What's the point of School, really?

@William,

I apologize in advance for bumping in this thread, but I feel strongly about the issue of school. I felt compelled to spill out my opinions on the issue of school.

School, as a concept, where students go to learn about different subjects, or in some cases, just one, is a good thing. But the pioneers of early modern education have perverted the concept of school, into molding factory. Students are molded into model citizens, those who don't graduate are said to become outcasts, even though many dropouts don't work minimum wage jobs, or at least are happy with their lives.

Many schools today, in particular public schools, are disgusting. Filled with apathetic teachers and dimwitted "star" students, it's nothing but a nesting place for germs, apathy, and teen angst.

Self-education is the best way to go, in my opinion. While others argue it's more responsible to stay in school, I think it's more responsible to educate yourself, be in charge of your learning, instead of having a nanny teacher teaching you everything. Educational reform must come sometime, it's horrible schools are in such bad educational shape, especially American ones.

And don't get me started on censorship in school...

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@Holiday20310401,

Public school is both a good and a bad thing. What is good about it is that it provides a certain degree of educational astuteness that society today considers a societal default, i.e., that almost every imaginable job requires a certain degree of proficiency in reading and writing and the ability to follow current events. However, by being geared to the lowest common denominator, school can also really alienate higher-performing students and so retard their performances. Home-schooling in certain cases may be desirable, but at the same time it carries certain social stigmas: i.e. the use of home-schooling in certain circles by parents to brainwash their offspring instead of teaching them to be competent rational people, and the fact that it is much more difficult for the home-schooled to build the type of peer networks needed for acceptance (IMO: in my experience the biggest positive about high school was that I was able to interact with a large group of local peers, something home-schooling by fiat almost disallows). Yet at the same time college students are self-selected into continuing their education, and so those who choose college certainly choose school. And at the collegiate level, the passion present in both the student body and the professorial one is markedly higher than ones at the high school level.

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@TheLessorIron,

TheLessorIron;85046 wrote:

I apologize in advance for bumping in this thread, but I feel strongly about the issue of school. I felt compelled to spill out my opinions on the issue of school.

School, as a concept, where students go to learn about different subjects, or in some cases, just one, is a good thing. But the pioneers of early modern education have perverted the concept of school, into molding factory. Students are molded into model citizens, those who don't graduate are said to become outcasts, even though many dropouts don't work minimum wage jobs, or at least are happy with their lives.

Many schools today, in particular public schools, are disgusting. Filled with apathetic teachers and dimwitted "star" students, it's nothing but a nesting place for germs, apathy, and teen angst.

Self-education is the best way to go, in my opinion. While others argue it's more responsible to stay in school, I think it's more responsible to educate yourself, be in charge of your learning, instead of having a nanny teacher teaching you everything. Educational reform must come sometime, it's horrible schools are in such bad educational shape, especially American ones.

And don't get me started on censorship in school...

Whoa, have we had similar experiences in school? Looking over your post made me think I was reading my own thoughts for a second. :Glasses:

I can certainly agree with your comment on the school functioning as a factory for workmen/officemen to plug into the system. It may be inevitable. After all, the school is filling a need for its particular society.

I can't tell you how many times I found myself in a class that graded our participation simply by counting the number of times a student raised his/her hand. This produces the most painfully obvious statements devoid of any thought from grade-whore students. For the ones who don't wish to speak unless their contribution is actually of some worth, this is teeth-grittingly exasperating.

I know exactly what you're talking about when you say "star" students. This connection with teachers enjoyed by the "stars" and the outcasting, I'm guessing, are just derivatives from school being also a social institution. I can't quite put my finger on how this all comes about...

Self-education is the best way to go. However, there are a lot of prerequisites. For one, the student needs to acknowledge a need for it most of all. Back when universities first came to being, the majority could not afford books, so they had no choice but to apply. Now, the materials in books is almost completely democratized. I figured...hey, this makes up the base of it all, and its all available to me. Its worked wonders. I've been through what?...19 years of school?...and its not until after then I felt great about learning.

School is a system (which comes with its limits), and its not for everyone. Its not all bad...and not all good.

