NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! FRIGGING GOOGLE CHROME!
I typed up this huge post for like half an hour (no kidding, it's really been that long), and google chrome crashed. Gosh dang it. I wrote a paragraph response for each and every sentence in the last two posts. Like, it was essay-quality material there. Do you know how long that took me, taco man? No. And you never will.
You will just have to take my word that I had a compelling, well-structured argument. It was awesome and I was totally right.
We got teachers who just fucking read pdfs....like no interaction at all.
and some teachers just dont even know what they are talking about...so the teaching becomes rather useles
Well yeah, but then you're not talking about teachers, but simply people who 'ended up in a job'. That's a problem with society, not specifically with school.
If you can explain to me why reading and analyzing Romeo and Juliet for 1 month is in any way going to benefit me in the future, I will consider looking at the other side of the equation. Until them I will continue to facepalm at 99% of the school system.
Also, some classes are pointless, but also very interesting. For example, US history. It is actually sort of interesting. Chemistry is alright, but mostly a huge waste of time. English is easily the most pointless class in the school. To me (and most people here) math is still somewhat important, but to most people, Calculus is also a waste of time. But yeah, that is pretty much it. If all I had to take was math and computer science, I feel I would be much better off in the long run. It's not like I do any of my homework anyways...
Well, it depends on how you choose to look at it. The general use of analyzing stuff like Romeo and Juliet and the US history is developing an advanced form of what they call 'common sense'. If you become able to understand and explain these things you become able to understand and explain 'the larger picture' behind all sorts of situations. Simple case in point; my history lessons so far have thought me that it seems likely that all of mankind derives from one 'ancient race'. Keeping this in mind suddenly gives you a new perspective when discussing religion and immigration, a discussion that's become quite popular in most western countries. And that's just history - I'm not even touching on economy which explains in great detail the reason why people leave their countries in order to come and live here.
I don't mind if people don't care for that and just want to do their own thing, but I also think that if that's their stance, they should not be allowed to vote or partake in political processes. But with that said, I don't like our political system as a whole, anyway.
Edit: Zelda, I know that feeling. Didn't Chrome save your text, though? It usually does for me. I do tend to save longer posts in txt files, though.
Lots of stuff seems pointless at school, and some will be depending on what you want to do.
I don't know what type of job you want to do when your older but theres a good chance you will need to read and write, maybe produce reports which require you to analyse other documents etc. Also if you intend to go to University you will need to write essays, dissertations, reports etc.
All of the above requires skills you learnt in English, History and other subjects. I hated studying Romeo and Juliet but skills you learn from from it do help you no matter how boring it is.
History teaches you to look at different sources, make links, judge how reliable they are and come to your own conclusions. I cant really see how anyone could possibly think those skills could be pointless.
Thats just two examples.
The context may seem pointless but the skills are not.
And to kind of echo Hobrow, try and enjoy school, its generally a pretty good time of your life :)
And despite that there are still kids graduating who can barely read. So, no, I don't think that the skills you learn are altogether very useful; they could be if you actually learned them, but you don't.
I actually hate that you dont have to learn anything to pass the school...thats so stupid! Why do they even teach anything if they are not willing to do it properly!
but I guess thats how life is nowaydays...people just dont care. I wouldnt mind having tests for every subject every week and FORCE LEARNING if we would take out all useles subjects and really focus on the important things/things you wana do...
I have heard couple times in school "You should atleast know how to do this when you graduate", but why wont they act like it matters! I havent gotten a single fail of any of my school subject...its just rather simple to pass the courses...yet doesnt mean you know or learn anything.
I know you will most likely just have to learn the stuff in real life, but it just pisses me off to waste time doing stuff half-assed, and I do think its schools and teachers fault...who are again very incompetent *sight*....
If the problem is the teachers not being strict enough, that's a simple enough fix. Just raise the standard for yourself. Go above and beyond what's asked, and try to get the most out of your education. Because in the end, learning something and improving yourself is far more valuable than whatever grade you get at the end.
I know it's easy to be lazy if you're allowed to, but if you don't want to be another run-of-the-mill student and not stand out at all, then it's best to keep high standards for what you do. This is what the Japanese society does naturally by itself, and I believe their education system is a lot better off.
