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Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

forbes.com

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Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#71

Post by parfe »

ktizo wrote: post #69
parfe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said from your safe little bubble. Dangerous is "I might misstep by half an inch and orphan the children." The college educated computer workers who post here haven't experienced danger since climbing trees as children. And certainly don't experience danger professionally. Roofing a house is dangerous. Delivering Pizza is dangerous. Picking between State U vs Private U? Choosing between Python and Ruby? Choosing betw…

Speaking as a college educated computer worker who posts here, I suspect that you might not have a clue. I spent a lot of last summer welding heavy metal, I am no stranger to hard-hats, safety boots and building sites. I have worked assembly, labour and construction, alongside code, graphics and networks. I get bored of desks quite regularly and have to go off and lift heavy things for a while. Is a bit like going to…

Did you really think you needed to point out that I might be making a sweeping generalization about tens of thousands of users? I'm glad you decided to share.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#72

Post by ktizo »

parfe wrote: post #71
ktizo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a college educated computer worker who posts here, I suspect that you might not have a clue. I spent a lot of last summer welding heavy metal, I am no stranger to hard-hats, safety boots and building sites. I have worked assembly, labour and construction, alongside code, graphics and networks. I get bored of desks quite regularly and have to go off and lift heavy things for a while. Is a bit like going to…

Did you really think you needed to point out that I might be making a sweeping generalization about tens of thousands of users? I'm glad you decided to share.

Well, from the way you stated your first post, I thought it might be worth reminding you, yes.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#73

Post by planetguy »

jerf wrote: post #57
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great observation. The list is bewildering to me as well. I think the author is trying to play up this strawman of conservative authoritarianism and perhaps reflects her upbringing but I don't think its typical of the American educational experience. "The best and brightest follow the rules" bothers me the most. From a young age I've been taught by the establishment that inventors and industrialists who pur…

They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers." They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a schedule... and probably even the teacher…

They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority

People don't need to be taught to question authority, they figure it out on their own at a pretty young age. Usually the moment an authority tells them to do something that they don't want to do.

At the age of two, "questioning authority" manifests itself by throwing a tantrum in the supermarket when the authority tells you to stop trying to grab things off the shelves. At the age of fifteen, "questioning authority" has moved on to the more direct form in which you assert that your parents and teachers are idiots who don't know anything and that you should be allowed to smoke, skip school and pierce your septum if you feel like it.

The process of growing up is largely a matter of getting out of this phase and accepting that actually those authority figures were right about some things all along.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years" -- Mark Twain (maybe, though snopes says falsely attributed)

Everybody on Earth fancies themselves anti-authoritarian; it's easy to be anti-authoritarian when an authority is telling you to do something you don't want to do, though much harder when the authority is telling other people to do things that you really think they ought to.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#74

Post by planetguy »

ktizo wrote: post #22

I always suspected that the way that schools were set up was borrowed heavily from the old establishments for training the children of the lower ranks of the aristocracy in how to be military officers. The regimentation and rote of your average maths classroom was obviously never designed for teaching the subject, yet is the main memory of the experience for most people, rather than what is supposedly being taught.

I thought one of the things we'd learned over the last decades was that when the hippies took over the education department and took all the regimentation and repetition out of the classroom, the result was a bunch of students who didn't understand the material.

Meanwhile, Asian schools were cranking out kids who had actually understood the material. How 'bout that?

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#75

Post by Goronmon »

planetguy wrote: post #73
jerf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers." They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a schedule... and probably even the teacher…

They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority People don't need to be taught to question authority, they figure it out on their own at a pretty young age. Usually the moment an authority tells them to do something that they don't want to do. At the age of two, "questioning authority" manifests itself by throwing a tantrum in the supermarket when the authority tells you…

I feel like you are twisting the meaning of the phrase "questioning authority" into basically pure "rebelling against authority" as I would say they are two separate ideas.

The notion of "questioning authority" I would argue is similar to your statement of accepting that authority figures are right about some things, as in, they are most likely not right about all things and that it is important to spend time figuring out which is which.

I'm not sure where that is similar at all to the idea of a child throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#76

Post by ktizo »

planetguy wrote: post #74
ktizo wrote: post #22

I always suspected that the way that schools were set up was borrowed heavily from the old establishments for training the children of the lower ranks of the aristocracy in how to be military officers. The regimentation and rote of your average maths classroom was obviously never designed for teaching the subject, yet is the main memory of the experience for most people, rather than what is supposedly being taught.

I thought one of the things we'd learned over the last decades was that when the hippies took over the education department and took all the regimentation and repetition out of the classroom, the result was a bunch of students who didn't understand the material. Meanwhile, Asian schools were cranking out kids who had actually understood the material. How 'bout that?

If you think hippies have removed all the regimentation and repetition from schools, can you please explain the existence of repetition and regimentation in schools. Or am I imagining it?

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#77

Post by agumonkey »

PaperclipTaken wrote: post #32
rglover wrote: post #4

I wish I could recall the name, but I read an essay on the general concept of this topic not too long ago. Essentially the author referenced how schools are stratified into a series of groups: lower class, lower middle class, upper middle class, and elite (not sure if these are 100% accurate). The author explained (from a series of in-person observations) the differences in education at each of the various levels. Ch…

I can relate to this based on my experiences from high school. I don't think that things are structured like this intentionally. (I think that few teachers and principal's would intentionally hold back the lower class students) But, if you have a kid who tends to do his homework less, think school is 'not cool,' and in general doesn't like authority (something I feel was more prevalent among the poorer students in my…

I'd add some theories cynically stating that the education, at times, designed to sustain replenishment of industry and nothing more.

I guess i'm more individualist than pluralist, but it seems too much of a society-impeded existence rather than growing of the inner self. I'm also tempted to bet that this layered approach you experienced, by providing tension between layers, is endebting us more in the long run.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#78

Post by Eliezer »

kitsune_ wrote: post #17

Errr? I don't know what schools are like in the Unites States, but I was probably taught the exact opposite of what is presented in this Forbes Article. For instance: "The people in charge have all the answers." > My history teacher would like to have word with you.

Did you ever have a word with your history teacher?

Did anyone in your class ever stand up and contradict the history teacher, about anything, and not get slapped down for it? Did the history teacher ever once say, "Huh, I guess you're right about that"?

You are exactly illustrating the point. Your history teacher is the one who gets to have the word.

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#79

Post by sp332 »

parfe wrote: post #54
mhurron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dangerous does not have to mean deadly.

Said from your safe little bubble. Dangerous is "I might misstep by half an inch and orphan the children." The college educated computer workers who post here haven't experienced danger since climbing trees as children. And certainly don't experience danger professionally. Roofing a house is dangerous. Delivering Pizza is dangerous. Picking between State U vs Private U? Choosing between Python and Ruby? Choosing betw…

Dangerous is "lying to these kids to keep them under control now might destroy trillions in future economic productivity and expose the country to financial blackmail by foreign interests, leading to the decline of our entire culture/civilization".

Re: Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

#80

Post by [deleted] »

planetguy wrote: post #74
ktizo wrote: post #22

I always suspected that the way that schools were set up was borrowed heavily from the old establishments for training the children of the lower ranks of the aristocracy in how to be military officers. The regimentation and rote of your average maths classroom was obviously never designed for teaching the subject, yet is the main memory of the experience for most people, rather than what is supposedly being taught.

I thought one of the things we'd learned over the last decades was that when the hippies took over the education department and took all the regimentation and repetition out of the classroom, the result was a bunch of students who didn't understand the material. Meanwhile, Asian schools were cranking out kids who had actually understood the material. How 'bout that?

[deleted]
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