My Thoughts On Public Schools

[Quertillia]

As I'm new here I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in the philosophy forum. Please excuse me if I screwed up!

(Also, please keep in mind that I know that there are some students in public schools who care about the world and are actually learning from certain subjects. They are the minority however, and I'm talking about the majority here.)

The main problem I have with public schools (besides the obvious nasty, stupid people and filthy bathrooms) is their ability to kill the desire to learn. I go to a school part time for my chorus class and to work in the library, and all I see are teens who honestly don't care about anything that isn't on this list: friends, clothing, tv, music, drugs, sex, and college.

I'm not just talking about all the drug addicts, I mean almost every student I meet there. Some of them actually make very good grades and are concerned about where they will go to college. The best way to explain what I mean is by using a guy I know as an example. He gets all A's in his courses (which are mostly AP), he's always doing homework, and he has mentioned college a couple of times. However, when I see him doing his homework he's usually copying off of someone else, and he, like every other student, is obsessed with clothing.

The problem here is that he cares about his future at least a little bit, but yet, he doesn't seem to have the desire to learn simply for the sake of improving himself and knowing about the world. It's a system where the ones who want to be successful are simply told to "get A's for college." Instead of wasting his time copying someone else's huge list of AP homework questions (which he had not had time to do the night before) he could be reading about something that actually interests him.

My point is this: learning is no longer something that people do to improve themselves, it is now something that people pretend to do in order to advance into a university. So what we have now are a bunch of materialistic kids who don't care about the world and are brainwashed about what real knowledge is.

I don't care how many facts you've memorized while cramming for some test. Have you actually thought about the subject of the test? Do you care about it? Have you gone beyond your Hamlet study questions and actually considered what Shakespeare's words meant? Do you have the independence to grow and to learn on your own? It seems to me that wandering alone in a library reading whatever interests you, and than thinking about it and actually forming opinions is a much better way to grow as a person. In my opinion, independent reading and alone time are how to discover "who you are." Being forced to memorize facts about stuff you don't care about only kills this!

If you don't care about the subject you wont learn it. I remember one day in chorus I saw part of one girl's history test. One of the questions was about Mao. I said, "Mao! That's exciting!" and she laughed and sarcastically agreed. This girl (who is actually an A student) doesn't give a crap about history. Ten years from now she wont remember one part of this and it's because you can not permanently learn unless you care about the subject. And it's because of the whole public school environment plus stupid homework and testing that these students don't care.

Maybe I'm too romantic? It just seems to me that getting a real education is gaining and improving the ability to think, create and imagine. Independence and confidence comes from this. Logically, being told what to think about kills this.

[IllusoryDeath]

Quertillia Wrote:My point is this: learning is no longer something that people do to improve themselves, it is now something that people pretend to do in order to advance into a university. So what we have now are a bunch of materialistic kids who don't care about the world and are brainwashed about what real knowledge is.

I don't care how many facts you've memorized while cramming for some test. Have you actually thought about the subject of the test? Do you care about it? Have you gone beyond your Hamlet study questions and actually considered what Shakespeare's words meant? Do you have the independence to grow and to learn on your own? It seems to me that wandering alone in a library reading whatever interests you, and than thinking about it and actually forming opinions is a much better way to grow as a person. In my opinion, independent reading and alone time are how to discover "who you are." Being forced to memorize facts about stuff you don't care about only kills this!

Maybe I'm too romantic? It just seems to me that getting a real education is gaining and improving the ability to think, create and imagine. Independence and confidence comes from this. Logically, being told what to think about kills this.

This.

I like you, new kid. I mean, most everyone on the forum has written about these things in one way or another, but props for this being only your second post & having your views well in hand. Plus, that was all pretty well written, which automatically makes you all the more respectable in my eyes.

[Quertillia]

Quote:This.

I like you, new kid. I mean, most everyone on the forum has written about these things in one way or another, but props for this being only your second post & having your views well in hand. Plus, that was all pretty well written, which automatically makes you all the more respectable in my eyes.

Thank you! Nice to meet you by the way. I'm Haley.

[IllusoryDeath]

Quote:Thank you! Nice to meet you by the way. I'm Haley.

Nice to meet you too, Haley. I'm Illusion (in case of confusion and/or curiousity, I'm female :thumbsup.

[Amortisatie]

Good Job, my views exactly!



(now watch paraless fuck it up)

[IllusoryDeath]

Amortisatie Wrote:Good Job, my views exactly!

This, too. xD

Amortisatie Wrote:(now watch paraless fuck it up)

lol. He's a bit busy helping me with technology problems at the moment, I should think. But still, lol. >.<

[Aviator]

Welcome. I'm Aviator.

I like you - you write intelligently, and you get it. You're right. School DOES kill the will to learn. I DOES hog up time that could be spent on other, more important persuits. But, you're also correct in saying that most kids don't care about that, or so it seems. All they seem to want to talk about is partying and fashion, to quote a song, which makes it all the more frustrating for others of us.

