Comments on: Why Kids Hate School (Pt. 1)

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:12:54 +0000

Interesting sites. I’m only partially with you on this stuff, though. People love to hate stuff, so you have to be careful that you don’t entice people into creeping into conspiracy theory.

Sure, in general, schools suck. But not because kids don’t like them. Veggies are good for you and kids hate them – that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with veggies.

But I agree with most of your premises. Either way, it’s good that you are pointing out a lot of the stuff you are pointing out. We need to do something about our schools. But first I’d like to figure out what it should be before we burn the schoolhouses down, you know?

By: Aminhotep

Aminhotep — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:37:39 +0000

There are other sites with similar concerns about the morality-based design doctrine of public school. Please check out these other links:

School Sucks Podcast http://schoolsucks.podomatic.c.....4_06-08_00

The Class Struggle http://wp.me/ptcfd-1L

By: penny

penny — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:19:25 +0000

To give you an idea how far the mighty have fallen, I grew up in the East South Bronx in NYC.

We used to CARE about education in America–now we care about image, politics, and measurement of the mediocre.

Professor Homunculus sez:

Amen, sister!

By: penny

penny — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:13:45 +0000

Gee, I went to public schools. We had excellent math and physics courses in H.S. This included
a physics course where we derived the Bohr Atom, and PV=nrt from the hypothesis of statistical
chaos. I had an excellent electronics course. Also first rate English and History courses.
We read Chaucer in Middle English, and Beowulf in translation. In French Class, we read Zola
and Victor Hugo.
In elementary school, my fifth grade classroom had books by H.G. Wells, Poe, and Milton.
My fourth grade class had excellent science–I learned there to build and design electric motors and generators, and to use an oil immersion microscope.
Such was life in the 1960′s in the NYC public schools.

Many of my high school teachers were bona fide radicals–one lost his job for a protest against saluting the flag, and others had marched in the civil rights demonstrations. Many were card carrying socialists–red diaper babies–who actually believed that it was a socialist goal to teach their middle class and lower class kids to think and read and question authority.

Today, elementary school is about job training–not about education ( which comes from the same root as “educe”–to bring out.)

AMERICA HAS DESTROYED ITS PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM–ONCE THE BEST IN THE WORLD.

By: Alane Tentoni

Alane Tentoni — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:16:25 +0000

What I hate is the whole age-grouping thing. Ideally, they should dig deep, master skills, and use them in later lessons, but many kids don’t master anything. They just drift from C to D to C, not really retaining anything and not caring, because there’s no incentive to excel. No easy answer to it, I guess. And you’re right – the furniture is institutional because institutional is cheap — it’s all about the bucks!