I never said that the idea behind school is useless. 2 hours a day for 5 days or 2 days a week for 7 hours would be just fine. Also, I have a 3 hour free period from 11:20 - 2:30, and then I have English. Instead of being able to switch English, or go home for 3 hours, I have to stay at school because it is a "closed campus". I get the reasoning behind that from a liability perspective, but come one. Not to mention I hate English already. The fact that it is preventing me from going home 4 hours early just makes me hate it more.
I have the same situation as you. At my school, once you can drive and your in junior year, you can take off whenever you want.
School is great as long as your at a good school. I LOVE the school I'm at right now. The teachers are passionate, energetic, entertaining, and legitimately care about the kids.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
The issue with high school is you leave and don't know how to do anything. You have no trade. Yes, you should be able to read and dissect a sentence, and probably do some algebra, and maybe, if your lucky, manage your taxes on your own from your Economics or Personal Finance class (my teacher for Econ was a fucking ENGLISH teacher; I had to go in after class and help him with the next chapter, and in return I got an A), and maybe even know a little bit about welding or machine shop, A+, things like that. The entire school system is designed to basically force you to go into college, where you still don't really learn anything if you don't apply yourself, and if you can apply yourself to do well in college there is no reason you can't apply yourself and learn the subject on your own. And then you have to take a bunch of classes that have NOTHING to do with your major while in college. My high school also had foreign language requirements (we had Latin, Spanish, German and French; I wanted to learn none of those so didn't take them, then in my last year was told I couldn't graduate unless I did so I said fuck that. And something else about not having attended for the first semester... I stopped paying attention when they said I had to take Spanish to graduate).
Eh... But... yes, that's kind of the point? You're saying high school is aimed at teaching folks basic global skills about everything, requiring them to go to college in order to broaden their view. That's what it's set up to do. I don't quite view that as a problem, though I do think specialisation should be an option earlier in someone's life.
College is a secondary waste of time (or tertiary... I suppose elementary school largely counts as the first). The system is designed to fit you into a niche; it discourages creativity and imagination, while encouraging you to fit into a mainstream and otherwise typical lifestyle. People don't encourage you to get a degree because you care about the subject, and most times don't even encourage you to go into the subject you studied as a profession: they encourage you to do it so that you fit into the bullshit concept that holding a degree, no matter what it is, makes you an automatically better candidate for a job.
Oh yes, that sure is true, but it doesn't make primary and secondary schools and college a complete waste of time. It's just that they're going about it in a wrong fashion. In especially primary school, you learn things that simply everyone in Western society needs to know. The need to be able to write is debatable in this modern era (since typing is taking over), but everybody needs to be able to at least read. And people need to be able to do basic calculus. There's really no denying that. And while (especially) college and universities are set up to simply get you a degree, it doesn't mean that one isn't at all able to do a study on something that he likes.
The way I see it, the main problem you're touching on here is 'jobs' and the way companies in that light are set up. Schools have just gone along in order to fit on that model. You want to encourage creativity and imagination, you make companies more flexable and make it possible for people to get their own work out there.
I go to k12 (which is an online school in the US) and that's probably the most brilliant school in the universe. If you don't believe me, I'm taking a 2 minute break to catch up on forums and guess what, I'm doing school right here right now at home. Everyone needs to do this...seriously...school is awesome over here. ;)
Reading yes, which as I've noted the SCHOOL SYSTEM DOES NOT DO. People are graduating who CANNOT read. The school system is broken, you just said it, making it useless. And no, not everyone needs to be able to do Calculus. I can vehemently deny that, many people have absolutely no use for it. And it's the other way around: schools, moreover government, has pushed for people to get degrees over time, people who go to college become elitist, etc. It's more complicated than you're trying to make it although I assume you know that, however as of yet you haven't really made much of an argument.
Elementary school is crucial. If anyone can't see that, they are blind. Junior High is where school begins to become more and more pointless. I spent more than 10 hours creating a model of an atom out of Styrofoam balls, and you know what? It taught me nothing expect for how much those damn little balls cost. High School is where it really starts becoming pointless, but in a different way than Middle School. Middles School has the right idea, teaching the basics of everything, but they just do a crappy job. High School on the other hand, is pointless for a different reason. Classes that used to be crucial are now meaningless, because you have already learned what you need to learn, aka English. Yes, reading and writing is important, but not important enough to take for 10+ years. Then they add in a bunch of other classes that make no sense either. Sure there is a "choice", but honestly if I had to choose between AP fork in my eye or AP club over my head, I would choose neither...
