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[AngularSaxophone]

Just awhile ago I was thinking back on my childhood and it made me wonder about how we think as children. My youngest is one and although he can't "talk" yet, he's very smart for only being in this place for a year. They say children are like sponges and again this "learning" all takes place before we can even speak languages.

With that said I started to think about the whole setup of the education system. All living things can communicate without being taught how to. Birds, cats, even the trees yet we're the only species that have to be given a language to speak. Why is that? Ever wonder what our native language is? We have to have one. Everything else does.

So we're taught to read and write, math and a bunch of other things along with being social with eachother over the course of 13 years and then college if you choose that path, but if it only takes a year for a newborn child to go from coming out of the mother's womb to a fully thinking human, then why is 13 years of school needed? In the history of the world, many things have appeared to change and evolve but I don't think the way man thinks has changed. What changes is the things we're given to think about. Back in elementary school my computer teacher had a saying, Garbage in, Garbage out when it came to programming.

Can any of you think back to how wildly smart and imaginative you were as a child? Go back as far as you can and see if you can remember what your level of thinking was. Not necessarily understanding because of course we're not going to understand a completely new world as a child but just how complex it is to actually take in all of the things you're being bombarded with as a new being and make some sort of sense out of it all. I think 13 years of school is actually a hinderence and not the help it's made out to be.

 

[Barsinister]

When my daughter was one, she was lazy. Just laying around all day, sitting in her own filth. I asked her multiple times to contribute to the household. But, she just lay there, like she couldn't understand me. I would have kicked her out, but my wife objected.

 

[AngularSaxophone]

Did you know that not even 100 years ago, here in the great USofA, if you made your way to land that wasn't claimed, you could build and farm on it and not pay a dime? God never intended us to have to work as we do now. It's either slave away at something or be discarded by society.

Funny you mention sitting in her own filth. I thought about that the other day. I wondered if you could just let a child be, how long would it take for them to poop without it being a complete mess. What age would we actually learn that?

 

[Barsinister]

I did know that, actually. Did you know, pound for pound, an ant has more nutrition inside of it than a cow?

I guess what I'm asking is, do you want to come over for dinner?

 

[G-Bus]

I grew up without an education as a child. My mom attempted to do home schooling but it never went any where. She ran a daycare out of the home so she was busy enough. My dad worked a lot. I don't know how they agreed to let this all happen.

When I was 10 my parents divorced and I eventually went to live with my dad. His only rule was if I wanted to live with him I had to go to school. So after a lot of meetings and what not it was decided they would put me in grade 6 (I was twelve, so a year behind) because my childhood best friend was in that grade and figured it would be easier on me knowing at least one person.

My first day of school was near the end of October. I could hardly write anything that was legible, I could barely read (borderline illiterate) or spell. Almost every English class I was escorted out with an educator where we would very slowly go over the novel we were doing (The Key) and I'd just truck along at my own pace.

By the end of the school year I had a B average grade. My teacher was absolutely blown away how quickly I picked everything up. I could read and write at a similar level of everyone else in the class. Spelling was an issue still. I no longer needed extra help with anything.

I dropped out of highschool in grade 10. So I have 4 years of school education.

You wouldn't think it if you met me. The few people that do know can't believe it. I'm well spoken and arriculate. Every job I've had I'm always pushed into management positions. I excelled as a carpenter when I finally started my trade.

I don't agree with how the education system works. Your taught to memorize and regurgitate.

 

[AngularSaxophone]

I did know that, actually. Did you know, pound for pound, an ant has more nutrition inside of it than a cow?

I guess what I'm asking is, do you want to come over for dinner?

I'd love to. Maybe we could figure out a few math "problems"

I kinda just figured out my own question about the pooping thing. Elders. We live in a world today where all of the elders have been through the same programming we have so lots has more than likely been lost and we've been generations now stuck in the same mode of programming for 100 years or more now.

 

[Barsinister]

I grew up without an education as a child. My mom attempted to do home schooling but it never went any where. She ran a daycare out of the home so she was busy enough. My dad worked a lot. I don't know how they agreed to let this all happen.

