I went to what I would consider an average public high school. I mean, it’s the only place I went to school, so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it didn’t seem particularly unusual when placed against pop culture’s version of high school. (Although I don’t think it was as cliquey or cruel as high school is often portrayed in movies or TV. Junior high was like that, but high school was much better.) My overall GPA was 3.4, so I was a good, but not great student. And I certainly learned this. My junior year I took a composition class for my English class and we had to write lots of essays and persuasive argument type papers. The next year I had AP Lit and we analyzed the shit out of literature. We spent six fucking weeks reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson at one point. I wanted to commit suicide - not because it’s so painful to analyze poetry, but because it was Emily Dickinson. Someone should have put that woman out of her misery. But every single person in my class passed the AP Lit exam. (My teacher told me later that that was the first time that had ever happened, in all of the years he’d been teaching the class.)
If all you did was listen to a book being read on tape and then watch a movie version, the system failed you and that sucks. But I don’t think that’s the standard. At least, I hope not.
I learned a lot in school. Academics of course, but I also had a few truly great teachers who loved their jobs and they managed to excite me enough to want to learn more on my own. One in particular, my World History teacher, just lit up when she started lecturing. She was amazing. She had an impact on me and my brother, who is now a history teacher himself.
There were a lot of bad ones too. I had an economics teacher who was so bad I walked out of school (after spitting in his face!) in tenth grade and never went back.
I must say, some folk’s schooling sounds to me like it is from another planet, education-wise.
I learned a lot in school. How to write is probably the most important thing; also, how to read critically. The history education was handled poorly at the school I attended I thought, but OTOH the real interest in history requires a very steep learning curve - up to a point is is just meaningless and unconnected dates and stories, you need to know a lot before it starts to “fit together”.
My bigger beef is later in the educational system. I was not very impressed with the usefulness of law school for practicing lawyers. Apprenticeship is a much better system - I learned far more in one year of articling than I did in three years of law school.
You said it, brother! In a normal, big city public high school (graduating in 1986) I had courses in economics, government, and computers. I learned to analyze Shakespeare, understand biological classifications, write persuasively and creatively. I had after school clubs in debate, public service, model U.N., sports, woodworking, and so many others I can’t even think.
I learned so much that I still use daily. I can still hear my economics teacher talking about economies of scale, what ‘worth’ means, and how asymmetric information effects transactions. The knowledge I gained was priceless.
I learned some things in school; basic math, grammar, various trivia.
However I can’t really say I ever remember teachers actually teaching me anything. It seemed like the schools role was to provide us with books on a subject, and a sufficiently boring environment that we had no choice but to sit and flip idly through them for hours on end. Teachers sat at their desk reading a newspaper, saying sshhhh every minute or so. “Lectures” were just teachers reading out loud from the book, usually chapters I had read so long ago it wasn’t even funny.
I think a lot of people who say they didn’t learn anything are often forgetting where they learned stuff they know.
Even just something like knowing that Sylvia Plath killed herself by sticking her head in the oven with the gas on? Learned that in school.
The basics of arithmetic? Learned that in school.
Learned the basic cloud types or the different types of rocks? That was learned in school.
I love learning; I learned to read and write before school, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking that everything I learned I ~magically~ learned on my own. A lot of things I’ve learned, I’ve known for so long that they’re ingrained in my brain. I’d have a hard time remembering where I learned a lot of them, since they’ve been in my head for so long. But I don’t assume I learned it all myself.
ETA: now “learn” and “learned” don’t look or sound like words. Learn learn learn learn learn learn.
You seem to think everyone in America graduated from college! The vast majority of us do not have a degree and work at jobs where little writing is involved, much less any degree of writing skill required.
I avoid jobs where I have ‘superiors’. Right now I have 3 part-time jobs at tiny businesses with one boss for each - as a bartender, a barista, and working at a home-renovation business where I do sales, secretarial work, accounting, filing, some design work, and customer consultation. I handle all non-verbal communication because my boss, while intelligent, has about the same ability to communicate through writing that I did when I was 7. But it’s limited to friendly emails to customers and translating his scribbled estimates/invoices into something that makes sense to a layman and sounds professional.
Many people I know who went through conventional school have some problems with these things, which disproves your theory.
I didn’t learn any of those things in high school. I was an irresponsible social cripple with authority issues when I left. I was cured (to the point that I can support myself and tolerate other people) by moving out on my own and working for a living. This does wonders for most people who are not yet capable of acting like adults - which includes most college students I have come across.
I went to public school here till I completed sixth grade. After I finished sixth grade, I was home-schooled for many different reasons.
To be honest, I learned more from my mother at home, or self-study then I ever did at school.
In school I did exceedingly well in English, and I was average in most subjects except mathematics. I was so horrible in math that the teachers refused to believe I had a learning difficulty and thought I was just being lazy. They wouldn’t take the extra time that was absolutely necessary to help me with math and it’s haunted me my entire academic career.
They made me feel stupid and lazy, through no fault of my own, because I remember my mother staying up with me at night, desperately trying to teach me basic math in elementary school, and ending up in tears. I tried, oh did I try, but it didn’t matter till I was out of public school and had more time to devote to my weakest subject.
As far as history goes, I love it, but all we learned in public school was black history. It was like a constant black history month from grade 1-6th, and every year we would go over exactly the same material. My uncle is the Bill Nye equivalent to history, so I owe a lot of my passion for history to him, definitely not to the Memphis City school system.
