I have significant ADHD that effects all parts of my life. Despite my love of learning without the structure of a school I would never have been able to study philosophy or history to the extent that I did. Additionally creating social connections and communities is essential for all humans, but especially people of developing ages. Having a place where kids and young adults can go and spend time with peers, pursue hobbies/extra curriculars, do some physical activity, and engage in learning they are invested in is essential to a functioning society and a healthy childhood. Just because school is shit now doesn't mean that we can't make it better.
Think of it less as a prussian model of indoctrination and more of a community center for kids that helps with their growth and to engage with society in a way that is satisfying for them.
Huh. I thought a person with ADHD would benefit from having a personal tutor that helps them learn at the pace they are most comfortable with, instead of rigid classes, but then again, I don't know shit about ADHD.
I can't really argue against youth community centers where kids can hang out and maybe learn something from someone, but that might be to school what community self-defence is to cops.
Personal tutors are great but honestly the only times that I ever studied in college were in study groups. Tutors are great for mastering more specific skills but I think that the classroom environment and collaborative learning that is possible there can be beneficial when it comes to forming relationships, teaching kids to work together and cooperate to solve problems, ect. Additionally slightly higher student to teacher ratios allows teachers to be more knowledgable about specific subjects which has all kinds of benefits. One of them is that when teachers actually know things about history they are less likely to just regurgitate the propaganda they are encouraged to teach. A huge amount of the propaganda that gets taught throughout all education is because it's hard to get changes to curriculums approved, and because teachers are overworked as it is, so as much as teachers might want to be teaching more up to date or more interdisciplinary history, they are just too overworked to make huge changes to their lesson plans.
Probably every teacher in my high school was a huge lib but because they got to have complete freedom to design their own lesson plans I learned about most American atrocities, both foreign policy wise and domestically, tulsa, rodney king, ect, and a lot of other things most high schoolers weren't taught. One of the reasons that I radicalized so quickly after bernie lost was because my lib teachers had accidentally given me a decent education. They all provided lib justifications for the events but even so it made it easier to connect the dots after the 2016 primaries. If singular teachers were expected to give most of the education to a single student then these sorts of higher level things wouldn't have been taught to me.
I think that we both agree that personalized learning and student self determination are incredibly important, at all ages and levels, not just college, but to me a brick and mortar school will always be an irreplaceable, essential, part of childhood.
I should note though that I went to a small private high school with low homework and tiny teacher:student ratios. Going from a public middle school that I did horribly in to there gave me a pretty unique look at just how much better, more freeing, and more stimulating school can be. I got huge freedom in terms of what i wrote papers on and everything. In English I gave a presentation on how the popularity of LOTR in a post WWII world reflects such a different social climate than the popularity of GOT in a post 9/11 world. I compared Petr Baelish to Gandalf, and Aragorn to Ned Stark among other things. And that is so fucking cool for a high school paper. We were always encouraged to make everything that we did something individual and expressive.
It is important to note that I am somewhat academically talented, I had an easier time with most things than almost all of my peers in high school and college. It's why I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life than most. There is a huge difference in experience between, for lack of a better term, low and high IQ ADHD. So a pretty high percentage of other ADHD people that you meet will probably be much more willing to burn it all down than I am. Because many people with ADHD literally have never had a positive experience with learning in any kind of structured environment. Although if I stayed in the public school system I might not have "blossomed" much at all. I was a shit student in middle school.
tldr: Yeah this is the education equivalent of abolish the police. I just think that we need to replace it with something at least reminiscent of our current system. And even if ADHD kids don't need it, kids with more severe disabilities certainly will.
I would definitely benefit from having a personal tutor lmao, the only info I learn in school with ADHD is how to pass tests/the next homework assignment. With the way classes are paced and graded I don't have time to care about the content, just how to pass that content from one end of my brain to the other efficiently. If I happen to learn stuff along the way, cool. Mostly it just gets stored in temporary info for the test and thrown the fuck away right after.
I do my best learning over the internet/in books at my own pace, when I feel calm enough to actually parse the information rather than use it as a survival tool.
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How true is the part of some students needing structure? There's been a lot of success with homeschooling and unschooling and all that jazz.
