Hi,
I’m having a hard time in high school (sit for 8h?? Good Luck.) and recently we’ve made some fuss around it… in fact the rate of dissatisfaction with school among my classmates have been rising constantly throughout the years and now it’s literally 100%, we’ve had a poll. Of course nobody cares, teachers are just too narrow minded for such philosophical thinking and the headmaster can’t do anything because of his superiors.
In fact, I’ve had quite a discussion or argument about the state of public education with the headmaster, just hours and hours. He’s an extremely intelligent, open-minded person who’s just trying to fight all the evils of the world.
My impression is that he wants all the best for us, but is extremely limited by the System. His final argument last time, which just killed me, was: “while what you are saying is all true, you don’t know much about education as you don’t have a degree in it and there are things that you just don’t know about and so school is what it is.” He didn’t mention many of these “things” apart from maybe the need for social interaction of the youth, etc, which we all know is bullshit considering how isolated technology and civ makes us. He doesn’t realise that the civ, hierarchy and tech are THE evil things and debate weather we should make lessons shorter or longer or what subjects to include is as pointless as discussing raising or lowering the taxes.
I think my duty as a true Anprim is to go talk to him again, but this time well prepared. Go through everything, starting from anthropology, through agriculture, modern day problems and why they exist, the evil of hierarchy, etc finishing at education. I want to know what he says to that… otherwise, till the end of my days I will have this feeling that the case of school is not closed, that I’ve been completely misunderstood and to be honest… I want all them to know our truth. The truth. Many will say it’s bullshit, but I want them to at least think about it.
My arguments against modern education (just quick thoughts, to be expanded):
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Complete denial of efficient learning by sedentary lifestyle - I don’t know how about you, but I learn far better when out in the wild or at least doing lots of sports every day. Forcing humans aged 13-18 to sit 8h a day is just PURE INSANITY going against nature and you can’t expect any good to come out of this.
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Complete denial of efficient learning by poor time management - I have calculated it. Out of all time spent in school (includes 15min commute and breaks) only 22% is used for effective learning. It means that ONE HOUR learning at home is worth FIVE in school. But this is very optimistic, read on.
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Complete denial of efficient learning by sleep deprivation - School does not end when you’re out of the building. It begins when you get home (have to learn). Almost everyone then goes to sleep for some 4h and wakes up at 7-8PM and has some few hours for everything (so called LIFE), then homeworks and learning and if you’re lucky you go to bed at 2AM. Not that you fall asleep because your biological clock just goes crazy, but let’s optimistically say that you sleep for 4h, until 6AM, then, guess what? back to school. EXHAUSTED.
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Complete denial of efficient learning by non-sense curricula (is that the plural?) - Well, not much to say here. We all know what it looks like. At least half of the hours is outright LOST to either some complete bullshit or super easy stuff.
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Complete denial of efficient learning by the incompetence of the teachers - This is just ridiculous. They seem to not accept that technology and the internet exist. Sometimes we end up rewriting stuff for 2h which could be read in a book or found in Google in 3 seconds. They make demands on us while not being able to check one test for months… omg.
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Too large groups (classes), too much noise, etc - just the details… If you have a group 36 people what is the chance that the teacher will even get the attention? not to mention actually teaching something…
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The cumulative effect of everything mentioned - The Effect? Me and most of my friends are basically almost in the same spot as 3 years ago, everyone exhausted, depressed, stressed out and furious. And for what? One guy even commited suicide, and lots of people had psychological problems. And it’s not just me. Everyone would tell you the same story. And the biggest paradox of all: We all have to avoid being in school as much as possible in order to learn for the finals from the books or the Internet.
Somebody still arguing FOR civilization? Noone? Yeah, I thought so.
This is just the beginning, my perspective. The problem is much deeper, namely: the evil of hierarchy, but I think there are people on this forum who can better describe the underlying problems than me. And that’s what I’m asking for. I’m counting especially on you, Kevin (@primalwar). It’d be so awesome if we could together write an entire essay about the issue, which I could later present to the headmaster, the people and maybe even share to some newspapers.
So, what are your thoughts and experiences?
