Why do schools waste so much time teaching pointless stuff?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

I’m going to come down rather on BrandonR’s side, here. I learned a lot of pointless stuff in grade school [in the 80’s; don’t know how they do things now]. The best example I have is that for at LEAST four years, maybe five, we learned about protons, neutrons, and electrons, and which ones had mass and which had what kind of charge. One year we did it with colored marshmallows, I remember. And every year, I would learn it for the test, and then forget it, because the knowledge was pointless. It wasn’t until chemistry (a tenth grade class) that I was told anything about why you actually cared about charge and mass (I distinctly remember thinking, “OH!”), and at that point I had no problem remembering, because I knew why it was interesting. (And chemistry was my favorite class until I took physics, though you’d never have guessed that from the trouble I had learning in sixth grade that protons had positive charge.)

(And I went to a school that, while not maybe the best in the country, was far from the worst, and had several quite good teachers, one of which was the colored-marshmallow teacher, who taught me the metric system-- which more than makes up for the marshmallows.)

I think this is the point BrandonR is trying to make; not that this information can’t be taught in an interesting way that enriches the kid’s life, in which case I have no problem with it (obviously I think chemistry has a point, and I approve of teaching Shakespeare too), but that often it is not, and everyone’s time is flat out wasted and it is pointless.

Chessic Sense, you’re lucky. I don’t think I learned a single one of those things in school. My first resume draft was a complete disaster.

102

Diagramming sentences seemed useless to me… until I got to high school and took Latin as my foreign language. At which point, knowing exactly what part of the sentence was the direct object and which was the indirect object was incredibly useful. Without that, I’d never have known which case to make a given noun. That knowledge of grammatical structure continued to be useful into college, where I took Japanese, and beyond, where I’m now in my second job where at least part of my work involves proofing things, and the ability to truly comphrehend grammatical rules is essential.

Babel Fish gives us:

For English → Greek → English. :smiley:

I would not say “no” to a new Home Ec class that taught this kind of stuff.

103

I went to Catholic grade and high schools and you bet we diagrammed sentences. We complained at the time, of course, but it is really useful. Just doing the initial diagramming in school (I’m assuming people don’t continue doing it for a hobby ;)) helps you absorb basic grammar rules so you don’t need to diagram sentences later on.

I went to a college that was known for its engineering programs. I was a writing tutor there and I can’t tell you how much diagramming sentences helped out a lot of engineers. They wouldn’t understand why something like:

Dante Alighieri, who was born in 1265.

wasn’t a complete sentence. If I spent a session showing them how to diagram sentences, you could see the lightbulbs go off. Grammar often makes no sense to engineering types, but if you explain that there is a “formula” for writing proper sentences, it becomes much clearer.

104

I certainly agree with the “kids should be taught ‘how’ to learn, rather than memorize things” but memorization is a big part of education and life in general. A good teacher, I think, would employ both methods (and probably most do). If you don’t think memorizing things is important, I’d have to disagree with your opinion, quite strongly.

Most people do memorize crap and then forget about it, but I’m pretty sure they remember when they are told, rather than having to learn it fresh. In college, I hated memorization tests, because I knew I’d just forget them in a couple weeks. However, I got really good at memorizing a list of crap, quickly, and only for a little while.

I don’t know if this is good, mind you. If I master a programming language, and don’t use it, after 6 months or so I’m almost back to square one.

I’m really for a higher quality of teachers, which could come about with higher pay and higher education requirements. Teachers are our countries lifeblood, IMO. Primary education is more important than college education too. I’ll stand by that any day. Our brains absorb more information, and much faster when we are kids. At that stage in life, we can become geniuses, idiots, or remain pretty average. Hell, if you only learn one language, by the time you get older, it is over pal. I’m 32 and can hardly learn Spanish, and I’ve been hearing it most of my life. Kids that are raised with 3-4 languages, can pick one up later in life no problem.

However, teachers aren’t the only ones responsible for instilling curiosity, learning skills, language and everything else. The parents are, and I blame the whole culture of plopping the kids in front of the TV to avoid that responsibility.

105

Actually, diagramming sentences was one of the cooler things I remember learning in grade school. It helped that it was the best teacher that I ever had that taught it, and also helped that we were in fifth grade where things like that are fun rather than tedious. And it really does help you understand how parts of sentences interact and relate to each other, in a visual way.

Of course, when we got to sixth grade, we were told that diagramming was sooooo hard (despite the fact we’d learned it the previous year) that we could not do it, but we would instead have to learn an “easier” method called Chinese boxes. Now, THAT was a complete and utter waste of time…

106

To a very limited extent I also agree with the OP. Personally, I have never used calculus or algebra since I left high school, nor do I personally know anyone who has.