When I was 10 my parents divorced and I eventually went to live with my dad. His only rule was if I wanted to live with him I had to go to school. So after a lot of meetings and what not it was decided they would put me in grade 6 (I was twelve, so a year behind) because my childhood best friend was in that grade and figured it would be easier on me knowing at least one person.

My first day of school was near the end of October. I could hardly write anything that was legible, I could barely read (borderline illiterate) or spell. Almost every English class I was escorted out with an educator where we would very slowly go over the novel we were doing (The Key) and I'd just truck along at my own pace.

By the end of the school year I had a B average grade. My teacher was absolutely blown away how quickly I picked everything up. I could read and write at a similar level of everyone else in the class. Spelling was an issue still. I no longer needed extra help with anything.

I dropped out of highschool in grade 10. So I have 4 years of school education.

You wouldn't think it if you met me. The few people that do know can't believe it. I'm well spoken and arriculate. Every job I've had I'm always pushed into management positions. I excelled as a carpenter when I finally started my trade.

I don't agree with how the education system works. Your taught to memorize and regurgitate.

Is your name Huckleberry Finn?

 

[#Phonepunk#]

i think it is always healthy to question knowledge and learning. to me this is the true value of it. in school you are exposed to so many ideas, concepts, narratives, histories, etc., and even if a lot of it you find to be bullshit, it is worth it for that critical experience. the bad teachers probably teach you even more than the good. the real learning is you wrestling w and analyzing these concepts yourself, giving your brain a workout. this is different than reading wikipedia or watching videos on youtube.

schools hold a number of functions beneficial to the state, to capitalism, and also genuinely to the individual who is being educated. socialization is a big thing you get at school that you do not get at home. you become accustomed to institutionalized systems, you are exposed to a great many of things that are in an educational tradition stretching back thousands of years. people say that Western Civilization is the devil, well if you want to study it, there really is no better place to dive in then with public education. you can chase the IRL wormholes of Latin fetishization & cultural imperialism straight to the source. art history classes are probably entirely worthless but i've had the time of my life w them. now i buy history books using all the stuff i learned as jumping off points, using it all for my own music, art, and imagination.

personally i am glad i went, even when i went for classes i do not use in my daily life. i learned about so much. yes some of it sucked but it is good to learn about sucky stuff. if one were to try and read every book ever written in order to get a historical context of human life on Earth, it would be an impossible task. schooling is a good summation of the popular theories, the historical narratives, the teacher's own personal academic interests, etc. on top of that you interact with people outside of your normal sphere, which is social exposure, probably good for fostering tolerance & harmony.

that said there are a lot of things that need to change and be fixed. sadly we put infinite attention to Climate Change in 2030 or Russia buying Facebook ads than into any ideas for how to make education better for the future. teachers are criminally underpaid.

 

[G-Bus]

Is your name Huckleberry Finn?

Maybe it should have been?

Not familiar with that story

 

[Dark Star]

School, from an early age, like 1st - 6th grade is a pretty valuable social experience, as well as a time to learn the basics. Not many kids grow up with parents teaching them basic arithmetic, geometry, or basic "solve for x" algebra. Heck, most kids can't even read a standard clock since everything is digital these days. Primary school teaches you the bare minimum to function, like how to count change/dollars at the cash register. Though, you could definitely get away with skipping highschool, which is mostly a total joke. Everything related to history or science can be easily learned on Youtube or the internet in general. I just wish school was geared more towards learning trades and actual life skills how to do taxes and stuff. Sure, there are "home economics" classes you can take, depending on your location in the world, but it's not a requirement to graduate. You can graduate highschool not knowing anything about the real world.

 

[strange headache]

Considering that OP is a flat-earther with not even a most rudimentary understanding of physical reality, a little bit of learning and education might do him some good.

Not necessarily understanding because of course we're not going to understand a completely new world as a child but just how complex it is to actually take in all of the things you're being bombarded with as a new being and make some sort of sense out of it all. I think 13 years of school is actually a hinderence and not the help it's made out to be.

