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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

Time once again for Kubrick:

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”

This is like wondering if painting the walls green will help. There's so much else wrong that needs fixing first that this is a silly triviality. Like treating the sniffles when the patient has terminal cancer.

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This makes sense. If you're very interested, it doesn't feel like an obligation, so a longer school year is like "more time doing what you like".

The problem is, like someone has already pointed out, schools fail to do this. So you end up with what we have here in Brazil. We've been making the school year longer every few years. When I was a kid, I used to have 3 months of vacation in summer and 1 month in the winter. Kids now have about a month in summer and 2 weeks in the winter, and education has never been worse here. Longer school years, by themselves, do absolutely NOTHING.

(EDIT: Grammar)

Except that interest doesn't work on a large scale. Schools exist to educate all their students to roughly the same level. Teaching by inspiring interest is a great idea, but one teacher does not have the means to teach the unique interests of 30 kids. To make that plan a success, you'd have to abolish the entire school system.

Schools exist to educate all their students to roughly the same level. How does that seem to be working out for them? Simply doing more of what we wish would work, but doesn't won't help.

I don't know how, but I think that interest is the only thing that can work on a large scale. If society churns out kids that are only interested in guns, drugs, and proving they're "thugs 4 life", you might have a problem bigger than a school system can ever hope to solve.

Abolish the school system? You might be on to something.

Edit: Yeah, I get it. It's one of those, strong, unpopular opinions I hold loosely. I don't believe all school systems are unworkable, or even that this one has never been so. But I sure do think it is now. We're paying hugely for it and it's not working for us. Turn it off.

Here's an idea. Make school a low burden, free, for basic math and writing skills, etc. Basically what we have but lower-key. Then let everyone who really cares homeschool or pay for private school. Even if you don't abolish the requirement to go to school, lax requirements for homeschooling would have a similar effect.

Homeschooling is not for everyone, but personally, being homeschooled in high school was one of the best things that ever happened to me, in terms of learning, social interaction and even career opportunities.

How did homeschooling help you in terms of social interaction? I thought that was one of the arguments against homeschooling.

In short, while homeschooled, most of my socialization was with nice peoeple. Most of my social issues are from the jerks in public school.

We knew a few other families who homeschooled and met weekly; "The Moms" and occasionally Dads talked about parent stuff and the kids, around 20 of us in our heyday, just played whatever. We eventually took martial arts and rock climbing classes together. For the most part they were all pretty nice. They're still the best friends I've ever had.

Besides that, a lot of homeschoolers (like us) are religious, so we have religious gatherings we go to. I know a lot of my homeschool friends' friends from church, too.

My homeschool friends eventually led me to my last couple years of internships, including this summer at Google. It didn't hurt that homeschooling had given me lots of time to concentrate on programming.

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