Why can't I just say No or Yes?

Gizametalman

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I was actually wondering something, and I am a bit curious about it. Perhaps, writting this will make an influence in you...

So... maybe (maybe not) you may know me a little bit. If you do, or if you don't, you should know that I am a big, huge "fan" of studying. Literally, studying is one of my hobbies. That and painting and music.
But what I've been wondering quite a lot, for the past 10 years or so. is the following question:

Why can't we all decide from an early age, and go on from there?


For instance... in order to be... let's say, a Physicist, or an Art Teacher, or Musician, or something else... why do we have to go through 15+ years of shool studying useless stuff?
Let's say that I want to be an Art Teacher. Why do I have to go through 10 years of Chemistry?
If you want to be a Physicist, why do you have to attend Philosophy classes?
If you want to be a Doctor, wouldn't learn History be a little useless at the end?
Why can't we all decide what we want to be and study exclusively all what it takes to be what we want to be?

Wouldn't that be a better way to develop ourselves as humans and as individuals?
If you really think abou it, in order to become that what you want to be, you have to spend YEARS of your life studying useless stuff. Even worse, if your grades aren't good enough, you have less probabilites to become that what you want to become. And to worse things a little more, bad grades prevents you to keep progressing with your studies.

Why can't we all have the freedom, at a young age to see what we love to do, and stick with it for the rest of our lives?

I'm aware that most stuff will be used once or twice throughout your entire life (have you used Geometry in order to get a job? Have you used your Foreign Languages to get a couple? Have you used your 9th grade knowledge to get a house?)... but why spend so much time with school?

Why can't we just keep with the stuff that we know is ultimately good for us?

What's your opinon? What do you think about all of this?
 
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Gizametalman

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Well, the thing is, you never actually know how you're going to end up.
A friend of my father's, when he was a kid, he said that he wanted to be a priest or something.
He works on video editing and designing.
That is actually what this is about.
Is about, finding exactly what you want to be, and work on it.
Without barriers. Without pressures.

I believe that the current "social system" is fucked up, so fucked up that it prevents you to realize as an individual.
 

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It's not like that.
I'm not encouraging to leave school.
Just to change the system... personally.

School shouldn't be yet another barrier to become whatever you want to be.
The lyrics make more sense, it's more about what is wrongly made compulsory to learn than telling you not to go.
 
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FAST6191

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I was actually wondering something, and I am a bit curious about it. Perhaps, writting this will make an influence in you...

So... maybe (maybe not) you may know me a little bit. If you do, or if you don't, you should know that I am a big, huge "fan" of studying. Literally, studying is one of my hobbies. That and painting and music.
But what I've been wondering quite a lot, for the past 10 years or so. is the following question:

Why can't we all decide from an early age, and go on from there?


For instance... in order to be... let's say, a Physicist, or an Art Teacher, or Musician, or something else... why do we have to go through 15+ years of shool studying useless stuff?
Let's say that I want to be an Art Teacher. Why do I have to go through 10 years of Chemistry?
If you want to be a Physicist, why do you have to attend Philosophy classes?
If you want to be a Doctor, wouldn't learn History be a little useless at the end?
Why can't we all decide what we want to be and study exclusively all what it takes to be what we want to be?

Wouldn't that be a better way to develop ourselves as humans and as individuals?
If you really think abou it, in order to become that what you want to be, you have to spend YEARS of your life studying useless stuff. Even worse, if your grades aren't good enough, you have less probabilites to become that what you want to become. And to worse things a little more, bad grades prevents you to keep progressing with your studies.

Why can't we all have the freedom, at a young age to see what we love to do, and stick with it for the rest of our lives?

I'm aware that most stuff will be used once or twice throughout your entire life (have you used Geometry in order to get a job? Have you used your Foreign Languages to get a couple? Have you used your 9th grade knowledge to get a house?)... but why spend so much time with school?

Why can't we just keep with the stuff that we know is ultimately good for us?

What's your opinon? What do you think about all of this?

Art without chemistry?



You have entire classes of art named for the chemicals they use -- water colours, oil paints, acrylic, wood carving, stone masonry, plaster... if you are being a tart and using film photography then chemistry helps here. Indeed as I sit here thinking the only thing that can mount a convincing case for similarly useful classification in art is the location-time period approach.

Physicists need to know to how to argue and that is surely what philosophy teaches. Equally the philosophy of science is rather important, granted when Karl Popper was running around it was even more prevalent and of the school system what was not started in the 1800s was probably last changed in the 1950s/1960s (when he was truly popular).

History also teaches evidence based reasoning, possibly when things are a little bit fuzzy or have to be interpreted from someone else's words. Somewhat useful there.

