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Comment by nerdbert | Hacker News Reader

> If kids rather want their phones than to listen to school, maybe it's time to change how school works.

Once you start to demand that schools become more entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of lost sight of the mission of a school.

> 30 kids having to sit still 6 hours a day and do nothing more than listen and take notes? That's boring as fuck.

Also not how school works, at least not in the Netherlands. There are lots of group projects and multidisciplinary lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?

> that's all stuff that only the private schools (Waldorf and friends) provide

Waldorf is an available option for public education in the Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary level as well.

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> Once you start to demand that schools become more entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of lost sight of the mission of a school.

Maybe it's time to put the world's best entertainment technologies to use for our educational systems instead of fucking Candy Crush.

> Also not how school works, at least not in the Netherlands. There are lots of group projects and multidisciplinary lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?

I did my Abitur in Bavaria, Germany in 2010. My 13 years of school life and ~60% of my 2-year stint in academia were precisely what I described, and the generation after me that profited from the infamous "G8" reforms for Bavarian Gymnasium schools reported just the same. New books, finally (one of mine still had the fucking Soviet Union...), but same old teaching methods. Something like smaller classes would have been impossible due to a lack of teachers.

> Waldorf is an available option for public education in the Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary level as well.

Kids shouldn't have to hope their parents know that this is an option or have the money for that to receive good education. Education is a human right and the only chance societies have for a survivable future.

People aren't idiots. Kids aren't idiots either. They want more than mindless entertainment. A school computer with Scratch can easily compete with a platformer on the phone. School in general is in a good position to be empowering, but the system prefers to be oppressive instead.

Don't get me started on how much my kids hated Scratch!

??? My kid loves it to this day. It's a major hobby. Never heard about anyone who would hate Scratch. Maybe it was a really poor presentation by the teacher.

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