Is school pointless?

[idkkkk]

I want to know what the ladies on this board think about schools. Considering that 1 in 2 Brits don't know basic arithmetic, or grammar, and a lot of the things learnt in school go in one ear and out the other. Yet we are "educated" for 10-15 years on these topics.

Couple that with bullying, and exposure to all sorts of very objectionable and destructive things, is school really what we make it out to be? Are our assumptions about education even valid? Is teaching a teen highly abstract ideas that were conceived by people 2-3 times their age a sensible thing to do?

I bloody loved calculus when I was 18. My brain was bloody awesome at that age.

@noblegiraffe

Knowledge of programming is not predicated on understanding machine code or x86 instruction sets.

I didn't say it was.

But imagine your kid has decided on an engineering project. You decide to 'slip in a bit of maths', let's say, trigonometry. If your kid hasn't been taught anything about triangles, angles, how to rearrange or solve equations, then how exactly will you just 'slip it in'?

A lot of strawmans in this thread. I answered that early on. The formative years are used to teach them the very basics they need to get by - math, language, reading, writing etc.

But imagine your kid has decided on an engineering project. You decide to 'slip in a bit of maths', let's say, trigonometry. If your kid hasn't been taught anything about triangles, angles, how to rearrange or solve equations, then how exactly will you just 'slip it in'?
You've made my point for me. They don't know, they enjoy building engines, so they will be incentivised to learn it, or at the very least they understand there is a relationship between the two.

You are taking a very structuralist approach. Learn A then B then C. That works for some, but doesn't for a larger amount of people.

The same point can be made with programming, they've built a procedural program but don't know about data structures, well now is the chance to learn it so you can move onto the next step.

How do I know this works ? because it's essentially what I was doing with other "graduates" at work. They've graduated but have no experience and so end up having forgotten large amounts of things they might have learnt because they can't contextualise it. So even though he has a masters, he would would be equivalent to a junior guy.

@pigcon1

I said that educated societies are healthier.. not that they are utopias (healthy!).

You asked - many have responded - what I can’t say is that I agree with you, but that’s ok too.

64% of brits are fat.

I think there should be more learning paths - because different people are different. I kinda agree with OP that some things are much better understood when you learn them later.

Our school system pushes kids ‘forwards’ in a v regimented way through a small number of ‘gates’ gcses, btecs, a levels, uni (mostly done at certain ages). It’s good that now there is more focus on apprenticeships. I think some kids are better off working earlier - but with the opportunity to study further when they are ready. I guess it is more expensive to provide for this diversity though. I hope online platforms and professional qualifications can help with other paths though.

You sound bloody hard work OP

Drains and radiators.

"The truth is I don't expect a 18 y/o to appreciate the beauty of say differential calculus"
Whyever not? Many do.

And that Independent article you quoted is from 2012......

But they do do this at school. For example in primary school, they y don't just sit in a room and learn say, weights. They then carry it through into a cookery lesson. They learn about decimals then carry it through into money.

Apologies to teachers (I see noblegiraffe here and I'm sure she can explain better and am drastically oversimplifying), but a concept that is being taught in my sons Y10 class demonstrably appears in several other subjects at the same time to reinforce learning.

40 years after leaving school I draw daily on the "abstracts" I learned at school, often to my surprise.

@BertieBotts

It sounds like you've swallowed a load of the home ed hyperbole about how school is just a tool of oppression, totally useless and teaches children all the wrong things. Either that or you're a bored teenager who is fed up of being told what to do by adults.

No, the school education system isn't perfect by a long shot, and absolutely some children fall through the cracks. But schools have really moved on in many ways from these outdated stereotypes. It's far from pointless in my experience. There are a lot of good things in and about schools these days. Like many things, government cuts and an overload of paperwork don't help, and a huge part will be down to individual teachers. But in general as a system it broadly works and is convenient. There are wider social factors at play that prevent many children from accessing education through schools and they probably wouldn't do well with an autonomous approach any more than a top down one unfortunately.

You're saying a lot without really saying anything. So how is spoon feeding a child a good thing ? If they should be taught a wide variety of topics then why not philosophy ? logic ? critical thinking ? They are conditioned to be robots and conformists with no mind to think for themselves. And you've still not accounted for the appalling stats that I presented, 1in 2 remember, 1 in 2.

The formative years are used to teach them the very basics they need to get by - math, language, reading, writing etc.

So you agree with formal education at primary school? It's just at secondary that they need to immediately drop anything they are not interested in because if they're not interested in it, it must be worthless to them?

You're closing a lot of doors for those kids by doing that aren't you, by narrowing their curriculum to what interests them aged 11?

@noblegiraffe I apologise for trying to badly articulate there. I'm usually more erudite, which incidentally was a word I learned from my English Teacher Mrs Diggle when is was 13.

They are conditioned to be robots and conformists with no mind to think for themselves.

Sounds like someone has watched a Ken Robinson video.

