WHY FIRST GRADE TO 12TH IS COMPLETELY USELESS, INCLUDING PARTS OF COLLEGE ..

Depends on the teachers, I guess. Some encourage creative thinking (unfortunately it is rare exception rather than a rule, as it should be - I only had 3 of those and only because I was moving much). With such teacher you are done with the program in few months (less than school year) and for rest, depending on the teacher you are either learning "extra" things or spend time on things unrelated to class' subject.

Unfortunately, more often you need to memorize stuff, here in Poland we have that nice shortcut for it: Zzz. Zakuj (memorize). Zdaj (pass). Zapomnij (forget).

Seriously, in most cases you don't remember what the exam was about, ESPECIALLY if you don't like subject.

Skip all your schooling and survive with only a kindergarten education, using this one weird trick discovered by a mom

author=LockeZ
Skip all your schooling and survive with only a kindergarten education, using this one weird trick discovered by a mom

School officials HATE her.

It's not really the school system that sucks, it's how horribly ineffiecient it is that is the problem.

Before critisizing education (look at how I spelled criticizing), educate yourself about it. By the way, I received my professional education from apprenticeship, just to illustrate the point Bandito is trying make.

First, let us take a look at the issue of standardized spelling:

This seems to make excellent sense to improving literacy but let's examine what it really means, and where it really comes from. It is a relatively new idea in education, having only been introduced in the late 1800s to schools (at this time, there was no public education, at least in the United States), though the idea had been toyed with before. Before this, words were spelled, within reason, based on how they sounded. Oh, and you should know that individual characters have there own interpretation in truly educated writing (did you know that there is cause to believe that the cipher "F" is more accurately used in the way we use "S" and indeed, "D" has been mistaken in our modern language for "R".).

Before you can truly understand a word, how to spell it, and how to use it, you must understand that ciphers that they are composed of. What would you make of the Letter A? A is the Roman form of the cipher, Alpha, in Hebrew Aleph (Aleph may look nothing like A, but if you understand how Aleph came to be drawn, you'll understand how it influences A). There are places in Rome where people used to meet to hold intelligent conversation, much like the parks of modern times where people now meet to play chess. These places were grassy knolls in the midst of a three way intersection. Now envision this in your head, three streets, crisscrossing, and between the three, a triangle where people meet to exchange knowledge. Three Way. You already know what this is in Latin, but in case you can't think of it, let me go ahead and translate it for you, TRI-VIA.

The letter A is the first and most important of letters as it is embodiment (or embodyment) of knowledge and wisdom. You see the tri-via atop with rays shining down from it upon those who would seek knowledge. Note even that the Letter A is the symbol of achievement in today's schools.

Writing has almost always been developed by the priesthoods of ancient cultures, these figures needing a way of preserving the wisdom they acquired from their meditations and their beliefs, and when they had an epiphany that bestowed upon them what they felt was dangerous knowledge, a way of encoding their writings so that the common reader would not grasp the depth of what he or she was reading (again, this alludes to the deeper meaning of letters). Monks and priests were responsible for the recording of all knowledge throughout history because of their ability to read and write: all births and deaths, all major events, battles, coronation, and on, and on, and on; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, the Domesday Book, Di Excidio, etc., etc., etc.

These religious orders have almost been solely responsible for the development of such things as special characters and shorthand over the millennia. This is with no standardized form of writing. Let it be shown that modern schools teach us that such men as Daniel Boone, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Davy Crocket were illiterate because their spelling did not always adhere to modern writing standards. Yet, standardized writing has become one of the many false gods of modern education. To speak against it is ruinous blasphemy.

The problem with standardized writing is that it, by design, diminishes the alphabet to the role of nothing more than Lego blocks. Most people don't know that the letter C represents a cup that ancient people used when playing a game of dice. Therefore, it would never occur to you that when C appears in a word, it, by its principle meaning, represents an element of chance (just look at the full, oral, written and etymological meanings of OCCUR, PRINCIPLE, and CHANCE and you will see the truth of this). We sing the Alphabet Song and are never taught that we haven't begun to understand it.

We thus establish that the education of reading and writing, not only existing before the advent of standardized and public education, but the reader and writer of old was more literate than the modern reader and writer, the argument in support of maintaining standardization being that more people are educated because of it (patently untrue: more people are educated because they have easier access to education, not because of standardization. As a matter of fact, the argument is ongoing and there is more evidence for than against that, far from educating us, standardization is actually dumbing down our understanding of the written letter).

I am an example of an educational failure, having had nothing but poor grades, and having dropped out after flunking my senior year, and ultimately having never attended college. Let me ask you: do you think I understand the written letter?

