public education and how it destroys the urge to learn

[ChinKing]

I was watching Stefan Molyneux's "gene wars" video, in which he spends some time explaining how prey/predators raise their young, why those two different classes raise their young that way, and the different behaviors of the two classes. As I watched this it occurred to me that if I had been learning the same subject in my high school, I most likely would have been bored to death, but during this video I was attentive and interested. Now this must partly have to do with Stefan's style of presentation (I doubt that an analogy to the classic FPS video game term "spray and pray" would be made of how certain animals ejaculate in a public high school), yet this doesn't seem to be the only reason for the huge difference in my attentiveness and interest. So I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas as to why subjects in school seem to be so much more boring when the same subject is interesting outside of school, and any solutions to this  problem.

[M.2]

So glad you brought up this topic, ChinKing!

 

Compulsory education is a Prussian invention, just like the wellfare state and many other terrible state programs. Before that it was the parents who decided whether or not they wanted to have their children educated. There was, of course, much demand, and there were many schools, almost all run by the Roman Catholic church, or the Protestant Communities later on.

 

The main broblem here is the word "compulsory". Parents have been tricked into thinking that the state knows better how to educate their children than they do. The end result is an army of neglected, bitter, mentally compliant idiots, who are not even suitable able to stand their ground in the work-force they were bred for.

 

I was educated in 3 elite private schools in 2 different countries, but me and my Brothers were all miserable. Thankfully, my parents were brave enough to make the outlandish decision to homeschool us for 2 years. It was the best decision they made in my life. At first I did not understand why they chose to do it, but within a year my eyes were opened to what I was missing out on, and what I was forces into instead.

 

I learned to learn during homeschool, and I learned to love to learn during homeschool. I would never enroll my future children in school. I don't want them to suffer the trauma that I have: bullying by teachers and students, corporal punishment, intellectual dryness, stress, the young army of the state called students, the hate for learning, and worst of all, parental neglect. 

[brucethecollie]

Deep down, humans don't appreciate coercion. We love to learn but not when someone snaps their fingers. Have you ever been interested in learning something years after you were not interested or when it was presented in a different way? At school when I wanted to keep learning about something we had to move on and when this happened over and over again I eventually felt like "eh, i'm checking out..." As an adult I've enjoyed learning about anything I want to learn about, on my own schedule and in the way I want to learn. So once again, learning is fun. 

[ChinKing]

So glad you brought up this topic, ChinKing!

 

Compulsory education is a Prussian invention, just like the wellfare state and many other terrible state programs. Before that it was the parents who decided whether or not they wanted to have their children educated. There was, of course, much demand, and there were many schools, almost all run by the Roman Catholic church, or the Protestant Communities later on.

 

The main broblem here is the word "compulsory". Parents have been tricked into thinking that the state knows better how to educate their children than they do. The end result is an army of neglected, bitter, mentally compliant idiots, who are not even suitable able to stand their ground in the work-force they were bred for.

 

I was educated in 3 elite private schools in 2 different countries, but me and my Brothers were all miserable. Thankfully, my parents were brave enough to make the outlandish decision to homeschool us for 2 years. It was the best decision they made in my life. At first I did not understand why they chose to do it, but within a year my eyes were opened to what I was missing out on, and what I was forces into instead.

 

I learned to learn during homeschool, and I learned to love to learn during homeschool. I would never enroll my future children in school. I don't want them to suffer the trauma that I have: bullying by teachers and students, corporal punishment, intellectual dryness, stress, the young army of the state called students, the hate for learning, and worst of all, parental neglect. 

interesting. I agree that coercion is the problem, but my worry with homeschooling is the social life of the child. Humans are social animals and school tends to be where children make most if not all of their friends, and romantic relationships tend to happen in high school. I think activities like boy/girl scouts, sports, or some sort of clubs may be good for a child's social life if they are home schooled (as long as the child wants to do it), yet things like that are usually one or two days a week, so i'd be worried that a child's social life would be impacted. 

