Re:The anarchic experimental schools of the 1970s
by InclinedPlane on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @09:17AM
(#8487130)
Many of the smartest and most successful people I know were not well served by the traditional school system. For myself I only began to do well in school when I somehow managed to acquire the maturity, at 13, to realize that I needed to take education seriously and make use of the system. I went from being in several remedial classes in my freshman year of high school to near the top of my class at graduation and attaining a bachelor's degree at age 20. But it was a very close thing, and I've seen others with great intelligence who struggled in school.
And, to be frank, much of what I learned, at least half, while attending public school I learned on my own, independent of classes. But again, I was fortunate. Fortunate to still have faith in the system. Fortunate to have gone to a very high quality high school where I actually could get a decent education and where most of the teachers and faculty put education as their top priority (this is not necessarily the norm). Fortunate to have a home life that encouraged and facilitated reading and learning, as well as acquisition of reading materials. Fortunate that I had acquired maturity ahead of most folks at that age at a time when it was critical. Fortunate that I had not fallen in with "the wrong crowd" of people and ended up dropping out of school or getting into drugs or petty crime or what-have-you.
A lot of kids, smart kids, are not as lucky as I was. And if anything the system is even worse today. Teenagers' lives are more regimented, there's more busywork, there's less trust, the academic bureaucracy is more onerous, it's harder to escape peer pressure due to the ubiquity of social media, and so on.
And, to be frank, much of what I learned, at least half, while attending public school I learned on my own, independent of classes. But again, I was fortunate. Fortunate to still have faith in the system. Fortunate to have gone to a very high quality high school where I actually could get a decent education and where most of the teachers and faculty put education as their top priority (this is not necessarily the norm). Fortunate to have a home life that encouraged and facilitated reading and learning, as well as acquisition of reading materials. Fortunate that I had acquired maturity ahead of most folks at that age at a time when it was critical. Fortunate that I had not fallen in with "the wrong crowd" of people and ended up dropping out of school or getting into drugs or petty crime or what-have-you.
A lot of kids, smart kids, are not as lucky as I was. And if anything the system is even worse today. Teenagers' lives are more regimented, there's more busywork, there's less trust, the academic bureaucracy is more onerous, it's harder to escape peer pressure due to the ubiquity of social media, and so on.