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We don't need no education

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
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    We don't need no thought control... or so the chorus goes.


    What are your thoughts on education, be it primary, secondary, or post-secondary? Do you think it's useful, or necessary? What would you change about the education system in your country? How much education do you think is enough education? Any other points you want to cover?




    I think that compulsory education in the US is at best meaningless droll, and at worse torture for the non-average. Of course I'm biased, still being in high school, but it doesn't mean I feel my opinions on matters any less so. I am far above average academically and always have been, since kindergarten, and schools on the east coast here have made it all make and manner of frustration for their lack of resources geared towards those who aren't average. Their system only works well with those who hit in the middle. In the midwest I attended a military high school where the power curve was a lot higher, but it still felt like more or less meaningless posturing nonsense. Like, besides the grade, what point is there to this?

    While thought control isn't something I'd touch on as much with the wealthier schools, in the poorer schools there is evidently a herd mentality both in on-topic discussions and off-topic "trendy" things. It's literally all about what everyone else is doing, and what everyone else is wearing, and... what everyone else is reading. There is no individuality in any sense in the schools I've attended, and it makes it really difficult for me because of how out-of-the-ordinary I am. I don't fit the mold. I don't care what others are doing. I do my own thing because I think it's the most reasonable course of action, not because twelve hundred other drones are doing it so it must make sense. It's just a mess for me, really. What angers me more than anything though, is the education system masquerading in the name of knowledge and thinking with this behaviour being across-the-board. It's a boldfaced lie.

    I don't think college will be as bad as I'm a paying customer (heh) but of course there will be holes too. I've heard all too much about Java being bought into being the gold standard for computer science when it is one of the slowest, ugliest, most clunky programming languages around. Yeah. :\
     
    Primary (Elementary for you American people) is essential. That is where the building blocks of your future self are laid. The most basic forms of fundamental and essential skills you need to succeed in life such as literary, mathematical and social skills are learned in your early years of schooling and without them we would get nowhere.

    After primary school though I think it gets a little more complicated. Realistically speaking, if you're going to be a brick layer or a check out chick then you don't need any skills beyond the fundamentals, but who knows what you'll want later in life?

    I think after your earlier years of schooling, your education becomes as useful and important as you make it. Only you can really determine what you want to do with your life.

    As far as changes that I would like to make to the education system in Australia, there are a few. We finally have a unified national curriculum that our schools must follow now so we no longer have any strange disparities between states. That is amazing... or at least it would be if the new curriculum was actually any good. The current curriculum is a mess. It expects us to teach things in strange orders and gives us an overly specific and limited scope of what we are allowed to teach. There is also way to strong a focus on a few specific ethnic groups because of the current political and economical climate that drives me insane.
     
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    It's a complicated question that I can't answer entirely here, and it's definitely dependent on where you live and your current school system. The simple answer is that education is important and can be one of the most powerful tools that we can give the next generation. Unfortunately, a lot of schools just aren't run very well.

    I think obtaining a high school diploma is vital in many countries. It teaches a lot of skills that can prove important later in life, even if you don't directly use what you learned. Just being able to think critically and knowing how to analyze can come in handy. As much as I dislike the subjects, everyone should know the basics of math and biology.

    That said, schools don't don't cover some pretty vital subjects. Home economics seems really useful, giving some idea of how to run a household and handle finances and such. Health and sexual education are also sorely lacking almost everywhere, and studies show that a well-rounded sex ed program can help students make safer choices and decreases rates of STIs/STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and more. It would also be great if more schools offered classes tailored to students' interests like art and music.

    The way schools are run is also not super great in a lot of instances. Any school that has one single way of teaching all students with no room for adjustment is automatically setting itself up for trouble. A lot of kids don't learn well in certain environments, or what they learn can't be identified through things like standardized tests. I get why it exists, but a lot of the time it just isn't fair to students or distracts from real learning (see all examples of teachers adjusting scores because their job depends solely on how well their students do in tests).

    I'm glad that here in Quebec we have CEGEP, though. It's a 2-3 post-high school, pre-university college, where students get a specialized degree in a subject of their choice. I don't know of any other part of the world that has anything like this, but I think it's really helpful to a lot of students. You can choose your program like at a university, and decide whether or not it's something you'd like to pursue for a Bachelor's, and it can help you decide if you even want to pursue a Bachelor's. It helps round off your high school education a bit, while also giving students an idea of what level of work to anticipate in university. It's also affordable, and is a great way to encourage students to stay in school past high school.

