What's the point of School, really?

@deathontwolegs,

The current education system wants to babysit and prepare for the workforce, they want people to be ready to work and join the economy. Some education systems will cater to the middle band, setting a goal of achieved mediocrity - get as many as possible through the gate. Coin operated turnstile, a piece of paper comes out the other side. If you pay the fare, be it in time or money, make the most of school. Ask your teachers perplexing questions.

I believe the high school education should be asking students to find what they are interested in, what they enjoy, then let them pursue it. If someone does not enjoy school, they can leave and find the rose garden of the workforce.

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@deathontwolegs,

deathontwolegs wrote:

There is absolutely no point to high or elementary school, and mandatory education needs to be abolished immediately. It kills creativity in the student, they learn to despise the work, because god forbid you don't go to school and follow your own method of learning, the police escort you. Learning is not a crime... unless it is YOUR style of learning which does not precisely comply with the school, then they take issue.

Get rid of it, now. School should absolutely be optional, all the way, for every age.

Grade/Elementary school is mandatory for a very good reason. Literacy. Can you imagine yourself functioning well in the modern society without mastery of your letters and numbers? That will lead us back to the Middle Ages.

I think this basic level education must be mandatory and totally subsidized (free). It should be supervised and highly regulated for a steady and firm ground work.

Creativity is sometimes sacrificed due to the pedagogical trend of the times but this should not be blamed in the idea of mandatory basic education. As I see it the government does not invest more in the trainings of teachers. Better Normal Schools, more graduate trainings for teachers and more budget to minimize the constraints of the puclic schools.
I agree that due to pedagogical trend studies

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@deathontwolegs,

Deathontwolegs,

Take Lewis Carol for example. He wrote the Alice and wonderland stories. While they are pretty trippy themselves, they are extremely complex in nature and content. Carol was himself a very accomplished logician. But the point is that Carol learned a very difficult formal system in order to converse in an abstract way so others would and could read and comprehend his stories. He need school as a venue for that higher knowledge.

But from what I understand, the most important thing about school is the peers you interact with. That sounds corny in itself, right, that school is about making friends? School kinda prepares you to converse with your colleagues in the future. I don't think many people would go if school was optional, so it is really something for our own good.

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@VideCorSpoon,

I would agree with deathontwolegs, but crime is something that usually revolves around the uneducated. The people who want to drop out have problems anyways.

But everybody has problems, lol. So we can't let people choose for an education, otherwise the potential of problems will become a reality for people who would normally be good people.

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@Holiday20310401,

I could read before I started grade school, so much for literacy. On the converse there was a guy who seemed to be of maybe slightly below aberage intelligence in my middle school who couldn't read clifford the big red dog....a 12-13 year old who couldn't read on the level of the average 6 year old. Again, so much for literacy. I think that if we put all resources into elementary education and simply cut off maditory education at the grades 7+ allowing only those who choose to go on to go on and sending the rest off to learn a trade.

Japan uses aptitude testing, if this were reliable it would be fine, however I think that those who enjoy learning and want to pursue academics and perhpas become men and women of letters, then they should be allowed to prove themselfs in their studies and drive rather than on a single test.

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@FatalMuse,

"If someone does not enjoy school, they can leave and find the rose garden of the workforce."

Except, you can't. It's mandatory until 16. The school does not give you any opportunity to do what you like. It doesn't care about your interests. Since knowledge and learning is diverse, why is everybody so willing to listen to the school? The student never equates into the factor.

I find it astounding how so many people can use the argument "to find what you're interested in"... humans have a natural curiosity for things, they do it naturally. School won't teach you very much if you're forced to attend.

A good essay on this is The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling .

Make no mistake, school kills creativity by forcing us through dull repitition to go through their sorry excuse for a system.

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@deathontwolegs,

"I don't think many people would go if school was optional, so it is really something for our own good."

Then perhaps school isn't such a good idea to begin with. Sorry, I feel no need to bow down to a school that will threaten me with legal proceedings should I not attend something that obviously "must be best for me".

