Don't get me wrong, learning is important, but I don't have tons of fond memories of great learning opportunities in school.

  • theboy [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I had my first year of Uni last year and I honestly did not learn anything the entire year and went into thousands of dollars of debt for literally no reason.

    Without the social aspect of school and its ability to create a practical learning environment its literally worthless.

    • GrandAyatollaLenin [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Get used to it. It does not get better.

      If you want to learn in Uni, stick to doing the bare minimum. Take the easiest classes possible. Then go to the library and find books for what you actually want to learn.

      The internet is also good. 50% of university learning is "Here's a project, now google everything you need to know so I don't have to give a lecture."

      • theboy [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        eh im fine with that

        the inability to be social outside of zoom and discord is what really bummed me out. Spending a year without having any friends reminded me of some not so pleasant times in Middle School and I had to keep delving into Marxist theory about how we NEED to be social to be human to keep myself sane.

      • theboy [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        In my last trimester I didn't even do that because i was so done with this fucking online learning shit :doomer:

          • JuneFall [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            talk about out of touch

            Well they remember a time were you worked for 4 weekends and were able to pay for your tuition. Also they were classist as fuck.

          • theboy [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            yeah ironically getting a job was the best thing that happened to me last year and a customer who was high off heroin threatened to kill me if I didn't give him a discount one night lmao

          • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I was in social work school until recently, and a friend of mine dropped out in part because that was the administration's response to her having financial issues (except they also recommended not even having part-time job).

            That's bad enough in any school, but social work school has traditionally, until recently, been arranged in such a way that you COULD hold a job, most students were expected to, and the workload was adjusted to account for it- guarantee it was that way when our administrators went through it. But tuition keeps going up, internship requirements go up (and they don't HAVE to be unpaid, but paid ones are extremely rare, as are ones that don't require you to have a car), academic workload keeps going up, and we're just expected to take out loans to cover our living expenses. And we're fucking social workers, it's not even like we're doctors who can expect to make pretty good money once they're done with school.

          • thisismyrealname [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            my psychology professor insists that we watch her 2 hour lectures where she dryly repeats everything in the textbook that would take like half an hour to read and take notes

  • half_giraffe [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I haven't been in a classroom in years and so far the most lasting consequence from high school and college are the semi-weekly stress dreams where I'm desperately late for a final in a class I've never been in. And according to basically every other older adult, this literally never stops happening.

    Real healthy education system you got there :agony-deep:

      • CrimsonSage [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I usually end up standing up and screaming at the prof in those exact dreams.

    • BillyMays [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oh god… why do I still get those? Like yo you just decided to not go to class for your final? Why would you do that?

      • half_giraffe [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        My rational human brain: Hopefully I wake up tomorrow well rested.

        My lizard brain during sleep: This is the perfect time to remind them about an impossible, imagined traumatic incident.

      • GrandAyatollaLenin [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I had a professor who told me the teacher equivalent of these dreams:

        One day, towards the end of the semester, you find out there's a course you're supposed to have been teaching this whole time. You rush to the classroom, and all the students are there, waiting patiently. You now have a semesters worth of content to teach in one lecture.

    • CrimsonSage [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Decades later I still have final exam stress dreams.

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Schooling needs a major overhaul as they haven't changed much for...centuries.

    As they are now they're more for teaching discipline and obedience than anything else. Personally, I think the prison-like environment of current schools breeds contempt and fear of learning rather than nurturing it.

    • Three_Magpies [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      When I see how schools are supposed to look post-Covid, it makes me sick. They look like dystopian bio-prisons -- I cannot fathom the psychological damage it would cause a person to go there. No socialize! No touch! Only 'learn'!

        • Three_Magpies [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I could be wrong about this one -- or overly sensitive. I've talked with a kid in my family going to school and she mentioned how she played soccer during lunch / PE. But she also talked about how they couldn't share pencils and a lot of rules about touching surfaces. Idk, it just seems atomizing and sick-making to me.

      • thisismyrealname [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        not to mention the charter school sickos taking it as an opportunity to try and push their bullshit

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    the school system in the US and much of the west is based on generating factory labor, most of the practices are rooted in the late 1800s. it is another factor in maintaining the reserve army of labor, only a small portion of the population is allowed to develop specialized knowledge through established means.

    • grey_wolf_whenever [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Education, like most systems in america, is actually just a penal system for kids. People wonder why we dont use a less oppressive system that gets better results, and its because the oppression is the point.

    • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Schools should unironically just send kids out to a farm for a day.

      They learn how teamwork, assigning roles, where food actually comes from etc.

      I reckon they'd have fun as well. You're training them for work but you're not just sitting in a dull room.

  • Terkrockerfeller [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    My experiences are obviously warped as both a gifted kid and an attendee of an autistic-specific school from hell from 6th grade till grad, but apart from basic algebra I don't think I remember (never mind use) a single thing that was ostensibly on the syllabus in all of high school

    I did get plenty of emotional trauma though!

    • CrimsonSage [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      "And you get a Child Hood Trauma! And you get a Child Hood Trauma! And you get a Child Hood Trauma! Everyone gets a Child Hood Trauma! We put children through a fucking misery factory and then wonder why our whole society is completely fucked up.

  • fed [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    School should be about children socializing first and education second. Like obviously the objective should be education but it needs to be a much more sociable environment rather than 20 kids sit in a dark room while the teacher lectures

  • BillyMays [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I’m not really sure the answer to our current learning daycares, but the way we do it now is awful and not the answer.

    One thing we could do is remove 95% of administrators. Maybe teach children about how to properly socialize and build community. Let kids explore their environment. Don’t make them sit for hours at a time having to listen their teachers drone on and on.

        • TheDeed [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          We were not allowed to go to the library during lunch, before or after school, or at any time unless you were going as a class or you had a pass from a teacher. I wish I was making this up.

          My school was like a prison tbh. Seemed like psychopaths were in charge and only taught/policed kids as a way to exert power and authority they couldn’t exercise elsewhere in life.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            We were not allowed to go to the library during lunch, before or after school, or at any time unless you were going as a class or you had a pass from a teacher. I wish I was making this up.

            Same, I remember thinking wtf is this here for then? Decoration?

      • GrandAyatollaLenin [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Idk. Personally, as a kid I wouldn't want to learn how to do taxes. I'd rather take the integral of a polynomial function.

        I had several of these classes in middle and high school, and it ranges from Jordan Peterson style "rules for living" to "practice doing office work". The latter can be actually useful and fun, if done well and for a job you're interested in, but I also don't want the entire school system geared around that.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        And also teach them a lot about the natural world outside of society, so they respect and understand that it's a part of them they can't live without and not something to exploit and destroy.

  • BigAssBlueBug [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    why do i need the textbook if you have al the info we'd need on the slides every day