Do you think college is worth it?

[lightsenshi]

As I often tell people, a college degree simply means you can take tests.

[Gamer_2k4]

Originally Posted by lightsenshi

As I often tell people, a college degree simply means you can take tests.

Translation: You can take information about subjects in your field of study and produce it upon demand.
Implication: You have the ability to absorb and apply relevant knowledge.
Conclusion: Success in college means success in the workforce.

[Vexx]

At the moment, its *hard* to get a job with a college degree... but its just about impossible if you don't have a degree. That's one of the first sorts a recruiter does in filling jobs - "degree? no degree?" The other track is to get a truckload of certifications in a job field (electrician, network IT, plumb, etc)... but still expect to lose out on a promotion at some point because you lack a degree.

One of my sons has certifications in personal training... he's very good at it, etc, making money. But he's encountered a lot of opportunities he's been unable to take advantage of because of the starting gate requirement of - college degree. So *now* he's going to college in his mid 20s.

So the "is it relevant?" question is a fail-on-ignition for most people because Those-Who-Hire have deemed it so. The alternative of "being your own boss" is getting tougher because the banks don't want to bother with small businesses any more and won't loan (in many cases, the loan process is automated so there's not even someone to pitch the business plan to) and because the Large Corporate simply mows down the mom'n'pop business.

[Samari]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I don't think mandatory education, as it is now, builds work ethic well, as all the motivation is external, not internal. If the young adult is left to his own devices he will choose to do nothing, as he hasn't been told to do anything.

Well there will be other factors involved of course. Like parents and environment, but I think school can definitely build a good work ethic.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

The key is exposure, not forcing them to sit through an hour on poetry they feel they have no reason to be interested in. I don't feel that forcing classes can create any interest, as it makes it into work, and forces an external interpretation on the material when the student should be left to form one themselves.

The really important thing is access. Once students are provided access to materials on the topic, then it becomes possible for them engage with the subject automously, be it subatomic physics or Emily Dickinson. Until recently this was difficult, as the best option was libraries, which are intimadating, don't provide quick access to information and did not always have wide availability, not all schools had extensive libraries. Now, with the Internet, that's all changing. The popularity of Wikipedia alone points to people's inherent desire to learn. With the Internet, students can be exposed to new, interesting and important things with increasing ease of access. It is not yet perfect, as there isn't yet wide enough access to full books over the plethora of "bitesized" articles we have now. If, for instance, the entrey on Plato gave links to up to date translations of his works we would have something even more potent. Computers can render the modern school obsolete, and the technology is still so recent that no one has attempted to do so.

Like I said no one is forcing folks to go to school. At least they schools themselves aren't. If anything, that blame should go to parents if you wanted to blame someone. Schools implement a grading system because it's a method to actually make sure that someone is giving a shot to something. Everything is going to be "fun" at first. Over time though you may realize that you have an interest in another field. That is why schools operate the way they do. The point is to make sure kids actually give it a shot instead of giving something thought for about five minutes and deciding it isn't worth their time.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

There isn't a social environment at home, I would be all in favour of Homeschooling were it not for the fact that it almost bars the individual from having a social life with access to their peers. Furthermore, they could gain increased access to expensive things like Musical Instruments, Books or art supplies they cannot access at home.

Then go outside? Or see friends and others after school? School isn't supposed to be a social gathering where people can just play around. It's a place where people that want to learn about other aspects than just their own personal interests can go. Books can be found at the public library. As for musical instruments and art supplies, I'd say if you want access to that kind of stuff for free, then it really isn't much of a stretch to go to school and learn other information regardless of whether you are interested in it or not. Not everything is "free" and "convenient" in life.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

It is my opinion that this "system" is alienating to many students, and doesn't help them find success. I also think the "system" engenders much of the laziness of which you speak, as throughout the student is only rarely required to choose to do anything. A better system would maintain the ability children have to be self-directed, rather then strip them of responsibility for their own future.

Laziness is reflected on the upbringing of a child's parents more so I'd say. Schools don't make students lazy. They're just giving information to the user. People that are lazy are only going to do what they like from the get-go. Can't blame schooling on that. And please, the responsibility to choose isn't stripped of them from grade school. After high school is over with you actually get to choose what you want to do in life. So let's stop with that angle please.

