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Comment by Aoyagi | Hacker News Reader

This really seems like excusing the underperforming education system in US and cultural glorification of language bastardization. Every language has some areas that are difficult to grasp and English is one of the easier languages, as most people who have learned more than two foreign languages (including English, of course) can tell.

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I too am not sure I buy the argument. While Danish has a institution 'controlling' the language, Danish is far more irregular than English is. This is also hindered by Danish having 18 basic vowels (most of any European language), although it has 9 (+4 from English) letters to describe the vowels. But even so, they overlap.

Despite Danish's inconsistencies, problems and - some might say - generally awfulness (which I personally like!), Denmark has a 99% literacy rate.[0]

[0] http://country-facts.findthedata.com/q/66/2395/What-is-the-l... (Although, those data are from 2003.)

A 99% literacy rate is nothing special. Canada, New Zealand, the US and the UK all have 99% literacy rates.

Well, the article claims 20% of native English speakers cannot read or write properly.

> Ultimately, about one out of every five English speakers are functionally illiterate, meaning they "cannot read or write well enough for everyday literacy needs," Bell said.

That's the only reason I brought it up.

Everyone seems to agree that schools are garbage. Why doesn't someone do something about it?

Also, this is off topic, but a decent place to ask: Why are there no programming classes in schools? (I've heard 'politics' before, but it has never been explained to me.)

> Everyone seems to agree that schools are garbage. Why doesn't someone do something about it?

If I had to guess it's because until/unless you have kids it "doesn't affect you" (I put that in quotes because it does but the consequences are not right in your face, see global warming).

> Also, this is off topic, but a decent place to ask: Why are there no programming classes in schools? (I've heard 'politics' before, but it has never been explained to me.)

I had a programming class (Java and a little c++) in HS but I realize you are probably asking about elementary/middle schools primarily.

No, I'm talking about high school. Though I think with how simple the basics are, I think they should be in middle school at the latest, I have never seen a high school programming class. Two of our math teachers used to program a long time ago, the computer tech guy doesn't even do html I think he said.

Oh, well my school had 1 class and I've talked to co-workers that had similar classes at their schools but I agree that the vast majority of schools don't have anything like this.

My school had a programming class and a web design class.

But generally, probably the same reason schools don't have engineering classes, accounting classes, actuarial classes, financial classes, legal, nursing, etc. etc. They are considered career specialties that you learn post high school.

Our political parties have very different ideas about how to fix education. Liberals just keep lowering expectations (learning to read is too much now?) and conservatives just want to either fully privatize it or at least let "the market" fix it.

Neither makes any sense to me.

School is 'garbage' because it's compulsory and is one of the few areas in a young person's life where they are forced to be disciplined when they're lazy, be organized when they're not, be thoughtful when they're pleased with simple, and/or work hard when they're tired.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the specific ways in which we educate our children - but the general unease with the 'education system' has more to do with everyone having been through it (making them experts on teaching, apparently) and having negative memories of a time where they were particularly socially and mentally stressed.

While I don't like school for those reasons, I also don't like how I don't get any options to actually learn stuff. Especially stuff that I care about. (I do learn some things, but not much.)

I personally like math, but we have spent more than a week on basic sin/cos/tan/csc/sec/cot curves doing things I already know.

Also, I don't like stress. Some amount of stress is bad, but I don't care about my grades anymore because that was too much stress. (I'm good at school, so I can get good grades just by doing my homework, the increase isn't worth the stress.)

I've also noticed the few adults (mostly my mom/relatives) I've talked to in real life about school (I've talked to other people in running start (college classes in high school) or at game jams, but not about how I don't like school.) seem to be of the opinion that I "need to learn stuff and things."

If I learn less after school I will be very disappointed, because I'm pretty much terrible at everything I do and I need to get decent at something.

The real relevance of content in school is often terrible, but until we can truly figure out what we care to educate our children about (which is exceedingly difficult without being able to agree on what skills will be needed in the future economy) compulsory education will remain hindered in this way.

At least for me, I would like to see a de-emphasis of content and A stronger focus on preparing young people to educate themselves, to be curious about our world. If you bring this to the table on your own I would hardly worry about 'learning less after school'. After all, only you have done your learning this far in life. School is only one structure for learning (that is often expected to be/treated as if it's the only one).

English is a foreign language for me and I think you're absolutely right. Every language has tough parts, but English is by far the easiest I've seen. Excusing the lack of proper education like that is just silly.

This is counter to all the anecdotes I've heard all my life (from everyday people to English majors) about the difficulty of English. I grew up and hang around American monolinguals.

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