"But unfortunately we must all conform to some basic methods of education. If not in order to succeed within their normative framework, but also to be aware of how other also think on the subject. Education requires a relativistic mind frame."

Example?

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@deathontwolegs,

deathontwolegs wrote:

"If someone does not enjoy school, they can leave and find the rose garden of the workforce."

Except, you can't. It's mandatory until 16. The school does not give you any opportunity to do what you like. It doesn't care about your interests. Since knowledge and learning is diverse, why is everybody so willing to listen to the school? The student never equates into the factor.

In my post, the first paragraph is how I see the education system as it operates today. The second paragraph, from which you quoted, is how I would like the education system to work. I think elementary school should be compulsory to try and foster at least some literacy but I think high school should be entirely optional. Also, even though high school is technicaly compulsory, it's still entirely possible to leave - I've seen many people do it.

Quote:

I find it astounding how so many people can use the argument "to find what you're interested in"... humans have a natural curiosity for things, they do it naturally. School won't teach you very much if you're forced to attend.

I'm saying to find what you're interested in in the context of high school not being compulsory. So if you're choosing to attend school, you should also have the choice to follow where your interests lie rather than if you choose high school, you are then forced to follow the prescribed curriculum.

If we have a legal system that relies on writing, then the nation has on obligation to at least make its citizens literate. It's unjust to force a written legal system on illiterate people.

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@FatalMuse,

I apologize if I misunderstood the context.

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@FatalMuse,

Deathontwolegs,

Keep in mind that the world you are about to enter (which you are arguably apart of as we speak generally speaking which is a faulty generalization in itself) is not your ideal world. You are entering a world based on competition, qualification, expertise, etc. No doubt, all these substance of things can be achieved by your self in some way or another. But there exists a framework where you need a piece of paper that says "I did this" or "I qualify for that." That is where school come in. It is a necessary evil for that piece of paper alone, but there are benefits to it, like peers and such if you try to spin it the right way. In that way, we have to put up with institutionalized education, because we are inevitably compared to the next guy and our chances for advancements depend on that system (which honestly sucks.) Hence the normative framework. But we can utilize that forced system but using other people to help our own intellectual abilities.

Fatalmuse,

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@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon wrote:

Fatalmuse,

I agree absolutely. Perhaps I need to add more the final sentence of my post:

Quote:

It's unjust to force a written legal system on illiterate people...

... when the state has not provided the opportunity of free literacy to all.

The point I'm tryint to get at is:
-If we have a written legal system then
-we must indiscriminately provide free education to at least the level of standard literacy

If someone is provided with the option of obtaining literacy and opts not to, then they only have themselves to blame when their illiteracy prohibits them from understanding the laws of society. Whereas forcing a system of society that relies on literacy on someone who has never received the option of free education, seems unjust to me.

It is my belief that having no free education but having a written legal system results in oppression.

The point of education, from the original question, is to give people the tools to become a functioning member of society (and therefore the economy). Illteracy causes real problems for people in a literate society, so if we allow people to freely choose whether they gain literacy or not, we have to accept they're going to cause problems further down the track in terms of crime & social services.

Therefore, I believe at least literacy (and basic mathematics) is essentail in education and the remainder should be optional.

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@VideCorSpoon,

Are the students really that much better off *with* school? All I can see is a failed system of "education". And no one is any closer to discovering what interests them. School prevents you from doing other things beside their work, so how is that diverse?

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@deathontwolegs,

Students are not independent enough to care to make productive goals, and strive for achievement. Especially with gaming and all that stuff, school needs to be mandatory for the little bit of learning that acts as a gemstone to all the tailings of education we get.

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@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

Students are not independent enough to care to make productive goals, and strive for achievement. Especially with gaming and all that stuff, school needs to be mandatory for the little bit of learning that acts as a gemstone to all the tailings of education we get.