I have little to know legitimate opinion on college because I am not in college yet, but it does seem far more promising than High School. Seems you at least get to take classes that are useful to you.
At this point I am just repeating what I have already said, so I will stop. The point is that too much of a good thing is sometimes a bad thing. On top of that, I'm not even convinced that the majority of school IS a good thing to begin with.
The information video is kind of cheesy, but... wow, that is actually pretty awesome O_o. I didn't know online schooling went any further than the Khan Academy.
And no, not everyone needs to be able to do Calculus. I can vehemently deny that, many people have absolutely no use for it.
What is your definition of calculus? When I mentioned the example I was talking basic primary school stuff. One apple plus two apples equals three apples. I don't think you can deny that people need that stuff to function in any modern society.
And it's the other way around: schools, moreover government, has pushed for people to get degrees over time, people who go to college become elitist, etc. It's more complicated than you're trying to make it although I assume you know that, however as of yet you haven't really made much of an argument.
I'm thinking we may be argueing different points. My original point was that just because school takes a wrong approach to teaching, it's not completely useless. Also, our places of residence might make a difference - I live in Holland, and the school system here is quite royally different from say, the American system. That said; there is no way you can completely overthrow the use of schools. I can make the very simple argument against that that without schools, we'd still be living in a state similar to that of mesopotamian farmers in 2000 B.C.
It's a translation error. The verb that goes with Calculus is 'to calculate' (or at least 'the verb I connect with it). In Dutch that translates to 'rekenen', which is the word we specially only use for basically every form of math that doesn't use formula's or any graphs but instead adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides known numbers. Aka aritmethic.
Nevertheless, my point still stands. There's even living examples of it - people from third world countries who have never gone to school that now have troubles doing virtually anything in the western country they fled to.
Even for myself, as you so gently mentioned, school has failed in a lot of ways, but I wouldn't dare to say it was completely useless. My primary school thought me lots of stuff I still use today, and my secondary school has mostly given me windows into all sorts of interesting fields - aside from the stuff from the subjects I did like and remember (history, some basic math, geography, French). As for my study right now - there's parts about it I like just as there are parts I dislike. Yet I am still learning things that are interesting to know and help shape my perspective of the world.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
@Varine: Go
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! FRIGGING GOOGLE CHROME!
I typed up this huge post for like half an hour (no kidding, it's really been that long), and google chrome crashed. Gosh dang it. I wrote a paragraph response for each and every sentence in the last two posts. Like, it was essay-quality material there. Do you know how long that took me, taco man? No. And you never will.
You will just have to take my word that I had a compelling, well-structured argument. It was awesome and I was totally right.
.....grumble grumble....
Well yeah, but then you're not talking about teachers, but simply people who 'ended up in a job'. That's a problem with society, not specifically with school.
Well, it depends on how you choose to look at it. The general use of analyzing stuff like Romeo and Juliet and the US history is developing an advanced form of what they call 'common sense'. If you become able to understand and explain these things you become able to understand and explain 'the larger picture' behind all sorts of situations. Simple case in point; my history lessons so far have thought me that it seems likely that all of mankind derives from one 'ancient race'. Keeping this in mind suddenly gives you a new perspective when discussing religion and immigration, a discussion that's become quite popular in most western countries. And that's just history - I'm not even touching on economy which explains in great detail the reason why people leave their countries in order to come and live here.
I don't mind if people don't care for that and just want to do their own thing, but I also think that if that's their stance, they should not be allowed to vote or partake in political processes. But with that said, I don't like our political system as a whole, anyway.
Edit: Zelda, I know that feeling. Didn't Chrome save your text, though? It usually does for me. I do tend to save longer posts in txt files, though.
Lots of stuff seems pointless at school, and some will be depending on what you want to do.
I don't know what type of job you want to do when your older but theres a good chance you will need to read and write, maybe produce reports which require you to analyse other documents etc. Also if you intend to go to University you will need to write essays, dissertations, reports etc. All of the above requires skills you learnt in English, History and other subjects. I hated studying Romeo and Juliet but skills you learn from from it do help you no matter how boring it is.
History teaches you to look at different sources, make links, judge how reliable they are and come to your own conclusions. I cant really see how anyone could possibly think those skills could be pointless.
