Does education kill true dreams

[mikelus]

Does education kill true dreams?
For me high school was a taunt. Between the kids and the teachers and hormones carries you away from what you really wanted to know. Do school formats kill true thought? How can you have a true discussion when there's someone there telling you you have to change your thought always to keep up to the lesson plan. How do you learn when you don't?

 

[one_raven]

I think you should make a distinction between "education" and what you are really talking about.
The US public school system?
All formal education in a classroom environment?
The mentality of US educators?
The politics in teacher/student relationshps?
Etc..

 

[Zantra]

I'll field this one as best I can.

Education is the pursuit of knowledge. IOW, you have to actually crave learning and knowledge to get the full benefits. Keyword being "pursuit". High School is a general outline. When you get to college you will be able to pursue the field that interests you more thouroughly. But of course you don't have to wait, you can always seek knowledge on the subject you want outside of the classroom. The only limitation is yourself. If you don't feel challenged, then you must challenge yourself. Do not rely on others to set the bar for you, if you feel that bar is too low. We all know the US public school system is lacking. If it isn't keeping up with YOU, then transcend it and seek what you want.

Ok that sounded more like a lecture than a philosophy post[zz)]

 

[FZ+]

I'd really like to change the whole basic education system, starting from the beginning. The first things to be tought in terms of science should be the philosophy of science, and we should always avoid fact-learning. Exams should test understanding rather than memory, and reward going beyond the standard answer.

I still remember how I *hated* learning the multiplication tables... Far better to understand what the operator represents...

IMHO...

 

[revesz]

Me being in grade 10, it's easy to see flaws or things that should be changed in the way they teach. In school they usualy try to tell you the answers to everything rather then find ways to make you realize it for yourself. For me realizing on my own is far more rewarding and mentaly challenging, without that challenge education can be very boring.

 

[physicskid]

For me, the ideal education must have the
following qualities:

• Room for students to express their creativity
• No more prejudices & lack of co-operating
  by eliminating class academic rankings.
• Less control= no more "sucking up" to higher authority &
  more independence. (Pls read my thread at
  https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9274 )
• No restrictions on students' way of thinking.
• More team spirit & sense of belonging by
  causing students to act like adults and have the same goal of suceeding in life
  instead of confining themselves to
  the goal of getting good exams results.

 

[Kerrie]

physicskid...outstanding outline! the u.s. educational system as far as secondary school does not promote creativity as it should...my daughter in the 2nd grade however does get many opportunities to use her imagination...

homeschooling from what i understand promotes creativity and allows a lot of room for young people to pursue what intrigues them at their pace...

 

[BoulderHead]

Originally posted by mikelus
Does education kill true dreams?

If it’s your dream it then it must hold some value to you. If it is valued highly enough, I want to believe you can pursue it.

Ror me high school was a taunt. Between the kids and the teachers and hormones carries you away from what you really wanted to know.

I think the hormones play a role often underestimated, but then, they also cause you to pursue what you really want to know too (at least at that moment).

Do school formats kill true thought?

Ah, here is the interesting question !
I believe schools are processing factories. They are processing human minds rolling along a conveyor belt, educating and indoctrinating. This makes public school systems an invaluable political tool (and may have something to do with why there are so many of them), creating nice little robot people who are intelligent, creative, and useful, but virtually incapable of questioning core beliefs (the Statist Assumption, being one such belief). You are taught that if you go along to get along you just might get a little.

 

[Esperanto]

We weren't meant to sit in classrooms 8 hours a day. School is not learning, we sit in front of people who lecture us all day long. We learn to suppress our own thoughts =P. Don't you think not being allowed to talk makes us stupid? The passiveness of having information poured into our heads will never do us any good. And IF you don't agree completely with everything I just said, I'm going to foam in the mouth and brains and I don't care what you think. Well, what happens when you compare the natural development of people with the sticking of children into buildings for a long time every day five times a week? Will someone PLEASE explain to me the importance of this education bullcrap?

Some reason I can't get out of my head the idea of "Informed Consumer" that school is supposed to teach me to be. Perhaps I need to take some ritalin or something, maybe I could get some of the drugs 1/4th of all people in high school have. School is a joke, and I'll never forgive my parents for sending me to preschool with other kids from other tribes all alone. Mark Twain once remarked, "I would never let an education get in the way of my learning.”

 

[quantumdude]

Pre-college education sucks. Having kids is not my plan, but if I ever do have a little bundle o' joy, I am homeschooling (I guess I'll have to marry a liberal arts type so the child will get a complete education). If you just stick it out in high school, and do the dance so that you get good grades and SAT scores, then that will be your ticket "out"--to a college and major of your own choosing.

