction considering the amount of hate lumped on to Common Core because of shitty curricula that implement it.
I think the standards are great, and well-designed curricula (as it sounds like Arizona has), are fantastic.
Things are loosely segregated by aptitude but proximity allows you to see what's coming next and overhear those behind you (in which case you might learn something you didn't quite get the first time, or understand it with more nuance now)
The basics of his paedagogics are based on a family-like bond between Teachers and Students. Its very different to the western model of education be it the traditional western style or the "Progressive Education" or its latest incarnation.
They still mix ages in Montessori schools. There is a stronger self-learning culture, including peer-to-peer collaborations and older children playing a mentorship role to younger ones. The teachers observe, faciliate and are there whenever they are needed.
It's not always so rosy in real life though. One school I volunteered at actually had to do more age-segregated classes (rather than lump Lower Primary together) because it was way too disruptive to mix 6 - 9 years old together. To add context, since the school was specifically for disadvantaged children, most (especially refugees) either join much later or stop suddenly, so couldn't fully benefit from the Montessori system.
relatedly, Ivan Illich "Deschool Society" [0] is another author that wrote in depth on this subject with similar incisive critiques.
also, Darren Allen writes on the institutional nature of modern society [1] and the way we are conditioned to become subservient to its structures [2].
all of this begins in elementary school and it's sorting of children into groups. The conditioning of children into being "manageable" components in an institutional indoctrination system is at the heart of how the system perpetuates itself.
0 - http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.h...
1 - http://expressiveegg.org/2017/05/05/egotism-institution-mono...
Yeah, but back in that day, you only got education if your parents had the time and knowledge to do it, or the wealth to hire private tutors.
That is, that's all it takes if the child values learning. If not, well, plenty of children manage not to learn in schools, too.
> if the child values learning
Big if there. Kids aren't really the ones who understand the value of learning. Give a kid with the ability to read the Internet and say "have at it" will probably not result in an educated child.
It's also entirely possible to take a child that values learning and drive that out of them through discouragement and disincentive, something schools are often quite good at.
On the flip side, it's entirely possible to encourage a child to value learning. But that's something that tends to happen early, far before school, and even if present, may or may not survive contact with school.
A good teacher can do it, at least for some children. Teachers that good are rare, though.
All of these were and still are statistically predicted by children's origins.
Not everyone has the skills, ability, or temperament to be a [choose: doctor, janitor, software developer, plumber, assassin, author, etc] and be successful at it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone should go to [choose: college, vocational school, Hollywood].
Let's stop with the idea that there is One True Way to be "successful" and encourage kids to experiment, learn, and help them explore what they're good at not what we want them to be good at.
It is easy to identify exceptions (replication crisis, intrusion of managerial activities), but this motivation also applies at the higher levels - ie phd candidature and above. The goal is self-directed research within a chosen field to produce new knowledge.
As for teaching children only what they want to learn, no. I would not raise my kids that way.
It used to be that education was something people did for themselves. Parents or a teacher would help children learn what they wanted to learn, when they were ready to learn it. Modern schooling forces children to learn on the teacher's schedule.
John Taylor Gatto wrote extensively of the corrupt nature of institutionalized schooling 15-20 years ago. I guess it's not polite to point out that the system is rigged against children, so Mr. Gatto's insights into more effective teaching have been successfully ignored in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis
"Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and Why" - http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com
Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"... several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.