The reason why young children can absorb large amounts of information is because of higher brain plasticity and denser neuronal connectivity:

During the early postnatal period, level of connectivity throughout the developing brain far exceeds that of adults. This exuberant connectivity is gradually pruned back via competitive processes that are influenced by the experience of the organism. These early experience dependent processes underlie the well-documented plasticity and capacity for adaptation that is the hallmark of early brain development.

This is necessary for young beings to adapt rapidly to their surrounding world, but at the same time it's also highly inefficient. As you grow older, the brain goes through a process called synaptic pruning where the brain basically eliminates unnecessary synaptic connections in order to make it more efficient and organized. That's the reason why children excel at implicit learning but are very bad at explicit learning, which is required for higher forms of knowledge. Children learn in an incidental manner (for example early age language acquisition) that is considered to be IQ independent. To say that children are smarter than adults is not correct when they merely acquire knowledge through a different method, one that might be rather efficient (for example rule learning) but severely limited in other ways (like conceptualizing and verbalizing the acquired knowledge).

In other words, the observations you make in your children has nothing to do with learning and education as you're comparing apples to oranges. I have no problem discussing the many shortfalls of formal education, but to say that it is outright hindering your development of knowledge and ability of understanding is just plain wrong.

Seems to me that you have an ax to grind with public education because it goes contrary to your silly belief system.

 

[AngularSaxophone]

Can I just make a thread? relax. You ever watch little house on the prairie? It's pretty interesting.

 

[Tapioca]

Whales speak different languages.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110512104252.htm

 

[AngularSaxophone]

Do we live among the whales? Have we been among their communities and been one of them? If not, how can we truly know that? Don't certain words have the same meaning throughout all Latin languanges? That finding may only be a single grain in a beach of sand.

 

[petran79]

Can any of you think back to how wildly smart and imaginative you were as a child? Go back as far as you can and see if you can remember what your level of thinking was. Not necessarily understanding because of course we're not going to understand a completely new world as a child but just how complex it is to actually take in all of the things you're being bombarded with as a new being and make some sort of sense out of it all. I think 13 years of school is actually a hinderence and not the help it's made out to be.

I did not mind 12 years at school that much. It was the last year of high school that did the most damage to me. Had chosen Maths, Physics and Chemistry. Started reading and attending cram school during summer and by Christmas I was totally burned out to the point of abandoning everything, even cram school. Even today I have alergy to reading and writing for exams and never take it seriously. Those things are for people in their 30s, not immature and psychologically unstable teens. I liked reading books in my own free time though.

 

[Big-G]

Coming from the guy who believe the Earth is flat

 

[AngularSaxophone]

It's not flat if it has hills.

 

[Big-G]

It's not flat if it has hills.

 

[petran79]

I also remembered a discussion I had with a psychologist who was doing a research about the bullying bad students get from good students, not only at school but also afterwards in society and the workplace. Initially I was surprised, thinking it was the opposite. Eg the school bullies with low grades vs the guys who read all day neglecting health and without any friends.
But she told me it is the opposite. Good students are not just the ones with good grades. They are also active and sociable in various fields both in and outside school. A bad student can also be one with good grades but quite unsociable and isolated.

 

[Airola]

Everyone learns from somewhere. Schools are places where all kinds of knowledge has been put in tight packages and to ensure people at the very least go through those learning moments.

It's nothing more, nothing less.

I learned to read when I was 4 years old. Didn't need school to do that. But without school there would've been huge amount of people who might've never gone through situations where they end up learning to speak. Schools are good for stuff like that. While I didn't need school to learn to read it certainly helped with knowing about some math things and things about chemistry. I know I would've never looked to learn those things on my own. It's a good thing someone made me learn the basics via the school system.

 

[Redneckerz]

Can I just make a thread? relax. You ever watch little house on the prairie? It's pretty interesting.

''Can i also ask random questions in various threads hoping something sticks? I am not derailing guys, i swear!''

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

The reason why young children can absorb large amounts of information is because of higher brain plasticity and denser neuronal connectivity:

Their brains even consume more energy, energy consumption peaks not at birth but in childhood and decreases after that. It is rumored there may exist drugs able to reincrease plasticity and restore youthful brain function and learning capabilities, as well as increased energy consumption of the brain which should help do away with excess calories.

