
Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School - tokenadult
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dangerous-things-you-were-taught-in-school/
======
ap22213
When I was a poor kid from the rust belt, I dreamed of becoming an adult and
getting a Phd. and talking deeply with the intellectual elite. I never got
that Phd. but I became happily upper middle class, and thus got to hang out
with a lot of Phds., often from good schools. Not surprisingly, many of them
came from upper-class areas, and upper middle class or wealthy families.

What surprised me of this bunch was the general lack of curiosity, passion,
and depth that many of them had - it jarred my world view. These were people
that I dreamed of being around, when I was a kid. And, they just seemed like
normal people, nothing special.

Over much time and after talking with many of them, I realized that many had
pursued the Phd. (or equivalent) not because of any innate passion or ability,
but just because that was what was expected of them. They did it because
that's what people did in their world. It was then that I realized that many
poor kids from the rust belt probably just did what they believed that people
did.

~~~
sopooneo
That is _exactly_ my experience in growing up in a poor rural area and getting
a big scholarship to a fancy private liberal arts school. I had lived and
breathed ideas and that naturally led to good grades. I assumed that the first
day of college would be like those rare episodes of the Simpsons where Lisa
finally meets a group she fits in with. I was, frankly, devastated. These
people weren't smarter or more curious, they were just richer and _better
educated_. My wife, on the other hand, went to a huge state school, but
enrolled in the inner honors college within it, and had much more of the
experience I had been looking for.

~~~
jiggy2011
I agree, when I enrolled on CS I expected there would be plenty of people who
had been doing interesting stuff with tech for years. While there were a few
like this , the majority were just bright kids who would have otherwise done
Law or Accountancy.

------
rglover
I wish I could recall the name, but I read an essay on the general concept of
this topic not too long ago. Essentially the author referenced how schools are
stratified into a series of groups: lower class, lower middle class, upper
middle class, and elite (not sure if these are 100% accurate).

The author explained (from a series of in-person observations) the differences
in education at each of the various levels. Children at the lower class level
were taught to always listen to their teachers, be on time, and not to
question things too much. Jump to upper middle class and the children were
taught how to organize into groups or promote consensus (much like a mid-level
managerial position). Finally at the top, children were given less concrete
homework and were asked to explore their creativity. They were also taught to
question their teachers, and most class time was spent as a dialogue between
the group and not a lecture from the "instructor."

Really interesting topic and I wish more people paid attention to these
things. Imagine where we'd be as a society if we didn't mold each other into
groups or social brackets. Blows my mind.

~~~
PaperclipTaken
I can relate to this based on my experiences from high school. I don't think
that things are structured like this intentionally. (I think that few teachers
and principal's would intentionally hold back the lower class students) But,
if you have a kid who tends to do his homework less, think school is 'not
cool,' and in general doesn't like authority (something I feel was more
prevalent among the poorer students in my education), you get a much stronger
attitude of 'sit down and do your homework' from the teachers.

Then you have the upper level classrooms, where assignments were almost never
turned in late, and students generally had less animosity towards authority in
general. They still disobeyed and did creative things and whatnot, but they
did it out of curiosity, and not because they were trying to irritate the
teachers.

Actually, I'm thinking of several cases specifically in my class where
students held visible animosity towards these teachers. These students
consistently had the lowest grades in the class.

~~~
roc
There's definitely something to this.

If the students won't cooperate/behave/listen, how could the teacher ever hope
to progress beyond reinforcement of "you need to cooperate/behave/listen"?

It's sort of like the old adage that you need to understand the rules before
you can break them. If one doesn't understand why you have to listen to the
instructor, they're far less likely to be productive in a setting where
interruptions are expected/encouraged.

------
kitsune_
Errr? I don't know what schools are like in the Unites States, but I was
probably taught the exact opposite of what is presented in this Forbes
Article. For instance:

"The people in charge have all the answers." > My history teacher would like
to have word with you.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This is a great observation. The list is bewildering to me as well. I think
the author is trying to play up this strawman of conservative authoritarianism
and perhaps reflects her upbringing but I don't think its typical of the
American educational experience.

"The best and brightest follow the rules" bothers me the most. From a young
age I've been taught by the establishment that inventors and industrialists
who purposely broke away from the norm became successful. I think the US
encourages this kind of thinking. "There is a very clear, single path to
success" is also unforgivable.

Maybe the dangerous lesson here is beware thumbnails of cute authors and
easily to digest comic strips that reflect your own biases.

~~~
jerf
They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying
literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers."
They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to
question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not
making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a
schedule... and probably even the teachers telling you to question authority
won't, say, actually let you walk out of the classroom and play basketball, no
matter how much they feebly protest that you should question authority. (And
if they did, they wouldn't be teaching for long. The system would not permit
it.)

Yeah. You had a couple of people mouth some words about nonconformity, while
spending hours every day inextricably enmeshed so deeply in a system built
around conformity that you apparently can't even see the conformity, if you
think that a few people mouthing words without actions was enough to
counteract it. The teachers said some words while you were _embodied_ in a
contrary system.

Mind you, all that conformity isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like
civilization. But I think it is still important to see it, and choose it when
you want it, and be aware of what is going on so others can't use it against
you, attacking you on a level you can't even perceive.

Also, this article is tripe. I shouldn't have had to elaborate on it in this
manner when it should have said it. And those are clearly something more like
5 points than 9; numbered lists strike again.

