Ask HN: For those of you who hated public school, how would you change it?

6 points by quadrin 6 years ago | 5 comments

Currently enrolled in one right now, and I am curious to how public schools could cater to:

-autodidacts

-ambitious kids in mediocre environments

-fixing the college is the only respectable path mindset

-implementing more freedoms in terms of courses (I fail to see why literature would be useful to a math-minded student)

I strongly feel that the US public school system is broken for all of the reasons above being neglected. I'm curious to what solutions there could be to these issues.

lacbuddah 6 years ago |

Public school is designed to teach a broad array of fundamental skills to a large audience. It's also an educational complex (industrial complex) in itself - a lot of people make a living in the public school space. Not just the visible people like your teachers or office staff, but custodians and district administrators, organizations and unions behind the scenes and all the logistics chains that sell all the goods the school consume. It's crazy huge and won't easily be changed which is why it doesn't change.

Even with that said, It's not designed for autodidacts. However, you should take away from school the skills on HOW TO LEARN. Then use those skills to teach yourself whatever you want. Public school serves as a base or platform, ie not the education to be achieved but the platform you use to then achieve want you want to learn.

It might also seem trivial that public school repeats or overlaps a lot of the same topics year over year, but this is to improve your comprehension. Think of it like watching your favorite movie, each time you watch it you notice something different. Each time you read, write, solve an equation, etc, you are increasing your efficiency and/or effectiveness to do those things better the next time, and next time, ad infinitum for life.

Fast forward both of the above, you're now in your career and able to out think, out maneuver your coworkers. If you start a business, you now can out think and out maneuver your competitors. It's far easier to change yourself by getting the skills you want out of school, then necessarily changing the school to give you those things.

Set goals, polish your lense, and put in the work - it all pays off later.

sloaken 6 years ago |

Class size is a biggie on the repair list. I believe if you have class size of 10, your first 2 issues go away.

For the 'college of bust' mentality, there are multiple issues here. I believe it is a failure to rate schools/teachers. Without a better method the only yard stick left is: how many go on to college. Germany has an interesting system. Although I have had some German friends say they hate it.

Your last point, and when I was your age, I agreed with. However, somewhere around the age of 35 I realized it was a good thing. I cannot promise you the same, but I can safely say, the smart money is betting that way.

Your last point, and when I was your age, I agreed with. However, somewhere around the age of 35 I realized it was a good thing.

jlongr 6 years ago |

I think that at least two of your four points are primarily concerned with gifted and talented students (autodidacts, ambitious kids).

I would like to point out that calling the US public school system broken because it doesn't sufficiently serve exceptional students seems to ignore the plight of many kids who face problems including but not limited to: bullying, learning disabilities, domestic instability, or food insecurity.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for not really answering your question.

butteredpopcorn 6 years ago |

“Unschooling” might interest you.

framebit 6 years ago |

My public magnet high school was a weird setup where the kids had a huge variety of educational backgrounds.

It was striking to me to be alongside kids who were naturally intelligent and gifted but who had gone to really crappy elementary and middle schools. I remember a math class in 10th grade where the boy next to me was really struggling through his work and shyly asked if I knew what he was doing wrong. I, in my arrogant 10th grade way, told him "don't you know about the commutative property??" And he gave me a blank look in response. When I explained it, he immediately understood and flew through the rest of his work with no issue. That was when it really hit me that I was no smarter than him, I just had the privilege of an elementary and middle school education that didn't suck. That boy has gone on to get a Masters from Yale and I think he might be working on his doctorate now, but he had to work hard to fill in some fundamental gaps.

I'm truthfully alarmed by the "free college" debate because of credential inflation. Our high school diplomas are nearly worthless, a bachelor's degree has become compulsory for a lot of careers that shouldn't need it, and graduate school is leaning the same way. I would rather see us as a country fix elementary and middle school education so we can make high school education meaningful again. While we're at it, my county took away stuff like auto shop and any kind of trade school class, which is ridiculous and even criminal IMO.

Of course, so much of what we talk about when we talk about education is inequality. In the haunting (paraphrased) words of one teacher that I heard on a podcast, "How am I supposed to teach them long division when they haven't eaten in days and they're going to get raped tonight when they go home." That whole "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" study didn't control for household income, so all it really showed was that kids who are food insecure do way better on standardized tests when they eat anything at all beforehand.

There was also an interesting article in The Atlantic[1] recently discussing the really strange US practice of teaching skills instead of knowledge. The idea is that kids learn how to learn, but the outcome is that they're horrifically confused and don't know what or why they're learning anything. When teachers switched back to knowledge based curricula, the measurement of skills went way up.

I suppose this is a rambly non-answer. I grieve the state of public education in the US where so many good people face so many barriers (poverty, clueless administration, their own food and housing insecurity, etc.) to doing good work.

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-rad...