Or verily, I could chuse to rite in an olde grafologie and shew that there is ashuredly no use to standardization err to enshure that all prose look alike.

The sentence above is not uneducated, it is archaic, all spellings having been used by men universally accepted to be of the highest learning.

The next point is that the teaching of facts is not education:

If you show a man what fire does, how it works, its benefits, its shortcomings, and the harm it can do, and then invite him to put his hand in the fire, that man will learn respect for fire. If you simply show him how to make fire and nothing else, he will start a forest fire.

There is a reason knowledge was kept secret. Anyone who wished knowledge throughout history, was welcome to it, and elders would gladly teach them, but not until such knowledge was earned. Pythagoras delved into philosophy and the deepest secrets of numbers, becoming the father of what we know as mathematics. You can thank Pythagoras for the existence of the modern computer, architecture, and even RPG Maker owes him thanks for its existence. Note that anyone could join his school, but would not be taught until a promise made never to write down or reveal the secrets of numbers. As such, no writings by Pythagoras exist, except for varying scraps that have nothing to do with his math or philosophy.

Children in the modern public school system have no respect for knowledge, no respect for facts, and are taught arcane mathematical philosophical secrets without understanding the reasoning that led to those secrets.

A young man goes to India and seeks out a guru of Yoga and demands magical knowledge. The cunning guru is more than happy to grant the young man's request, but not on the whim of the young man. With great caution and secrecy, he points to a random, innocuous spot on the young man's body and says, "I will give you what you want, but first, you must wash in the Ganges every day for a week without thinking of that spot." Of course, the frustrated youth spends the week thinking of little else, but rest assured, the guru will teach the youth nothing until this task is accomplished and he has his way of knowing whether or not you have succeeded (there is a certain way the mind behaves when one has successfully focused on such a task that reveals itself in speech and manner).

One need only look at the comments section of most Yahoo articles to see the truth of fools in possession of facts. Our modern "enlightened" society is overrun with educated idiots. There are levels of education that must be achieved before higher education can advance. Where our public education has currently failed is at the "Comprehension and Understanding" level. If we have not mastered ourselves, how can we master anything else?

Now let me ask you: Do you think me an educated idiot?

Our education system is flawed by design. This is not a failure. It's deliberate:

Up until the beginning of the 1900s, school was either by homeschooling or in schoolhouses. Our current education system was conceived and developed by John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, bless him, was responsible for our modern library system. Rockefeller had other ideas about education. It was his concern that the average citizen given a classical education would become a competitor in existing business, which was all fine and good, but if everyone in America was so educated, it would create an entire society of people competing with the wealthy for success and privilege.

It was Rockefeller's opinion that the people of America should not be educated to succeed. Instead, they should be trained to fill roles in society. We can't all be ambitious successes after all. There simply has to be an existing peasantry to bottle soda, operate cash registers, and till fields. What you are failing to understand is that the rote memorization and the acts of repetition that embody our school system today aren't intended to educate us at all, but to train us as obedient, efficient workers. Foreign languages (which should be taught when the child is still developing between the ages of 4 and 8) aren't taught until we are well into our teens, when it is too late for most of us to effectively learn them (those that do are commonly also those that learned to play a musical instrument in their youth). In Japan, there is a joke: "What do you call a person that speaks only one language? American."

People believe they learn history in school. You actually don't. History is optional. What you think is history is called "Social Sciences", which is nothing more than a church of the same type of superstitious mythology that you learn in any religious institution. You learn that Betsy Ross created the first American flag (she didn't), that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and told his father that he could not tell a lie (Washington did nothing of the sort and he didn't say he did either), and that Christopher Columbus discovered America (look up Lief Ericsson). What you don't learn is that Andrew Johnson ordered the extermination of all Native Americans (a campaign that almost succeeded), that John Smith was murdered by his men and that Pocahontas was taken as a slave by John Wolfe (she died of smallpox at the age of 19. Wolfe didn't even think enough of her to provide a doctor), and that between the decades of 1920 and 1980 (and in some states it still continues: California springs to mind, where all inmates are required to be sterilized, though the law is long gone.), the United States maintained a policy of forced sterilization of people it deemed genetically inferior (determined by education and financial success and enforced by determining who these people were when they became pregnant and had to go to the hospital, a policy known as eugenics). Try finding any of this in a Holt textbook.