But how do we fix this? All of it? I don't think one can be fixed without the other being fixed up as well - if schools are made optional, few kids would still go, yet, that's the reason we have schools - to educate our kids. And it's all broken because it requires more enthusaiasm from the students than it currently has, in order to function.

Anyhow. I think I'll stop there. Nice to meet you anyhow.

[monkey]

I can tell your a respectable poster from that post, Good well thought out.

[Jackass McAwesome]

I, Avi? Epic typo there, sunglasses,

Regardless, this is well written. The points you make are all valid.



...But seeing Paraless in the users also reading bar makes me wonder what counters he's got. Shaping up to be interesting, all of a sudden.

[The Desert Fox]

For your 2nd post, this is excellent! I think it should be put somewhere on the main site.

Welcome, you can call me Fox for short, seeing how everyone else does.

[Coma Girl]

Good on ya kid! I completely agree with you. Depending on where you live, and the difference between public schools and private schools, or, any other type of schooling institutes in your country, I've been to both public and private schooling, and i'll tell you now, they're not that different. Generally kids in private school's have the tendency to not come from a broken home, be on drugs, or have any life problem that affects them too drastically, however, their ability to comply with completing school homework or taking interest in their class is very similar to public school kids.

Really, who wants to be memorizing pointless articles about a class you will be dropping, or a subject you dislike and see no point in?

[Quertillia]

Thanks everyone. Nice to meet you all. : )

Quote:I like you - you write intelligently, and you get it. You're right. School DOES kill the will to learn. I DOES hog up time that could be spent on other, more important persuits. But, you're also correct in saying that most kids don't care about that, or so it seems. All they seem to want to talk about is partying and fashion, to quote a song, which makes it all the more frustrating for others of us.

But how do we fix this? All of it? I don't think one can be fixed without the other being fixed up as well - if schools are made optional, few kids would still go, yet, that's the reason we have schools - to educate our kids. And it's all broken because it requires more enthusaiasm from the students than it currently has, in order to function.

Anyhow. I think I'll stop there. Nice to meet you anyhow.

I would like to eventually see schooling become optional, but I think this country is so deep into the idea of forced schooling that if we pulled out now we would have a bunch of people not learning anything.

Maybe the problem is with society in general. In the age of ipods, television, and other technology of course people are encouraged to be lazy. So not only are we trying to fight public schools, we're trying to fight all of society. We already have a couple generations of lazy consumers, so if we shut the whole schooling system down right now there will obviously be some kind of crash. So while I don't agree with forced schooling, I think we need to take things slowly.

The first thing we should do is give students more options and therefor more freedom. Homeschooling needs to be allowed everywhere, and there should be lots of different kinds of schools for parents and students to choose from. I also like the idea of people hiring a couple private tutors for subjects that absolutely require a teacher.

I think we also need to separate public schools and education itself from the government as much as possible. The federal government has no place whatsoever deciding what the children of this country are taught. We need to give more freedom to separate communities (I'd like to see the states involved as little as possible) to encourage parents to become involved. Every move we make should be towards giving more freedom to young people. Then we can only hope that with more freedom to direct their own studying kids will stop losing their love of learning. I think it's obvious through homeschooling and unschooling that this really does help. I'm not sure how testing would fit into all of this, though. I hate testing.

Quote:Good on ya kid! I completely agree with you. Depending on where you live, and the difference between public schools and private schools, or, any other type of schooling institutes in your country, I've been to both public and private schooling, and i'll tell you now, they're not that different. Generally kids in private school's have the tendency to not come from a broken home, be on drugs, or have any life problem that affects them too drastically, however, their ability to comply with completing school homework or taking interest in their class is very similar to public school kids.

Really, who wants to be memorizing pointless articles about a class you will be dropping, or a subject you dislike and see no point in?

I agree. : ) I wanted to stick to public schools in this post because I have personal experience in a public school to back up my ideas.

[Amortisatie]

I completely agree with you, if you need any info about private/catholic schools, I have been there the entire time, so you know who to call

On a side note, I find it EXTREMELY hard to write the long posts you do, i'm the type of guy who can take 5 paragraphs and turn it into 4 or 5 sentences, ya know?

[Quertillia]

Quote:I completely agree with you, if you need any info about private/catholic schools, I have been there the entire time, so you know who to call

On a side note, I find it EXTREMELY hard to write the long posts you do, i'm the type of guy who can take 5 paragraphs and turn it into 4 or 5 sentences, ya know?

Great!

Oh I think you're lucky. I always get really frustrated when I realize how long my posts are and I start thinking "wait, who would actually want to read all of this?"

[Amortisatie]

I'm sure you got all of our respect, i'll be reading your posts no matter how long they are

[Colin]

You've gotta be the coolest new kid I've seen around these parts. You're intelligent, you can spell right, and you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there with your second post. I think I speak for most of us when I say "I love you."

[IllusoryDeath]

Quertillia Wrote:I always get really frustrated when I realize how long my posts are and I start thinking "wait, who would actually want to read all of this?"

This.

lol OK guiz, enough flattery - the kid can only take so much.

[Paraless]

IllusoryDeath Wrote:OK guiz, enough flattery - the kid can only take so much.