[Mister Mister]

It's a good question.  I teach kids music, and in general there are things they like doing, and things they don't like doing.  If you pay attention to their needs and indulge the things they like, you develop trust, and they are willing to do the things they don't like as much, so long as you can make the case of why it will be good for them in the long run.  This part is lacking in public education, in fact, it is impossible within the context they are working with: there are just too many students per teacher, often with widely divergent IQs, different cultures, parenting backgrounds, and so on, and the school has to pander to DOE standards in order to get 30 or 40% of the funding which was taxed out of their community in the first place.  Also, teachers are indoctrinated in "Education" degrees which preach a creepy mix of Cultural Marxism, collectivist "ethics", and behavioralist social psychology, where they study not what makes a person happy and healthy, but how to get them to do what you want.  I know because I once considered getting such a degree.

[Rventurelli]

I think that everything has to do with the way that the topics are presented and by how diluted they are. For example, they present those disciplines as complete trivia and make no effort to make it interesting as they mostly cannot be fired.

I went to a private and expensive Catholic school. The teachers were mostly Marxist and extremely anti-catholic. They did, however, make their best to show things in an engaging way: historical movies, images, maps, laboratories where you actively tested stuff... There are subjects that no matter how much you try to teach me, I will not want to learn because it seems so useless and uninteresting, or so I thought. Even in more theoretical math when I went to college I had a very enthusiastic professor that would go off on tangents and make jokes while teaching, approaching things in a more philosophic way -- I have never before been so good in math.

In the Catholic school they co-opted me into Marxism-Leninism for a while, but man, the geography teacher made us give our opinions, analyse arguments, encourage us to read books about the subjects, always had maps, images and was very passionate about it. The history one would always make references to Age of Empires, Call of Duty, show us historical movies, bring metal bands with songs that the lyrics were about the historical subject we were studying... Man, the secret is to make things funny and make a lot of popular culture references. The teachers that did not do that usually got fired within a year in that school. Things were so engaging that way and interesting that I remember crying when my philosophy teacher, who was Argentinian, was leaving the school to go back to Argentina because classes with him was like being around Plato's fictional character Socrates or in a call in show with Mr. Molyneux. Also had the commies that were the history and geography teachers coming to my birthday because they enjoyed so much talking to me after classes about their subjects.

Later, in another private school, the history teacher was actually very right-wing and owned many guns, some of the historical ones that were used in the wars he was teaching about and he showed me his collection, explained how it worked, how it changed war -- it made history become alive for me.

I was fortunate enough in some respects, to go to a private school. Bullying was extremely bad and vicious, but man, having a teacher that is passionate enough about what they are teaching that they can engage in your curiosity, in a system that it is okay for them to fail their students in mass if needed and easy for them to be fired is the best thing.

[brucethecollie]

interesting. I agree that coercion is the problem, but my worry with homeschooling is the social life of the child. Humans are social animals and school tends to be where children make most if not all of their friends, and romantic relationships tend to happen in high school. I think activities like boy/girl scouts, sports, or some sort of clubs may be good for a child's social life if they are home schooled (as long as the child wants to do it), yet things like that are usually one or two days a week, so i'd be worried that a child's social life would be impacted. 

That is a legitimate concern. I unschool my 2 kids who are now 7 and I find it very interesting to note how very sociable one is (soooo friendly and expressive!) The other is more introverted and takes time getting to know people and speak comfortably with them. But even he says hi to strangers for the heck of it. I went to public school and didn't speak much for about 5 years due to crippling shyness.

 

I don't think school is what teaches socialization so much as quality interaction with others in daily life. I take my kids somewhere each day and we interact with others. At home, we socialize all the time with each other. I am in the process of helping my son who is sometimes uncomfortable socializing. I've met plenty of sociable and slightly anxious type kids who are homeschooled or unschooled. Same in public or private schools. 