 

[-hal-]

With that said I started to think about the whole setup of the education system. All living things can communicate without being taught how to. Birds, cats, even the trees yet we're the only species that have to be given a language to speak. Why is that? Ever wonder what our native language is? We have to have one. Everything else does.

So we're taught to read and write, math and a bunch of other things along with being social with eachother over the course of 13 years and then college if you choose that path, but if it only takes a year for a newborn child to go from coming out of the mother's womb to a fully thinking human, then why is 13 years of school needed?

I like the questioning of the status quo, but here I think you haven't quite compared things equally.

The creatures you mentioned all communicate. They all learn to communicate to the degree that is needed and/or offered by those that are teaching. If humans lived in a culture of mere survival, I don't think anyone would argue that they'd need much longer than your average mammal to communicate to one another.

You're comparing basic communication to advanced communication - nuanced language and complex thought. Those things take much longer to develop.

A child of one year has developed rather rapidly, because that's just how it works, physiologically speaking. At the milestone of one year, it is capable of processing thought... but not at the level of a toddler, or a teen. Those things take time to develop: discovery, repetition, challenge.

 

[AngularSaxophone]

You're comparing basic communication to advanced communication - nuanced language and complex thought. Those things take much longer to develop.

Speaking isn't advanced at all. It's noisy. I believe that animals can still communicate by thought alone. Some people can still do it. The only time the majority of people do it today is in anger where you can be completely silent yet feel the emotion in a room.

 

[jufonuk]

I don't agree with most of it. All the memorisation of facts etc. Not actually learning on your own. It's like a template and if you don't fit you are branded dumb.

Guess who didn't do too well at school.

Really I started reading more when I left secondary school most of the books we read were boring as shit

 

[infinitys_7th]

Speaking isn't advanced at all. It's noisy. I believe that animals can still communicate by thought alone. Some people can still do it.

Do you mean telepathy or body language?

 

[EverydayBeast]

Potentially harmful, schools a big impact on kids. You don't want your kids getting into trouble

 

[Big-G]

Speaking isn't advanced at all. It's noisy. I believe that animals can still communicate by thought alone. Some people can still do it. The only time the majority of people do it today is in anger where you can be completely silent yet feel the emotion in a room.

Comparing a written spoken language (with an alphabet) to body language in a room you don't disappoint

 

[AngularSaxophone]

Do you mean telepathy or body language?

Telepathy and auric fields. Energy. Not body language.

 

[-hal-]

Speaking isn't advanced at all. It's noisy. I believe that animals can still communicate by thought alone. Some people can still do it. The only time the majority of people do it today is in anger where you can be completely silent yet feel the emotion in a room.

Well, you're meandering down a rather unexpected path with your telepathic implications, and I shall diverge.

I would encourage you to study psychology, physiology, and human behavior, as I believe it will shed some light on some of your assumptions.

 

[Kassep]

In addition, I wanted to say that modern education is not very effective. A lot of empty unnecessary information that is not useful in life. My son is a second year university student. Nevertheless, there are very difficult tasks in physics and mathematics, he ordered help here. I also could not help my son. It seems to me,
Modern education is not very effective...

 

[hargwood]

Did you know that not even 100 years ago, here in the great USofA, if you made your way to land that wasn't claimed, you could build and farm on it and not pay a dime? God never intended us to have to work as we do now. It's either slave away at something or be discarded by society.

Funny you mention sitting in her own filth. I thought about that the other day. I wondered if you could just let a child be, how long would it take for them to poop without it being a complete mess. What age would we actually learn that?

Pass me the DMT brah

 

[AgentP]

So take a tribe of indigenous jungle people with zero education and have them design the next space telescope or do surgery on your mom.

 

[Holgren]

Speaking isn't advanced at all. It's noisy. I believe that animals can still communicate by thought alone. Some people can still do it. The only time the majority of people do it today is in anger where you can be completely silent yet feel the emotion in a room.