 

[J/Psi]

Scholarship is the enemy of romance, according to Billy Bragg.

 

[mikelus]

Originally posted by one_raven
I think you should make a distinction between "education" and what you are really talking about.
The US public school system?
All formal education in a classroom environment?
The mentality of US educators?
The politics in teacher/student relationshps?
Etc..

I'm talking about all those situations when I wrote this post. Then I want to question if they kill that honest kid I knew so well before I went to school everyday. Does early education brainwash silly ideas. What if daydreaming was killed permenatly, would Einstien have exisisted.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Einstein hated the German education of his day which made present day US schooling look like utopia. He cut out in his teens, leaving his German school and joining his father in Italy. Eventually he made it through the ETHS, the MIT of Switzerland. He wasn't crushed by it because he didn't let it crush him.

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Einstein hated the German education of his day which made present day US schooling look like utopia. He cut out in his teens, leaving his German school and joining his father in Italy. Eventually he made it through the ETHS, the MIT of Switzerland. He wasn't crushed by it because he didn't let it crush him.

Einstein was a typical example of teens. Genius finds it way sooner or later. Today the gold is recognized quickly and scooped up and made good use of. In the old days gold was recognized only when it had a high class family to shelter it. Today it is easier and there are more oportunities for all to fulfill there dreams.

 

[BlackJack]

True. But you can get crushed by the school system even if you are a genious on a subject. You can still be good at maths and physics but when you other student push you down because they can't keep up it aint good [b(]. Well this is an other problem of schools. Teachers aren't really interessted in people but more in their subjects [b(]

 

[hamlet69]

dream are dieing

when you teach someone how to do something in a set way IE like a computer progame then there is no room to explore other ways of doing things and since you are teaching the young who know no better there thought process are set in that way,

teachers have a lot to answer for but then they are taught that way as well.

 

[TENYEARS]

No matter what system you learn in, keep your dreams, for it will be your dreams that give you hope, strength and knowlege. It will be your dreams which will make you forge ahead into the unknown. One must not falter, but you should realize and have compasion for those who do not understand, for if your life was formed differently how close would you be to them, it is easy to judge.

Never harden yourself to the the magic of the universe, no matter what you learn or think you know. Be open to it, and it will respond to you. It has no choice, it is physics it is the law.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

This is not going to solve 'present problems' for anyone I suspect, but it wasn't till well past my teens/twenties/into my thirties that I started to gain an appreciation for the 'formal'/scholastic parts of my education, that I had had, took till them to realize just how much I had needed to learn lots of the things that I had learned, but as i said, that doesn't solve anyone's present problem...

P.S. I too disliked school, but it is needed...

 

[mikelus]

Originally posted by hamlet69
when you teach someone how to do something in a set way IE like a computer progame then there is no room to explore other ways of doing things and since you are teaching the young who know no better there thought process are set in that way,

teachers have a lot to answer for but then they are taught that way as well.

Is education just about learning. It's about order and behavior as well. Just as the lesson plans are there to keep a certain pace in the class, the disaplinarians are there to keep a certain order in class as well. School is about what the all american youth should act and think like. School is a fad high school that is.

 

[TENYEARS]

There must be a balance between structure and free thought, when you are high in your life(not drugs) you must make a case for it then within yourself. If you are too much in one you will not be able to relate and too much in the other the same is true. There is a balance where clarity occurs, when you know that you have the ability to know. Here and only here true knowledge is born. Every thought comes from a place never before experienced. In this place the universe unfolds, you are there now. The question you must ask yourself is why am I not experiencing it if I am there already? Find it and you find your dreams, and you will know the structures you will need to set up, not for others but for yourself.

 

[JackRaven]

Originally posted by mikelus
Does education kill true dreams?
For me high school was a taunt. Between the kids and the teachers and hormones carries you away from what you really wanted to know. Do school formats kill true thought? How can you have a true discussion when there's someone there telling you you have to change your thought always to keep up to the lesson plan. How do you learn when you don't?

Hi Mikelus, Education serves a purpose up to a certain level. It is for the individual to decide when it is time to finish their own education and step out into a world where they can formulate their own ideas and beliefs. I believe a good all round knowledge of language, science, history and religion will provide most with the desire to ask their own questions. That is the purpuse of education. To encourage people to ask their own questions at a level where everybody else is trying to misinterpret other peoples opinions.

 

[Nomolesteporfavor]

"One hundred years ago, children were kept out of school to be used as a cheap factory workforce; today, they are kept in school to become a cheap workforce in the factories of the future." Says Michael Engel.