 

I think the key is to identify what a child needs support with and then finding ways to help them gently overcome. I was thrown to the wolves and it didn't do anything but make me more nervous and stressed. I'm still trying to recover. It helps that I don't want my kids to be like me so I push myself to appear sociable and it serves as practice for me and an example for them.

 

It takes work to find activities for each day. The idea of just sending my kids off to school each day sounds so easy in regards to what I have to figure out. I speak with parents whose concern is that they don't want to do that work of finding things to do for the kids. I get it. It isn't easy.

[Snafui]

As far back as you can look into public education you will find it a disaster. The primary factor is basing education on averages which is the worst method possible:

 

• Chronological: You cannot generalize for age because individuals start puberty at different rates and have different paces through puberty. Puberty onset can vary large window and this stage of development affects mental development as well as areas of the brain may, or may not, be ready for advancement nor have the capacity to handle certain subjects.
• Pedagogical: You cannot generalize academic ability because people learn at different rates due to genetic factors that most refuse to even acknowledge. Top students are dragged down to the average and the below average never catch up. Also, this inanity continuously brings the average down which is why test scores keep going down generation after generation.
• Physiological: You cannot generalize to physical maturity because not everyone develops these attributes homogeneously. This can affect what the student will want to learn.
• Psychological: You cannot generalize motivating factors due to mental maturity. Also, you cannot generalize methodology because there are different learning styles and combinations to those styles.

 

The reason public education fails, and has always failed, is because it is geared toward education as if people were not individuals. This was born of The Industrial Age mindset: that a student could be manufactured. We are still early in The Information Age and we will see a lot more change to how education is going to be handled. So, the public system, which gains increasing support due to failure, is not the most likely place to see healthy change. Public schools are fighting tooth and nail over this already so expect to see an ever increasing resistance as we move forward.

[Rventurelli]

That is a legitimate concern. I unschool my 2 kids who are now 7 and I find it very interesting to note how very sociable one is (soooo friendly and expressive!) The other is more introverted and takes time getting to know people and speak comfortably with them. But even he says hi to strangers for the heck of it. I went to public school and didn't speak much for about 5 years due to crippling shyness.

 

I don't think school is what teaches socialization so much as quality interaction with others in daily life. I take my kids somewhere each day and we interact with others. At home, we socialize all the time with each other. I am in the process of helping my son who is sometimes uncomfortable socializing. I've met plenty of sociable and slightly anxious type kids who are homeschooled or unschooled. Same in public or private schools. 

 

I think the key is to identify what a child needs support with and then finding ways to help them gently overcome. I was thrown to the wolves and it didn't do anything but make me more nervous and stressed. I'm still trying to recover. It helps that I don't want my kids to be like me so I push myself to appear sociable and it serves as practice for me and an example for them.

 

It takes work to find activities for each day. The idea of just sending my kids off to school each day sounds so easy in regards to what I have to figure out. I speak with parents whose concern is that they don't want to do that work of finding things to do for the kids. I get it. It isn't easy.

It is also important for kids to have a peer group. One that is healthy, of course. School provides ready made peer groups, which can be beneficial or harmful depending on the school district and other factors. Lacking a peer group while growing up can lead to serious issues as adults, as being unable to bond well with others or working in groups. Children of military personal, FBI agents and others that have to move a lot and therefore are always losing or never form a peer group show all sorts of psychological issues[1].

 

That is just anecdotal and I have no scientific backing for it, however, I noticed this trend that the people who were home-schooled until high school (I admit I only know two families, six people home-schooled in total), have this tendency of having really poor grammar. I wonder why that would be. I mean, I learned English by myself, playing video-games, and still I correct grammar errors by them in text messages and others all the time. It is mostly words written incorrectly but the sentence structure is correct. They also seem to be very slow in reading, to the point they always prefer dubbed movies because they can barely read the subtitles in time.

 

They can effectively communicate in the spoken word without issues, the only problem I notice is writting many words incorrectly. (Perhaps they are dislexic?)

 

[1] The Nurture Assumption - Judith Harris

[S1988]

But, what if some kids aren't very social? Is non-social behavior an issue that should be "fixed"? As a semi-hermit loner, I don't see it as a problem.

