Or, generally it’s because young people think they know everything. And the stupids or lazy ones tend not to push themselves intellectually as they get older so they basically just reinforce whatever it is they think they already “know”.
I learned things at school - it’s more university where, at least academically, I learned essentially nothing that I have ever put into practice. Oh, and that was Cambridge btw.
As with many folks here, I often find xkcd comics ringing true for me, but none moreso than this one.
Replace “11th grade” with “K-12” and “Perl” with “computers and programming in general”, multiply the numbers accordingly, and you’ve got the foundation for my entire career thus far.
Not learning as much about your chosen field as you did in other areas and “I didn’t learn anything in school at all” are two different statements.
I learned loads of stuff in school. Had a great time, and this was in the public school system of Montgomery, Alabama.
-I learned calculus up through the second college-level class.
-I learned Latin well enough to get maxima cum laude on the National Latin Exam.
-I learned German well enough to be fluent.
-I learned up through college level chemistry and physics.
-I learned up through college level biology.
-I learned quite a lot about American and world history. Seriously, you didn’t? How is that possible? I know for a fact that you did NOT know more about history than all of your teachers. Didn’t happen. So did you just not pay attention?
-I learned that I hate Hemingway. Fitzgerald is overrated. I rather like Maugham. Stephen Crane is OK in my book. I still love Poe. Michener is good at times, but incredibly bogged down in his research at others. Shakespeare is both brilliant and becoming a bit obsolete. On and on and on and on.
How is it even possible to have learned nothing in school?
I learned a ton of stuff throughout school, in a variety of public school systems across the midwest US. It helped get me ready to take some really challenging courses in college.
I do recall there was a large group of my fellow high-schoolers who did proclaim loudly that they weren’t learning anything, and that their time was being wasted.
I graduated HS in 1975.
I went to public school in Chicago starting in 1970, then in 1979 moved to the south 'burbs, again going to public school. This was middle class to lower middle class neighborhoods. I learned a lot in grammar school and high school. Middle school (7th and 8th grade) was bad, though - I specifically remember that I already knew what they were teaching in 7th grade math from 5th grade. But in 8th grade I got to take algebra. I also learned a lot abou High school was in the mid-80s, when they were just starting AP (advanced placement) courses. I took two years of physics, one year chemistry, a couple AP lit classes, and learned to program in BASIC. I will say I didn’t learn a lot of practical stuff, like how to balance a checkbook, but I learned a lot of reading, writing, 'rithmatic.
So in short, I learned a lot in school.
I don’t understand how someone could go through 13 years of school and not learn anything. Seriously. I learned enough from the major disciplines to attend college. I also applied the skills I learned to build cars, a garage, an airplane and basically anything that could be self-taught using the building blocks of a primary education.
I believe I recognize a subtext in the OP that is a praise of the value of autodidactism. And I agree - self-directed learning, self-teaching, has a place in every educated person’s life.
But I believe that there are limits to such a method of instruction. For one, it is human nature to naturally seek out information that either agrees with one’s opinions (confirmation bias) or is information to which one is naturally drawn. I’ve had a number of students in my classes over the years who brag to me that they are expecting my classes to be easy for them because they’re read a lot about psychology over the years. Many of them get a huge wake-up shock on the first exam, because they’ve chosen over the years to read books that are pop psychology or that are fun and interesting, but are not actually psychology.
Just talking about my particular field, there are a LOT of theories and contributors to the field of psychology that, left to my own devices, I would not have chosen to study. Having that knowledge, however, is just as important as the knowledge of those contributors that interest me.
I believe that some people are convinced that they, themselves, personally, did not need any formal education, and that left to their own devices, they would have learned as much from “a dollar fifty in late charges down at the public library,” as Will says in Good Will Hunting. However, I believe that those people are few and far between, and that there might just be some possible holes in their self-chosen educational process, and that formal educational systems do good for a wide swath of the population at large.
As for me - I knew how to read when I was three, and was writing at four. But school taught me what a well-crafted sentence looked like, and then taught me why, and that knowledge taught me how to recognize when someone was playing with the rules of grammar and English writing in a creative way, and when they were just a bad writer.
School taught me algebra and trigonometry and calculus and geometry and chemistry. I did not go into those classes knowing that information.
School taught me history, and taught me that the way I was taught it made it boring, and later taught me that other ways of teaching it made it come alive for me.
I don’t have enough time, actually, to list all the things I learned in school.
I have GCSE history. And with all due respect, you did not get yours knowing literally nothing about history. You may have forgotten it all since, but thats not the systems fault.
The primary purpose of school, is to learn how to learn.
Its nothing new for people to cry, “5 years of French/Science/Geography wasted, I never learned a thing”. These people have sorta missed the point. The world doesnt care if you learn how to ask directions in french, it just wants you learn new things, so that you can do it again in the future.