 

[TENYEARS]

Ah, give em a cigar. Yes as the price of college goes through the roof and they require more of it so you can make proportionally less money on the outside in a less and less stable environment. Big business has done a wonderful thing. You are being educated without ever being educated. Awesome isn't it.

This process has been going on for years, but it is a slow one which has excellerated with every transgresssion that big business makes and gets away with.

Big business is stealing the innocence of children at a younger and younger age. Their ability to understand, to hope to change to be is being compremised. The newer and newer generations will be more and more unbalanced. Not because of who they are, but because of what they are subjected too.

Big business = (Concious & Unconcious) Excellerated destruction of the planet

Present Education System Due To Big Business = Increased Mental Illness

Dreams Shattered = All that hard work, they said I could become this or become that or do this or do that.

Find your dreams and learn, but never let learning get in the way of your dreams, unless what you learn is real learning. When it is real learning you will know and not need to be told. Find a balance, but do not be lazy.

You want dreams, save the planet. That was a bad thing for me to say. Give you a dream that cannot be accomplished because it would require a whole planet to become resonsible, to work together for the common good of the place that we do not own, but are lucky to occupy.

In order to achieve that level, the entire human existence on this planet would have to be reshaped. From all that is produced to the smallest to the largest. What we no do is an insult to intelliegence. It is nothing at all, it is just meaningless conversation. We will all die here and for some it will be in a cesspool of toxic waste.

As I finished this I thought, not a good thing for any young impressionable person to read for dreams and education. The thought that followed, if they are on the computer and reading this they are already damaged goods. The future is being shaped by the hands before us, our hands and the hands to come. Careful what you shape.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Humm the 'value' of your education? you can read, and respond, to all/any of this...

 

[Nomolesteporfavor]

Education did not teach me how to read and respond. How educators try to teach us is oftentimes not at all in a way corresponding to how we think. Do all kids learn efficiently while fixed rigidly in a chair in a classroom? Hence ADHD and dyslexia. I don't give a F*** if I managed to store the information they pour into my head, because the most important thing, which they don't and can't understand, is how I think and act to assimilate information into knowledge. Not everyone benefits from didactic teaching. I am increasingly convinced that young people today don't have any future.

 

[Vosh]

Education is what happens to you when you have an experience. It begins sometime in the womb and ends at death.

Why seek to reform schools when there is no good reason to have them in the first place?

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Originally posted by Nomolesteporfavor
Education did not teach me how to read and respond. What did then? How educators try to teach us is oftentimes not at all in a way corresponding to how we think. How astute, (sarc!) how do you know this? the "thinking patterns" of all children? Do all kids learn efficiently while fixed rigidly in a chair in a classroom? Hence ADHD and dyslexia. So, according to your statements here, "education causes ADHD and Dyslexia, you need some more study perhaps?..(cause that is wrong!) I don't give a F*** Clearly here, we have found the problem, you don't care, then why do you bother responding? if I managed to store the information they pour into my head, because the most important thing, which they don't and can't understand, is how I think and act to assimilate information into knowledge. But you seem to come across as "An Expert" in the field, as you are so certain NO ONE knows, how anyone thinks... Not everyone benefits from didactic teaching. I am increasingly convinced that young people today don't have any future.

"When you talk to me, you walk me down the corridors of your mind" hence I can, given you talking enough, get some kind of idea of just how you think, and if I am older, and have had more time to study the manners of 'thinking' that are presented to us by humanity, (God Willing) I (or whomever is in charge of it) might just know better how to go about teaching you, then you know about yourself...but only time will help you to see that one, nothing else...

 

[Nomolesteporfavor]

Education did not teach me how to read and respond. What did then?

Sitting in a classroom of thirty students listening to a teacher is just being presented information without the teacher communicating with us to get an idea of how we think.

How educators try to teach us is oftentimes not at all in a way corresponding to how we think. How astute, (sarc!) how do you know this? the "thinking patterns" of all children?

I don't need to know the thinking patterns of all children to know that when children hate school I know that thinking of kids as blank slates does not always work. Some people feel education to be an excessively uninteresting presentation of information, some would enjoy it.

Do all kids learn efficiently while fixed rigidly in a chair in a classroom? Hence ADHD and dyslexia. So, according to your statements here, "education causes ADHD and Dyslexia, you need some more study perhaps?..(cause that is wrong!)

No! **** you. Show me ADHD that has occurred outside of the classroom. Evolution has been mean to us so now after so many generations of it we must take drugs. School causes dyslexia is not an opinion. School fits the description of the most logical explanation of dyslexia's cause: an unstratified learning process. This kind of happens when teachers don't give a damn about you and you can only phase out when they yap.