[TurkeyPotPie]

Borrowing $100k to get a degree in ethnic studies or some such is not worth it because you are unlikely to ever get a job that pays well enough to compensate. However, a college degree of some kind is almost mandatory in the corporate world now (speaking of the US here). Most places you cannot even get your foot in the door without that credential. I don't agree with this BTW, although I understand the reasons why companies do it. Partly it is lazy/ineffective HR and the other part is due to PC/fear of lawsuits. The criteria that employers can use and the recourse they have if someone doesn't work out have narrowed so much that they are extremely leery of hiring. Hiring a bad/worthless employee can do so much more damage than just the cost of their compensation. However, testing for IQ/aptitude is out and once hired it is extremely difficult to fire people (especially if they fall into an EEOC protected group), so employers fall back to a credential.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Translation: You can take information about subjects in your field of study and produce it upon demand.
Implication: You have the ability to absorb and apply relevant knowledge.
Conclusion: Success in college means success in the workforce.

You can pass a test without knowing much about the subject. It's called "cramming".

Originally Posted by Samari

Well there will be other factors involved of course. Like parents and environment, but I think school can definitely build a good work ethic.

I don't think so, why? I've said so earlier, so I won't repeat, but also simply because what work you do in school is frequently meaningless, and students realise it, and start "playing the game" getting the maximum result for minimum effort. This is not work ethic.

Like I said no one is forcing folks to go to school. At least they schools themselves aren't. If anything, that blame should go to parents if you wanted to blame someone. Schools implement a grading system because it's a method to actually make sure that someone is giving a shot to something. Everything is going to be "fun" at first. Over time though you may realize that you have an interest in another field. That is why schools operate the way they do. The point is to make sure kids actually give it a shot instead of giving something thought for about five minutes and deciding it isn't worth their time.

If you don't go to and finish school you're pretty much an outcast. It's like what Vexx says about college x100. It's also illegal not to attend school of some kind before 16, also illegal to work full time before 16 as well...

You're not physically forced, and chained to your desk, but you are socially forced.

Then go outside? Or see friends and others after school? School isn't supposed to be a social gathering where people can just play around. It's a place where people that want to learn about other aspects than just their own personal interests can go. Books can be found at the public library. As for musical instruments and art supplies, I'd say if you want access to that kind of stuff for free, then it really isn't much of a stretch to go to school and learn other information regardless of whether you are interested in it or not. Not everything is "free" and "convenient" in life.

I was saying that the benefits of sudbury over simple homeschooling was that at homeschool, you have ... no ... social life. The average teen or child's social life completely revolves around school. How can you make friends without going to school? So the benefit of Sudbury is that you can make friends there, which is a vital part of the learning and socialization process. You can't learn utterly alone.

Likewise the access to books, instruments and art supplies are all things that normal schools offer as well, it's not about being free and convenient, it's about offering students opportunities to try new things. Besides that, it's the parents paying the expenses of a sudbury school, so it isn't free at all.

Laziness is reflected on the upbringing of a child's parents more so I'd say. Schools don't make students lazy. They're just giving information to the user. People that are lazy are only going to do what they like from the get-go. Can't blame schooling on that. And please, the responsibility to choose isn't stripped of them from grade school. After high school is over with you actually get to choose what you want to do in life. So let's stop with that angle please.

Our formative years are from 0-~18. This is when much of a students habits and personality is formed. If environment had nothing to do with it, attainment accross the globe would be almost equal. Depending on the environment they are brought up in, they will develop different skills and qualities. Now tell me, in all the time between 3 and 18, when a child is at school, when do they ever need about choosing what they should do? When do they ever have an ounce of responsibility to choose to do anything for themselves? They learn to accomodate themselves to a linear system that is of a frequently quite arbitrary nature.

When they come into the adult world with it's myriad choices and responsibilities, their schooling has done very little to prepare them for it. I think School should be a lot more like the real world.

[Gamer_2k4]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I've said so earlier, so I won't repeat, but also simply because what work you do in school is frequently meaningless, and students realise it, and start "playing the game" getting the maximum result for minimum effort. This is not work ethic..

In the working work, that's called "efficiency," and is regarded very highly.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

In the working work, that's called "efficiency," and is regarded very highly.

