Yeah, I'd agree humanbeing, the educational experience can be a pretty bleak time for a lot of kids. Both of my two, for instance, actively disliked high school, and my son in particular... well, frankly I've never seen anybody who hated school as much as he did.
It's often a sick little subculture based on cliques and popularity, with a layer of random authoritarianism from the school administrators overlaid on top. That was certainly true of the high school he had to go to. Fortunately he's perceptive enough to understand that the diploma is a useful ticket to other places, so he toughed it out with a lot of support from his parents (though he seriously panicked us more than a few times) and eventually got where he wanted to go; he's now the web master for a pretty substantial organization.
I have a strong suspicion that our educational systems are failing at their two primary duties: giving our children a basic level of knowledge about the world they live in, and teaching them how to think and learn. They're not too bad at the former, usually, but at the latter they suck the big one. They teach them what to think, not how to think, and one consequence of that is that there's no end to the mystic nonsense in this culture. Astrology, homeopathy, naturopathy, iridology, reflexology, reiki... ach, the list is infinite. Anybody who knows how to think clearly would reject all of those after a ten minute inspection of their claims and the evidence for them. But most of us don't learn at school how to think clearly. I certainly didn't, and it's taken me decades to figure it out on my own, despite being thoroughly trained to the post-graduate level in the sciences and spending a 30+ year career engaged in various scientific matters.
-----------------------------------------------Dexter Sinister------------------------------------
1. Disliking school.
2. cliques, popularity contests, randam authoritarianism from principal and teachers
3. basic level, foundation of knowlege
4. teaching us HOW to think
5. teaching lightweight mystical crap
Want to list some of the salient points in Dexter Sinister's excellent post.
Each point begs for solutions.
It's often a sick little subculture based on cliques and popularity, with a layer of random authoritarianism from the school administrators overlaid on top. That was certainly true of the high school he had to go to. Fortunately he's perceptive enough to understand that the diploma is a useful ticket to other places, so he toughed it out with a lot of support from his parents (though he seriously panicked us more than a few times) and eventually got where he wanted to go; he's now the web master for a pretty substantial organization.
I have a strong suspicion that our educational systems are failing at their two primary duties: giving our children a basic level of knowledge about the world they live in, and teaching them how to think and learn. They're not too bad at the former, usually, but at the latter they suck the big one. They teach them what to think, not how to think, and one consequence of that is that there's no end to the mystic nonsense in this culture. Astrology, homeopathy, naturopathy, iridology, reflexology, reiki... ach, the list is infinite. Anybody who knows how to think clearly would reject all of those after a ten minute inspection of their claims and the evidence for them. But most of us don't learn at school how to think clearly. I certainly didn't, and it's taken me decades to figure it out on my own, despite being thoroughly trained to the post-graduate level in the sciences and spending a 30+ year career engaged in various scientific matters.
-----------------------------------------------Dexter Sinister------------------------------------
1. Disliking school.
2. cliques, popularity contests, randam authoritarianism from principal and teachers
3. basic level, foundation of knowlege
4. teaching us HOW to think
5. teaching lightweight mystical crap
Want to list some of the salient points in Dexter Sinister's excellent post.
Each point begs for solutions.