I don't give a F*** Clearly here, we have found the problem, you don't care, then why do you bother responding? if I managed to store the information they pour into my head, because the most important thing, which they don't and can't understand, is how I think and act to assimilate information into knowledge.

I don't give a F*** if I managed to store the information they pour into my head, because the most important thing, which they don't and can't understand, is how I think and act to assimilate information into knowledge.

if I managed to store the information they pour into my head, because the most important thing, which they don't and can't understand, is how I think and act to assimilate information into knowledge. But you seem to come across as "An Expert" in the field, as you are so certain NO ONE knows, how anyone thinks...

I like this thing called communication. We don't get much of a chance when it is thirty kids talking to a teacher who talks much more than us. I don't want to ask questions when the teacher is already done giving instructions and I've had to keep the question in mind for half a class period, I'd get better at not voicing my opinion. A one on one discourse with dog**** is infinitely better than not being expected to speak and thereby not having any opinions. You probably think I'm dog**** but IMHO at least you get to exercise sarcasm albeit at the price of the truth. Unless I'm way off. Who thinks I'm way off?

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

I do-I do!

to your...

Originally posted by Nomolesteporfavor
How educators try to teach us is oftentimes not at all in a way corresponding to how we think.

Perhaps you should consider that just one of the tasks that they are attempting to accomplish, is teaching them/you "How to Think" as it seems assumed that 'they' already know this completely, heck I'm still learning that process, and I'm 47!...thats why the 'sarc' you, by your 'assumption', missed the truth of it.

As for the rest, you don't really make any points at anything in particular, aside from your insistence that because ADHD gets diagnosed, (more often) once someone has "entered a classroom" that that therefore causes ADHD, bad connection, really bad connection...

P.S maybe you should learn to [ quote] people properly, that is a mismash to read, difficult, at best, to extract and understand, and the "foul" language nothing more then a nuisance to read/see...waste of thinking time!

 

[Vosh]

If by education you mean that institution that got started late 19th century called "school" then I can tell you that it is not generally known how insidiously and deeply damaging it is. Even those who escape it can be the ripe age of 50 and still uncovering the effects of coerced instruction...

Schools are a jobs creation project. Bertrand Russel called American schooling the most radical social experiment of the 20th century next to the Russian revolution. There is no scientific theory of learning at the bottom of schooling. Everyone just assumes there must be a valid reason for schools to be. It is a tribute to schooling that these folks make that assumption and never stop to question it. Albert Einstein was certainly not alone when he said that schools quash the imagination. Try to count how many nobel prize winners had anything good to say about school. Indeed their comments about school are never less than scathing. To my mind it is some kind of miracle that more and more ppl. are opting against schooling. The number of unschoolers has not stopped growing since the late 1970's and continues to rise today. How long will this trend continue, do you suppose? There were two million at last count. In ten years what will it be? I used to think that by the time the mainstream no longer looks at teachers as the unsung heroes of our society that teachers will be long dead and won't have to suffer the stinging indignity; but maybe it will happen sooner than I think! That would be fun to watch; school teachers foaming at the mouth at the sight of their small time prestige slipping away...

 

[Evo]

The school system in America is contemptible. It is more about "control" than education.

Learning the basics of "reading & writing & 'rithmetic" as the old song goes of course is critical. Access to a free education is a good thing for those children that otherwise would have no means of learning, but for the majority of the kids, formal schooling, as it exists today, (after the basics) can be a hindrance to higher learning and creative thinking.

I will relate my own personal experience with the school system.

I hated school. I loved learning and did so on my own from a very early age. The result was that I was so far ahead of my classmates that starting in the third grade, my teachers would take my schoolbooks away so I wouldn't get too far ahead of the rest of the class. I would have to sit there all day listening to the other kids struggling, it was maddening. The public elementary schools where I grew up had no special programs (this was a long time ago).

When I was 11, I had a teacher new to the school... I won't go into all the details but as a result of her help I was continually "jumped" ahead and finished high school when I was 14. I don't know how I could have survived school otherwise.

So do not give up hope or let school hold you back. If you have a thirst for knowledge - GO FOR IT. Do not limit your education to the classroom. Since you are on this forum, I think that you are already doing this to some extent. I know it's awful having to put up with the Cr*p that goes on in school, but hang in there.