These are two very different things. In school you are supposed to learn. Extra learning that may not directly be in an exam is part of the package. It's a good thing. So doing stuff that is non essential leads to a more rounded education. Also, this "game playing" behaviour results in cramming behaviour-> you study for a few hours for an exam, studying purely to answer on the exam, and then you forget it all afterwards. A very frequent pattern. It's also the easiest way to get through school, but it also results in the student learning almost nothing. A better knowledge would be obtained by reading it and working with it repeatedly until you have a complete intuitive understanding, and maybe doing a bit extra to anticipate future challenges. This is much more time intensive requiring weeks and months of work, while cramming requires hours.

At work the goal is not education or personal development, it's production. It's about producing the most, and using the least resources(including time) to do so is desirable. Doing extra stuff isn't good, it's wasteful.

Work and school are very different. A student that views school as "a job" is a poor student. Just as a worker forgets and moves on after a job (in this case an exam) is done, so does the student.

If you think about it, for a 2 hour exam, it makes sense that you should be able to figure out how to do it in ~6, given access to materials. This exam is supposed to sum up 3-4 months of learning time. See the problem?

[Gamer_2k4]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

If you think about it, for a 2 hour exam, it makes sense that you should be able to figure out how to do it in ~6, given access to materials. This exam is supposed to sum up 3-4 months of learning time. See the problem?

Only vaguely. Nearly everything you learn will be forgotten if you don't use it frequently, so the argument of "you learn it for the test and then forget it and that's bad" isn't an especially compelling one. Do you know why it only takes six hours to study for an exam that covers four months of material? Because throughout those four months, you were constantly using and applying the things you learned. The six hours are time spent converting the concepts from "I kinda know this but I'd probably need a reference" to "I definitely know this, no reference needed." Even though you were cramming, now that knowledge is at the front of your mind, ready to be called upon for a while afterwards (something that's important if the class was a prerequisite, which many are).

The best way to retain knowledge to to constantly apply knowledge. If you don't apply it, it doesn't matter how hard you work during the learning process. Back in college, I had an American history class. I took notes, did all the assignments, and got consistently high grades on both my assignments and exams. For the final, I didn't have to cram, because I remembered everything from doing the work. In other words, I did it the "right" way. Fast-forward to today, where I couldn't tell you a name or a date beyond, "Yeah...that kind of sounds familiar" if you told me the answer.

This isn't restricted to college, either. My current job is a software quality engineer: I write automated tests to assure we put out a good product. I've been writing the tests since the day I got here, so I could tell you how to do that in a flash. I'm considered one of the experts here in that regard. However, I've been on several feature teams that work on different aspects of our product. While I'm on a team, I could tell you whatever you needed to know about that team. Once I move onto another one, the knowledge of the first fades away, since I'm no longer working with it.

My point is this. A few people, myself included, have said that school is less about obtaining knowledge and more about understanding the process of learning itself. School isn't about learning. If you don't use what you learn, you'll forget it anyway. No; school is actually about the "game playing" you talk about. In the real world (or at least, in the software industry), doing well is all about being able to pick up knowledge quickly and put it to use immediately. Admittedly, some jobs aren't like that, though I imagine they're limited to manual and theoretical jobs (CERN researcher, construction worker, etc.) However, a good deal of work is based on the ability to constantly learn and apply. School teaches you that.

[Miko Miko]

Not been reading recent comments, but to answer the question.

I currently don't go to college, or have a job. In my life i need a job, I have been applying for the past 5 months, and not got ANYWHERE. I have applied for every single job I can find.
But, at least what i've found, is you really have a lot more chance of getting ANY job with more than a handful of extremely CRAP GCSE's.

So yes, college is definately worth it. If you want a decent job at least, not talking Uni or anything but a college course, especially at my age, is definately worthwhile.

[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Translation: You can take information about subjects in your field of study and produce it upon demand.

That's partially true, to be precise, for passing an exam you must be able to recite what the eximiner wants to hear, not what is useful or practical for research, work, etc.

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Implication: You have the ability to absorb and apply relevant knowledge.

Slight correction, you have the ability to memorize a ton of information whether useful or not.

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Conclusion: Success in college means success in the workforce.

LOL, a couple of years ago, the head of software development in the company I was working, made a formal complain to HR, because they only hired fresh graduates, who despite having masters, and doctorates from highly ranked universities, could not write properly 10 lines of production level code.

