6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss of Formal Schooling | Hacker News Reader

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss of Formal Schooling

theonion.com

46 pointsEliezer22 comments

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

Does a quarter or half a mile to class at college count? If not, doubtful

School used to start at 7 am for me. And I had to drive around 5 km by bike.

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.

thank god for recess!

Some states no longer have recess.

I miss recess. :(

And it is true, it seems to have dissapeared. I haven't gone next to an elementary school in a while but the last time I went to my old school, I didn't see any slides, swings, jungle gyms, etc.

:`(

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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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