TSSDNCOP

@nonamehere

"The truth is I don't expect a 18 y/o to appreciate the beauty of say differential calculus" Whyever not? Many do.

And that Independent article you quoted is from 2012......

An 18 year olds understanding of life is unlike that of a 30, 40 or even 50 year old. This is more than just knowledge, it's about life, experience, challenges, growth and learning other disciplines as you age. An 18 y/o just doesn't have the life experience and historical + philosophical back drop to really appreciate the nuance of what they are learning.

An 18 y/o just doesn't have the life experience and historical + philosophical back drop to really appreciate the nuance of what they are learning.

But you don't want them to learn anything that might contribute to that backdrop unless they decide for themselves that it interests them?

I'm not sure how they will find out what they are interested in without anyone presenting them a bit of it to see.

@PickAChew

I bloody loved calculus when I was 18. My brain was bloody awesome at that age.

Me too! And we had to do it all without calculators in my day...

@noblegiraffe

The formative years are used to teach them the very basics they need to get by - math, language, reading, writing etc.

So you agree with formal education at primary school? It's just at secondary that they need to immediately drop anything they are not interested in because if they're not interested in it, it must be worthless to them?

You're closing a lot of doors for those kids by doing that aren't you, by narrowing their curriculum to what interests them aged 11?

Adding, subtracting, multiplying, reading, writing for kids ? sure.

But you are assuming that learning can only occur in school to uni. Why must it end at university ? the eastern traditions had perfected this balance - learning from cradle to the grave, not till you're 21. You have your entire life to explore that potential, and this idea that schools and universities are the only places to understand things is absurd. What ever happened to teaching children how to think rather than what to think ?

I was talking to a y12 boy today. He's doing maths and science A levels.
I taught him GCSE English. He wouldn't have chosen it but he had to do it. Today's conversation began with him asking me whether I thought the language we speak today would be the same if Shakespeare had never lived.
He found an interest in language by being forced to read Shakespeare. He wants to see a play now.
That wouldn't have happened if he'd been allowed to explore his interests. They were not his until the curriculum introduced him to them.

As has already been pointed out, the article was talking about 11 year olds. If 50% of the adult population can whizz through the year 6 maths curriculum I think that's good enough. If the article was talking about 7 year olds then you may have a point.

Some people will be demotivated by stuff they consider pointless and don’t understand. Some may become disruptive (by no means the only disruptive people though).

Maybe some of them would be more motivated by more tangible reward than a gcse cert. eg to get a promotion with more money, they need to pass x test. So they study for it.

I’m not saying everyone is like this, just that some people are and seems reasonable to provide different paths for different people.

I quite enjoyed being spoonfed hard maths, and amazingly it didn't stop me becoming a well rounded human being that's good at nuanced design engineering.

@MrsHamlet

I was talking to a y12 boy today. He's doing maths and science A levels. I taught him GCSE English. He wouldn't have chosen it but he had to do it. Today's conversation began with him asking me whether I thought the language we speak today would be the same if Shakespeare had never lived. He found an interest in language by being forced to read Shakespeare. He wants to see a play now. That wouldn't have happened if he'd been allowed to explore his interests. They were not his until the curriculum introduced him to them.

It would have happened though, just a little later in life. Again, you are assuming that schools are the only place where a person can find themselves, I reject that. My approach is more holistic. Don't give him the fish, give him the net. Teach them to explore their potential, and as they age, they will change, and discover new things, and that's okay. It's only because of this capitalist model that we are ingrained with this idea of exploring your "potential" in school and then work your life away for the next 50 years.

An 18 y/o just doesn't have the life experience and historical + philosophical back drop to really appreciate the nuance of what they are learning.

So what? In school as a child I learned about 1789 and the Terror. Yes 7yr old me was not exposed to the class genocide of even children getting their heads lopped off to crowds baying for the deaths. But so what? I learned the full horror and nuance of the Revolution later in life. And at least it wasn’t all new and a surprise to me because I’d already learned the rough outline. You cannot withhold ALL knowledge of something because a person is too young to take all of it in at once. You teach it age appropriate and then it can be built on. Repeated. And repetition is the proven way to get knowledge to stick.

@CoronaPeroni

As has already been pointed out, the article was talking about 11 year olds. If 50% of the adult population can whizz through the year 6 maths curriculum I think that's good enough. If the article was talking about 7 year olds then you may have a point.

So what ever happened to y7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 6th form etc? You are making my point for me but still aloof to my arguments.

"An 18 y/o just doesn't have the life experience and historical + philosophical back drop to really appreciate the nuance of what they are learning"
But many do appreciate the beauty of abstract Maths, even while lacking these life experiences. Would you prefer them not to be exposed to it, just because some won't be interested?

It's only because of this capitalist model that we are ingrained with this idea of exploring your "potential" in school and then work your life away for the next 50 years.

Schools for educating children and young adults have nothing to do with capitalism. They’re as separate as the moon and a wheel of cheese. Sounds like you need to explore your inner economist since you obviously do not even know what capitalism is.