Joshua Hernandez9 said:First off—that's just wrong.
If you had said "most," maybe we could talk. But generalizing like that doesn't fly for a few reasons:
- Saying "every type of school" covers everything from now to ancient times—including something like a Pythagorean school, where people actually worked to find answers rather than just swallowing "pre-packaged" info.
- Even today, there's still discovery-based learning in schools—it's rare, sure, but it's why schools will always beat any computer-based learning. Google is just another way of serving up finished products. Even those lecture links people post here are basically just standard university lectures designed to deliver a final product—they have the least value when it comes to actually making a student think or get involved.
A package for elementary school?
Duh.
I don't know how things work elsewhere, but even here in the US, plenty of kids in 7th or 8th grade are sent to programs like Science Olympiad or specialized summer camps (not linking, so here's the gist: ). Those might be outside organizations, but they function like schools and work closely with local public schools.
In some high schools, research projects are part of the curriculum—which is how you actually make discoveries;
And at every major university, there are research institutes where students get involved starting freshman year (obviously, they don't take everyone—there's a selection process).
What you seem to be missing is this:
Knowledge isn't something humans just conjure out of thin air.
It's always built on what came before.
You have to master the existing foundation first if you ever want to actually discover something new.
So yeah, formal education is necessary.
I agree that "serving it up" is mostly a bad method—but it's unavoidable sometimes. You can't expect kids to "discover" the alphabet on their own; you have to give it to them. You can't reinvent digits or number systems until you've taught them how the current ones work.
The whole point of knowledge is that it’s basically our cultural inheritance.
Which means its whole purpose is to be passed down.
If it didn't work like that, everything someone learned would just die with them—and they wouldn't have gained much to begin with.
So, schools aren't there to fight the essence of knowledge, they're there to build upon it (as part of that cultural legacy).
What you just wrote—you learned it.
And now you're trying to teach it to others.
How is what you're doing any different from what a school does?
Also—why do you think what you just said can't be taught (or isn't being taught) in a school somewhere?
You're talking about the American school system here.
Sure, maybe it's like that elsewhere, but I know the American way firsthand—having been here, seeing kids struggling over textbooks and notebooks and sheer ignorance. And I remember how things were back when I was in elementary school.
I think even now (based on what people say from those areas), things are just as bad there as they are in most of the US.
It's not true that every single school, everywhere, handles it this way.
There are approaches where kids actually discover knowledge for themselves.
Google is acting up for me right now, but try searching for "hands-on learning" and see what comes up.
Not for me.
It's only about 50 yards from my house, and I spend a few hours there every single day. 😁
in America?
From what I've seen—yeah.
Same goes for Mexico, mostly yes, but for totally different reasons (mostly just incompetent staff)
I really love this concept. I wish we had something integrated into the standard American education system like what they have there.
It’s a bit difficult to respond to everything that’s been said so far (Richard Allen, great job with all those details 👍), but I’ll certainly try my best.
I am currently a sophomore in a math-focused high school, and speaking as someone actually in the thick of it, there is plenty of room for improvement in our educational system.
First off, there is a massive lack of coordination between middle school and high school. At least, that’s definitely the case here in the States. There is a huge amount of material that gets cut from the middle school curriculum, yet that exact same stuff is considered the fundamental foundation for high school. Consequently, high school teachers (take math, for example) have to spend hours re-teaching things students should already know by heart.
There is also an overwhelming amount of data being dumped on students daily through textbooks. Take a geography textbook, for instance—it’s just packed with useless, trivial facts.
Beyond that, the system itself isn't quite where it needs to be. I agree that we are served too much raw information, but I also realize that certain data points are impossible to skip, like the alphabet. What we really need to do is shift the focus toward teaching through comprehension rather than just mindless rote memorization!
By "rote memorization," I mean things like learning the phases of mitosis and meiosis. I know them all by heart (well, mostly :P ) simply because I spent countless hours outside of class repeating the names of the stages until they finally stuck.
On the other hand, take my ethics class. That is the one period where I never once study outside of school hours, yet I remember about 85% of what we cover. In my opinion, that’s because while I spend my biology period frantically scribbling down every phase of mitosis for homework, my ethics teacher lets us actually discuss the topics (of course, stepping in if we drift too far off track). Even if it takes seven class periods to get through two pages of a book, he waits for us to reach the conclusion ourselves regarding why humans differ from animals. He doesn't just dictate it to us to write down for a grade, nor does he force us to memorize it just to test us at the end of the year to gauge our knowledge like my biology teacher does.
To be honest, while I was reading all these empty comments on the thread, I had a flood of ideas on what to write, but now that I'm actually typing it out, I've forgotten most of them. I'll try to swing back by later to see how this discussion evolves. 🙂
EDIT: Regarding languages, I was offered electives in preschool and throughout middle school. I didn't start learning English formally until 4th grade, whereas my sister started in 1st grade. It wasn't until high school that I faced the reality of having a mandatory second language (which is a requirement in both academic and vocational tracks). I have to admit, I never actually "learned" English in a classroom setting; I basically picked it up from watching TV and using the computer later on. Because of that, I consistently pull A's or B's on exams, even though if you asked me to explain when to use the past perfect, I'd look at you like a deer in headlights (since I don't know the grammar rules and, frankly, I never needed them). Dictation used to be a struggle, but today I can easily write a 500-word essay with maybe two or three mistakes. On the flip side, learning a language like Spanish just doesn't come naturally to me. I can read it, but holding a conversation feels like an immense struggle—aside from a few basic introductory phrases, I can't really carry a dialogue. Meanwhile, some of my peers who are studying Spanish just as much as I am are significantly more advanced. This obviously ties back to watching shows frequently, which helps with pronunciation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and overall interest. I don't have that spark for English; it wasn't particularly attractive to me, so I just chose it because it was recommended as the easiest option.
To give you some perspective, my peers back in New York City—I’m currently based down in Miami—have Japanese offered as an elective alongside several other options. Down here, my choices are limited to Spanish, German, French, or Italian. Honestly, my grasp of Spanish might actually be a bit stronger than my Japanese, even though I taught myself the language out of pure passion for the culture, specifically through manga and anime 🙂
. That’s pretty much the situation.