Originally Posted by Vexx

At the moment, its *hard* to get a job with a college degree... but its just about impossible if you don't have a degree...

Mate, I haven't finished my bachelor, but I never had trouble finding a job or getting a contract as a software developer, in between I am/was studying electrical engineering. The only times I have problems with applications is when HR gets involved or the public sector. But generally speaking, I agree... anything except IT today (in Germany, UK, and Japan where I was recently looking for a new job), it is extremely hard to get a job.

[synaesthetic]

Vexx is referring to the US. It is easier in other places... but here, you can't get a job mopping floors without a goddamn degree.

[Malkuth]

^^ LOLWUT I thought that it wasn't so much different than the UK Generally speaking again, I have noticed that the less restrictive laws are, the easiest it is to break free from useless, yet expensive paper-rolls

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Only vaguely. Nearly everything you learn will be forgotten if you don't use it frequently, so the argument of "you learn it for the test and then forget it and that's bad" isn't an especially compelling one. Do you know why it only takes six hours to study for an exam that covers four months of material? Because throughout those four months, you were constantly using and applying the things you learned. The six hours are time spent converting the concepts from "I kinda know this but I'd probably need a reference" to "I definitely know this, no reference needed." Even though you were cramming, now that knowledge is at the front of your mind, ready to be called upon for a while afterwards (something that's important if the class was a prerequisite, which many are).

The best way to retain knowledge to to constantly apply knowledge. If you don't apply it, it doesn't matter how hard you work during the learning process. Back in college, I had an American history class. I took notes, did all the assignments, and got consistently high grades on both my assignments and exams. For the final, I didn't have to cram, because I remembered everything from doing the work. In other words, I did it the "right" way. Fast-forward to today, where I couldn't tell you a name or a date beyond, "Yeah...that kind of sounds familiar" if you told me the answer.

This isn't restricted to college, either. My current job is a software quality engineer: I write automated tests to assure we put out a good product. I've been writing the tests since the day I got here, so I could tell you how to do that in a flash. I'm considered one of the experts here in that regard. However, I've been on several feature teams that work on different aspects of our product. While I'm on a team, I could tell you whatever you needed to know about that team. Once I move onto another one, the knowledge of the first fades away, since I'm no longer working with it.

You are describing good study techniques. I'm attempting to describe to you bad ones, which are just as effective at passing tests as good techniques.

What the bad student does is: Attend few lectures at all, or pay very little attention, instead has his computer on hand with facebook! He does little to no work during the semester. In my university there's a phrase called a "golden week", which is where you attend every lecture in a given week. There's an entire class of student who rarely achieve this.

He gets sample questions from final exam paper, figures out what questions will likely be on the exam. You then look at what questions come up frequently, and then look at what study materials you have been given, be it in textbook or class notes. Then you ruthlessly cut out everything from the course that does not have any direct relevance to the final exam. This often cuts out 50-90% of the course content. You then study the exact answers you will need to know for the past exams, and memorize them. Understanding it is completely unnessecary, though it can make the process a bit easier. I often didn't understand a lot of what I wrote down. If you know what you're doing you can reformat those answers on the fly in the exam itself. To expedite it, you can also leave certain core equations or whatnot to just prior to the exam beginning, and then right them down really quickly in some part of the paper. Some go further and outright cheat. The fact is, there's no hope of being able to examine fully 4 months worth of content in a 2 hour exam, so they always have to cut out a lot of the explanotory stuff they go over in lectures. To the student that stuff is pointless, as it doesn't help him pass the exam.

If you do this right you can ace any test. However if you're placed in any kind of real situation you'll fail utterly. All you studied were the answers to the test, not the concepts themselves. This is particularly easy to do in Engineering or Science once you have a decent grasp of Basic (high school level) Mathematics. Hell you can often get by without Matrices or even Calculus (I had 4 courses in my entire time in College that required Matrices. 2 of them were the courses teaching them...).

