my nephew started school this week
and i fear for his life.
i fear our system that teaches
the rote memorization of facts we’re quick to forget
The immediate or proximate cause of war was the assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.
after the test
punishes thinking/exploring
Begin by dividing the left-most digit of the dividend by the divisor. The quotient (rounded down to an integer) becomes the first digit of the result, and the remainder is calculated (this step is notated as a subtraction). This remainder carries forward when the process is repeated on the following digit of the dividend (notated as ‘bringing down’ the next digit to the remainder). When all digits have been processed and no remainder is left, the process is complete.
caring only about arriving at the correct answer
You then have 25 minutes to complete 20 questions.
quickly
doesn’t matter
if you cheated
just did you bubble in the correct circles
in fact as i write
they’re probably teaching him
the correct way to hold a pencil
the correct way to draw his letters
the correct way to sit silently
accept boredom as intrinsic to education
the correct way to kill curiosity
and intellectual creativity.
*All random facts come from Wikipedia (as they usually do).
couldn’t agree more….would be nice if they would start teaching people HOW to think….not WHAT to think….
Ugh school system fail.
school, the absolute bore… All I learned from it was how to effectively space out, forget all about being human or pupil and engage in a fantasy world… no wonder i turn out so wrong. In the end, memorizing facts might not be so bad (comparatively that is). For instance, knowing the exact date of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is better than believing yourself to be the the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s whiskers(thus feeling persecuted by the amount of soup and other gross liquids consummed by the Archduke in question)
i’m with freaky on this. everything he said.
plus.
holy crap i had no idea how bored i was in school until the first year I was out of it.
since then its been 3 years back in it… and at least 6 more to go… wow… my life is miserable sometimes.
it’s such a delightfully wonderful feeling when you realize that you are about to be done with school and never have to go back. A world of infinite possibility opens up to you with all of the free time that you will not have. Which is exactly why i hope that i never get a phd…