The purpose is to indoctrinate us to believe in the benevolence of our government and obey. Courts, government offices, and the President himself all drills it into the public that the law is the law and must be obeyed, however unjust it may seem, as if these people were omniscient, beyond human authorities. If the framers of our government believed that, we would still be part of the British Empire. In fact, Jefferson, Hancock, Franklin, Washington, and Adams taught quite the opposite. "The Tree of Liberty is watered by the blood of Patriots." Thomas Jefferson "He who sacrifices liberty for security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin.

A final statement. What do most of the greatest people in history have in common?

Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Julius Caesar, Thomas Jefferson, Emperor Constantine, John F. Kennedy...

None of them have ever seen the inside of a public school.

Homeschooling, apprenticeship, private institutions, tutoring...

But let the old saying stand; Caveat Emptor.

calling people weak for arbitrary reasons, on the other hand, is a sign of immense personal strength!

my favourite thing about libertarians is that instead of taking steps to reduce unfair government practices, broaden the opportunities people of all classes have available, etc., most of them just spend their time acting as though all poor people deserve it because (long screed based heavily in the myth of bootstrapping goes here).

Indeed. For me, Public school was the best experience of my life.
That is why I voted for george.W.Bush.

author=Bandito
1. Education doesn't encourage thinking, it just wants you to repeat and memorize.

Bullshit IMO. Education was the best thing to happen to me since Slice Bread. It tests discipline, patience, creative thinking, etc. Education can also provide a means to actually help you find what course/curriculum you want to take. Memorization means little in application work? IDK how their school system works but I still say, BS.

author=Bandito
2. You don't need 12 years of education to learn all the stuff you need to learn.

Another Bullshit. Can you learn advanced Algebra by yourself in just a year and apply it later? Some people still haven't perfected English despite being in it since Elementary. :U

author=Bandito
3. Apprenticeship > Education.

No.no.no.
First of all, you can meet the sweetest and coolest people in school. You are exposed to different Social situations. You can also meet the most inspiring teachers of different fields that will affect your knowledge later on. I don't think a secular apprenticeship program can provide that! Or it could but it'd be a very limited experience.

Also, how can you even take apprenticeship if you don't know what to take or not even exposed to different types of outlet to find what you want to do in the future?

I know you took this from a post Bandito, not really referring that to you :p

The post makes very dumb generalizations about people who get good grades. Under that logic, people who routinely fail their grades are generally intelligent, successful individuals?

I am still young so I have no strong opinion, aside from the fact that I go to school. Memorization is really emphasized compared to the other types of thinking, and it's obvious. There is a school district in my state that has 0% of their students passing standardized tests. That would seem preposterous, but do you think that the public education system is failing them? Or do they not care, and they believe their apparently superior street smarts will project them into success?

Public Education, at least in the U.S., isn't near perfect. The whole argument about the rote memory and repetition seems like that would be given. You obviously can't have everyone or most everyone a wealthy CEO or something, the bottom class(?) is needed. So the fact that not every student is the achieving star of academics that they ideally should be isn't exactly a bad thing.

I don't know, I just feel like I am not getting the best education I should, that quite a few of the teachers that instruct do not care much about your individual education, and its all about the standardized test scores. Nothing I can do about it, but try to take what matters from it all. I still appreciate public education a lot, because I have learned to read and write and interact socially with all sorts of people and have been exposed to so many things I wouldn't have been in a rural Michigan home. People make statements saying that public education is worthless, but it really isn't. It sounds like they aren't satisfied with that they got out of it, which really if they take a step back, is their responsibility to do. Not anyone else's, so there is nobody else to blame as much as their selves. It isn't the responsibility of any other person to force feed you exactly what you should be getting out of your education.

also note that GPA has like nothing to do with how smart or worthy of a human being you are, it is mostly responsibility to do work and such and the ability to memorize and apply things on tests.


if anything should be concerning, it's the cost of college/university! The prices rise with every year and I am concerned affording post-secondary education will be a hefty investment. I am already disadvantaged, so I am hoping going to a University will lift me out of the bottom class at least somewhere in the middle.

author=mawk
calling people weak for arbitrary reasons, on the other hand, is a sign of immense personal strength!

my favourite thing about libertarians is that instead of taking steps to reduce unfair government practices, broaden the opportunities people of all classes have available, etc., most of them just spend their time acting as though all poor people deserve it because (long screed based heavily in the myth of bootstrapping goes here).

Though you have firmly established yourself as a contrarian and a shit-stirrer, I still feel compelled to defend modern libertarianism (aka classical liberalism) as a young, thus underdeveloped, NON-monolithic ideological entity. Generalizations made about "libertarians" are almost always based on an limited, agenda-driven opinions extracted directly from MSNBC.