A quote I was reminded of recently is “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” and there is certainly an element of truth there and I am all for exploring the ramifications of that. Equally testing is a tricky problem and I am not sure the presently favoured methods are good for it. With that said there is no way I am going in for not sending fairly well rounded people out there into the world, if for no other reason than it is collisions between areas that give us the best stuff -- how many things has computing revolutionised now?

"at a young age to see what we love to do, and stick with it for the rest of our lives"
I am an old man and I still don't know what I want to do. Of the people I have met in life I am so very far from unique in this.
So far in life
Palaeontology. I liked dinosaurs and exploring. Still do and can still identify them by skeletons and tell you what era they are from.
I then maybe didn't discover computers but had them click. This was much of my childhood. It flicked between software and hardware a lot though.
Said hardware phase saw me pick up electronics.
At this point I was 16.
No option for computers or electronics for a few years here so back to sciences.
University time.
At this point I went for engineering (materials branch specifically) as I liked maths, physics and chemistry. Later that was twisted back towards computing and electronics where I could, and at the same time I was also very much going in for computing -- for all else I have done my formal computer training is pretty minimal.

Geometry to get a job? Yes as a matter of fact. It is also very useful when finding furniture to go in your house, putting up shelves, planning your garden, figuring how much wallpaper you need... If you sit in an office typing reports someone has not got a programmer to write then so be it. If you have any kind of manual trade then geometric reasoning can come up any time, and if you are hazy on it then you are going to come unstuck.

9th grade knowledge to get a house? Personally no but I am too poor for such things. Others in there would have used the knowledge of taxes, savings and mortgages they gained in that year of school to sort such a thing out.
 
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Gizametalman

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Art without chemistry?



You have entire classes of art named for the chemicals they use -- water colours, oil paints, acrylic, wood carving, stone masonry, plaster... if you are being a tart and using film photography then chemistry helps here. Indeed as I sit here thinking the only thing that can mount a convincing case for similarly useful classification in art is the location-time period approach.

Physicists need to know to how to argue and that is surely what philosophy teaches. Equally the philosophy of science is rather important, granted when Karl Popper was running around it was even more prevalent and of the school system what was not started in the 1800s was probably last changed in the 1950s/1960s (when he was truly popular).

History also teaches evidence based reasoning, possibly when things are a little bit fuzzy or have to be interpreted from someone else's words. Somewhat useful there.

A quote I was reminded of recently is “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” and there is certainly an element of truth there and I am all for exploring the ramifications of that. Equally testing is a tricky problem and I am not sure the presently favoured methods are good for it. With that said there is no way I am going in for not sending fairly well rounded people out there into the world, if for no other reason than it is collisions between areas that give us the best stuff -- how many things has computing revolutionised now?

"at a young age to see what we love to do, and stick with it for the rest of our lives"
I am an old man and I still don't know what I want to do. Of the people I have met in life I am so very far from unique in this.
So far in life
Palaeontology. I liked dinosaurs and exploring. Still do and can still identify them by skeletons and tell you what era they are from.
I then maybe didn't discover computers but had them click. This was much of my childhood. It flicked between software and hardware a lot though.
Said hardware phase saw me pick up electronics.
At this point I was 16.
No option for computers or electronics for a few years here so back to sciences.
University time.
At this point I went for engineering (materials branch specifically) as I liked maths, physics and chemistry. Later that was twisted back towards computing and electronics where I could, and at the same time I was also very much going in for computing -- for all else I have done my formal computer training is pretty minimal.

Geometry to get a job? Yes as a matter of fact. It is also very useful when finding furniture to go in your house, putting up shelves, planning your garden, figuring how much wallpaper you need... If you sit in an office typing reports someone has not got a programmer to write then so be it. If you have any kind of manual trade then geometric reasoning can come up any time, and if you are hazy on it then you are going to come unstuck.

9th grade knowledge to get a house? Personally no but I am too poor for such things. Others in there would have used the knowledge of taxes, savings and mortgages they gained in that year of school to sort such a thing out.


Well, all the "examples" was just in a manner of saying. Of course, as an Artist, I'm aware of all the chemicals that are involved to create the paint and other stuff.
I'm also aware of Geometry in our everyday life.
I'm aware that Mathematics are in everything we do and make.
I'm aware that History may be useful sometimes.

Hey, have all of your school education prepared you to become whichever you want to become?
That's the point. You say "I'm an oldman, and I don't even know what I want to do"... well... what if you knew before instead of spending so much time in other stuff?
You seem to be a little like me.
All this was just to point out the fact that shool is just a barrier to become that what you were supposed to become.
And realizing your potential at a young age, is better than spending 20+ years in school, waste time and money, and then see if you can become what you wanted to become.
 