    Having a high-school diploma can be really important, and I think a lot of people can benefit from a university-level education, but it isn't for everyone. I think we should encourage more people to enter trade schools from early on. But there are issues with school systems at all levels, and I think some reform could go a long way to keeping people in school and passionate about learning.

    ~Psychic
     
    The purpose of education is unclear in the US with the subdivisions of power.

    Education should be training "good" citizens, but unfortunately, discussion of what a good citizen is and what best benefits the US population becomes conflated into "test scores", "gpa", and other measures that don't actual measure or evaluate whether our educational system is effective or not. Not to mention the structural biases of minorities in achieving the same success at testing and school work. Racial class division is the root of numerous political issues, and ultimately doesn't do anyone any favors.
     
    Education is a necessity that a lot of people are beginning to disregard more and more in the recent years. In England, people can earn a lot of money from their school looking good. More and more people are beginning to care about GCSE grades and so on, when they really don't mean much at all. Problems can be broken down into Pupil-based and System-based. I'll start with things that affect students and pupils more emotionally and tangibly.

    Secondary School in England can be a nightmare. I've been through the stresses of GCSEs and I've also been through the horror of the Sixth Form program (though I did IB, so A-Level students may not quite be on the same page as me there). To begin we have GCSEs, you study from when you are 11 until you are 16, five years, and at the end are given a grade based on exam performance. Well, I should say two years, because when you are 13/14 you choose your "Options"; a set of subjects that you choose to study. Only thing is, there are restrictions and limits. So everyone has to study English and Mathematics, of course. You also have to take science, and you must choose a social science on top of that. You also have to do P.E. (compulsory sport, goes with most compulsory education systems) and you must choose between Religious Studies, Citizenship and Sport Leadership. AND you have to learn a foreign language (or at least, at my school you did). So what you basically choose is which creative subject you want to study (art, music, drama etc.), which social science least bores you (Geography, History etc.) and what foreign language you are somewhat interested in. Not much choice really is there at the end of the day; you're not really getting the "Options" you think you will. That should change. Of course, cutting out things like science completely as a lot of students would given the choice is a bad idea, I know. I understand why a lot of the restrictions are there. However forcing things like social sciences and foreign languages down your throat at such a young age when you also have a lot personally to deal with (hormones etc) is a bit much. I think it would be a lot better to relax these restrictions a small amount.
    Moving on to the Sixth Form (oh golly, I'm going to enjoy this). What a disaster! I took the International Baccalaureate. Right, it's supposed to be more internationally accepted throughout the world than A-Levels. Really though, unless you want to travel abroad and work, it is a pointless waste of your time, and effort. A-Levels are less stressful and give the same results, if not actually help you more in England. But they don't tell you that do they? Oh no. And the entry requirements for University which is the only place you can feasibly aim for taking this course and NOT moving out of the UK are so high, you're not getting there unless you bar yourself in a room with no social life, no sleep, no breaks, no family. Nothing. But the score you get makes the school look so good, all the teachers push you beyond breaking point to try and get the school to look shiny and nice and awesome. What they don't show you is the absolute despair and anxiety that hits too many students taking this course.

    Enough about that, I'm moving on to how the SYSTEM is at fault. Firstly, the Secretary of State for Education was (until mid 2014) was Michael Gove; a man not qualified for his position. The reforms to education that he decided to take destroyed students grades, and messed up a lot of results my generation received. We lost a lot of marks and some of us barely scraped into succeeding courses that we should have flown into. But the system was bad already. Primary education is disgusting. From the age of four we are sent to primary school, where we are instantly judged on our abilities within the classroom. Instead of being a place to learn, primary school is a place where grades are everything. Once you hit year 2/3 (ages 6-8) you begin to get sorted into various classes based on ability. The idea is that the class learning pace is matched to the children's learning pace for that subject. However, if that does set into your mind that you're doing badly having been placed into 'Set 3' or 'Lower Class' I don't know what will. Children are given indicators on how well or badly they are doing straight away, which begins to reflect in their mind how good they feel at learning, and often will give up before they've even begun. It's actually very sad. My sister, bless her, gets test scores back for maths regularly that aren't as high as she'd like. She finds the subject hard, like a lot of people. But it doesn't help when teachers teach methods that don't help in the real world, or even in class. They are some ridiculously complicated methods for topics such as long division or fractions. When my sister tried to tell me how she'd been taught to convert fractions to decimals, I got a headache trying to understand it (and maths is a strong point of mine, one of the few). And the comments on her homework and test results would read something like this;
    "A good effort, but [my sister] could do better" "[my sister] needs to try harder" And so on, you get the picture. I'm sorry for getting a little personal here, but this is downright out of order. Instead of noting that my sister struggles with a topic or subject, the teacher gives a snide comment and blames my sister for "not trying hard enough". Maybe she could put a little more effort into homeworks, but she is 10 years old. What kind of 10 year old girl wants to be sat at a table busting her brains over a homework that makes her feel incapable? She'd much rather be running outside and enjoy her childhood as she should be.

