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Comment by mrcsd | Hacker News Reader

I am often left confused by responses like this. I think it would be fair to suggest that some significant percentage of chidren suffer in schools or have harrowing experiences that they are going to carry with them through life until dealt with. If this is the case, why on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be drawn? I don't believe you are meaning to suggests that the situation as it stands doesn't need change, but that is nonetheless implicit in your statements.

From my position, saying: "I'd be wary of drawing too many wide-ranging conclusions about school education as a whole from it." Comes close to invalidating the experience of another.

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Whether school is a net benefit (that can stand to be improved) or a net detriment (a system that needs to be uprooted and upended entirely) depends significantly on that "some significant percentage".

If the percentage is 10% of children suffering through school, that's a horrendous number, but still leaves school as an overall positive experience for the vast majority, even though significant work needs to be put it to fix its problems.

If the percentage is 50% of children suffering, then it's a crapshoot if your child will benefit or be deeply disturbed by school, and the whole system needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

One anecdotal experience can't help one decide which of these is the right approach. I'd venture a guess that, since most people are not clamoring for fundamental school system reforms, the experience of most voting adults has been largely positive or at least neutral in school.

The author paints a picture of schools as literal prison, as a place where children are forced to go to waste their time and be tortured. They invite the reader to conclude that the entire exercise is worthless and should be abandoned -

"Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education."

"I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a functional understanding. "

> why on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be drawn?

It depends on the conclusion. If the conclusion is "school as a concept is so irredeemably bad that we should scrap schools entirely because of my experiences", I'm not sure it's supportable because of the lack of universality.

If the conclusion is "some schools have been run so poorly that students are left with lifelong emotional scars and little education to show for it, we need to do something about that", I'm all onboard.

Yet another person here who agrees with OP. I think you're vastly underestimating how common our experiences were. Vastly.

Feel (some) of your pain - was bullied some in school, and actually had terrible compressed nerve problems that made sitting in high school all day terrible. But think what this person is saying is that this probably isn't the experience of most students. And in all humbleness, would have to agree, don't think me and my friends wouldn't say it's was an extremely abuse experience.

Not saying it doesn't need to be fixed, but that like most systems handling large volumes, for better or worse, it caters to the majority:(

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