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If all your examples fell flat and as easily as they did then I would question things.

Some of school could have been more efficient or effective but assuming I did not want to be hyper specialised (again that is so vanishingly rare these days -- almost no chance anybody in school will advance the big three sciences or something, plenty of chance they find a niche where things overlap) I regret none of it. I guess PE could have been more engaging and I otherwise kept myself physically fit (if school is daycare PE was the part they tried to cause fewer fat bastards to arise in the world) so eh. The more interesting question from where I sit is what would I have added. First up that would have been computing and actual computing, not "MS office as understood by cretins" as it so often was.

"if I knew"
But I didn't and it is a rarity among those I do meet. Indeed I am not sure I approve of getting people to think of what they want to be. So much is only knowable once you already know something, and that may change in the decade you spend learning it (app and web dev was radically different when I was a kid, the former being a speciality of electrical engineering and the latter sort of maybe existing). I liked dinosaurs as a kid but trying to convince the me of that age of either archaeometallurgy (how the ancients made metals and metal items) or late 1800s through 1960 or so heavy engineering machines and engineering practice, both of which have been my main area of interest this last couple of years would not have happened at all. Actually even 5 years ago I was only dabbling in it (anything I had was more that old books/info is still useful) and it took a few times something more foundational (or at least something I am now using as a foundation) all clicked before I hit this.

I can certainly see a path outside school to learn things to do what you want in almost all cases (to actively be some flavour of medic I can see some baseline qualifications be needed sort of thing) your writings would appear to lead to a "chucking the baby out with the bathwater" type situation.

Maybe I had a better experience of school than you, in previous threads I mentioned teachers which chucked away the curriculum (took me longer than it should to realise what was happening there) and throughout it all my parents facilitated some learning. Without those and going through things in a rigid fashion like some of the lesser things I did sit through... I don't know what would have happened really but it would probably see me be unrecognisable today.

If I live to see schools/education in 50 years time I imagine I will be insanely jealous of the kids of the day, give or take it probably not looking entirely alien to what I do now.

Ask an even harder question. Psychology recognises all sorts of ages at which people change mentally in fairly significant ways (we all like the music we listened to at 19, 25 is when we stop thinking we are immortal if we look at car crash stats http://www.racfoundation.org/assets...ident casualty comparisons - box - 110511.pdf , I am sure we have all met 18 year olds full of piss and vinegar and thus harder to teach in certain ways, far younger is when we understand the concept of external action*, 10000 hours to be an expert is a lot of time if done over a conventional sleep-wake-reliably able to learn cycle. What if we are actually unable to tell when we are younger and thus forcing people to pick is tantamount to closing avenues the whole exercise aims to avoid?

*bob has a coin, he puts it in a box, bob leaves, alice takes the coin and puts it in her box, where does bob look for the coin when he comes back? The ability to answer "where he left it" is something of a developmental milestone.
 
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Gizametalman

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If all your examples fell flat and as easily as they did then I would question things.

Some of school could have been more efficient or effective but assuming I did not want to be hyper specialised (again that is so vanishingly rare these days -- almost no chance anybody in school will advance the big three sciences or something, plenty of chance they find a niche where things overlap) I regret none of it. I guess PE could have been more engaging and I otherwise kept myself physically fit (if school is daycare PE was the part they tried to cause fewer fat bastards to arise in the world) so eh. The more interesting question from where I sit is what would I have added. First up that would have been computing and actual computing, not "MS office as understood by cretins" as it so often was.

"if I knew"
But I didn't and it is a rarity among those I do meet. Indeed I am not sure I approve of getting people to think of what they want to be. So much is only knowable once you already know something, and that may change in the decade you spend learning it (app and web dev was radically different when I was a kid, the former being a speciality of electrical engineering and the latter sort of maybe existing). I liked dinosaurs as a kid but trying to convince the me of that age of either archaeometallurgy (how the ancients made metals and metal items) or late 1800s through 1960 or so heavy engineering machines and engineering practice, both of which have been my main area of interest this last couple of years would not have happened at all. Actually even 5 years ago I was only dabbling in it (anything I had was more that old books/info is still useful) and it took a few times something more foundational (or at least something I am now using as a foundation) all clicked before I hit this.

I can certainly see a path outside school to learn things to do what you want in almost all cases (to actively be some flavour of medic I can see some baseline qualifications be needed sort of thing) your writings would appear to lead to a "chucking the baby out with the bathwater" type situation.