My point is this. A few people, myself included, have said that school is less about obtaining knowledge and more about understanding the process of learning itself. School isn't about learning. If you don't use what you learn, you'll forget it anyway. No; school is actually about the "game playing" you talk about. In the real world (or at least, in the software industry), doing well is all about being able to pick up knowledge quickly and put it to use immediately. Admittedly, some jobs aren't like that, though I imagine they're limited to manual and theoretical jobs (CERN researcher, construction worker, etc.) However, a good deal of work is based on the ability to constantly learn and apply. School teaches you that.

I think they require the more thorough form of learning you outlined(which is not strictly game playing), which is correct, and not the superficial form which I describe, and was practiced by me and my fellow students. However my University had no continuous assessment, which makes things a lot more difficult to do this way. I can't see this approach working well in the USA, but in UK and Irish Universities, where 80-100% of the marks go on finals it works beautifully. You can get by with 5-30 hours work per exam total, without any attendance of lectures. The real source of difficulty is finding out what you need to know, and then finding the material itself. After that it's extremely easy, you just memorize away.

In a sense this isn't a bad skill, it's good to be able to look at a text and derive quickly what you need to know. But you're supposed to learn the whole thing. Not just the small sections that get examined. You're supposed to know all the theoretical underpinning and explanations, not just the solutions to the problems they ask commonly.

If you know what you're doing you can get a B average in a UK or Irish college while doing 200-400 hours work per year. That's not much more then 4-8 weeks solid working. You can spend 40 weeks out of the year doing whatever the hell you like. And that's in Engineering, which is supposed to be hard. I knew Arts students who routinely spent weeks doing nothing but smoking Marijuana. And they still did fine!

I will say, that even though that amount of time will be quite small, most of those 200-400 hours will be spent in frustration wrestling with perplexing material, trying to figure out exactly how to pass the exam, so it's still not exactly easy. It just doesn't require much time.

EDIT: The wikipedia article goes into why cramming is such a bad thing. I might also add that cramming is a very seductive thing, as it means you can put your work off, and when you succeed in the exam (and you usually can), it gives a false sense of security. It's a bit of a drug, as once you start to use cramming as your primary study technique it's very difficult to stop. It's not a pleasant way to learn might I add, and sucks all the joy out of it.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

In the working work, that's called "efficiency," and is regarded very highly.

It could lead to efficiency, but it could also lead to cutting corners and doing the bare minimum necessary to be deemed acceptable. The comparison would be products made in China vs. those made in the USA back in the 1950's era (or thereabouts - not modern products). The modern products (which admittedly aren't limited to those made in China) are passable, but generally crap quality. Stuff made in the "good old days" was usually over-engineered and built solidly. The modern products are probably more efficient in terms of profit margins, time to produce, energy to produce, and so on, but I think we've lost something valuable along the way...

Similarly, people who approach learning or their work as a "do the bare minimum" effort will generally get the job done, but their contribution may fall short of what someone who attempts to go above and beyond can do. It's not always a matter of efficiency - sometimes it's just a matter of effort. However, the reality is that some people (probably the majority) will always do the bare minimum necessary, while others will always strive to go above and beyond. The education system probably has little effect in changing that about people.

[Samari]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I don't think so, why? I've said so earlier, so I won't repeat, but also simply because what work you do in school is frequently meaningless, and students realise it, and start "playing the game" getting the maximum result for minimum effort. This is not work ethic.

So? Even when you go after something you desire, there are times when you have to do things you do want to do/aren't interested in to achieve that goal. School prepares you for this. It gives you that work ethic, or rather gets you used to those scenarios. Along the way you can learn a lot of useful information.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

If you don't go to and finish school you're pretty much an outcast. It's like what Vexx says about college x100. It's also illegal not to attend school of some kind before 16, also illegal to work full time before 16 as well...

You're not physically forced, and chained to your desk, but you are socially forced.

Well school gives people opportunities. This is common sense. Which is why the thought of choosing not to attend is seen as unusual. At least grade school for that matter. By the way I don't think society would have gotten as far as it has now if we all just sat around and decided to do whatever we wanted and not teach anyone anything and let people learn on their own....and/or introduce people to new facets of life.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I was saying that the benefits of sudbury over simple homeschooling was that at homeschool, you have ... no ... social life. The average teen or child's social life completely revolves around school. How can you make friends without going to school? So the benefit of Sudbury is that you can make friends there, which is a vital part of the learning and socialization process. You can't learn utterly alone.

