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Comment by wastedhours | Hacker News Reader

> the parts of school that are social are not necessarily good

Most definitely - however it's also worth bearing in mind that if you happen to fall into a more traditional life path afterwards, those social elements will rear their heads again.

The sink or swim mentality of school social interactions sadly mimics quite a lot of interactions post school as well. In an ideal world my shitty experience at school wouldn't have been relevant as an adult, but it has actually helped navigate quite a number of toxic situations.

As sad a world as it is, I'm (somewhat perversely) glad I was able to learn how to cope with those as a teen.

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It's a good thing you responded well to that situation. But can you imagine others in your situation not learning the lessons you did, or learning to emulate the toxic behavior, or becoming withdrawn or callous or misanthropic, or otherwise developing bad coping methods?

It's very common for people who admit that school sucked, to then defend it by saying "it taught me to deal with it". I say, if you really wanted to teach that thing, you could probably come up with something way more safe, time-efficient, and pleasant. I mean, how many weeks would it take for someone to teach a course on "Common personality problems and sources of conflict in the workplace", or something, that would cover 80% of what you learned plus some things you didn't experience? Most of the time, when people claim school is good for a particular thing, you can quickly see that it's nowhere near optimized for that thing.

Oh most definitely - it's neither an efficient or ideal way to learn those things. Unless there's dedicated thought to teaching them though, it could be an issue as well.

I'm certainly not defending the way it worked out, but we focus on an idealised education from the perspective of the learner (i.e. curiosity, passion, zest for self improvement), it might not prepare them if they end up in more traditional scenarios. Fully support the notion of it being taught like a traditional subject, just that it's important those lessons don't get lost (which I can foresee happening).

If the light behind your eyes hasn't been diminished by the experiences at school, it's likely it'll be extinguished in less than ideal real-world scenarios. I'd hate to see the joy of someone who genuinely has a zest of learning and curiosity to be crushed the minute they come across the things a lot of us deal with on a daily basis.

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