A rant about the school system...

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If there is one thing I have noticed about school, it is that presentation is held higher than actually being smart. The teachers care more about whether you can make yourself look like a smart person than if you actually are a smart person. Quantity over quality; a certain amount must be written to answer many questions, even if one sums it up quickly in an effective manner. I would not be surprised to find that someone could write a great deal and get a high mark without actually answering the question.

Deadlines; okay, this is more to do with how I see them, but they make me feel like saying to the teacher 'actually, I will do it in my own time, not pander to yours'. I have a feeling that without deadlines, I would do the work much quicker, hoping to curry favour, whilst with deadlines, I procrastinate to the last day or two and feel stressed.

Education should be about making people knowledgeable and wise, but instead, it is utilized for the purpose of adding to the masses for this endless 'progress' and making money. The individual is ignored.

I once heard a story (true) of some woman at university spending ages finding detailed information and analyzing it for a presentation, but some guy quickly made a funny one and immediately got a high mark. I did not hear about what mark the woman got but I suspect it was low, judging by the fact she was apparently very angry.

Um, yeah, needed to blow off some steam. Anything anyone would like to say on this?

Well the point of a presentation really is to teach your audience about a subject. Here's an example that actually happened to me:

I had in a speech class, for the final my class was broken into groups of 2-3 and left to decide our own topic for our 5 minute speech. Knowing there was another gearhead(car guy) in the class we instinctual paired up and decided to do a speech about engine performance and it's all around benefits to a car and its driver. Everything was fine and dandy until we got to the point in the project where we began to decide the way were we going to present the information. He basically wanted to just regurgitate facts upon facts to people for 5 mins and bam we get an A, because we were right and presented a bunch of facts so how can we not get an A? I on the other hand know personally that this approach wouldn't teach the class anything because I know for a fact (from painful personal experience) that lobbing facts at people about a subject they have no clue nor interest about doesn't work. Long story short we decided to go our separate ways and just do the final alone as a solo project, the teacher agreed this is and was interested to see how the class would respond to learning the information 2 different ways. The day of the final comes, my partner goes on with his purely fact based speech and at the end of 5 mins half the class is asleep or doodling the other half are about ready to shoot themselves. A few speeches later I'm up and present basically the same information in a more engaging, light-hearted(funny) way at the end of my speech there was about 10 mins of questions I took before the teacher stopped me because of needing time for other speeches. I got an A, he got a C+. His speech wasn't bad, hell he was a much better public speaker then I was. The problem was his speech wasn't engaging to the audience so they didn't have an interest and basically all the information he gave them was lost because they didn't care. If your audience ignores you completely no matter how right you are, you have failed as a presenter and because of that your presentation didn't accomplish it main goal, to teach your topic to your audience.

As for having to write a certain amount for essay questions, you have to understand that when a teacher asks a question like that of you it's not because they want to torture you and make you write a bunch of BS on the page(for the most part). Sure you can answer a lot of questions with a single sentence and express you know the answer in a somewhat reasonable way, but are you really showing a FULL understanding of the question in your answer?

If I'm asked how an engine produces power I can answer simply "It sucks in air, mixes it with fuel, ignites this mixture car goes forward" or I can go on to explain the entire 4 stroke cycle, throw in some tid bits about engine mapping and Volumetric efficiency and how the power is transferred from up and down motion of the pistons to the turning of the wheels. I could fill about a page to 3 pages(if I BS a bit and really extend on some of the superficial parts that could be left out) the point is while both answers do technically answer the question, answer B demonstrates to the teacher that I have a FULL understanding of the subject I'm being questioned on and that I grasped the material that I was taught over the course of the semester or quarter. While Answer A shows I might have paid attention for 5 mins during the first week while we went over the basics.

As for deadlines, the world has deadlines there is nothing stopping you from making your own deadlines or finishing the work before the deadlines given to you. You'll curry more favor by completing the work early and show it to your teacher after class and asking what could be made better/what should be omitted for clarity sake/or where you need to add more information then revising your paper by the deadline anyway.