Likewise the access to books, instruments and art supplies are all things that normal schools offer as well, it's not about being free and convenient, it's about offering students opportunities to try new things. Besides that, it's the parents paying the expenses of a sudbury school, so it isn't free at all.

Well folks that are going to sit around and bitch about going to school, but then at the same time bitch about not being able to have a social life and make friends and then go ahead and "blame the system" for this anomaly kind of comes off as ridiculous in my opinion. I wish I could have the perfect life and blame society whenever I don't see things as "fair" and "convenient".

And at public schooling a lot of materials and extracurricular activities were free for students. There are fees in certain things, but really come on. School, the prospect to learn is free in itself. That really is a great gift on it's own. Of course if you'd rather not attend school, then don't bitch about not being able to have access to this and that.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Our formative years are from 0-~18. This is when much of a students habits and personality is formed. If environment had nothing to do with it, attainment accross the globe would be almost equal. Depending on the environment they are brought up in, they will develop different skills and qualities. Now tell me, in all the time between 3 and 18, when a child is at school, when do they ever need about choosing what they should do? When do they ever have an ounce of responsibility to choose to do anything for themselves? They learn to accomodate themselves to a linear system that is of a frequently quite arbitrary nature.

When they come into the adult world with it's myriad choices and responsibilities, their schooling has done very little to prepare them for it. I think School should be a lot more like the real world.

I never said environment had nothing to do with a child's upbringing. Did you not read what I said about parents? Before kids even start attending school they are already influenced a lot by their parents already. Maybe where the school is and the neighborhood will effect a person's development, but a simple public school is just an institution that relays information and promotes socialization. It's not going to make a person lazy. That's pretty ridiculous. That aspect of a person is more so up to who they are raised by and where they are raised...not what is being taught in a public school.

By the way students do have choices in public school in various activities. This becomes more and more apparent when you get to high school with the ability to choose more classes.

Not everything is going to be roses. Especially in life. What school does is important. It is a matter of not just what you have learned but also, that you were able to take a problem that you knew nothing about before and figure it out. It is the development of the mind and the accessibility of what is out there that makes school so important.

But don't take your children to school. Blame society. Blame the system. See what happens. Don't be surprised if they can't read or write...but at least they'll be able to sing that rap song!

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Samari

So? Even when you go after something you desire, there are times when you have to do things you do want to do/aren't interested in to achieve that goal. School prepares you for this. It gives you that work ethic, or rather gets you used to those scenarios. Along the way you can learn a lot of useful information.

So we should be preparing people to do things that are utterly unnesecary and meaningless just because someone higher up says so? No wonder we have so much bureaucracy! School shouldn't be accomodating the student to do unproductive and meaningless tasks. It should be imparting relevant and useful information and skills.

Well school gives people opportunities. This is common sense. Which is why the thought of choosing not to attend is seen as unusual. At least grade school for that matter. By the way I don't think society would have gotten as far as it has now if we all just sat around and decided to do whatever we wanted and not teach anyone anything and let people learn on their own....and/or introduce people to new facets of life.

Up until about 1870-1900 that universal education was implemented. Prior to that society was quite capable of functioning. Now I don't want to diss on the implementation of universal education, for one thing it got children out of the work houses. But in itself it wasn't responsible for all of societies innovations either. But our education was made for the industrial revolution, where standardisation and industrial methods were the order of the day. You characterise the system I propose as being easy or soft, with no substance. I think it is the opposite, as it puts the onus on the student to learn, the student is no longer the passive participant, but the driver. I also think it is a more natural way. This is how people have learned for millions of years, why mess with it? Furthermore, school usually fails to introduce students to "new facets of life". I rarely see any of the students go on to be great lovers of the things they are introduced to in school. Usually it's the opposite, and they go on to hate them with a passion.

Well folks that are going to sit around and bitch about going to school, but then at the same time bitch about not being able to have a social life and make friends and then go ahead and "blame the system" for this anomaly kind of comes off as ridiculous in my opinion. I wish I could have the perfect life and blame society whenever I don't see things as "fair" and "convenient".

You're putting words in my mouth. I don't think it has anything to do with fairness, or convenience. It's about educational quality. I think a student directed model, a la the sudbury model, has the potential to be far superior to the education used now. I was speaking in terms of what sudbury offers over simply staying at home, and it offers relative to staying at home, what school offers relative to home schooling (IE home schooling where the parent and child follow a conventional curriculum and schedule), which is access to peers, and improved facilities.