    Now I'm coming to my thoughts over education as a whole. Starting education so young (well in England anyway) is wrong. Children shouldn't have to slave away for tests that make them feel like they won't achieve anything from the age of 7. Children should be allowed to enjoy learning. Which means taking away the serious, over-hanging, dreaded test results and homework scores. For starters. The education system in primary schools needs to be over-turned, I feel, and made into a program that children enjoy being a part of. A program that encourages learning, and stimulates their brains, and doesn't tell them that they are bad, and need to do better at something they just don't have the capability to do as well as others. People will always look at the Higher Education system for flaws when grades aren't so good, but really, the real problem lies at the very beginning, with Primary Education and the first impressions children get of their subjects and abilities.

    Education is good. Schools educate children badly, and the children get blamed. That needs to change.
     
    I'm all too familiar with these kinds of complaints with schools in the US. I lost the notion that you're there to learn years ago. It may not be as bad in England, but here you're judged and critiqued on how well you can verbatim repeat back the meaningless bullshit they feed you out of a textbook.

    I know this because I've come into subjects with a bit of knowledge, and some confidence that it wouldn't be that difficult. The tests are rigged to where you can't know the answer unless you read their specific material! "What did we specifically tell you five minutes ago." What kind of "learning" is that? Where I have to know your book to know anything?

    It's setting people up with the wrong idea of learning. Because I see folks who think that this stuff is critical thinking. Faculty, staff, students... they believe it's the real deal, and take it seriously. They're being set up to never think critically and it's appalling.
     
    The thing with education is that it has to be done right. I don't know about US, but here in Romania schools generally fail to give proper education, due to stuff such as old teachers who think they still live in the communist era (1947-1989) and thus being cold and severe, lack of proper sanitation, average-at-best textbooks and children not being properly encouraged to learn. Good teachers sought employment elsewhere due to our very low wages. But the worst thing is that the government does not give a fuck about our educational system. They loot billions of dollars to the church and thus allow them to become rich like no one ever was. I'd say the Romanian educational system is by far the worst in the European Union.
     
    I believe that schools could do better when it comes to learning, especially when it comes to real life topics. My school didn't teach me about taxes, getting a house, managing your money and etc. You would think those would be the most important things to learn. Luckily, the careers course that we had to take during high school taught us how to apply for a job. That included making a resume and looking at jobs that we would pretend to apply at. The teacher would give us an interview and she would give us feedback at the end of the assignment.

    Luckily I had that experience because I wouldn't have had the teeniest idea of what to expect at a job interview. Taxes I had to learn from my parents or well parent, my step dad taught me about taxes. My mother doesn't even know how to do her taxes, my step dad does it for her.
     
    Original post.

    Someone gets it.
    Anyways, if you think about it, the grand conspiracy doesn't stop at just schools.
    Think about kids TV. Really, anything "educational" for people who need education. Shows for children almost always have some sort of underlying message. e.g: "Simon was a bully, so he got in trouble." This show is teaching you that you should not be mean to anyone, because society will reject that and you will get in trouble. You see messages like this repeated, over and over and over, until the child takes it as fact. You are never told in any kids show, that hey, maybe Simon is having trouble in school, or he himself is being bullied, so maybe he has a reason and that you should talk to him about it instead of just getting Simon in trouble. That won't solve anything.

    Have you ever gotten in trouble in school for cursing? Or maybe a little earlier in your school career, did you get in trouble for playing a "violent" game at recess? Really, anything like that, is basically the same thing. Your teachers will tell you, don't swear because it is a bad word. Don't play Murder Tag (hey, we were six), because it encourages you to act wrongly. Well, do you ever remember asking your teacher why it is a bad word? Or saying that the game was just for fun? You are almost always met with the same response.
    "It is just wrong." or some variation of such.

    Schools don't challenge you to think for yourself. They are there to teach you more of what society expects of you than how to divide negative numbers. And same with shows, again. I remember one of my favorite shows as a kid. I basically worshipped the main character. If he told me anything, I would believe it. When my idol tells me that Simon is a bully? I believe him.

    But maybe I'm getting waaaaaay off topic. Or maybe I'm saying exactly what has already been said by other people. I don't know, too much text to read in one sitting.
     
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