I was 16 too, and I had the same exact qualms about school, look a back now I was just looking for an excuse to be lazy. A smart person can not only answer the questions they are asked, but also satisfy any other requirements they are given.

One thing to be aware of it Bloom's ladder, many teachers and learners (students) are keen to stay at the bottom where all they need to do is to recall by rote facts which the students have been spoon fed.

The higher levels in Bloom's model require a person to be able to understand and use the knowlege which they have been taught.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy

Very few schools bother with improving their teaching methods. The system is set up to simply churn out masses of people with roughly the same level of knowledge (if they pay attention in class) on a standard, uniform template.

Its a good system to generate an educated workforce but not a good system to generate an enlightened society.

There's a short story that describes what the modern system does to future minds...

It starts with a little boy going to school for the first time and in class he is told to get his crayons and paper and draw a house with a mountain and a river. The boy ignores it and draws spaceships and dinosaurs and all sorts of wonderful things. The teacher sees this and tells him he should draw the house, mountain and river like all the other kids did..

The next day the teacher again asked the class to take out their drawing materials and draw a house a river and a mountain. The little boy instead drew airplanes and cars and planets. The teacher seeing this, flips his paper around and shows him how to draw a house, a mountain and a river.

Months go by and the little boy keeps refusing to draw the river, house and mountain.. ultimately the parents decide to move him to another school.

The teacher at the new school tells the kids to take out their drawing materials and draw anything they want.

The little boy drew a mountain, a river and a house... just like all the other kids.

To sum up, what I am trying to say is:

Intelligence and ability to present are not the same thing. Nor is wisdom.

How many brilliant minds are there out there that cannot be voiced because they are so useless at stating things in an interesting/comprehensible way?

The problem is, the government wants us to work well as a mass, and my point of view is that we need to work well individually. We are taught teamwork, but in doing so end up relying on each other and cannot support ourselves. Such is how society/culture works. Methinks we should all be able to take care of ourselves, and those who cannot (disabled) can be cared for by the joint efforts of others and themselves.

I'm all for individuality and creativity, but there comes a point where sometimes you just need to follow directions in order to get a certain result. The story about the kid really makes no sense to me.

If I tell you that I need a picture of a house a mountain and a river and you come back showing me a picture of Godzilla destroying japan, you failed at what I asked. Assuming that you knew what I wanted and then just decided to do something else because you wanted to be different isn't going to be my first assessment of the situation. I'm going to think you either didn't understand the directions or worse you think a picture of Godzilla destroying Japan is in reality a house, a mountain and a river. It does no one any good if the job calls for a sledgehammer, I ask you to get said sledgehammer and you come back with a toothpick because you didn't wanna get a sledgehammer...
I understand the point of your story is to express the lost/death of the small boys creativity what in reality you have just shown that the small boy either refuses to follow directions or never understood the directions in the first place.

There is a very big problem in teaching now a days where teachers refuse to tell people they are wrong at a young age. Everyone get a participation award in little league and every child is a "student of the month" at least once a year. I'm sorry but not everyone in the world is special and gifted at everything they try and in the real world you going to lose and fail on a continual basis, that's just a fact in life. By not learning how to cope and learn from those loses and failures at a young age we are robbing children of a very important tool they need as adults. If I lose at something I truly want to do it gives me MORE motivation to practice at it and become better for next time. I was taught if I want to win at something I have to earn it and use what I am good at to come out on top, not just show up and collect some meaningless participation trophy and be content with that.

E-FrameZenderblast:

Rarely is it that a brilliant mind that truly and fully understand his idea's not able to be voiced in a comprehensible way.

