Is School Necessary? - Page 4

On January 09 2014 07:13 radscorpion9 wrote:
What a great discussion! I voted in agreement with Red more than Blue, but right about now I actually am not sure and find myself thinking there isn't enough evidence to support either side.

Some people in this thread have commented on how unschooling has worked out great for them; that's obviously great, but I think the real question is how true is it in general?

For some intelligent, self-sufficient kids, who read about a wide variety of subjects, school may easily slow their development. And if they're able to join clubs and organizations that make up for the loss of social interactions at school, then there really is no problem. But there is also the equal possibility that some kids may not have the drive to learn and explore a variety of subjects, who may prefer to enclose themselves and play games and not learn certain fundamental skills that will be required when they get older and need to start supporting themselves. They may discover they want to pursue certain studies and find themselves unprepared. Additionally, if they tend to be shy, introverted children, it may be much more difficult to make friends outside of a school setting, in spite of the bullying that may be present.

I think both sides should acknowledge that there is a place for schooling and unschooling, and it really depends on the child and their parents.

It is a very difficult question to answer whether schooling is still necessary. We would need to study kids in general, and see how capable they truly are when left to explore the world on their own. In theory if they are capable (i.e. they are exposed to a wide variety of subjects, and learn well on their own or with a tutor), and can find ways to socialize outside of a traditional school setting, then unschooling is better when compared to formal schooling (ignoring formal requirements needed to gain entrance into university - I think the question being asked is more fundamental).

But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).

I guess to finish off, what we can say about school as it exists today is that it is a safe bedrock, and that kids are more or less guaranteed to gain the necessary tools to work and communicate in the world.

Whether its necessary really requires scientific study and understanding of how capable children are. And if they are capable, I think we need to make schools much more open and flexible for the student.

On January 09 2014 07:57 sluggaslamoo wrote:
I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.

Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.

Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.

Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".

Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Scott Alexander wrote:
I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.

And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.

By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.

Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”

To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be...