Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

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> Here's a secret: That's the point of the class. School is mainly there to teach you to take assignments, follow directions, and cough up results on demand, irrespective of whether you actually care about the subject. It's a much-in-demand business skill.

I get tired of people dumping on schools.

The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

There are many reasons for people to not like school (social aspects--both personal and community--certainly being a big problem), but, I have ZERO sympathy for anyone who complains that it was boring, uninteresting drudgery from an educational standpoint.

Yes, everybody has bumped into the teacher that is retired-in-place--these people exist in any long-lived institution including companies. But, dear God, most teachers are desperate for any student to show even a modicum of interest in what they are teaching. Even in the worst schools, there always seems to be a handful of teachers lighting the way.

If you found your education boring, it's because you didn't exert even the minimum amount of effort necessary to get the attention of those teachers. And that's your own damn fault.

> "The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into."

I almost stopped reading after that bit and I kind of wish I did.

there is some, some truth to what you are saying. but to paint this picture that "the problem with school" is the students.... is disingenuous at best, completely ignorant at worst.

> The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

So, we agree there's a problem. It's immaterial if the issue is in the school itself or in the students. The material fact is that the tool you're using (the current educational system) isn't having the effect that you want (imparting useful information and useful ways to think about it).

Say that I've got a polished, high-quality product, heavily advertised, easily available, and cheap. But: sales numbers are terrible. Is it the potential customers that are the problem, or is it something about the product? Put another way, is it more useful to fight against the nature of the customers, or to modify the product into something that will convince them to buy and use it?

If most people are unmotivated, I don't think it's reasonable or constructive to just say "all well, they should've just tried harder". I think it's more useful to assume that they aren't inherently slackers and diagnose and fix the problems in the system to improve the experience for the students and the outcome for society, overall.

> It's immaterial if the issue is in the school itself or in the students.

Um, that is, in fact, kind of a VERY big deal. If the problem is the students, your solutions are mostly about fixing things outside the school.

> The material fact is that the tool you're using (the current educational system) isn't having the effect that you want (imparting useful information and useful ways to think about it).

I somewhat disagree with this. The system appears to be generating a certain average level of education. We would like the system to be generating a higher average level of education. No one has yet shown that there is a better way of doing this than the current system, sadly, without expending a lot more focused resource than people are politically willing to exert.

> I think it's more useful to assume that they aren't inherently slackers and diagnose and fix the problems in the system to improve the experience for the students and the outcome for society, overall.

The problem isn't that students don't want an education--the problem is that there is almost always something right now (sports, guys/girls, video games, Facebook/Snapchat/Line) that they want more.

This is what a school is fighting against. Good luck.

> No one has yet shown that there is a better way of doing this than the current system, sadly, without expending a lot more focused resource than people are politically willing to exert.

John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40 years ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" 25 years ago.

The education problem is very well defined, but it can't be fixed or addressed because of inertia, and because of who benefits from the status quo.

> John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40 years ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" 25 years ago.

Holt is not a particularly good figure to cite to back up your assertions. "Education" books are like most "business" books, very little research and data to back up scores of anecdotes. This doesn't automatically make him wrong, but many of his ideas have been overturned and refuted by actual research and investigation.

However, your point stands and we are in agreement with the fact that there is no political will to expend the resource required to improve educational attainment.

We've got the example of places like Finland, that are supposed to be much more successful than U.S. schools. They've got the same distractions, technological and social, that are available in the rest of the world.

It's a very different country than the U.S., but it gives me hope that there's a better way to structure our school system.

> It's a very different country than the U.S., but it gives me hope that there's a better way to structure our school system.

I am watching how they integrate refugees to see if the "system" or the "homogeneity" is the cause of better educational outcomes.

So far, the "system" seems to be losing to the "homogeneity" argument.

Even assuming that bad teachers are the norm, there's always an interesting way to look at any subject. A curious mind will find those. Start by reading the textbook - again, some are awful, but most aren't.

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