That still doesn't answer what -hal-is trying to say. Speaking would not be advanced if it was a mere system of symbols that only expressed our basic needs. If language was how you say it is, our conversations would be: "Hungry, Hungry. Danger!, Happy, Cuddle, Mad". The ability to talk and theorize about topics of this kind of nature like language and learning itself, is an abstraction of reality. That is the difference of basic communication and advanced communication. It is through questioning our reality and ourselves that has let humans evolve their way of seeing the world and manipulate reality in the manners we can do now. The way man thinks has changed, mathematics is a language that is completely counter-intuitive to how we experience the world (reason why it is so hard and important in school), and it is the main tool used for all the technological advances we have now.

If telepathy and auric fields were to exist as you say, it would still be basic communication. I fail to see that serving another purpose other than "danger" or "oh, he is mad".

 

[Ichabod]

I thought this thread was going to be about how the education system teaches youth a certain type of knowledge that often has no real world application.

 

[strange headache]

Yeah because f*ck math and general education, being an obedient worker drone that pays its taxes is all you need amirite? I'm sorry but ignorant sh*t like that seriously rustles my jimmies. "Waaah, I only want to learn what's practical" is the lazy plea of the ignorant fool who shies away from the inherent value of knowledge. Not to mention that to a well educated person, doing taxes isn't even difficult, it's merely tedious.

 

[AngularSaxophone]

I thought this thread was going to be about how the education system teaches youth a certain type of knowledge that often has no real world application.

I just found out I can do my own taxes for business it's just numbers.

 

[Ichabod]

Yeah because f*ck math and general education, being an obedient worker drone that pays its taxes is all you need amirite? I'm sorry but ignorant sh*t like that seriously rustles my jimmies. "Waaah, I only want to learn what's practical" is the lazy plea of the ignorant fool who shies away from the inherent value of knowledge. Not to mention that to a well educated person, doing taxes isn't even difficult, it's merely tedious.

I had a feeling someone was gonna go oldGAF on me and get triggered. I've spent nearly 2/3 of my life getting educated and earning degrees so believe me, I'm not one to shy away from "the inherent value of knowledge (lol)."

Imparting critical thinking, culture, and wisdom can and should the aim of an education system aimed at creating well-rounded adults. All I'm saying is, maybe some practical stuff should be added to the mix so people aren't graduating from universities with a mortgage-sized loans and no idea how to manage their personal finances.

 

[Tesseract]

there's almost nothing more important than a good education that leads to the mechanical understanding of the world

children are not smart, they're curious

 

[hariseldon]

Yeah because f*ck math and general education, being an obedient worker drone that pays its taxes is all you need amirite? I'm sorry but ignorant sh*t like that seriously rustles my jimmies. "Waaah, I only want to learn what's practical" is the lazy plea of the ignorant fool who shies away from the inherent value of knowledge. Not to mention that to a well educated person, doing taxes isn't even difficult, it's merely tedious.

Indeed. The purpose, as I see it, of education for children is to give them a number of useful tools for life.
1. Socialisation. Learn how to be with other people and fix some of the mistakes made by parents.
2. A broad and rounded education. Ideally we want people to have enough education to work, and if I was designing the system I'd add a bit more on how to think critically, analyse sources of information, debate, etc (these things are more prevalent in private schools I think, judging by my wife and her friends who went to private school vs me in state schools - kicked out for 2.5 years of it for being a violent little shit). A baseline standard.
3. Kids don't know what they might like, and will try to avoid it. Enforcing a broad view gives them a baseline so that when they're old enough to decide what they want to learn they can make a more educated decision, and they aren't starting from zero.

Without those things we wouldn't get any of our high-skilled workers, and the electorate would be even more incapable of making rational decisions in an environment stacked against them (the money spent on persuading them instead of developing good policies is frightening).

 

[hariseldon]

I had a feeling someone was gonna go oldGAF on me and get triggered. I've spent nearly 2/3 of my life getting educated and earning degrees so believe me, I'm not one to shy away from "the inherent value of knowledge (lol)."

Imparting critical thinking, culture, and wisdom can and should the aim of an education system aimed at creating well-rounded adults. All I'm saying is, maybe some practical stuff should be added to the mix so people aren't graduating from universities with a mortgage-sized loans and no idea how to manage their personal finances.