Then I'd say you have a vast misunderstanding of children, and people. Children especially have very creative imaginations. I cannot believe that I'm even arguing about this on a philosophy forum. By forcing the child you go to school, you don't let he/she pursue their goals, which leads to resentment. It's NOT "for your own good", at all.

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@deathontwolegs,

I'm 17, and in highschool, and all I see among people in my class is wanting to socialize; they talk about video games, xbox, what they talked about last night on MSN, "What's up", etc. (the ceiling, the sky) lol.

Yes we have creative minds, but to bring out such an inherent gift is not provided through elementary school. Unless you get the odd few who know what they want to be from the very beginning, which usually parallels their surroundings like that of a teacher, or doctor, or dentist.

We kids and teens are too taken in by the non-constructive world, and thats only going to get worse. (Unless game industries decide to go "educatative" by "incentive" from the government or something). lol.

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@Holiday20310401,

Im 19, in college, remember highschool and what I did while I was there. After age 15 I stopped playing videogames entirely, stopped watching t.v.. I started to develop myself. I took up guitar, got a teacher and practiced for 5 hours a day, I developed my art through my own studies, I read quite a bit and wrote even more.

School did not stifle my creativity, if anything, it broadened it. It added to my existential angst, it gave me subjects to criticize, to understand. It showed me conclusively that an adult is often just a big kid, and maybe even a big baby. It showed me that those who have authority rarely have any more worth than those who do not, and they are rarely the most ideal candidate for the position that they have taken up. They might not even do the best they can with it. I did often dispair that the system was one which just cranked out a product, and I often objected in taking part in it to any degree which might be too much of an inconvenience, but I always welcomed any task which allowed for some degree of creativity such as writing papers(though I often lost points for not following the outline, I though that was goofy since I clearly still was achieving the same thing in doing the task as I chose to, try telling a teacher or administrator that and they will deny it either on the grounds that their outline was the only one which could achieve the ends they intended or that a student is too young to comprehend their educational scheme).

School gave me a good bit of free time to develop my ideas. While I was ignoring the task at hand, I got to spend time thinking, writing, drawing and I had a constant source to draw from. I think that were it not for school, I would have never developed my healthy skepticism and disregard for authority and profesionalism.

The single most objectionable thing I can think of were those damn outlines. Especially the busy work designed to pound the following of directives into the students skull. There was one in particular that I remember doing that said to read the whole sheet and in small print at the very end said don't follow the previous instructions or answer the 30 questions. I figured that one out, thank god, but everyone who filled out the answers got a zero. The message:get with beurocracy or get out.

I like sen. mccain's plan to allow for those who have degrees and professional experience in a subject to teach. Every single decent teacher I have ever had had field experience in the topic, or at least some kind of real life experience away from the defunct school system. .

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@Zetetic11235,

When I started on the forums here I stopped playing games. Basically they are boring now. And yes, school can broaden creativity, but it is never about figuring things out for yourself.

Math, sure, when learning the basics as are still done in highschool, we require to follow the guidelines of a teacher. But when doing labs, and writing essays that are narrowed to a book against one's own choice, the student should follow their own path. Especially chemistry. We are stuck doing labs of titration with an acid that is less acidic than rain. And we never get to invent our own experiments.

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@Holiday20310401,

You can teach yourself math better than any sicence. The experiments are often created with a pretty specific purpose in mind if they are done right.

I self study advanced math pretty often. I essentially taught myself basic calculus. Yet I find learning fairly basic chemistry from a book quite a bit more troublesome. I think that there is a good ammount of value to structured labs. On the other hand, if you think you can design a better one, that would be an interesting project.

Holiday you kind of remind me of this guy I know who lives in Wilton, Connecticuit. Just throwing that out there. Smile

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@Zetetic11235,

Yea, I used to think this too. When I was young and in the early years of school no one could come up with any argument that'd convince me...

Being among those of your age group, from early on, helps to develop social skills; how to get along, defining your place among 'people', friendships, foes and how to interact.