I have no sympathy for people who only go to school for socialising, but it can't be denied that a proper social life is an integral part of being human. No man is an island after all. Why else would schools provide an hour of lunch time, and after school activities?

And at public schooling a lot of materials and extracurricular activities were free for students. There are fees in certain things, but really come on. School, the prospect to learn is free in itself. That really is a great gift on it's own. Of course if you'd rather not attend school, then don't bitch about not being able to have access to this and that.

I am talking about sudbury schools, not normal schools. Normal schools have completely free extracurricular activities (well, barring buy equipment), sudbury schools are private institutions, with all costs payed for by the parents. So if the parents wish to provide opportunities to thestudetns, they have to pay for it. Which makes sense...

And school isn't free, it's payed for out of your parents taxes, so they're still indirectly paying for it.

I never said environment had nothing to do with a child's upbringing. Did you not read what I said about parents? Before kids even start attending school they are already influenced a lot by their parents already. Maybe where the school is and the neighborhood will effect a person's development, but a simple public school is just an institution that relays information and promotes socialization. It's not going to make a person lazy. That's pretty ridiculous. That aspect of a person is more so up to who they are raised by and where they are raised...not what is being taught in a public school.

People spend so much of their lives in school, for a child and teen they are their workplace. You spend almost 1/2 of your day in and around school, and more so with school peers. That schools pay no role at all in people's personality is equally absurd. Of course parents have a large effect, but it's equally been shown that peer groups, and educational environment have a very large effect. If you are educated in a particular environment, it makes sense that you will grow accustomed to it, and develop qualities that will enable you to function there, and after graduation the work places you will function best will be those most similiar to school. As we know most work places are utterly different from school, so I think school ill prepares students by keeping them in an environment that is artificially different to real life.

Consider the fact that until recently the concept of a "teenager" was non-existent. After puberty you became, simply an "adult" albeit an inexperienced one. It may be this divide between teenagers and adults is entirely driven by the introduction of mandatory education in the last century. And it may be that many of the negative qualities we associate with teenagers is partially due to the education they receive. It's notable that children coming from private education end out achieving much more then those from public schools.

By the way students do have choices in public school in various activities. This becomes more and more apparent when you get to high school with the ability to choose more classes.

It's a very limited choice, almost a false choice. Where I was you had to do Math, English, Irish and a foreign language. You could then choose 2-4 more from a variety of others. Most likely you would choose to do a science or history etc. Now there is a lot more choice then there used to be, and I support it, but it's still very constrained, and most schools have limited budgets and don't provide their students with most of the options available anyway.

Not everything is going to be roses. Especially in life. What school does is important. It is a matter of not just what you have learned but also, that you were able to take a problem that you knew nothing about before and figure it out. It is the development of the mind and the accessibility of what is out there that makes school so important.

I know very few schools that offer that. It's mostly memorizing and drilling. Stuff like Spelling, multiplication tables, poetry (my god poetry...), Physics rules and grammar. The one subject where students actually have to use their head, Mathematics, is the subject that students have some of the worst attainment levels for. Maths is the one subject we can convincingly make an argument that mandatory education is required for, and yet actually in most cases our schools fail to adequately teach it at all.

But don't take your children to school. Blame society. Blame the system. See what happens. Don't be surprised if they can't read or write...but at least they'll be able to sing that rap song!

I blame society for an over emphasis on university. I don't have much of an axe to grind regarding school. In fact I very much enjoyed my time in school. I was a model student. I just think a looser system would have superior outcomes and better prepare students for real life. I also have a individualist/libertarian strak and I think society should be much more focussed on the individual. I think a student centred education is what we should have, not a teacher centred. The education should fit the individual students needs, not the student made to fit the education. I did well in school, but I saw a lot of others who were failed by the current system, who were often perfectly capable, but were ill-served by it's overly narrow nature.

I also find the current trends towards standardized testing and tighter bureaucratic controls over schools to be disturbing. We don't want to end up like Japan where students are continuously preparing for another stage of overly competitive exams, and many students just can't hack it. In adulthood no single event as a group of exams have such a huge effect. It's like this in Ireland, where whatever college you get into is completely determined by your results in a set of examinations that take place over 2 weeks. Good luck if your cat dies.

