Public Schools are Inefficient, Unfair and Bureaucratic!
The average public high school student attends school for 6.5 hours a day, 180 days of the year. Very little of this time however is spent actually learning. As a high school student myself, I see the inefficiency day in and day out. Schools require students to arrive on time every day ready to learn, or at least to look like they are learning. The average public school however, cares very little about the individuals that show up each day. Schools fail to recognize that students are unique individuals and tend to generalize students, and categorize them according to what the school values.
Schools Kill The Natural Desire To Learn
Students do not learn as well when they are not allowed to have a say in what or how they learn. Schools manage to take the fun out of everything, even learning. Humans are born curious creatures. Children want to learn everything about the world around them through trial and error. Before even starting school, children learn some of the hardest things they will learn in their entire lives. Kids pick up the english language due to a desire to communicate. Children learn about basic physics, cause and effect, simple reasoning and logic, and some math all before school when left to their own devices. Once children turn 5 or 6 however, the public school system begins to turn children into zombies slowly chipping away at their desire to learn. This is done through a few methods. Children are told by schools that they are wrong when they make mistakes. Mistakes are not wrong! Mistakes are the best learning opportunities for children. Starting from a young age, students raise interesting questions about he world around them, and bring come up with new solutions to old problems just to have their ideas stomped down. I remember back in second grade when an art teacher told my class to make collages using pictures from magazines. I used a group of pictures in one corner of the paper, and put one big picture in the other corner. The teacher told me I was wrong and that I should start over. Students are often told from a young age that their questions are dumb, and are then given a hard time for not asking questions. By the time a student reaches middle school, they no longer have much of a drive to learn. They have been forced to memorize facts and to repeat math problems for so long that they can barely remember discovering something on their own. Students often fail to enjoy reading as time goes on. This is because when reading in school, students are forced to stop every page to write meaningless questions and to put predictions that they already made in their heads onto sticky notes for no apparent reason. The methods which are currently used to teach children are not effective in producing children who love to learn, instead they produce artificial test scores and evaluation results.
Standardized Testing (The PARCC is CCRAP)
One of the biggest wastes of time in schools today is testing. Testing students multiple times during the year for days at a time is not efficient. During the PARCC test, a newly created test that all New Jersey Public Schools students have to take, my friends and I gathered some interesting information. All I'm going to say is that one individual wrote the lyrics to the song "Hotel California" instead of an essay on the writing section and still scored a proficient. The PARCC was a really screwed up experiment that was most unfair to teachers, followed by students. The test had no impact on students' futures as it was not necessary for students to graduate. Students were even informed that the test "would not count". Teachers however were evaluated based on their student's test scores. This is completely unfair as students were lacking an incentive to do well, while teachers were given an incentive not to teach valuable information, but to teach for the test.
People Learn Differently...
The vast majority of the successes in my life have been achieved with short bursts of hard work and energy. When I make a YouTube video for example, the idea for it comes to me. I then quickly write a script or basic outline. I gather my gear and begin to film. After filming scenes as quickly as I can I go straight to editing. I quickly upload and publish the video and hope for some positive feedback. All of this happens within the span of a day. The pressure of time is crucial. The best videos I have created have been created under time pressure. In school, I often lack the energy to learn about a subject for less than an hour a day. Once I start something, it is hard to stop. The school system forces students to start working and then stop when the bell rings, often just as they are gaining momentum. This cuts short trains of thought, puts an end to a discussion or destroys progress on a math problem.
Schools Ask Students To Hate Them
TL;DR-- The cafeteria food sucks, (Thanks Michelle Obama), for some reason students aren't allowed to eat or drink in class and the excessive amounts of homework do not allow students to obtain good grades and enjoy their time exploring and learning in the real world.
(Above: A picture of me in school)
Feel free to share opinions on school, or anything else for that matter, in the comments! Follow me for some more dope stuff on all sorts of topics (life stories, opinions, reviews, internetting advice etc.
Thanks for the feedback
--Aaron
You should also read and/or watch videos by John Taylor Gatto who exposes the sham masquerading as 'education', From its inception it is an indoctrination designed to rather dumb people down and compartmentalize us.
It is a complete and utter failure. people with very expensive 'education' have allowed the nuclear industry and threaten all life on Earth because the stations are decaying!
They built nuclear stations in Japan, Fukushima, which was known for earthquakes!
THIS utterly disastrous ignoreance comes from people who calim to be highly educated!
Another example is the so-called 'war on drugs'.l ANYONE with any commonsense would have predicted what utter chaos this would bring. I mean look at the Prohibition of alcohol years. But no, 'highly educated' people all got around tables to impose this ongoing nightmare which suck vast amounts of money from the economy also, but causes so much destruction in communities.
These are just two very important examples of the utter failure of the enforced 'education' system (Just as a side note, I was never a classical music buff as a kid but LOVED the music piece played in this video--which I have never seen before. I also absolutely HATED school, from beginning to end. So this deep expose of the institution which I dreaded as a kid and this music chosen as the soundtrack is very meaningful to me):
John Taylor Gatto - The Purpose Of Schooling
This is inspiring:
'Learn Free' (an unschooling documentary)
I'll definitely check out the videos and I agree that the war on drugs is a complete failure. Finally lots of people are realizing this though which is cool
@aaronburt
I totally agree with you. They are an expired insitution, waste of time
With all the snarky remarks from the teachers, the arbitrary tasks, the lessons which pretty much never helped me outside of school... I certainly don't miss it. Fortunately, children today have the opportunity to find information which really interests them on the Internet, and even to start making money that way.
An even bigger problem is the fact that employers refuse to hire people without the right diplomas and certificates.
Other countries do have options, but Finland, where I live, the schools are public, period. You either attend them, or you're stuck doing minimum wage odd jobs for the rest of your life.
Naturally, there are people who are intelligent and capable, but for one reason or another simply don't succeed in school. Their talents, smarts and capabilities don't matter, the one thing that determines their success in life is the fact that they didn't do well in school.
Unless you happen to be good at sales jobs, like me. Sales is what saved me from minimum wage, thankfully.
But the rest? They're screwed.
Its awesome to hear about school outside of my home country! Here in the U.S., people often compare our schools to those in Finland because our schools have some serious problems and we hear you have great schools as far as academics go. I agree and think it is unfair though that how well you do in school at a young age can determine the rest of your life
Maybe they should give students personality tests and then match them to teachers.
Today is "Happy Not-Back-To-School Day" for my 3 elementary children.
I have never had any of them in school. We learn at home through real life.
Thats awesome. I'm sure its much more efficient
Great post. You might also want to watch my documentary Class Dismissed. I think you would love it: http://www.watchmybit.com/Video/Show/7a0ee6cc-347b-487c-9aa3-977828816480