"A great teacher never strives to explain his vision. He simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself." - R. Inman

Working well as an individual is an excellent trait and I do agree it is something that you should strive for. But at the end of the day one man can not build a skyscraper, or send someone to the moon, or discover the cure for cancer. Learning to work well as an individual by forgoing to learn to work as a team is just as bad and a danger as solely relying on other people to support you. Truly great people know the power of a collective effort working towards a common goal, there is a time for individual work and a time to collect the work of individuals as a mass so that all may learn and advance towards that goal at a faster rate then any of them would be allowed to alone.

You can't state you think everyone should be able to take care of themselves then turn around and say others should be cared for by everyone. If you truly think the world would be a better place if everyone took care of themselves then the people who CAN'T take care of themselves should be eliminated for the betterment of the society.

The point is that the story shows how the educational system is set up to supress individual creativity from an early age and make them conform to a set standard for a group.

I do not consider building a skyscraper, sending people to the moon or discovering the cure for cancer worthy goals (except maybe the last one, a bit). Why bother? I would like it if we all just lived on farms or something.

I was trying to figure out how disabled people could possibly fit in. After all, they are, technically, abnormalities, and are not 'supposed' to appear, but do. But if you take Asperger's as an example, surely many, maybe even all, disabilities could have advantages in SOME way.

I don't think the kid in the story was being particularly creative. He just ignored instructions, that's all. A truly creative kid would work within the parameters given and make the teacher/class see the material in an entirely new way, perhaps making the mountain be a house with a river running through it. You have to understand the rules before you break them. Otherwise you're just doing random things that don't connect with anybody.

Creativity is new ways of looking at things. It isn't ignoring the thing and doing some random, unconnected thing that pops into your head.

1)There are too many of us to all live on farms. There simply isn't enough land. The point of skyscrapers is a more efficient use of land, a commodity that is limited.

2)Much was learned about the moon by sending people to it. Also, the efforts required to get people to the moon forced people to create new technologies which have non-space travel uses. These technologies would probably have eventually been created but the needs of space travel made engineers put their heads together (together!) to expedite their creation.

3)Living on a farm doesn't make you independent from other people. You still need seeds and equipment, which requires the cooperation of other people and also that they follow directions just as you follow directions. If you buy seeds and the clerk decides to give you begonia seeds instead of wheat, because she thinks begonias are so much prettier, her lack of following directions adversely affects you. If you are told to get your seeds into the ground by a certain date and you decide that following such a deadline is annoying, your crop will fail. Following deadlines, following instructions, cooperating with others, these are skills that kids need to learn because adult life is impossible without them.

4)Everything that DCxMagnus said. Really. Every word. The man knows what he's talking about.

you're thinking too much into it. Its a kid on his very first day of school. Think on that for a moment .

Well your story involved the same situation being repeated with the same set of instructions continually ignored by the student. Janissy makes an excellent point, truly creative people work within the parameters of a project to make spectacular results.

You can't just walk around in life ignoring every rule and regulation you disagree with and call yourself a creative person, that is not creativity in the least, that is ignorance.

E-Frame

I don't think you fully understand the teamwork and hardships it takes to run a farm for an entire year. Even if you are talking about everyone going out for themselves and living off the land, no one helping anyone else is a gigantic step backwards in a society. Sit down and think about the massive amount of energy you would have to expend just finding food everyday. The massive amount of technological advancement and information we gathered about physics, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, fuels and octane, chemistry, and loads of other sciences because of the space race is outstanding. There are things you use on a constant daily basis that would have never been invented or improved upon to such a degree if it never happened.

If fact one of the biggest problems with teachers and schools today is how they attribute great advancements to just a single person. Newton didn't come up with the laws of physics all by himself, Albert Einstein didn't write and discover everything about electricity locked away in a room without anyone else, and Christopher Columbus didn't just hop in a boat by himself one day and find America for the second time. Newton had MANY assistants and talked to MANY other scientists of his day to come up with his laws. If it wasn't for the likes of Nicolas Tesla, Charles Volta and a slew of other amazing people we would literally be sitting in the dark not able to have this conversation. As for Christopher, he wouldn't last 10 minutes out of port without the crew he had to maintain a ship the size of the Santa Maria, let alone the 2 other ships he had sailing with him.

