Iamepimetheus:
Thank you for writing that.
Unlike some of the people here, I truly appreciate it. My children are now only 14 and 13, both in middle school, but I am reading these posts sometimes, wondering how to better advice my kids.
I think you are right, when you are writing about focusing “too much on what was irrelevant” and ignoring “what mattered”.
I find extremely interesting that people are denying the above points and that people do not understand why there is a problem with being “an interesting person”
My ideas about education are probably very different than most, because I grew up and went thorough school outside of the US.
I have a problem with what seems a very curious and very typical desire of some to immediately label what you wrote as ” disgusting shallowness, ignorance and lack of substance “.
My personal observation, as somebody who didn’t grow up within the American system, is that that in America, students learn for grades, and only incidentally for learning.
In my student years, I hated teachers who simply repeated textbooks: it seemed to me that they wasted my time. I came to the US many years ago, but what still strikes me the most, is that it seems that many students here are quite satisfied if the teacher simply repeats and explains what is written in the textbook.
It seems that some of the students have problems in reading by themselves what is written, although most textbooks are quite elementary.
It seems that teachers are teaching from the text and give exams based on the text or similar problems.
When I go over my kids textbooks I get astonished by the fact that I can’t find absolutely no nonstandard problems.
Many children really want to learn, because curiosity is inherent in human nature. But selfless curiosity is illegal at schools, in the sense that it is neither expected nor supported officially. On the contrary, officials cater to those who want to learn as little as possible.
Parents urge their offspring to get high grades by any means, but fail to add that they care about actual competence, too.
The grade looks like the ultimate value, and neither students, nor parents, nor school officials see anything wrong with this. They invest more efforts into pushing for grades than for understanding.
Some students are so busy and anxious counting points on tests and predicting grades that they have no “mental room” left to think about.
It seems that children always learn under the lash of grades, never from natural curiosity, some students just cannot imagine that learning might be of intrinsic value, besides official graduation. And they might go through many years of schooling, communicate with teachers and officials, graduate from an elementary school, middle school, high school, and a university, and never have a chance to question this!
Unless they meet some irritating foreigner!
I would say it is quite difficult for a kid that goes thorough such school system to make himself “ an interesting person.”
Anyway, thank you again for your post!