And speaking of, Bill Nye taught me more science than I ever learned in school. There was never any hands-on study in science other than when we planted seeds and studied their growth.
And of course, one of my fondest memories was spent studying a book of Women’s History with my mother one evening (the power went out) and she read to me by candlelight. My mom taught me to never stop reading, which wasn’t pressured upon us in school.
I tried to learn and did learn a lot in school. But it was all useless facts. We spent hours memorizing dates that have no use. What’s more, who cared when Waterloo was fought. I know all about the battle but I hardly needed to know the exact date.
All the biology and chemistry is now hopelessly outdated and wrong. So that was a waste.
The only skills I got in high school that I still use are typing and my understanding of the “new math.” Seems like I was the only one in school who understood set theory and base number systems. I can find a lot of use for that but the stopped teaching the new math years ago.
Wow. Could you try to use more hyperbole next time?
You’ve reasonably noted that it’s not critical to know the exact date of the battle of Waterloo. Likewise, the fact that they didn’t tell you about hadrons, carbon nanotubes, and the fact that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria doesn’t mean that your education in the hard sciences was all for naught; these are details that aren’t critical for the average joe. Got some grasp of the basic classifications, behaviors, anatomies and life cycles of various organisms? Great, that’ll do for biology. Remember anything about exothermic reactions, protons, electrons, combustion, solids/liquids/gases? OK, that’s still a valid basic understanding of chemistry, more than most folks who haven’t had chemistry understand.
Yeah, all the stuff they learned was hanging out with their fellow teens or spending hours every day at the library or watching TV or having in depth discussions with the parental units? I know I spent hours discussing poetry or history or the rules of English or geography outside of the classroom :rolleyes:
Yeah, possibly true for some folks, but IMO for the LARGE majority folks,
not so much.
Could many high schools do a better job? Hell yeah. Is it an absolute waste of time? Hell no if you even give it a half assed try as a student.
It might have been one of our “pioneer nights”.
Remember? We’d cook hot dogs and marshmallows on the grill and spent the entire evening without lights? I just wanted you to appreciate what you had.
Good times, baby girl. Your post made me smile.
I had a great education, courtesy of the Jesuits and Christian Brothers, who encouraged critical thinking, debating and backing up what you are saying… but they would do it in an intimidating way, because corporal punishment awaited you if you were out of line. It was effective. When you spoke up, you were probably backing it up.
One teacher liked to say that ''school should not get in the way of your education".
I wouldn’t say that I learned nothing in high school. But I would say that my ability to retain knowledge that I haven’t subsequently used over the years is very low. My history knowledge, for example, is pretty much kept alive only by cultural references. Factoring in that my first two years of college was just a repeat of grades 9-12, I’d say that, yes, I could’ve comfortably skipped high school with no net effect on my knowledge – which is the same as “learned nothing in high school” (in terms of academic knowledge, anyway).
I can see not learning anything in high school. If you hit just the right (or wrong) combination of track and teacher you could coast your way to a diploma with no expended effort. Due to inexcusable laziness in eighth grade I ended up in shop class English. My freshman English teacher lived for summer vacation. If he was not on a summer vacation he only wanted to talk about a vacation he had taken. Over the course of a year we were to read one book. We were not tested on whether we actually read it. Everyone got As.
And the thing is, people loved his class. Someone was running football pools, somebody else sold things that people wanted but probably should not have, and there was constant free flowing conversation about the general bullshit stuff teenagers talk about. Nobody in that room knew they were being robbed. Until later.
Sometimes the decision is out of the teacher’s hands. I had a 9th grade student one time who could write only his name and address. He had already failed someone else’s 9th grade class and there was no way that I could give him a passing grade. The principal said that since he had failed 9th grade twice, we should give him a chance to see how he would do in the 10th grade. And he changed the grade.
Some of you are really silly talking about how you didn’t learn anything in school. And you (well, most of you) are writing your comments in well-composed sentences. Oh, please.
Ogre, do you mind if I ask which high school in Montgomery? The smartest man I know is a product of the public schools there.
Ah! Are you in the Village? I’ve never been to NYC, but I’ve always wanted to stay at the Chelsea just because of its history. “They” all stayed there. Good choice for your post.
Ogre: Do you mind if I ask which high school in Montgomery? My husband graduated from Lee and went to Vanderbilt. Smartest man I know.
I learned a great deal in HS. Everyone did. But, like everyone else, I have forgotten most of it, since most of it was pretty useless in day to day life. School seems like a waste in that respect, but, just because we don’t use a lot of the knowledge, or don’t even actively remember it, doesn’t mean we don’t benefit from it. My mind was exercised. I probably can put 2 and 2 together faster now because of it. No doubt there are many fragments of that knowledge still floating about helping to make connections so I can understand the world better.
Right now I have 3 part-time jobs at tiny businesses with one boss for each - as a bartender, a barista, and working at a home-renovation business where I do sales, secretarial work, accounting, filing, some design work, and customer consultation. I handle all non-verbal communication because my boss, while intelligent, has about the same ability to communicate through writing that I did when I was 7. But it’s limited to friendly emails to customers and translating his scribbled estimates/invoices into something that makes sense to a layman and sounds professional.