I have a degree and an MSc. I can tell you straight up they were too easy and not worth my time. However, parts of my degree stimulated my own personal study outside of that and I'm grateful for that. The practical stuff, managing finances, etc should ideally be coming from the parents, but given kids are arriving at school unable to use a toilet or feed themselves (I'm not fucking joking - my teaching friends inform me that there's been a huge decline there in the last decade or so) perhaps we do need to be doing more of that in schools. That said, it's more time and thus more teachers needed, and that requires funding. Try getting that in a world where people consider taxation to be theft.

 

[Yoshi]

I thought this thread was going to be about how the education system teaches youth a certain type of knowledge that often has no real world application.

Good luck analysing the effect of forces on something you build without parallelograms.

And you know, math skills can come in handy when planning personal finances as well. The ridiculing of maths skills as useless in wide parts of society is one of the sadest facets of society.

Avoiding formal education can be a good way to make your child believe that outside of a couple of hills, mountains and craters, earth is flat and the sun circles it. So there is some use to it for some I guess.

 

[hariseldon]

Yoshi - I'm a programmer - maths is pretty much an essential in my line of work. Honestly one of my greatest regrets is not doing a maths degree. It'd have been a shitload more useful than what I actually did.

 

[Grinchy]

The basics of math and sciences are taught to everyone so that the kids who enjoy it and can properly grasp it move on to studying it at a higher level later. It's incredibly useful to make sure that happens.

We can't just pray to an invisible man in the clouds for bridges and buildings.

 

[Greedings]

Yoshi - I'm a programmer - maths is pretty much an essential in my line of work. Honestly one of my greatest regrets is not doing a maths degree. It'd have been a shitload more useful than what I actually did.

While I work in molecular biology, I WISH I had studied maths past GCSE. I hated it, but I ended up having to teach it to myself during university and beyond.
My maths is now very patchy due to only teaching myself exactly what I need.

Weirdly, it turns out I'm not bad at maths, I just had awful teachers, and was a miserable little fuck in school, who only learned what I liked.

 

[hariseldon]

While I work in molecular biology, I WISH I had studied maths past GCSE. I hated it, but I ended up having to teach it to myself during university and beyond.
My maths is now very patchy due to only teaching myself exactly what I need.

Weirdly, it turns out I'm not bad at maths, I just had awful teachers, and was a miserable little fuck in school, who only learned what I liked.

I got an A in GCSE so wasn't bad but failed miserably at A Level in a class where the highest grade anyone got was an E. You can infer the competence of the teachers from that.

Same story in physics. I actually taught there years later before I even had a degree and with no prior teaching experience, they were paying a sack load of money so I couldn't say no. That was an eye opener.

 

[7echnicolor]

This topics definitely reads like someone took a little too much acid.

 

[Greedings]

I got an A in GCSE so wasn't bad but failed miserably at A Level in a class where the highest grade anyone got was an E. You can infer the competence of the teachers from that.

Same story in physics. I actually taught there years later before I even had a degree and with no prior teaching experience, they were paying a sack load of money so I couldn't say no. That was an eye opener.

That's crazy. No degree...is that even legal? Where in the UK?

 

[hariseldon]

That's crazy. No degree...is that even legal? Where in the UK?

No idea if it was legal, don't want to give out too much personal info on here for obvious reasons. It was a college, and I taught adults a variety of courses, don't want to give thee location as that wouldn't end well.

 

[Makariel]

I think 13 years of school is actually a hinderence and not the help it's made out to be.

I disagree. Things I learned in my 13 years in school include:
- read/write - perhaps the most useful, since my parents usually left me to my own devices and we had plenty of books around the house for me to read
- basic maths and physics
- some chemistry
- biology and sex education
- basic English
- crafts, woodwork, knitting, sewing and mending
- cooking and organizing a kitchen
- metalworks (including milling, drilling and turning with a lathe)
- soldering and welding
- programming
- designing simple electronics circuits
- etching circuit boards
- electrical wiring and protection circuitry
- filing taxes and accounting
- some history
- how magnets work
- some basic geography
- working towards a deadline
- value of democracy
- how my home country is organized politically
- how the EU works on a basic level

Worked out alright, plus I could go to University afterwards.