Do we learn the right things at school?

Hey guys.

Recently I've been incredibly unmotivated to go to school (I'm in about.. 10th grade I suppose. Hollands' school system is different) because nothing we get taught anymore is relevant to our future life. For instance, in our Dutch class.

From classes .. 6-9 we actually had relevant things: right grammar, things like that. However, they still have 2 years left to teach us things and they cannot seem to be able to find actual helpful subjects, so they teach us random things, like 10th century stories in the Dutch Literature. What the fuck? I will never use this in my future life. Why in the name of all that is holy do I have to know what most stories in the middle ages were about?

Another example. In class 8-9 you can choose which subjects you wanna drop and which subjects you wanna take with you from class 8 to class 9, etc. I actually had to repeat a class because my grades for biology and physics were insufficient, while I had already put those two as subjects that I wanted to drop in the next class. So long story short, I had to repeat a class because my grades on two subjects that I wouldn't even have in the néxt year were insufficient.
/end rant

Ofcourse I'm still going to school, and I still pay attention and get good grades, however I'm just constantly so bored at school, I am so unmotivated.. Any tips for me? And what do you think of this school system?

 

Well, usually things have a deeper purpose.. For example, testing you're knowledge on the stories you mentioned is to teach you to read and analyze what you're reading, not to get you to memorize the story.

But that's all irrelevant because the way students are taught is fucked up from the start. Think about it. School growing up is a weird environment when compared to adult life and the real world. Children grow up in bubbles of foolishness. With the stupid ones, this continues into adulthood while they seek comfort in their own ignorance.

 

Public education is a fucking joke, at least in the US.

Pretty much, throughout elementary-highschool you learn your basics in elementary. Middle school, you mainly just review. Highschool your first two years are also review, unless you take advanced classes. Then the required classes you have to take are bullshit usually. Anyways, public education is a joke, you're mainly just learning how to learn.

 

Generally I found most of my courses to be pointless, although that might just be my personality. Almost everything that I've learned since elementary school has been largely self taught, and I just sit in my chair in school to get the slip of paper. That's why I finished highschool two years early because I thought it was a waste of my time.

 

I still remember some stuff we did in primary school, so it's not all bad

It's not about teaching you all this awesome stuff that you'll use every day for the rest of your life. It's giving you a taster of everything, teaching you to learn, teaching you what it's like to be in an environment nine til five, you learn norms and values, respect, friendship and I could go on and on.

It might seem pointless, and most of it probably is, but it's necessary to prepare someone for a working life. Some would say it's just used to groom children in to being a working class being in a capitalist system. To keep quiet nine til five obeying an employer. They teach you just to do what you're told and not question that - the hidden curriculum.

In Scotland at least, secondary schools have changed for the better. Instead of taking the standard computing, biology, chemistry, business and so on the subjects have turned in to something more exciting and life-like such as computer game design, forensics and so on. I think subjects that actually show you what that industry will be like are more useful than just textbooking all day.

 

Nope, a lot of pointless shit that you can skip because youll have no use for it in real life, they only make up these shitty mandatory courses you have to take so they can make money

 

Most of the mandatory courses are useful. At least English/Math/Science. History for the most part is useless. Govt. is nice.

 

No, they're not. English is good. Math and science are useless for 99.5% of the population, and offer very little in terms of applicable information (exception being engineers.)

The emphasis of education today should be on critical thinking and logic. Sadly, next to none of this is seen until higher education (if it's even offered there.)

 

They teach you useless shit you rarely ever have to use.

What they don't teach you is how to live a proper, balanced life.

 

I would say that's false. They teach you things so you can find out what you wanna do with your life.

If someone likes math or science, they're going to delve themselves into those subjects even further. Who knows, they may become a professional at what they do with those subjects of ''uselessness''. There's always a reason behind it.

However, I will agree that they don't require students to take classes such as financing, accounting, how to pay bills, etc. in high school. You kind of just learn that from your parents or the internet.

 

You DO use math and science in your everyday life.

 

Nope. Outside of basic operations, which we learn in elementary school, we have very little practical use for math in our lives. Things like algebra and calculus are frivolous.

Same goes for science.

