Comment by pavelludiq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavelludiq | Hacker News Reader

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I can spend 8 hours programming a computer with just 1 or two 20 minute brakes for eating or a mug refill, but i found it impossible to concentrate for a 40 minutes high-school chemistry class. Could it be that school is just BORING?

I can read a thick book on a hard subject(programming, philosophy, history), but could never finish a fucking chapter from a high-school text book, without falling asleep. Could it be that the textbooks are badly written?

I can spend days and weeks writing an essay on something that interests me, but i fucking hated writing 3 paragraph short essays in school. Could it be the topics, the format and especially the time constrain made me write badly?

If school taught me anything is that unless im working for myself on what i want, its better to just half ass everything, and not do your best, because all it takes is to not be your worst. It probably made me even less disciplined because my natural rebelliousness made me pride myself as an undisciplined misfit. I was proud of being lazy, stupid, stubborn, rebellious and all of that precisely because they wanted me to not be like that. Fuck school. It messed me up, and caused me great suffering with very little benefit, when at least in my case, there was a clearly better way of doing things.

If school taught me anything is that unless im working for myself on what i want, its better to just half ass everything, and not do your best, because all it takes is to not be your worst

This is so true. I realized this very thing myself in the second year in high school. I thought: what the hell am I doing trying to get good grades—from every subject?

I had been doing precisely that just because I could and with the eerie awareness of the fact that I would forget 95% of anything deemed uninteresting right after the course. When it came to subjects tangential to my interests, I realized that I was certainly not going to learn something in school that I couldn't learn by myself.

If I ever needed to cross check which European country invaded which other European country in the 1600's, how to translate "dear girl, I want to marry you for the rest of my life" to German should the opportunity arrive, or desperately need to exercise in some molecular calculations, then I was convinced that I would still have the chance to learn that stuff.

Except for the subjects of my interest, I then dropped all my effort to the very, very minimal level and as a result my grades dropped slightly. It was probably the 20% of effort, 80% of results scheme in action. In some subjects that I had decided to completely ignore, like religion courses (yes, we had those in Finland...), I let my grades drop to the minimum that was required to avoid flunking and was actually pretty proud of that result.

I graduated with good grades in everything I cared about. My high school diploma then exhibited real value for the period of a mere month until it claimed its purpose and I got accepted to the university. I've never needed it after that.

And, by the way, except for mathematics, 99% of what I learned in high school I have never ever needed since. I'm 32 now and I'm glad my teenage realization turned out to be correct.

careful on dismissing which European country invaded which European country etc. Unless people have a good understanding of history, they're doomed to repeat it. Something that becomes very clear in times of strife such as the recent world financial crisis.

One thing that school is good for is exposing you to ideas that are normally outside your sphere of interest, thus attempting to give you a balanced view of the world.

Granted, they're not completely successful at this but I think a lot of that has to do with our immaturity and privileged upbringing as much as it has to do with boring subjects.

"Why do I have to learn this", "I'll never use this", etc etc. The catch cries of a generation of students who have never had to fight for an education and don't have the awareness of how tough life can be to be grateful for the chance to gain one.

Granted, they're not completely successful at this but I think a lot of that has to do with our immaturity and privileged upbringing as much as it has to do with boring subjectss

That is mostly caused by the school systems. Our parents go to their job, and we go to schools.

We are forced into an artificial society of children, and with teachers as authorities. So, we learn what other children like, missing altogether the wisdom and experience(if there are any) of the adults.

So children become very shallow in their taste and what they think is cool.

Ironically the people behind the recent financial crisis are the product of the best our educational system can produce.

Zing!

Or are/were they exhibiting the shallow results-driven sentiment reflected in statements like "99% of what I learned in high school I have never ever needed since."?

Yes, school sucks: http://www.hulu.com/watch/169534/louie-pta-meeting#s-p1-sr-i...

20 minute brakes

Holy Crap! They're some inefficient brakes!

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