~~~
planetguy
_They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to
question authority_

People don't need to be taught to question authority, they figure it out on
their own at a pretty young age. Usually the moment an authority tells them to
do something that they don't want to do.

At the age of two, "questioning authority" manifests itself by throwing a
tantrum in the supermarket when the authority tells you to stop trying to grab
things off the shelves. At the age of fifteen, "questioning authority" has
moved on to the more direct form in which you assert that your parents and
teachers are idiots who don't know _anything_ and that you should be allowed
to smoke, skip school and pierce your septum if you feel like it.

The process of growing up is largely a matter of getting out of this phase and
accepting that actually those authority figures were right about _some things_
all along.

 _"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much
the old man had learned in seven years"_ \-- Mark Twain (maybe, though snopes
says falsely attributed)

Everybody on Earth fancies themselves anti-authoritarian; it's easy to be
anti-authoritarian when an authority is telling you to do something you don't
want to do, though much harder when the authority is telling other people to
do things that you really think they ought to.

~~~
Goronmon
I feel like you are twisting the meaning of the phrase "questioning authority"
into basically pure "rebelling against authority" as I would say they are two
separate ideas.

The notion of "questioning authority" I would argue is similar to your
statement of accepting that authority figures are right about some things, as
in, they are most likely not right about all things and that it is important
to spend time figuring out which is which.

I'm not sure where that is similar at all to the idea of a child throwing a
tantrum in a supermarket.

------
PaperclipTaken
There's a big difference in how students are taught and what students are
thought to think from school to school, which is mostly correlated with income
bracket. It's not that our leadership structure or general society has this
'keep the poor down' mentality, it has to do with the general mentality of the
teachers and the general mentality of the students.

Think of the demographics of the teachers. In low income areas, the teachers
are much more likely to be people that grew up in poor income areas
themselves. Generally, that also means that they will be less familiar with
higher-level concepts like 'when given lined paper, write the other way.' Even
if they've heard these quotes and can tell you what they mean, they are less
likely to be able to answer questions like 'Why 5 paragraphs?' and 'When in
real life am I going to use the Pythagoras theorem?'

In high income areas, you are much more likely to get teachers that come from
high income families themselves, which means they are much more likely to have
gone to a reputable school. My high school (William Fremd High School) is
seated in a high income area, and actually had several teachers (2 or 3) with
Oxford level degrees. Many teachers in the English department actively
rejected the idea of a 5 paragraph model, and told you to write the essay
'until it was done.' Many of the teachers, having been through some level of
engineering school themselves, could tell you that the Pythagoras theorem is
very important to things like Architecture and mechanical engineering, and
that the seemingly useless mathematics you are learning actually have very
powerful real life applications.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _Many teachers in the English department actively rejected the idea of a 5
> paragraph model_

Hmm. There are problems with that - writing to a limit / self editting is a
skill in itself. Work needs to be equable in format to be readily compared.

Should every piece of prose be written to a format requirement, no. Should the
idea of writing to a particular format be rejected? No IMO.

------
joedev
"On average, a four-year degree is the equivalent of an investment that
returns 15.2% a year." - [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/30/a-college-
degree-r...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/30/a-college-degree-
returns-more-than-the-stock-market/)

Stay in school kids.

~~~
rmc
How much of that is due to having more knowledge, and how much is classism?
i.e. having upper class parents is probably a very high return aswell.

Also that only really works once. If spent 40 years, doing 10 4 year degrees,
by this logic, I'd be a multibillionare right? Something is wrong with this
theory.

~~~
joedev
"having upper class parents is probably a very high return as well"

True, which is why the studies account for factors such as family education
and family income in order to attempt to isolate the impact of the one factor
being measured: the subject's education level.

------
ntkachov
Most of these things, I think, stem from the fact that it's much easier to
take care of a class that believes in all 9 facts, than to take care of a
class that doesn't.

How many teachers could justify the 5 paragraph essay if all the kids started
questioning them on the arbitrariness of that number?

If you reward that kid that's really easy for you to take care off the others
will follow, right?

Standardized tests measure your value because they measure the teachers value
(in paychecks).

I have little respect for the school system. It's basically rigged to make the
teachers lives as simple as possible and make the kids as miserable as
possible.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I've a rule to let my kids question anything once - they must provide a
rationale if they wish to reverse my decision. However, it does sometimes come
down to a simple exertion of authority (ie because I say so trumps the
unsupported objections). I find now that J at 6 can usually answer my side and
rationalise why an _a priori_ arbitrary demand is being made.

Surely any teacher could readily answer a challenge like 'why not 3
paragraphs?' and this is a valid and worthy question for a student.

Unfortunately at some point the student will have to accept irrational or
limited reasoning and learn to live with that, eg why does the law require me
to learn that.

------
lucian1900
The print version is on one page
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-
dang...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dangerous-
things-you-were-taught-in-school/print/)

------
gravitronic
Having gone through north american public schools I definitely agree with most
of the article's points.

However most of those graphs make absolutely no sense. Clearly the author was
being a free spirit on "how to make a graph" day.

