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Comment by PrivateButts | Hacker News Reader

I know that this is yet another article about how an emergency shift to a novel form of education maybe wasn't ideal for a quality education, but when has school ever completely prepared someone for whatever path they take in life? Didn't for me when I graduated. There is so much to learn, so much specific knowledge out there, that it's impossible to cram it all into X years of schooling. Best you can do is teach them the broad, base level stuff, give them some opportunities and connections to get started, and help them build the skills to learn new things efficiently. Learning doesn't stop when school ends.

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Exactly. This type of article is to make us believe school was ever useful. It was not much

Says the person that can form a sentence, likely thanks to instruction they received from a school.

I can form much more complete and eloquent sentences and I treated school as the re-education camps that they are. My mother taught me to read, then books (and later the internet) taught me the rest.

> I can form much more complete and eloquent sentences

much more than what?

> It was not much

Not a big deal and not something I would point our normally but it lacks punctuation and lands a bit soft for my tastes.

I was writing fast, and english isn't my mother tongue. But I'm sure it's about style and taste here. I've read dirty english in Bukowski

I spent 18 years in school. If the net result is "the student can form a sentence", then 99% of instruction was wasted

Did you also learn mathematics? Did you learn anything or were you exposed to anything that interest you and that you pursued more deeply? Did you make friends and learn social skills?

Everything I use in my career was self taught from the internet. I took many math and other classes that were a waste of time

So if you had children you would not send them to school?

I'd look into democratic schooling or private schools with alternative pedagogy. My criticism is not of all forms of school and learning, just the conservative, orthodox pedagogy found in public schools and most private schools

You definitely don't have children.

I do have kids.

The idea that school is just organized babysitting where you learn nothing is an absolutely ridiculous take.

Sorry about my presumption.

Could your children form sentences before they attended school? Almost certainly yes, so I don't understand your earlier claim.

Won't send them to public school

One claim of the article is that specific job focused training programs have failed to provide students with skills previous students had gained during their training.

I completely agree that education does not remove the need to gain real experience on the job, no matter the circumstances. But there are certain skill that should be learned before entering certain jobs and the article claims many students are lacking in those skills.

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