[Slick_rick]

I find it a bit odd to complain about American schools being too constrained. Compared to many Asians countries today that's a bit of a joke. The U.S much less time in school than many other nations. Home schooling is big in many part of America and its a very viable option though not one I personally prefer.

The current intellectual boom is in no small part due to the standardization of education. Through I don't want it to be excessively constrained, as to stifle individuality of course material, you still shouldn't be learning too different of material from children your own age as you can relate to them better and if you move are not be left behind or become lost.

One of the reasons America is losing out to many more countries today than it did in the past is that American children have been engendered with the belief that they know best and don't have to listen to anyone else. They know better than their teachers and parents and then wonder why when they come out of school with that attitude they have a hard time making it in the workplace.

IMO its not so much a problem with school as much as it is with American society. If they cram just to get good scores instead of seeing the value in learning then its their problem and it'll catch up with them eventually. If it already hasn't with American society and one of the reasons it is on the decline.

I won't argue against the fact that it is completely overpriced at many institutions but the value is clear. School is far from perfect but without structure children are left to blow in the wind. Some might turn out all right but the vast majority will be lost forever in the sea of irrelevance.

[Cinocard]

I blame society for an over emphasis on university. I don't have much of an axe to grind regarding school. In fact I very much enjoyed my time in school. I was a model student. I just think a looser system would have superior outcomes and better prepare students for real life. I also have a individualist/libertarian strak and I think society should be much more focussed on the individual. I think a student centred education is what we should have, not a teacher centred. The education should fit the individual students needs, not the student made to fit the education. I did well in school, but I saw a lot of others who were failed by the current system, who were often perfectly capable, but were ill-served by it's overly narrow nature.

Of course, that knowledge needs to be taught to students is fundamentally wrong; it needs to be discovered. But "education" is the most cost-effective way to assess and evaluate anybody's capability. You have to see it both way.

A moment of thought tells us that to accumulate, cultivate, expand, and spread knowledge is what the college system was originally meant to be; it was not meant to be an assessment tool. This byproduct, however, over the years becomes the main purpose of college, precisely because no better single comprehensive evaluation of individuals has been invented. And hey, guess what, as a side benefit, it does teach a small group of people a small amount of usable things.

99% of the problems you present originate from the fact that individuals who have neither the desire nor the ability for higher learning go to college,or to school at all. It is impractical to criticize the teacher once we admit how challenging it is to teach the incapable and the unmotivated. If a teacher can get her students interested in a subject, that is excellent. If she can't, she is still hardly at fault. The only debatable issue is how many students out there have no such desire and ability, and how many had it, but actually lost it inside this brutal, inadequate education system. To me, whose opinion is talent is mostly inborn, and in any case determined at a very young age, the education system as a whole carries permissible flaws; higher education is even more so.

[Reckoner]

I'm going to speak as a student in the US who is a math major in Undergraduate, about to enter my third year and have already taken several upper division math classes.

First of all. College setting is such an ineffective means of teaching knowledge, especially something like the mathematics. Of course, we can't give every student the individual attention they need, so inevitably there are certain things we just have to live with whether we are students or teachers. We don't have the resources to facilitate the perfect form of education.

However, what is presented to the students by the teachers is a bunch of garbage. This may only apply to mathematics, but I have never seen a field so unnecessarily unorganized, and disorienting in my life. The professors seem so disconnected from the needs of the students it's a joke. They may have PHD's, and they may know stuff better than anyone else in the world, but for goodness sakes, that does not make them good teachers! Most of them don't even realize that what they seem to think is clear to them isn't clear to the students. They skip over too many details, and not just them, but the books they write too! The books are even worst than the professors.

Combine this with the fact that the evaluation system for academics is trash, and it's just a massive fucking headache.

We can say whatever we want about the students, but the fact that the system does everything possible to make sure that college is not a proper learning environment shouldn't make it surprising.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. College has one use, a fucking piece of paper with a bunch of signatures worth thousands and thousands of dollars. You end up learning everything on your own anyways. College itself is pretty worthless, and perhaps the only thing it provides other than that is some abilties to gain connections and build some social skills (But does this need to be at college?!!!?).