Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dangerous-things-you-were-taught-in-school/

by tokenadult • 14 years ago

153 82 14 years ago

forbes.com

lucian1900• 14 years ago

The print version is on one page http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dang...

Tangaroa• 14 years ago

For a similar take on the school system, here's John Taylor Gatto's essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher:

http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Six-Lesson%20Sch...

rglover• 14 years ago

I wish I could recall the name, but I read an essay on the general concept of this topic not too long ago. Essentially the author referenced how schools are stratified into a series of groups: lower class, lower middle class, upper middle class, and elite (not sure if these are 100% accurate).

The author explained (from a series of in-person observations) the differences in education at each of the various levels. Children at the lower class level were taught to always listen to their teachers, be on time, and not to question things too much. Jump to upper middle class and the children were taught how to organize into groups or promote consensus (much like a mid-level managerial position). Finally at the top, children were given less concrete homework and were asked to explore their creativity. They were also taught to question their teachers, and most class time was spent as a dialogue between the group and not a lecture from the "instructor."

Really interesting topic and I wish more people paid attention to these things. Imagine where we'd be as a society if we didn't mold each other into groups or social brackets. Blows my mind.

aik2• 14 years ago

I'm curious where this came from. I wonder if it can also be broken into something like:

[1] Public school: low, low and mid classes

[2] Alternative school (private or public): upper mid class

[3] Best private schools: elite

With [2] and [3] making use of alternative education models (e.g. Montessori, Waldorf, Democratic), and most importantly recognizing that EVEN STUDENTS can be fairly competent human beings that have the capability to both breathe and think rationally at the same time if given the opportunity a sufficient amount of times.

jcromartie• 14 years ago

I've seen [3] at public schools, from a very slim handful of teachers. Those teachers tended to generate strongly polarized opinions about themselves among students.

arethuza2• 14 years ago

From what I can see, there is also a pretty strong correlation in the UK between the "rank" of a school and the amount of time pupils spend playing sports (particularly rugby) as part of the curriculum - presumably for the perceived leadership/team-building that these sports are believed to promote.

PaperclipTaken3• 14 years ago

At my high school, and at my college as well, the sports players are generally looked down upon by the 'gifted' or 'AP' students. I don't know how sports players compare to the average student, but the average GPA on our cross country and track teams always shocked me a little. Few of my friends ever got below 3.5, and the sports teams often had averages below 2. The football team (by rumor, I never actually saw the numbers) was the lowest gpa sport in our school.

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

Possibly because rugby is a good way to get rid of excess energy and constructively channel some aggression as well as the team building and discipline aspects.

I remember reading that it had been suggested that all schools do 1 hour of physical education/excersize before school officially starts, this would help children concentrate.

PaperclipTaken3• 14 years ago

I can relate to this based on my experiences from high school. I don't think that things are structured like this intentionally. (I think that few teachers and principal's would intentionally hold back the lower class students) But, if you have a kid who tends to do his homework less, think school is 'not cool,' and in general doesn't like authority (something I feel was more prevalent among the poorer students in my education), you get a much stronger attitude of 'sit down and do your homework' from the teachers.

Then you have the upper level classrooms, where assignments were almost never turned in late, and students generally had less animosity towards authority in general. They still disobeyed and did creative things and whatnot, but they did it out of curiosity, and not because they were trying to irritate the teachers.

Actually, I'm thinking of several cases specifically in my class where students held visible animosity towards these teachers. These students consistently had the lowest grades in the class.

roc• 14 years ago

There's definitely something to this.

If the students won't cooperate/behave/listen, how could the teacher ever hope to progress beyond reinforcement of "you need to cooperate/behave/listen"?

It's sort of like the old adage that you need to understand the rules before you can break them. If one doesn't understand why you have to listen to the instructor, they're far less likely to be productive in a setting where interruptions are expected/encouraged.

agumonkey• 14 years ago

I'd add some theories cynically stating that the education, at times, designed to sustain replenishment of industry and nothing more.

I guess i'm more individualist than pluralist, but it seems too much of a society-impeded existence rather than growing of the inner self. I'm also tempted to bet that this layered approach you experienced, by providing tension between layers, is endebting us more in the long run.

jmj42• 14 years ago

This is the basic premise of "Waiting for Superman." It's a fairly good documentary on the failings of American public education. The majority of the film focuses on the problem of stratification and the impact it has on both lower and upper levels of the stratification.

joedev4• 14 years ago

"On average, a four-year degree is the equivalent of an investment that returns 15.2% a year." - http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/30/a-college-degree-r...

