

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss of Formal Schooling - Eliezer
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/6_year_old_stares_down_bottomless

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delackner
This ties in nicely with the lecture series recently on Death.

The Onion in good form, blending humor and a question that more and more of us
are asking: really, what is the point of school?

A question which has been asked a lot on HN recently, and I hope to see more
answers in the near future that are not "eh, school is necessary".

I am so grateful that I started taking part time jobs as early as the 6th
grade, after school at INTERESTING places. A patent law office, SETI (really,
I was amazingly lucky), SLAC, several software companies. Without those
experiences, I am not sure I would have ever realized that work and fun can be
synonymous. School certainly didn't teach that idea.

~~~
ardit33
I would never recomend anybody not going to school. It is a great learning
experience, and I am not saying academically only. Also socially.

Really, there is nothing prohibiting you on working on a startup idea during
summer time, and if it goes well, you can run with it. 3 months is a lot of
time, and time is a great luxury when you are working full time. And by the
time you reach 21-22 your ideas will have changed.

What I wouldn't recomend, is somebody paying too much for school, and ending
up in debt up to their eyeballs when they get out. Forcing them to work full
time, instead on an idea.

But even financially, you could go to community college for the first two
years, get grants, scholarships, some debt, attend good state school (that
tend to be cheaper).

There is a lot of help out there, you just have to seek it. And if you
question the value of school, then you either are going to the wrong school
(too exepensive, too party type), or not taking the right kind of classes (ie.
bullshit majors such as communication, or businness....).

when you start working, you have contact with the same people, doing the same
things, for months or years, and not exposed to different point of views, or
people that you would be exposed in school.

~~~
delackner
I was actually thinking just about K-12 education. I got a lot of rewarding
stuff out of college. I think most kids would turn out just fine if they were
given much less structured enjoyable activities while growing up.

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babyshake
Oh, there is a bottom. There is definitely a bottom to the abyss.

The question is, can you calculate the length of the abyss based on the time
it takes for your screams to reach the surface?

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mynameishere
_Someone_ has to look after the children, yes? I started off by writing a
lament about my own school days, and how much I loved summer, and how much
time was wasted, etc. But then I realized...my mother had to work a day job,
and I was an asshole even as a child. Should she have to deal with me 24 hours
a day while making a living? Is that possible...?

Is it not more efficent to allow an institution to babysit children rather
than working parents? It's a matter of cost/benefits like anything else.

Still, I wish I could really "drop out" from it all. The article reminds me of
that fact. I spend 3 dollars/day on food and every other penny goes to shining
my prison walls.

~~~
mattchew
_Is it not more efficent to allow an institution to babysit children rather
than working parents? It's a matter of cost/benefits like anything else._

Maybe. But if what we want is an institution for babysitting, we ought to
_call_ it "babysitting", and have conversations about the institution of
babysitting.

Instead we call what we do "education" and have conversations where we treat
it like a magic spell that will transform children and society.

I would love it if I could hear a politician or columnist say "more investment
in babysitting is always a good thing", or "babysitting is the key to solving
our social problems".

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nazgulnarsil
I think the goal of school is supposed to be to teach children how to evaluate
which actions will be most beneficial to them. What school actually teaches is
how to be dishonest/illogical in all the correct ways for a given society.

~~~
mnemonik
Teaches you how to cheat and get away with it. How to act like you are doing
something but not really; how to get others to do your work for you; etc...

~~~
nazgulnarsil
those are the obvious ones yes. the ones that affect people most strongly are
the ones we don't think about. You probably picked those because they all seem
somewhat unwholesome. It gets more interesting if you take a step back and
look at what you _do_ consider wholesome.

~~~
mnemonik
Ok. Can you point me towards what you were thinking of?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
Our schools teach us things like the founding fathers were heroic
revolutionaries casting off the shackles of monarchy for the benefit of
mankind because The U.S. government has to justify its own existence as being
somehow intrinsically, morally, or mystically correct. No one wants to think
that the government is just a bunch of guys who own the land between canada
and mexico, and got it by inciting mob violence and forming armed militias.
(see the Nobel Prize winning _Ideological Origins of the American Revolution_
) But you can pick any major historical event and look at the basic message
that kids are sent: the civil war was about freeing the slaves, WW2 was about
saving the jews, vietnam was about stopping communism, Iraq was about deposing
a mad dictator with WMD's. Step back from any of these and look at the various
motivations of all the players involved and you get a very complex picture
that doesn't reduce easily to an ideological byline (America: spreading
freedom!). But every country teaches children that it is awesome, otherwise
those children might grow up not believing in the legitimacy of the people in
power.

In short, the actual function of school is to tell children that the current
balance of power is the correct one, and comes up with all manner of reasons
why this is so regardless of what the power structure actually is.

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anaphoric
thank god for recess! And school wasn't so bad. I mostly have happy memories
(I guess I have forgot the bad ones).

Still I remember being so envious of the dog. I was forced to walk a mile
through the snow/rain at 7 am and the dog just got to curl up next to the
radiator. It's amazing that I was able to get up so early for so long.

~~~
edw519
_I was forced to walk a mile through the snow/rain at 7 am_

So was I. We're showing our age.

Does anyone do that anymore?

~~~
pmjordan
I think it depends where you are. In a lot of places, parents seem to be so
worried about the safety of their kids nowadays that they take them to school
& pick them up until their mid-teens.

Having grown up in a small town in central Europe, I certainly walked (later
cycled) to and from school (~2km), as did most colleagues that lived close
enough. (the rest got the bus or train; many kids were picked up on Saturdays
though) I haven't been around that school at 8am since I finished 6 years ago,
so it's possible the situation has changed.

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MaysonL
It is a rather horrifying prospect, isn't it?

~~~
davidw
Yes, but it was a _lot_ better than the alternatives when mandatory schooling
was instituted in most countries.

~~~
Prrometheus
The problem with government is that it will take a policy that was a good idea
in the 1800's and continue that policy until the country collapses.

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whalliburton
Anyone who cares about this subject should read Ivan Illich's "Deschooling
Society".

<http://ournature.org/~novembre/illich/1970_deschooling.html>

He was ahead of his time and died in 2002, but his time is _now_. His ideas on
"Learning Webs" and "Conviviality" are a goldmine for any startup not wanting
to get rich but to actually _help the world_.

