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.
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.