I have significant ADHD that effects all parts of my life. Despite my love of learning without the structure of a school I would never have been able to study philosophy or history to the extent that I did. Additionally creating social connections and communities is essential for all humans, but especially people of developing ages. Having a place where kids and young adults can go and spend time with peers, pursue hobbies/extra curriculars, do some physical activity, and engage in learning they are invested in is essential to a functioning society and a healthy childhood. Just because school is shit now doesn't mean that we can't make it better.
Think of it less as a prussian model of indoctrination and more of a community center for kids that helps with their growth and to engage with society in a way that is satisfying for them.
Huh. I thought a person with ADHD would benefit from having a personal tutor that helps them learn at the pace they are most comfortable with, instead of rigid classes, but then again, I don't know shit about ADHD.
I can't really argue against youth community centers where kids can hang out and maybe learn something from someone, but that might be to school what community self-defence is to cops.
Personal tutors are great but honestly the only times that I ever studied in college were in study groups. Tutors are great for mastering more specific skills but I think that the classroom environment and collaborative learning that is possible there can be beneficial when it comes to forming relationships, teaching kids to work together and cooperate to solve problems, ect. Additionally slightly higher student to teacher ratios allows teachers to be more knowledgable about specific subjects which has all kinds of benefits. One of them is that when teachers actually know things about history they are less likely to just regurgitate the propaganda they are encouraged to teach. A huge amount of the propaganda that gets taught throughout all education is because it's hard to get changes to curriculums approved, and because teachers are overworked as it is, so as much as teachers might want to be teaching more up to date or more interdisciplinary history, they are just too overworked to make huge changes to their lesson plans.
Probably every teacher in my high school was a huge lib but because they got to have complete freedom to design their own lesson plans I learned about most American atrocities, both foreign policy wise and domestically, tulsa, rodney king, ect, and a lot of other things most high schoolers weren't taught. One of the reasons that I radicalized so quickly after bernie lost was because my lib teachers had accidentally given me a decent education. They all provided lib justifications for the events but even so it made it easier to connect the dots after the 2016 primaries. If singular teachers were expected to give most of the education to a single student then these sorts of higher level things wouldn't have been taught to me.
I think that we both agree that personalized learning and student self determination are incredibly important, at all ages and levels, not just college, but to me a brick and mortar school will always be an irreplaceable, essential, part of childhood.
I should note though that I went to a small private high school with low homework and tiny teacher:student ratios. Going from a public middle school that I did horribly in to there gave me a pretty unique look at just how much better, more freeing, and more stimulating school can be. I got huge freedom in terms of what i wrote papers on and everything. In English I gave a presentation on how the popularity of LOTR in a post WWII world reflects such a different social climate than the popularity of GOT in a post 9/11 world. I compared Petr Baelish to Gandalf, and Aragorn to Ned Stark among other things. And that is so fucking cool for a high school paper. We were always encouraged to make everything that we did something individual and expressive.
It is important to note that I am somewhat academically talented, I had an easier time with most things than almost all of my peers in high school and college. It's why I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life than most. There is a huge difference in experience between, for lack of a better term, low and high IQ ADHD. So a pretty high percentage of other ADHD people that you meet will probably be much more willing to burn it all down than I am. Because many people with ADHD literally have never had a positive experience with learning in any kind of structured environment. Although if I stayed in the public school system I might not have "blossomed" much at all. I was a shit student in middle school.
tldr: Yeah this is the education equivalent of abolish the police. I just think that we need to replace it with something at least reminiscent of our current system. And even if ADHD kids don't need it, kids with more severe disabilities certainly will.
I would definitely benefit from having a personal tutor lmao, the only info I learn in school with ADHD is how to pass tests/the next homework assignment. With the way classes are paced and graded I don't have time to care about the content, just how to pass that content from one end of my brain to the other efficiently. If I happen to learn stuff along the way, cool. Mostly it just gets stored in temporary info for the test and thrown the fuck away right after.
I do my best learning over the internet/in books at my own pace, when I feel calm enough to actually parse the information rather than use it as a survival tool.
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You mean like it's cumbersome compared to teaching an entire class the whole day instead? Why is that?
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Maybe this is a way the students who prefer structure in education can be provided said structure without need for a school.