No great advancement can every be attributed to a single person. Yes there are amazingly bright and talent individuals in the world that have and will continue to come up with groundbreaking discoveries and theories. But without the research and understanding they gained from studying people before them, they would never be able to advance in any field. They would be stuck re learning every basic principal and progress would be halted.

My view is that things would be better in small, rural communities, not necessarily no interaction whatsoever, but certainly no towns or cities. Therefore no truly significant things can occur, good or bad, and a certain level of individuality is maintained for everybody, and people can specialise in personal interests, but not to any major extent. In any case, I do not really care about the advancement of society, something which I see as entirely pointless. Apparently humans have evolved to live in groups of 150.

I recently read about a small group of tribal people living in South America, I cannot remember what most people call them but they call themselves the Straight-Boned People or something. The book said that, with their upbringing, a member of their tribe could wander off into the jungle with nothing, and come back a few days later with a self-made basket full of fruit and nuts. That is what I would like to be able to do, though given my laziness I doubt it will be possible.

About there being too many people: yes, a major problem, and I do not think it can be solved through moral means. By this I personally think that, without mass murder or a considerable downgrade in the number of births, we will overpopulate and overindustrialise and/or starve. It is not nice, it is not moral, but it the long run, it will be better for everyone. Think of how the death of thousands in Pompeii and Herculaneum by Vesuvius allows us to see a huge amount of detail into ancient Roman life. In any case, this is just theory. And by the way, I am one of those philosophers who thinks death is preferable to life, but is too pathetic to get over my instincts.

All very controversial, of course. I know and comprehend little, as I have found out time and time again. But that is how I think.

Then you are not a philosopher, and you are contradicting yourself from your first post. You stated that you believe the goal of education should be to make people knowledgeable and wise. If you care not about the advancement of society and see it as pointless how do you expect people to become wise? A wise person is someone who can learn not only from their mistakes but the mistakes of men and women before them in order to not repeat them. A wise person uses knowledge already gained by his/her predecessors in order to advance society for the betterment of the future generation.




Yes and with my upbringing I can do into a fully stock machine shop and come out a few days later with a machine that will give the ability to transverse extremely large amounts of land in a very short period of time. Your statement doesn't support your original thesis in fact your contradicting yourself. This in no way shows that these people produce wise members of society it just shows they can train someone to survive in a forest for a few days, so that their village can progress and prosper...



This is a very dangerous and self defeating view on life, how do you pick who dies? how do you pick who can give birth? when does it stop? how will you stop it when it should stop? what if people don't want to stop? A wise person see all these questions and more before even stating such an outlandish idea.

You should not call yourself a philosopher, you are far from one... A philosopher is a person who tries to answer life's questions so that mankind in general can advance and process into a new age with more knowledge and a better understanding of this moral coil. A philosopher is a person who loves life and it's mysteries and wishes to live as long as they can so that they may gather knowledge and wisdom from each passing experience they have to help answer these questions for the betterment of the human race. A true philosopher understand you are dead a lot longer then you are alive, and if you do continue to "live on" in death then life is truly the limited commodity of the two. You best use each and every waking hour of it rather then wishing it to end...

Maybe I see those questions cannot be answered. There are so many views, they each make so much sense in some ways yet so little in others, that I do not think it is possible to create the perfect society, or judicial system, or anything like that. You say my views are self-contradictory: I can only agree. The only defence I can put up is that I frequently jump from view to view, in order to perhaps better see things from different views, and perhaps the truth. None, and yet all, of it is right.

Death is preferable to life says Schopenhauer - he is considered a philosopher by normal standards. Who are you to decide what defines a philosopher? Who is anybody to decide what a philosopher is? Taking a viewpoint and standing by it I can only see as zeal/fanaticism. Much of philosophy is about critical thought.