 

I take umbrage to the view that extroversion=good and introversion/loner behavior=bad. When I was a kid, I used my loner behavior as a coping mechanism to shield myself from bullies, but the adults were more concerned about my quiet behavior than me being bullied, and shamed me for it. Once, when I was 12 years old, I was on a charter bus on a class trip reading a book. Then, one of the chaperones sat a kid in a seat next to me and said, "Now you have someone to talk to." It was obvious she didn't care whether I wanted to talk to someone or not.

 

When I was 16 one day after school, I told my mother that I sat alone at lunch, and she threatened to take me to a therapist. She didn't carry out her threat, thank goodness.

 

Even now, I still received flak for not being outgoing, but at least it's easier to escape from now than it was during my childhood. It's a real pet peeve for me when some people see quiet/loner behavior as a problem when it isn't one. Who's being harmed when one wants to keep to themselves? I wonder if worries about loners stem from crazy myths such as loners being serial killers. The serial killers I've learned about weren't loners. They usually had families and coached kids' sports, things many loners don't do. Emily Dickinson was a loner, and as far as I know, she didn't kill anyone, and I haven't killed anyone. 

 

I'm not sure why being non-social is seen as a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I've been harmed more by those who tried to "cure" me or take advantage of me than my loner lifestyle. Also, I feel that my loner lifestyle has more pros than cons. I can do what I want, when I want with very few obligations. Since I don't go out very much, I'm less likely a target for so-called friends. Plus, I have the freedom to be myself without judgement or derision because I'm somewhat of an eccentric person.

 

Excuse me for going a bit off-topic. This thread was about education, but I feel I had to give my two cents when socialization was mentioned. My advice is that if you have a kid or know someone who's not very chummy, let them be. There's nothing wrong with wanting to stay home instead of going out to a party or reading a book instead of hobnobbing. Don't fix an "issue" that isn't one. It's funny how some people are bothered by the fact that others don't want to be bothered.

 

I'm not bashing extroversion, but I despise how that's seen as "better" or "healthier". Outgoing/quiet aren't good or bad, just different.

[brucethecollie]

It is also important for kids to have a peer group. One that is healthy, of course. School provides ready made peer groups, which can be beneficial or harmful depending on the school district and other factors. Lacking a peer group while growing up can lead to serious issues as adults, as being unable to bond well with others or working in groups. Children of military personal, FBI agents and others that have to move a lot and therefore are always losing or never form a peer group show all sorts of psychological issues[1].

 

That is just anecdotal and I have no scientific backing for it, however, I noticed this trend that the people who were home-schooled until high school (I admit I only know two families, six people home-schooled in total), have this tendency of having really poor grammar. I wonder why that would be. I mean, I learned English by myself, playing video-games, and still I correct grammar errors by them in text messages and others all the time. It is mostly words written incorrectly but the sentence structure is correct. They also seem to be very slow in reading, to the point they always prefer dubbed movies because they can barely read the subtitles in time.

 

They can effectively communicate in the spoken word without issues, the only problem I notice is writting many words incorrectly. (Perhaps they are dislexic?)

 

[1] The Nurture Assumption - Judith Harris

I graduated from public school with many people who can't write well but my three homeschooled siblings write at a college level so it must vary depending on a multitude of factors (I don't know about the statistics on this though). It isn't easy finding peers for the kids to have but we try. We hang out with homeschooled kids and public schooled cousins who are around the same age. I struggle finding a perfectly ideal situation, that's for sure.     

[Rventurelli]

I graduated from public school with many people who can't write well but my three homeschooled siblings write at a college level so it must vary depending on a multitude of factors (I don't know about the statistics on this though). It isn't easy finding peers for the kids to have but we try. We hang out with homeschooled kids and public schooled cousins who are around the same age. I struggle finding a perfectly ideal situation, that's for sure.     

Yes... It might be that I was just unlucky coincidence because it is such a small sample.