If your school has a gifted program, these usually are less structured and have smaller groups allowing students a bit more freedom to learn in their own way. Also, you can take tests showing that you already have knowledge that will allow you to skip having to actually take certain courses. This will allow you to graduate early. Maybe that would be an option for you.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Humm, school is the reason why I know what a "Van Der Graff Generator" is, what Deoxyribonucleic Acid is, the reason why I understand how a car's induction coil works...(the collapsing magnetic field) it is the reason why I know about Shakespeare and his writings, it is where I learned to add two plus two, and is the only reason why when taking a computer course when it was explained how a computer "multiplies" and "Divides" that I was able to follow the theory and understand that simplistic reality of math, it was the place where I was introduced to machinery (that I otherwise would never have used) in shop classes (in both metal and wood) and got to see, and do, first-hand, some of what, later on in my life the understanding of, came through much cleaner/clear'er.

School, No I didn't like it much, but that's an "all bad" memory thing, cause, (like most people) there is a more balanced experiance, everyone wants to 'rag on it' with the group, as to be a part of the group, not pointing out, (if they bother to think about the ALL of the experiance) that there are probably some places where it was actually something that helped, even if it is only in sociality/social-ability/social-environment. We still all learn things that help, that is "why" school, that, and at that early an age, it is when it is more will likely "sink in" as there is an absence of judgment in a the youthful/child state of lessor knowledge.

 

[Vosh]

Originally posted by Mr. Robin Parsons
Humm, school is the reason why I know what a "Van Der Graff Generator" is, what Deoxyribonucleic Acid is, the reason why I understand how a car's induction coil works...(the collapsing magnetic field) it is the reason why I know about Shakespeare and his writings, it is where I learned to add two plus two, and is the only reason why when taking a computer course when it was explained how a computer "multiplies" and "Divides" that I was able to follow the theory and understand that simplistic reality of math, it was the place where I was introduced to machinery (that I otherwise would never have used) in shop classes (in both metal and wood) and got to see, and do, first-hand, some of what, later on in my life the understanding of, came through much cleaner/clear'er.

School, No I didn't like it much, but that's an "all bad" memory thing, cause, (like most people) there is a more balanced experiance, everyone wants to 'rag on it' with the group, as to be a part of the group, not pointing out, (if they bother to think about the ALL of the experiance) that there are probably some places where it was actually something that helped, even if it is only in sociality/social-ability/social-environment. We still all learn things that help, that is "why" school, that, and at that early an age, it is when it is more will likely "sink in" as there is an absence of judgment in a the youthful/child state of lessor knowledge.

Fortunately, my raggin' on school isn't about being bitter over bad experiences. That would be just immature and intellectually barren. Learning is as natural as breathing. It can't be stopped; only perverted. I have very good memories of learning about Archimedes and simple machines in the sixth grade. This doesn't mean that I learned thanks to school. The fact that I was in school when this happened is *incidental*. You may not be able to imagine it; but learning experiences would also happen in a world that never knew that institution we know of as school. I know that schools weren't invented in the name of growth and learning. They were put into place because there was some considerable concern by the captains of industry during the Industrial Revolution, among some others, that everyone know the same things at the same time and become mostly predictable and compliant adults. It was about creating the labour class etc. etc. etc. This is not a secret history. You can look it up (but you won't hear about it in a college teacher school)! No one ever came forward with a theory of learning which said civilization needs a program of coerced instruction (of any kind) without which children would become mute wolf children unable to even say the word, "technology" or "modern". Think of this: if someone took you when you were 5 years old and kept you in a place until you were 18 (think about that; 5 years old -- you were a toddler just yesterday!) so that your imagination would be diminished, if not entirely quashed, you would be indifferent (just one example: in CPR training you are taught that when calling for someone to dial 911 that you should point directly at someone in the crowd; otherwise no one will bother to be the one who goes and dials 911), to experience an extended childhood (so called adolescence) -- You're probably thinking, "I'd notice something was wrong". Here's the thing: NO, YOU WOULDN'T. You grew up this way; everything seems normal to you!

At the end of the day, however you feel about it, one thing remains true. There is no good reason to have schools (as we know them; there could still be places where ppl. could go the same way we go the public library now). This fact doesn't change because you have good memories associated with it. Further more, consider this: if you think schooling is an indispensable part of the fabric of civilization then why are there more and more ppl. opting for homeschooling every year (and I'm wondering why some ppl. have an easier time intuiting what is wrong with the notion of schooling while others fumble with questions like, "how will I learn?" "what about socialization?") This is something ppl. have the liberty to do and as this concept gets around, mostly by word of mouth, it grows and grows. At last count there were two million homeschoolers (officially). In 5, 10 years how many will there be? How long will the number of them keep going up? If you think all of this is just too radical for this world, your schooling really was successful!