It’s supposed to be boring–right?
How are the teachers’ unions going to spin this?
More and more, children of all ages are saying that they don’t like school–75% of high school students, in a Yale study, said they were tired and bored and stressed (out of 21,000 sampled). And there are very many reports of children as young as kindergarten crying because they don’t want to go to school. Here’s just one of many: https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/11qo0o5/my_kindergartener_crys_and_not_wanting_to_go_to/
Frankly, if I had a child who said he liked to go to school each day, I’d be afraid there was something wrong with him.
When I was in grade school, of course, there was boredom and bullying and all that; but at the same time, there was no “You’re a white person, so that makes you a bad person,” “You are probably some gender other than the one they say you were born with,” “You only think you’re a girl,” etc., etc., etc.–the whole 21st century Education Fun-Pak.
Remember when they closed the schools for COVID, and kids had to, um, “learn” online, at home? And remember how shocked you were, when you overheard those, er, “lessons”?
Imagine how much worse it’d be, having to sit there all day, five days a week, and listen to this ****. Of course you’re tired and bored and stressed.
And then they teach your kiddies what a rotten no-good country we have here in America and how it needs Fundamental Transformation, blah-blah. Your tax dollars at work!
Do your kids a favor and pull them out of public school.
What a sad state of affairs. I loved school, especially through middle school, but I did read a lot of books from the library too, since school didn’t offer all that I was interested in.
My grade school was like a POW camp.
I hated school. It was a massively wasteful process. I’m not saying that there was no value in what I learned, but what amazes me is that they managed to stretch about three years worth of learning out for 12 years, and bore me to death, in the process.
When I came out of high school, I could read well, I was good at math, and my handwriting was atrocious. The same is true to this very day, but most importantly, the same was true in 3rd grade.
So, what classes did I excel in? Music, the reading half of English, science, aviation.
Aviation was basically Private Pilot ground school, and it was the only ground school I ever took and 8 years later, I took my Private Pilot written exam with just a brush up on what I learned in that class. Most importantly, vitally, this applied my math and basic science into a practical application. You can’t fly an airplane without math. You have to have adequate physics to understand the basic dynamics of flight, and if you plan on flying, you will undoubtedly be reading a lot. I did well in aviation, because it was actually useful application, and not just a pointless exercise. Had you suddenly erased that information from my brain, while I was flying, it’s unlikely that I would have lived to tell the tale. It was useful learning, and it was possible in the public schools, but that was 50 years ago.
Overall, I struggled in school, because my handwriting was poor. Dysgraphia was not a well-known term at the time, so I suffered even ridicule from instructors for my handwriting. When computers came along, I suddenly was able to communicate via the written word. Had I gone to school over the last 25 years, it may have been a lot easier.
But, my initial point is that the useful learning I got from the public schools was certainly not adequate to justify 12 years in public school. Had I been allowed to demonstrate my reading, math and science knowledge, as I learned these subjects, and then be allowed to pursue studies which applied this knowledge to some practical use, I probably would have been able to learn something with job market value, by the time I was 10 years old.
This isn’t to suggest that I was ready to enter the workplace at 10 years of age, but had my education allowed me to apply the basic skills I possessed to subjects of interest, I would have naturally wanted to expand these skills. For example, aviation and electrical theory, both require some basic understanding of trigonometry, which means that I would have pursued the subject voluntarily, with interest, and with some skin in the game.
I believe that with home schooling, I probably could have finished high school quite early, and perhaps would have had time to learn to type properly, as opposed to struggling with poor handwriting (which has resisted all attempts at remediation).
There were high points, including teachers whom I honor to this day, but the bottom line is that the school system failed me badly.
The geniuses who ran my school thought I was stupid because I had trouble reading what was written on the blackboard. Finally somebody tested my eyes and discovered that I needed glasses! But a couple of school years were wasted before that happened.
Similarly, Lee, I was called lazy and belittled by some teachers. I’m not going to say that I was an easy student; I wasn’t, but that was because I wanted not just to memorize, but also to understand, and I asked questions that weren’t easy to answer. It wasn’t done out of disrespect, but because the canned curricula was not doing the trick for me.
My role in this world is to be the outlier, which is fine by me, but the public schools are not there to encourage someone to be an outlier. However, we need outliers, because outliers sometimes see things that others do not, and when it’s 3 AM and no one can figure out why the firewall in Herefordshire quit working, an outlier might be just what you need.
When I was in the school system, there were a number of teachers with whom I connected intellectually and it all worked pretty well. Other teachers were not such a good fit.
Ultimately, the majority of my education came from myself. I would develop an interest and soon be able to find the answers I needed to advance. Eventually, I would end up knowing my subject.
Interestingly, at least in the tech industry, training and certifications work similarly. Much is self study, and certifications verify your knowledge.
And, I might add, wasted a lot of my time.
After 7 years of sub teaching in public schools, I would say most students are bored stiff.