Thats just two examples.
The context may seem pointless but the skills are not.
And to kind of echo Hobrow, try and enjoy school, its generally a pretty good time of your life :)
And despite that there are still kids graduating who can barely read. So, no, I don't think that the skills you learn are altogether very useful; they could be if you actually learned them, but you don't.
I actually hate that you dont have to learn anything to pass the school...thats so stupid! Why do they even teach anything if they are not willing to do it properly!
but I guess thats how life is nowaydays...people just dont care. I wouldnt mind having tests for every subject every week and FORCE LEARNING if we would take out all useles subjects and really focus on the important things/things you wana do...
I have heard couple times in school "You should atleast know how to do this when you graduate", but why wont they act like it matters! I havent gotten a single fail of any of my school subject...its just rather simple to pass the courses...yet doesnt mean you know or learn anything.
I know you will most likely just have to learn the stuff in real life, but it just pisses me off to waste time doing stuff half-assed, and I do think its schools and teachers fault...who are again very incompetent *sight*....
Im going around in circles with my posts
If the problem is the teachers not being strict enough, that's a simple enough fix. Just raise the standard for yourself. Go above and beyond what's asked, and try to get the most out of your education. Because in the end, learning something and improving yourself is far more valuable than whatever grade you get at the end.
I know it's easy to be lazy if you're allowed to, but if you don't want to be another run-of-the-mill student and not stand out at all, then it's best to keep high standards for what you do. This is what the Japanese society does naturally by itself, and I believe their education system is a lot better off.
I never said that the idea behind school is useless. 2 hours a day for 5 days or 2 days a week for 7 hours would be just fine. Also, I have a 3 hour free period from 11:20 - 2:30, and then I have English. Instead of being able to switch English, or go home for 3 hours, I have to stay at school because it is a "closed campus". I get the reasoning behind that from a liability perspective, but come one. Not to mention I hate English already. The fact that it is preventing me from going home 4 hours early just makes me hate it more.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
I have the same situation as you. At my school, once you can drive and your in junior year, you can take off whenever you want.
School is great as long as your at a good school. I LOVE the school I'm at right now. The teachers are passionate, energetic, entertaining, and legitimately care about the kids.
I new I wouldn't have to say anything. Cause you awesome people just said it all.
The issue with high school is you leave and don't know how to do anything. You have no trade. Yes, you should be able to read and dissect a sentence, and probably do some algebra, and maybe, if your lucky, manage your taxes on your own from your Economics or Personal Finance class (my teacher for Econ was a fucking ENGLISH teacher; I had to go in after class and help him with the next chapter, and in return I got an A), and maybe even know a little bit about welding or machine shop, A+, things like that. The entire school system is designed to basically force you to go into college, where you still don't really learn anything if you don't apply yourself, and if you can apply yourself to do well in college there is no reason you can't apply yourself and learn the subject on your own. And then you have to take a bunch of classes that have NOTHING to do with your major while in college. My high school also had foreign language requirements (we had Latin, Spanish, German and French; I wanted to learn none of those so didn't take them, then in my last year was told I couldn't graduate unless I did so I said fuck that. And something else about not having attended for the first semester... I stopped paying attention when they said I had to take Spanish to graduate).
@Varine: Go
Eh... But... yes, that's kind of the point? You're saying high school is aimed at teaching folks basic global skills about everything, requiring them to go to college in order to broaden their view. That's what it's set up to do. I don't quite view that as a problem, though I do think specialisation should be an option earlier in someone's life.
College is a secondary waste of time (or tertiary... I suppose elementary school largely counts as the first). The system is designed to fit you into a niche; it discourages creativity and imagination, while encouraging you to fit into a mainstream and otherwise typical lifestyle. People don't encourage you to get a degree because you care about the subject, and most times don't even encourage you to go into the subject you studied as a profession: they encourage you to do it so that you fit into the bullshit concept that holding a degree, no matter what it is, makes you an automatically better candidate for a job.
@Varine: Go
Oh yes, that sure is true, but it doesn't make primary and secondary schools and college a complete waste of time. It's just that they're going about it in a wrong fashion. In especially primary school, you learn things that simply everyone in Western society needs to know. The need to be able to write is debatable in this modern era (since typing is taking over), but everybody needs to be able to at least read. And people need to be able to do basic calculus. There's really no denying that. And while (especially) college and universities are set up to simply get you a degree, it doesn't mean that one isn't at all able to do a study on something that he likes.