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@Holiday20310401,

Welcome to the machine...

You want that piece of paper that promises a successful life, so you enroll and pay the money. Once they get their hands on you, they'll make you a proper citizen alright...

In reality, I think very little brainwashing goes on at school. This is because students don't care enough to take any of the ideas they are presented seriously; most of them are being "educated" by their parents, friends, and the media, which could only be worse than what the teachers at school are instructing. Then you get to higher education, where everything is learned for about as long as is required to regurgitate the information in time for the final, and then forgotten along with large quantities of alcohol.

There's a point to school. To some, it is learning. To others a party. To most, getting a job, and having a party in the mean time.

1 Reply

@Pangloss,

Pangloss;86159 wrote:

Welcome to the machine...

You want that piece of paper that promises a successful life, so you enroll and pay the money. Once they get their hands on you, they'll make you a proper citizen alright...

In reality, I think very little brainwashing goes on at school. This is because students don't care enough to take any of the ideas they are presented seriously; most of them are being "educated" by their parents, friends, and the media, which could only be worse than what the teachers at school are instructing. Then you get to higher education, where everything is learned for about as long as is required to regurgitate the information in time for the final, and then forgotten along with large quantities of alcohol.

There's a point to school. To some, it is learning. To others a party. To most, getting a job, and having a party in the mean time.

It's true, some benefit from the Prussian School System. Others don't, everyone is different(which means everyone is the same?...), and thus, not all are motivated by apathy. This is probably little brainwashing down in school, but regardless, some brainwashing thoughts lurk. (School=only way, dropouts=dumbasses,etc.)

Nietzsche once said: "What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.", I'm gonna close with that.

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@Holiday20310401,

I really think that public school has the purpose of mainstreaming us, making us equal, and not serving our individual interest.
Drag the dumb kids up and drag the smart kids down.
The state of course wants workers who are used to do repetitive boring tasks, not geniuses who think independent.

I didn't like school, and in retrospect I realize that the problem was that I was hold back by the simpletons I was forced to trample in tact with.
It might just have been the school I was at, so I don't want to unnecessarily generalize.
Some of my teachers were just crazypeople (actually left to the nut-house) and I think we as a society should do a better job at selecting who influences our children.
No matter how you structure it, those people will have an immense influence on impressionable minds.
I have long thought that progressives like to tell other people what to think, which is why teachers - and journalists - tend to be progressives.
Which is why I am pretty skeptic of public education.

I would recommend any smart kid to do your own learning and only follow school to the extent that you can tell the teachers what they want to hear.
In the days of the internet that should be possible.

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@bk-thinkaboom,

My philosophy: Autodidacticism is the way to go. I've learned far more outside of school in my free time than I've ever learned in school.

The only reason I still attend school and I don't just grab a backpack and get lost somewhere Chris McCandless-style is because I consider school a social obligation to my family and to society. I've already had my college paid for, a generous offer that I should pay back by at least going to college.

But after that, all bets are off and the world is my canvas.

Break free. Travel for all the people who can't because they live worker-bee lifestyles.

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@Holiday20310401,

The_Dude wrote:

The only reason I still attend school and I don't just grab a backpack and get lost somewhere Chris McCandless-style is because I consider school a social obligation to my family and to society.

I feel the same. Really, I only went to college for financial security (which now, it appears, I've actually achieved the opposite - tons and tons of debt!). The things I really want to learn, I learn on my own. Hence why I'm here on philosophy forum Smile

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@Holiday20310401,

It's ironic how success costs so much money, even the brightest people may drop out of school.

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@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401;18736 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.

Fire drills like every two weeks. Waste of a period.

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.

So again, what's the point of school, besides the education (academically speaking). [If it weren't for other aspects existing I wouldn't go as much as I did]

Even tho I consider school primitive in it's teachings, it's still a handy tool nomatter how primitive it may be. If you were raised in the rainforest, you wouldn't have all the basic concepts about math, physics, different languages, art ..etc.

Maybe your not allowed to write essays at home, because copying from internet would be too easy.

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What's the point of School, really?

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