~~~
Thrymr
The author of the Forbes article also has a blog which features this sort of
tongue-in-cheek graphics:

<http://thisisindexed.com>

------
goblin89
This one's great IMO: “Days off are always more fun than sitting in the
classroom.”

Not exactly well-phrased—I believe prolonged sitting is indeed not quite fun
for various physiological reasons. However, this makes it fair:

“You are trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of
allocated vacation.”

It appears to be about splitting life into work and vacation despite the
alternative of doing things you love and loving things you do. (It's hard to
convince people, though. They continue hate most of they regular 9-to-6 day
and watch TV in the evening.)

------
johnohara
True danger is serious business. Approaching an unexploded IED is dangerous.
So is going in to reactor #2 to pump out radioactive water.

There's a difference between incorrect and dangerous.

~~~
mhurron
Dangerous does not have to mean deadly.

~~~
parfe
Said from your safe little bubble. Dangerous is "I might misstep by half an
inch and orphan the children."

The college educated computer workers who post here haven't experienced danger
since climbing trees as children. And certainly don't experience danger
professionally.

Roofing a house is dangerous. Delivering Pizza is dangerous.

Picking between State U vs Private U? Choosing between Python and Ruby?
Choosing between iOS vs Android for your initial deployment? Choosing VC A
over VC B? Telling your Boss he's wrong? Calling any of that dangerous is an
insult to people who face real danger daily.

~~~
ktizo
Speaking as a college educated computer worker who posts here, I suspect that
you might not have a clue. I spent a lot of last summer welding heavy metal, I
am no stranger to hard-hats, safety boots and building sites. I have worked
assembly, labour and construction, alongside code, graphics and networks. I
get bored of desks quite regularly and have to go off and lift heavy things
for a while. Is a bit like going to a gym where they pay you.

Be very careful of stereotypes, especially among groups that are well known
for idiosyncrasies, which at the last count is pretty much all the groups.

~~~
parfe
Did you really think you needed to point out that I might be making a sweeping
generalization about tens of thousands of users? I'm glad you decided to
share.

~~~
ktizo
Well, from the way you stated your first post, I thought it might be worth
reminding you, yes.

------
srconstantin
I think the prevailing mood among people who think of themselves as "business
people" is nowhere near risk-averse enough.

------
K2h
Nothing like a proper education to give you all the reasons an idea can't be
done - instead of giving you the tools and confidence to tackle a problem no
on else has even thought of and succeed. I'm still looking for the later.

------
cafard
There's a bunch of straw men in the emergency room today.

------
dsirijus
It could be argued that all those sentiments listed are actually driving force
that accounts for most of the creativity now.

------
Tangaroa
For a similar take on the school system, here's John Taylor Gatto's essay The
Six-Lesson Schoolteacher:

[http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Six-
Lesson%20Sch...](http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Six-
Lesson%20Schoolteacher%20\(John%20Taylor%20Gatto\).htm)

------
ktizo
I always suspected that the way that schools were set up was borrowed heavily
from the old establishments for training the children of the lower ranks of
the aristocracy in how to be military officers.

The regimentation and rote of your average maths classroom was obviously never
designed for teaching the subject, yet is the main memory of the experience
for most people, rather than what is supposedly being taught.

~~~
gaius
Ironically, schools that _were_ set up like that produced more literate and
numerate kids, i.e. Grammar schools. In fact these were a key route to social
mobility for bright but poor kids. They were killed off by politicians who
relied on the lower classes for their votes...

~~~
UK-AL
Except many exist today, and there mostly populated by the middle class with
ridiculously low levels of poor people. Like 1% on free school meals and
majority were tutored for the entry test? Most poor people can't afford
tutors.

With stats like that, they REINFORCE class structure, not break it.

And do poor people want to pay for the education of the elites? Which is what
current grammars effectivly do.

~~~
gaius
That is only because there are so few grammar schools left. When they were all
over the country, anyone who passed the 11-plus, regardless of their family's
wealth, could go.

These days they are _intended_ to reinforce class structure. You don't need a
left-wing, if you don't have a poor working class...

~~~
UK-AL
Even in the past they had relatively little working class people in them. Even
then they had tutors for people getting in, my dad went to grammar
school(We're not working class, his parents were business owners) and he was
tutored. His 63 now. Even I was tutored for the 11+(My county has them).

The only reason for populist support for them at the moment(Daily Mail,
Telegraph, UKIP, BNP and other populist parties all support them), is most
people THINK their kids will get in although most won't(By definition). When
they come realise that, populist support will disappear again, and they will
go out favour once again.

