Table of contents:
- Why am I not sending my children to school?
- Why does a child need school and why do parents need it?
- School doesn't teach children anything
- School interferes with the socialization of children
- Does the school teach these qualities?
2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
This article by Olga Yurkovskaya was first published in the Snob magazine. We, sharing the author's arguments and having a complex relation to the quality of teaching material in the country, publish it without changes.
Why am I not sending my children to school?
A strange question … I am rather puzzled why smart educated city dwellers, especially those who have reached career heights and material security, break their children, innocently imprisoning them for eleven years in this System.
Yes, of course, in the past centuries in the villages the Teacher was much more developed and financially secure, had a higher social status and level of culture than the parents of the children. And now?
Even then the nobles did not send their children to schools, they organized education at home …
Why does a child need school and why do parents need it?
It is very convenient for working parents to put their child in a storage room under minimal supervision, consoling themselves that everyone is doing this. The position of non-working mothers with a wealthy husband looks more strange, who are so stressed by their own children that they even give them away for extended periods … It seems that these children were given birth only as a way to provide for themselves in money and public opinion, almost all of them would have done so.
A child almost never needs school. I have not yet met a single child who would like to continue to go to school at the end of October instead of holidays. Yes, of course, the child wants to chat or play with friends, but not sit in the classroom. That is, if the child is provided with comfortable communication outside of school, attending school completely loses its meaning for the child.
School doesn't teach children anything
Now let's look at popular social myths that make parents mindlessly maim their own children.
Myth one: SCHOOL TEACHES (gives the child knowledge, education)
Modern urban children go to school, already knowing how to read, write and count. No other knowledge acquired in school is used in adult life. The school curriculum consists of a haphazard set of facts to memorize. Why remember them? Yandex will answer any questions much better. Those of the children who choose the appropriate specialization will study physics or chemistry again. The rest after leaving school cannot remember what they were taught all these dreary years.
Considering that the school curriculum has not changed for many decades, and the child's handwriting is much more important in it than blind ten-finger typing on a computer keyboard, the school does not provide a child with any truly useful knowledge and skills for further success in adult life. Even if we assume that it is precisely this set of facts for memorizing in a school subject that is really necessary for a child, his can be given ten times faster.
What do tutors successfully do, teaching a child in a hundred hours what a teacher has not taught in 10 years and a thousand hours.
In general, this is a very strange system, when a thousand hours stretches over several years. Already at the institute, each subject is taught in larger blocks for six months or a year. And a very strange teaching method, when children are forced to sit still and listen to something.
The experience of numerous parents of applicants shows that several years of studying a subject - over a thousand hours at school plus homework - do not help a student to know the subject in a volume sufficient to enter a good university. In the last two school years, a tutor is hired and re-teaches the child in this subject - usually a hundred hours is enough to be among the best in the class.
I believe that a tutor (or computer programs, interesting textbooks with live text, educational films, specialized circles and courses) can be taken from the very beginning, in grades 5-6-7, without torturing the child, beforehand with this thousand hours:) the free time the child can find something to his liking, INSTEAD OF SCHOOL.
School interferes with the socialization of children
Myth two: SCHOOL IS NECESSARY for the socialization of the child
Socialization is the process of assimilation by an individual of patterns of behavior, psychological attitudes, social norms and values, knowledge, skills that allow him to function successfullyin society. (Wikipedia)
What can be considered a success in society? Who do we consider to be successful people? As a rule, they are well-established professionals who earn good money in their craft. Dear people who do their job very efficiently and get decent money for it.
In any area. Perhaps entrepreneurs - business owners.
Top managers. Major government officials. Prominent public figures. Popular athletes, artists, writers.
These people are distinguished in the first place ability to achieve your goals … Thinking speed. Ability to act. Activity. Strength of will. Perseverance. And, as a rule, they put in a lot of effort to achieve a result. They know how not to give up the case halfway through. Excellent communication skills - negotiation, sales, public speaking, effective social connections. The skill to make decisions instantly and do it right away. Stress tolerance. Fast high-quality work with information. The ability to concentrate on one thing, dropping everything else. Observation. Intuition. Sensitivity. Leadership skills. The ability to make choices and be responsible for them. Sincere passion for your work. And not only by their own business - their interest in life and cognitive activity is often no worse than that of preschoolers. They know how to give up unnecessary things.
They know how to find good teachers (mentors) and quickly learn what is important for their development and career.
Think systematically and easily take a metaposition.
Does the school teach these qualities?
Rather, on the contrary …
All the years of school, it is obvious that we are not talking about any sincere enthusiasm - even if the student manages to get carried away with a couple of subjects, they cannot be chosen by abandoning the uninteresting. They cannot be studied deeply within the school. Most often they are carried away outside of school.
Nobody is interested in the achievement of the result - the bell rang, and you are obliged to give up what you have not completed and go to the next lesson.
All 11 years old children are taught that the result is unnecessary and not important.
Any business should be dropped halfway through the call.
Thinking speed? When targeting middle peasants or weak students? With outdated ineffective teaching methods? With complete intellectual dependence on the teacher, when is only thoughtless repetition of previously voiced facts allowed? A student with a high speed of thinking in the classroom is simply not interested. At best, the teacher simply does not bother him to read under the desk.
Strength of will? Activity? The system will make every effort to make the child obedient. “Be like everyone else. Keep your head down, is this the wisdom of life that is needed for adult success in society?
High-quality work with information is not taught at school - the majority of average students stupidly do not understand the text they have read, cannot analyze and formulate the main idea.
Responsibility for choice? So the students are not given a choice.
Negotiations and public speaking? Developing intuition and sensitivity?
Leadership skills? Ability to act? Not included in the program at all.
The ability to abandon the unnecessary is required to be replaced by the opposite ability to endure the unnecessary and useless for years.
Instead of internal reference, children develop emotional dependence on the often preconceived opinions of others in the person of the teacher. This happens against the background of the complete control of the student. A child has no right to express his or her own opinion with impunity.
Alas, one can only dream of good teachers at school. More often than not, few urban parents are less educated and successful in society than teachers in order to prefer the teacher as a role model. With modern teachers there is a so-called “double negative selection”: first, those who could not get points in a more prestigious university enter the pedagogical universities, and then only the least initiative of the graduates stay to work at the school, the rest find a higher-paid and prestigious job.
In general, the only society that looks like a school in adulthood is prison. But it is easier for prisoners there than for children: they are of different ages, with different interests, they are not forced to do an uninteresting business. There they understand what they are punished for. They will be released earlier than 11 years later, if they have not received a sentence for the murder.
Adults have a choice: what to do (and you can always change your job and boss), with whom to communicate, what should be considered the result, what interests to have.
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