Maybe I had a better experience of school than you, in previous threads I mentioned teachers which chucked away the curriculum (took me longer than it should to realise what was happening there) and throughout it all my parents facilitated some learning. Without those and going through things in a rigid fashion like some of the lesser things I did sit through... I don't know what would have happened really but it would probably see me be unrecognisable today.

If I live to see schools/education in 50 years time I imagine I will be insanely jealous of the kids of the day, give or take it probably not looking entirely alien to what I do now.

Ask an even harder question. Psychology recognises all sorts of ages at which people change mentally in fairly significant ways (we all like the music we listened to at 19, 25 is when we stop thinking we are immortal if we look at car crash stats http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/road accident casualty comparisons - box - 110511.pdf , I am sure we have all met 18 year olds full of piss and vinegar and thus harder to teach in certain ways, far younger is when we understand the concept of external action*, 10000 hours to be an expert is a lot of time if done over a conventional sleep-wake-reliably able to learn cycle. What if we are actually unable to tell when we are younger and thus forcing people to pick is tantamount to closing avenues the whole exercise aims to avoid?

*bob has a coin, he puts it in a box, bob leaves, alice takes the coin and puts it in her box, where does bob look for the coin when he comes back? The ability to answer "where he left it" is something of a developmental milestone.

First off... I want to thank you for stating your opinion about all this. Seriously, thanks ^_^
Maybe, maybe not... you had a better school experience than me. Probably, you're assuming that I had bullying problems or some kind of problems.
While, yes, if you're assuming I had problems, then you are indeed correct. But solved them.
And actually, that didn't triggered all this questions.
These questions about why we are forced to spend time at school instead of doing what we like to do and get supported came at a very young age.
Just finding that what you want to be and go straight and forward for it without any type of barrier.
This question arose when I was about 12 years old.
And recently (about 5 years ago) I began to think about all this but seriously.
Looking back at my life, I realized that few people has the ability or the support that they need to be better not just intelectually, but as a human being.
Even worse, most people conforms with what they receive.

You pointed out something really interesting... being jealous off the kids in 50+ years. Imagine all the information they can get at that time.
I mean... the Internet is more common now than it was merely 10 years ago, even more, 15 years ago, and look at all the information available to us.
Want to learn Anthropology? Go to the Internet.
Want to learn how to compose music? Go to the Internet.
Want to learn a foreign language? Use the Internet.
Want to learn Maths or any other Science? Go to the Internet.

Can you imagine, if kids nowadays realized the potential of this?

When you and I were kids, we had to rely in books in order to get information. Sometimes incomplete information.

If I had Internet (as it is today) when I was a kid, perhaps I'd be smarter than I am today. Not talking about intellect, but smarther when taking decisions
about my future.
Just imagine, you as a kid, with nowadays information.
Why do we have to wait 20+ years to see our inner potential?

PS: Don't take my words so seriously. I was just curious to see if I was the only one thinking this way about this particular issue.
 

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I was not thinking bullying for a moment. Merely pondered whether the lessons where the teacher reads the book, asks the question the book gives and then sets a test that serves only to see how well you memorised the text were what you... suffered. I had a few that tried that but I had learned to do my own thing by this point.

Information is not the problem. Free public libraries have existed for the longest time and are stuffed with information that would take most multiple lifetimes to absorb. With the internet the barrier to entry is even less and maybe for some it is presented in a way more conducive to certain types of learning, and there may be some truly esoteric field a modest library would not cover (or cover in as much depth). Ask the same question to someone in a developing country and that changes radically, something I am excited to see the results of.
I should note however I do well with books and minor experiments (most of which I can conduct with things I find in my house or for cheap).

Is it readily doable to determine someone's potential at an early age? An "environment of pure learning" is an odd one from where I sit, moreover when I teach people to pull things apart and fix them it is not the kids with mummy and daddy's credit card that do the best but those that grew up poor and had to fix things -- if you have ever heard a phrase along the lines of "it is not what you know but who you know" then I would expand education to include stressors and outside pressures. Maybe you could replicate that in some way, though in many cases that would probably border on cruelty, indeed some people I know with amazing skills are that way because they are broken. Nature vs nurture and all that.
Going further psychologists barely agree on anything in quantifying and defining intelligence and I already mentioned the different ages thing.
You have knocked around here long enough to see pirate syndrome be talked about (too many choices leads to apathy). Surely something similar applies here, indeed my pick for university was sorted by rolling some dice (which I was caught doing and thus gave rise to an incensed careers teacher) as I could not pick.
 
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What's your opinon? What do you think about all of this?
You're both right and wrong.
Not everyone can decide what they want to be at an early age, for example. IMO the best would be if we weren't pressured to learn all this. Grades are bull. If you fail your year for example, you shouldn't be forced to repeat it and to learn everything all over again.
 

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