 

Shit like algebra is annoying, I've never been to the shop and the guy is like "that'll be c10-8c+93(4c-2b) please, I'd be like what the fuck? (I know its probably not even a sum.. Need to learn stuff we'll need to learn, like what tax actually is, why we pay it, what we will need to pay it for, etc, and other stuff we are going to use in life, not this crap, thank god I left school with my 3 GCSE's

 

It stimulates problem solving and logic

 

Same goes for History and English and Spanish and most everything that is learned in school.

 

Nothing that critical thinking can't do tenfold.

You're right in a certain sense, the most important things for individual intelligence and growth aren't taught in school. English is at least somewhat useful and applicable. Everybody writes.

 

Lack of motivation can come from a few areas. This is completely in my own opinion so please no flaming!

1. Disinterest in the subject being taught.
2. An insufficient challenge (i.e the student being smarter than the current level of instruction).

If you are experiencing #1 then consider that once you graduate in 2 years, you'll be able to do anything you want with your adult life. But going through the motions of high school is indeed relevant and you should try to make the best of it. It may not help you with the real world, but you do sort of grow up a little by being in school. As opposed to home schooled kids, you're getting the social exposure needed to form relationships that will be useful later in life. As for what happens after, you can choose to go on to college, but don't be put off by others telling you that getting a degree is the "right" thing to do. Anyone who says that is ignorant of the multitudes of opportunity available as an individual in this digital age.

If #2 is your problem, then consider speaking to a counselor to test in to a higher level of learning. You might be have an 11th or 12th grade mind stuck in 10th grade. I recall that the most restless kids in class during elementary school were sometimes the ones who weren't in the same maturity level or of the same tier of intellect as the others in the class. Adjustments were made to either move them up or down a grade.

 

If you wanna get motivated, think like this: You work hard, get good grades and then even though you learned nothing useful, you will be more respected by jobs because you did well in HS + college/uni.

 

Yeah. Been there. But believe it or not, it serves a purpose. I think to prepare you for college. Maybe not prepare but to help you choose the path you want to take in college. Also, a good amount of general knowledge wouldn't hurt.

 

I'd argue that the point of learning math is not to "teach you how to think", as any subject can do that, but to actually teach you ways of expressing ideas.

You learn the natural numbers in elementary school - so instead of saying "some", "a lot", etc. you can say "two" or "three". Similarly, instead of saying "a group of six and a group of four", you can say "a group of ten".

You learn the negatives a bit later -- what happens when you take away objects from a pile? You can't really express that well without negative numbers.

Same goes for rationals. Say that you want to split two pies into six pieces. Saying "split them into thirds" is much easier and clearer than saying "split these two pies so that there are six pieces".

These examples go on and on... it is a lot easier to handle a phone plan that costs "3c per minute plus an $18 flat fee" if you've encountered equations like f(x) = 3x + 180.

What about calculus? Well, limits are a way of saying "what happens if we use zero minutes?" or "what happens if we were to talk on the phone for a really long time? Oh that would be bad, right? Okay lets not do that."

You may say that "well, all of this is just common sense". But the point is that all math taught in k-12 is common sense. None of it is difficult to understand, you just need to be introduced to it to make situations that occur in real life more familiar.

A side note about geometry: this is the only class that I'd say is valid for the "teaching you how to think" argument. At least in my experience it introduced me to formal logic and how to draw conclusions from several premises. It made sure to teach that A => B does not mean that B => A, etc.

As for the history being useful or useless - history is absolutely useful because it 1). helps trace the ideological movements and 2). provides training in the cause and effect way of thinking

For 1). Some people may not see the inherent value in knowing how other people used to think. Although this is often repeated, knowing that helps you avoid mistakes made in the past.

For 2). (At least in the USA northeast) You study that the Boston Tea Party happened BECAUSE the UK decided to raise taxes on the colonists (which, for the record, was completely reasonable and the colonists were just being little shits, but thats beside the point). World War II happened BECAUSE Germany was in a weakened state from World War I and needed something to pick them up (and it turns out that Hitler was just that guy). World War I happened because of tensions in Serbia over earlier conflicts caused an assassination of the Prince of Austria (well, that was the official reason anyway - Austria just had it in for Serbia to begin with... it wasn't so much because of the assassination).

Math, English and History all have their very good reasons for being taught. Critical thinking isn't just covered by Math or History, it is a collage where you learn bits and pieces from each class.