The way I see it, the main problem you're touching on here is 'jobs' and the way companies in that light are set up. Schools have just gone along in order to fit on that model. You want to encourage creativity and imagination, you make companies more flexable and make it possible for people to get their own work out there.
I go to k12 (which is an online school in the US) and that's probably the most brilliant school in the universe. If you don't believe me, I'm taking a 2 minute break to catch up on forums and guess what, I'm doing school right here right now at home. Everyone needs to do this...seriously...school is awesome over here. ;)
Reading yes, which as I've noted the SCHOOL SYSTEM DOES NOT DO. People are graduating who CANNOT read. The school system is broken, you just said it, making it useless. And no, not everyone needs to be able to do Calculus. I can vehemently deny that, many people have absolutely no use for it. And it's the other way around: schools, moreover government, has pushed for people to get degrees over time, people who go to college become elitist, etc. It's more complicated than you're trying to make it although I assume you know that, however as of yet you haven't really made much of an argument.
Elementary school is crucial. If anyone can't see that, they are blind. Junior High is where school begins to become more and more pointless. I spent more than 10 hours creating a model of an atom out of Styrofoam balls, and you know what? It taught me nothing expect for how much those damn little balls cost. High School is where it really starts becoming pointless, but in a different way than Middle School. Middles School has the right idea, teaching the basics of everything, but they just do a crappy job. High School on the other hand, is pointless for a different reason. Classes that used to be crucial are now meaningless, because you have already learned what you need to learn, aka English. Yes, reading and writing is important, but not important enough to take for 10+ years. Then they add in a bunch of other classes that make no sense either. Sure there is a "choice", but honestly if I had to choose between AP fork in my eye or AP club over my head, I would choose neither...
I have little to know legitimate opinion on college because I am not in college yet, but it does seem far more promising than High School. Seems you at least get to take classes that are useful to you.
At this point I am just repeating what I have already said, so I will stop. The point is that too much of a good thing is sometimes a bad thing. On top of that, I'm not even convinced that the majority of school IS a good thing to begin with.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@yukaboy: Go
The information video is kind of cheesy, but... wow, that is actually pretty awesome O_o. I didn't know online schooling went any further than the Khan Academy.
Regardless of whether it's succesful, the school system does *try* to get people to read, and not exactly in a terrible fashion either.
Not all that is broken is useless. Don't need to say much more past that, I think.
What is your definition of calculus? When I mentioned the example I was talking basic primary school stuff. One apple plus two apples equals three apples. I don't think you can deny that people need that stuff to function in any modern society.
I'm thinking we may be argueing different points. My original point was that just because school takes a wrong approach to teaching, it's not completely useless. Also, our places of residence might make a difference - I live in Holland, and the school system here is quite royally different from say, the American system. That said; there is no way you can completely overthrow the use of schools. I can make the very simple argument against that that without schools, we'd still be living in a state similar to that of mesopotamian farmers in 2000 B.C.
Can I ask how many of you are working already? Minimum wage shit does not count.
Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus
whic does not equal to aritmethic.
Go play Antioch Chronicles Remastered!
Also, coming soon, Antioch Episode 3: Thoughts in Chaos!
Dont like mapster's ugly white? Try Mapster's Classic Skin!
One apple plus two apples is not Calculus. Apparently the school system has failed yet again.
@Varine: Go
How classy of you (see what I did there?).
It's a translation error. The verb that goes with Calculus is 'to calculate' (or at least 'the verb I connect with it). In Dutch that translates to 'rekenen', which is the word we specially only use for basically every form of math that doesn't use formula's or any graphs but instead adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides known numbers. Aka aritmethic.
Nevertheless, my point still stands. There's even living examples of it - people from third world countries who have never gone to school that now have troubles doing virtually anything in the western country they fled to.
Even for myself, as you so gently mentioned, school has failed in a lot of ways, but I wouldn't dare to say it was completely useless. My primary school thought me lots of stuff I still use today, and my secondary school has mostly given me windows into all sorts of interesting fields - aside from the stuff from the subjects I did like and remember (history, some basic math, geography, French). As for my study right now - there's parts about it I like just as there are parts I dislike. Yet I am still learning things that are interesting to know and help shape my perspective of the world.