But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught- but I think what needs to happen is that students shouldn’t be compelled to learn things they’ve obviously got no talent for and will therefore make a conscious decision to avoid later in life.

For example, there’s no point forcing tone-deaf students to learn music. Give them a year of it and if they’re no good at it, let them do something else. They’ve still got some background in it, but they’re not spending years struggling with something they suck at and will never use. Similarly, if you’ve got a student who is a maths whiz but can’t remember the names of Henry VIII’s wives, don’t keep making them memorise it.

I have to say that my school was very good at relating the stuff we were taught to “the real world”, to be fair. But learning is a lifelong process- I wasn’t taught a lot about the history I’m interested in at school; I’ve read and educated myself on the subject because I’m interested in it.

Education that inspires people to learn even more on their own is the best kind, I think.

107

Thus the theories behind democratic- or other student-lead types of schooling.

108

Err… “led”.

109

I wouldn’t go that far… I don’t like what I’ve seen about some of the “Democratic” school models, some of which appear to have “Do nothing” as an option.

I was thinking of something closer to an “Elective” system (like in University), where students can put together a course that works to their strengths, but still ensures they can work out change and percentages, estimate travel time/distance, and have some idea how society works.

110

That some are run poorly or take the concepts too far doesn’t change the underlying principles, which I think are sound. You’re just proposing adding a particular set of minimums or standards to be achieved.

111

Honestly, I have no idea what you’re proposing in practical terms. Of course teachers do more than just “expose one to something.” Teachers pretest to evaluate students’ state of knowledge and zone of proximal development, design lessons with multiple learning styles, provide students with scaffolding to build their knowledge, differentiate lessons according to individual ZPDs, assess learning, and reteach or extend as necessary. It’s not absorption, it’s not exposure, it’s action. Students are participants in their learning–but very few students are so self-motivated that they will initiate the learning on the subjects we need them to learn.

Perhaps if you could provide a concrete proposal of what you think schools should look like, we’ll have something to discuss.

112

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If you were lucky enough to succeed in algebra at that age, then you were probably pretty good at math generally and could have considered the careers where you would need higher math too. Hah! I’d love to have been forced to take so much math, but seeing as I struggled with algebra in the ninth grade, and again in summer school, they reasonably gave up on me. And I was the kid always drawing rockets and airplanes. Ironic, isn’t it.

At least now I could probably ace it.

Wait don’t tell me…you run a hotel in Torquay. And you killed four men in the Korean War by poisoning them, while working in the catering corps?

113

The difficulty there is that most of us change direction at least once in life.

I planned to study linguistics in college, but got hooked on computers and changed to computer science. Got a job as an operating systems programmer. Became fascinated by logic design, got trained by the company I worked for on chip design, and switched to IC design and logic simulation programming. Started writing about what I was doing, and ended up a contributing editor for a magazine, freelancing for others. Started a software company, put a bunch of our equipment into a community college, got a teaching credential, and started teaching at that school. That was all by my early thirties. Now I’ve written over 20 books, mostly children’s science/nature books, own a bookstore, and publish a monthly alternative newspaper. I even have a patent on a video/TV technology.

What’s the point of all of this? If I hadn’t had a good, solid, rounded education covering writing, literature, science, computers, electronics, math, and more, many of these options wouldn’t have been open to me. We don’t know where we’ll end up or what we’ll be interested in when we’re 15 years old.

Forgot the punchline: many of the things I’ve ended up doing were things I had little interest in when I studied them in high school–and I never did go back and learn anything about linguistics.

114

For something that common, beyond the age of about 7, yes it does.

115

Cite?

116

My colleagues and I have agreed that those of us teaching Freshman Comp. should spend at least the first few meetings of every semester going over a basic grammar review. This shouldn’t have to happen in Comp., but we’ve got to do something early on.

117

Heh. My husband has no idea about the names of flowers or trees, besides the really common ones like “rose,” and even then he’s likely to identify it under “white flower” or “red flower” rather than rose.

The names of plants he does know are ones that live around here (manzanita, California live oak) which he obviously didn’t learn in grade school in the Midwest.

And I defy you to find anyone who knows him who thinks he’s an idiot.

118

But does he know that some trees lose their leaves and some don’t? I mean, my boyfriend doesn’t know a petunia from a pansy, but he knows that the pecan trees in our yard drop their leaves and that loblolly pines don’t, and he knows that pollen is trees having sex and that pine cones open up to let the baby tree seeds out. It’s basic level knowledge that everybody of normal intelligence ought to have.

119

Tenth grade, I meant to say, and then eleventh grade summer school.

120

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