Stay in school kids.

anamax• 14 years ago

No one gets an "average" degree, so it doesn't much matter what the average is.

Some degrees are good investments. It depends on both the person and the degree.

aik2• 14 years ago

Interesting, but it doesn't necessarily take into account the opportunity cost due to the very significant time investment.

But more importantly, you know there's something wrong with the system when so many feel they have to try to justify the cost. Meaning, I think many realize that the investment is in the credential, not the learning that takes place due to the institution. I long for the day when a sufficient alternative will come to satisfy the average student (I'm working on this myself...)

tgrass3• 14 years ago

The opportunity cost does not have to be more than one's liesure time. I worked thirty hours a week as a waiter in engineering undergrad and was a part time single dad. I averaged 17K a year. This is not unusual.

joedev4• 14 years ago

If you read the study you'll find it does take into account opportunity costs.

rmc• 14 years ago

How much of that is due to having more knowledge, and how much is classism? i.e. having upper class parents is probably a very high return aswell.

Also that only really works once. If spent 40 years, doing 10 4 year degrees, by this logic, I'd be a multibillionare right? Something is wrong with this theory.

tyree732• 14 years ago

> Also that only really works once. If spent 40 years, doing 10 4 year degrees, by this logic, I'd be a multibillionare right? Something is wrong with this theory.

I can't imagine that the authors claimed anything more than that.

DrJ• 14 years ago

it would only work 3 times, Bachelor, Masters, PhD. Also if your income is 0, then however high the multiplier is, the result is still 0.

joedev4• 14 years ago

"having upper class parents is probably a very high return as well"

True, which is why the studies account for factors such as family education and family income in order to attempt to isolate the impact of the one factor being measured: the subject's education level.

randomdata5• 14 years ago

I'm not a fan of this kind of interpretation because it treats everyone as an equal. People derive joy from different things in life.

Some people work to live and will only do the bare minimum to get by in order to fulfill their real joys. Those people are less likely to go to college, and are less likely to earn high incomes, because the passion isn't there.

Others live to work. These people love what they do. They go to college because they love it. Then they work really hard to be the best when they enter the workforce, because they love it. The money follows to these people, because they've worked really hard to earn it.

If you forced someone in the former group to go through college, their income coming out is not going to rise. They are still not going to put forth the what it takes to be a higher earner. It's not in their nature, and that's okay.

As they say, correlation does not imply causation. Your earning potential is essentially given to you at birth, plus the luck factor. On a macro level, college isn't going to have any effect on your earnings.

joedev4• 14 years ago

"Your earning potential is essentially given to you at birth"

Interestingly the data shows otherwise. Factors such as parents' education, where one lives, age, race, family structure, IQ are measured and factored in. Two stats techniques are commonly applied. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) is more traditional while Instrument Variables (IV) is a newer approach which attempts to account for statistical errors such as omitted and unknown variables in order to more strongly determine causality.

If you like stats check out this review of the literature: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/card/papers/return-to-school... which concludes that studies "Taken as a whole, however, the findings from the recent IV literature are remarkably consistent with Griliches' (1977) assessment of a much earlier set of studies, and point to a causal effect of education that is as big or bigger than the OLS estimated return, at least for people whose schooling choices are affected by the supply-side innovations that have been studied so far."

There are real economic reasons why governments invest in their citizens' schooling. It's not just because it sounds like a nice idea. The increased income potential of someone going to school pays off for a government higher earnings which is a primary indicator of an economy's health.

SeoxyS• 14 years ago

People treat college like it's a checkmark to check off. If try get through four years of it they will make good money for the rest of their lives. False. College is about learning. If you just scrape by and don't learn anything from it, you'll be no better off four years later. In fact, you will probably be worse off, with six figures of debt and no salary.

srconstantin• 14 years ago

I think the prevailing mood among people who think of themselves as "business people" is nowhere near risk-averse enough.

ap222132• 14 years ago

When I was a poor kid from the rust belt, I dreamed of becoming an adult and getting a Phd. and talking deeply with the intellectual elite. I never got that Phd. but I became happily upper middle class, and thus got to hang out with a lot of Phds., often from good schools. Not surprisingly, many of them came from upper-class areas, and upper middle class or wealthy families.