Learning mathematics establishes new neural pathways, defines relationships among quantities and calculations, stretches the mind to conceive computational structures and gives a framework for solving the innumerable problems that arise throughout the course of ones' life.

Learning history helps to put much of your culture into perspective; and in so doing, gives the learner a framework in which to place current events.

Reading improves comprehension, vocabulary, ones' ability to express themselves - it improves the imagination and helps to compartmentalize the process of communicating thought Developing writing skills teaches the learner how to use words to carefully phrase and express themselves using the written word. Concepts like sentence structure and word components become clearer, enabling one to more accurately communicate.

Social studies teaches the young mind the complexities of how people interact within the framework of their culture. It helps to define how behavior affects our ability to get along, be productive, go to work, oppress, show compassion and much more.

Extracurricular activities such as music and sports teaches skills in how to work together, with other individuals, as a team towards a common goal; how individual roles contribute to the end-goal. The music disciplines actually establish new perceptional pathways in the brain enabling the learner to better perceive structure, sounds and an appreciation for beauty while sports help to develop coordination, stamina and general fitness.

Biology gives the youngster an understanding on how living forms on this planet work; how living cells and systems work, how biological systems interact, come into being, feed, reproduce and die - all combining to imbue the young mind with how life works in our world.

Chemistry teaches how the basic elements of our world interact to form the structures we know, produce and use. It provides practical knowledge on how to combine otherwise inert/unusable substances into those we need and can practically use.

For the most of our young: No, you're not going to see this - No, you're not going to buy in or understand this and No; you're not going to perceive any value. That's ok, its part-and-parcel of mature understanding, but if we succeed, we ALL enjoy the benefits; you're happier too!

Cultures that try to teach their young in this kind of structure realized long ago the innumerable benefits of schooling their young. It jump-starts life and the human mind and gives them basic mental and physical tools to succeed. I, too, can come up with cases where an individual's natural curiosity pushed them to learn and develop on their own. But this is the exception and the natural lassitude of the human animal generally prevents this.

As society becomes more focused on the 'me', it loses the discipline - needed by all instruments of culture - to make this system work and the wisdom to even understand why we're doing it at all. Then rears the ugly heads of selfishness, laziness and apathy.

I suppose it comes down to yet another self-fulfilled prophecy: If you see no point, and no one ever helps you to understand any point, your lack of discipline and motivation will lead you to a place where that becomes reality. Years later, you can then sit in your ignorant, unproductive and uninformed life and tell *your* kids, "Naw, ain't no pont to it anyways".

... my take.

PS: I play games too! I love 'em and there's nothing wrong with diversions taken in prudent measure.

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@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

I can't say as I enjoy school much, because I hardly learn what I want to learn. And a lot of the in class time is wasted, coloring, cut and paste assignments for cring out loud!!, in my biology class!!
And what is the point of essays when we aren't allowed to do them at home. No time for perfection, especially when there are so many structural factors that get marked. " You can't use pronouns, lead in must be coherent, quotes must be given author's name and page number....." And only given two periods in class, only allowed to bring in "quotes" for writing the essay. Silliness.
And chemistry class, . "Lets review the periodic table. Please recite the first twenty elements of the table" Oh yeah, like we didn't do that in grade nine. :rolleyes:

Hopefully world issues class will allow for some opinion, and actually give understanding to society.

Physics has yet to get theoretical and imaginative. Yes it is al about theory but thats not my point.

And the boring way a teacher grasps a textbook so precisely during a lesson. Heck in english class (grade 11) we never got a lesson. How ironic, theres still plenty to learn, why not semantics and linguistics, or even logic.

I'll admit highschool has never been as great as university but without highschool you wouldn't learn the fundamentals that are needed for university. I think that in highschool they should change the system completely and have different expectations and fundamentals. Why should somebody take all of of these history or geopgraphy courses if their true passion is in the sciences. Why not offer more science related courses in highschool and give the students more options. If a student wants to take math and science all the way through highschool then let them do that. Ofcourse you still need grade 12 english but for everything else who cares.

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What's the point of School, really?

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