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Are you implying we should school them the Spartan way rather then? Would that prepare them for life in a better way? Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.
Is that the aim of schools? It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered. All around school was a giant waste of time.
So some self proclaimed smart person “learned nothing”, and therefore school is a waste of time. At the same time, ignoring that maybe a school or system is indeed not prepared to handle some individuals (which is not good), or that maybe some teachers are bad, or maybe the system does not support their staff enough. But that can’t be the case because they learned nothing. Whole school system must be a scam.
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
You pose this as a question, but I find it's quite easy to say "we need to achieve this some other way" but then not having a concrete suggestion what that other way could be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that the aim of schools? It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered. All around school was a giant waste of time.
You have put your finger on something - the actual purpose of school is to socialise children (it isn't very efficient as a teaching system - tutoring is better and what the people who really care about educational attainment use). But a side effect is teaching them a lot of useful things. And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it…
I agree that this is probably the most important thing for children to learn. My point is that sitting in a room for 8 hours does very little to accomplish that.
>And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a difference.
I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster.
To talk about schooling we first have to make clear what the goal is. Sure everybody needs to learn how to read, write and do basic arithmetic, but that is not a 12 year endeavor. Even including basic general knowledge is not a 12 year endeavor. And we should not be wasting children's time on things, just because we can't be bothered to have them do something actually meaningful.
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
So I fear if we do not want them to be addicted we have to prohibit things (it does not need to be smartphones, it could be mechanisms on these devices).
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not like they're going back to quills and ink.
Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a simple mobile phone with texting/calling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
partially to guarantee a base level of competence and knowledge, partly to condition a society of good workers. the modern public school system was designed during the height of the industrial revolution to pump out laborers. by adulthood it seems natural to show up in the morning, complete tasks assigned by authority figures, receive discipline or praise, then go home for dinner.
Given that schools totally fail at these, can't we consider making children do something else. Something which does not involve sitting in classrooms for 8 hours a day and learning nothing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What is the point of school? Why do children have to spend 12 years of their lives learning basically nothing and coming out anything but well formed adults. So that every kid has a uniform and common base of knowledge that helps them understand the world around them, and enables them to go further by learning more or starting to work. With no mandatory schooling, most kids would be illiterate and ignorant. A lot o…
>So that every kid has a uniform and common base of knowledge that helps them understand the world around them, and enables them to go further by learning more or starting to work. Oh, I must have missed that class.