IME, people who say that they “feel as though they learned nothing in school” get too hung up on the details of what they learned at school, rather than the deeper purpose of education. After all, part of the history GCSE involved 2000 word coursework esays about WW2 or the History of Medicine. What bloody use is that to me now eh?
I didn’t learn algebra in school, though this was in part due to a kid who sat behind me in algebra class and sang almost constantly. When he wasn’t singing he would tell dirty jokes. Given the choice between a free concert and the quadratic equation, I chose to focus on the concert.
The teacher did nothing to remedy the situation. In fact, he sometimes joined in telling dirty jokes.
I guess I’ll qualify my previous response with, during the time that I was enrolled at the high school I graduated from, I learned a hell of a lot. But I don’t credit the school for any of that. It was all independent, because my school’s implementation of OBE was a failure, and if I’d let myself succumb to their piss-poor education philosophy, I’d be a raging moron, but then I suppose that only a raging moron would let a piss-poor education philosophy hold him back.
The only thing I ever did was read the assignments. Nothing more. Studying? Yeah, why, to meet their limited “outcomes”? I didn’t do shit (school-wise) for three years, and still managed to finish 14th in my class of 500 or so*. In fact, those assholes ill-prepared me for college, because I assumed I would never have to do anything forever because education was a joke. I still maintained a 3.8, but I actually had to use my brain once in a while.
*I interviewed the valedictorian for our award-winning school paper (remember by journalism reference earlier?). I felt sorry for her when she described how much she had to do to finish as number one versus my do-nothing attitude to finish as number 14.
So, if you had actually got off your butt and worked a little bit you coulda been number one and learned a bit more than you did as well as develop a decent work/study ethic?
You felt sorry for the wrong person if you ask me.
You will forgive me if I am just a little skeptical as to whose fault these alleged educational deficiencies are. You admit to not trying, and in fact feel “Sorry” for someone with a good work ethic.
There’s a remarkably strong correlation between people who say “I didn’t learn anything in school” and people are are lazy, arrogant, and cursed with a blind sense of entitlement. It’s entirely possible you are a rare exception and went to a school that was genuinely, unbelievably awful and was maliciously designed to not teach you anything. I wasn’t there and can’t say for sure. But I know where the smart money is.
I’m also skeptical about the claims from people who claimed they learned nothing in school. It’s virtually impossible, if meant literally.
For myself, yes - of course I learned a ton in school (American, mostly public, some Catholic). It wasn’t always taught in the most efficient way, and there were any number of hours wasted on busy work. But a huge chunk of my practical knowledge and skills came from the classroom - and what I picked up on my own out of the classroom was sparked and enabled by my school learning.
FWIW, though I still learned stuff in college, the rate of class learning dropped off hugely compared to my high school years.
I thought it was much closer. As in, the eastern New Orleans suburbs were across the Florida line.
Aaah, the elusive “classroom with no map of the United States”! Rarely seen in the wild, you know.
Public school, graduated high school in 2004.
I learned some academic stuff - I remember the history I studied, I remember Spanish, and I remember some of the math (though I basically redid all that math in college, so that doesn’t really count).
The biggest thing I learned was that I was doing it all wrong. I thought that a high school education should be about an education - about learning new material, about learning how to learn, about challenging yourself intellectually. Apparently, I was wrong - it’s about getting A’s. I was told several times during my four years of high school that, really, I should seriously think about dropping from an “honors” level class to an “advanced” or even “regular” level class. Why? Well, you’re getting a B or C in honors <Algebra II/Calc/Biology/Spanish>, and we think you could easily get an A in regular or advanced. Yes, but I’m learning more in this honors class; I can deal with the material, but I’m working my ass off for it and learning lots of new things. Isn’t that the point? Actual response: “Oh, but colleges don’t care about how much you learn or how hard you work, just your GPA. You won’t get accepted anywhere with your grades, even in honors-level classes.” (I proved them wrong on both of those points, for what it’s worth.)
I learned much more in college. I probably learned more in my first semester than I did in all four years of high school.
Oh yeah, I learned tons. All the basics and more. My parent’s didn;t bother to give us any start on reading or math, so I hit kindergarten dead ignorant. I still have a very strong memory of how I felt the first time I understood the concept of subtraction - like a little religious epiphany.
As for high school, all the real basics of understanding the physical sciences came clear - biology, geology, chemistry all started to really make sense. The only thing I feel I missed was an understanding of history - that I pursued as a strong interest on my own later.
I don’t think I learned many useful social skills - we moved to often for me to make friends easily and I was not encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities. Mom liked me home to babysit and take care of the house.
I learned quite a bit in public K-12 schools. In particular, I remember that 12th grade calculus and 11th grade U.S. history taught me things I still remember 30 years later.