What surprised me of this bunch was the general lack of curiosity, passion, and depth that many of them had - it jarred my world view. These were people that I dreamed of being around, when I was a kid. And, they just seemed like normal people, nothing special.

Over much time and after talking with many of them, I realized that many had pursued the Phd. (or equivalent) not because of any innate passion or ability, but just because that was what was expected of them. They did it because that's what people did in their world. It was then that I realized that many poor kids from the rust belt probably just did what they believed that people did.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

That is exactly my experience in growing up in a poor rural area and getting a big scholarship to a fancy private liberal arts school. I had lived and breathed ideas and that naturally led to good grades. I assumed that the first day of college would be like those rare episodes of the Simpsons where Lisa finally meets a group she fits in with. I was, frankly, devastated. These people weren't smarter or more curious, they were just richer and better educated. My wife, on the other hand, went to a huge state school, but enrolled in the inner honors college within it, and had much more of the experience I had been looking for.

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

I agree, when I enrolled on CS I expected there would be plenty of people who had been doing interesting stuff with tech for years. While there were a few like this , the majority were just bright kids who would have otherwise done Law or Accountancy.

why-el• 14 years ago

You might find Sir Ken Robinson's Academic Inflation concept interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

rprospero• 14 years ago

I'm also a rust belt kid and, while I wouldn't say I grew up poor, we were decidedly middle class. I would have qualified for Harvard's free tuition program, to put things in perspective.

I'm also in a PhD program and my experience here is slightly different than your own. Specifically, I'm probably the median in terms of economic backgrounds among the graduate students in my program. Yes, there are some students from upper middle class and wealthy families, but I know just as many grad students who were living on welfare before going to college. Heck, even out of the professors, more of them are sons of farmers and bakers than of bankers or doctors.

I should include my own samples biases here. First, I'm at a large, state school, not a private institution. Sopooneo has already commented that that could make a difference. Also, the majority of my social group is in the physics department, so I'm not sure how well this extends outside the sciences.

planetguy3• 14 years ago

How would you distinguish an academic acquaintance with curiosity, passion, and depth from one who lacked those qualities?

timwiseman• 14 years ago

What surprised me of this bunch was the general lack of curiosity, passion, and depth that many of them had

My experience has been different from yours. Everyone I have known well that attained or even sought a PhD has had curiosity, passion, and depth.

However, many of them had narrow curiosity and passion. Engaged within their specialty and their brilliance would shine through, but outside of it they were realtively intelligent but fairly ordinary people.

Of course, there may be a bit of sample bias on my side. The PhD's I got to know tended to be focused on math or a tightly related hard science. They also tended to be the ones that were tolerant of hanging around with someone like me that liked talking about math.

ap222132• 14 years ago

To be clear, the lack was in relation to my expectations, not in relation to the average. That is, I had very high expectations. But, when I came to know more people with advanced degrees, what surprised me was that they were generally more like the people that I knew with lesser education, than not.

I hope you see that I'm not claiming that people with advanced degrees have less curiosity, passion, or depth than the average. In fact, I think it's slightly above average. Instead, I am pointing out that many people achieve the levels that are expected of them. Some people are expected to get a Phd. (or other advanced degree) as similarly they are expected to brush their teeth twice a day.

My observation is that (holding natural abilities constant) achieving higher education seems to have more to do with internal self-expectations than with those other attributes. And, that was the surprise to me.

WalterBright2• 14 years ago

I did not have that experience at all. I was accepted at Caltech, and when I arrived I found it was incredibly fun to be around people who were smart and excited to learn the mysteries of the universe.

A friend of mine lived in an apartment off campus, and he'd invite lots over for his patented chicken wings recipe. The apartment manager, an older fellow, was invited too, and he'd just sit in a corner and say nothing.

After several incidents of this, I went over and asked him why he was interested in hanging around with a bunch of college kids. He replied that he found our conversations fascinating - we didn't talk about sports or music or girls, we talked about science, research, and ideas. He said he'd never heard anyone else talk like that.

WalterBright2• 14 years ago

And where else could you drop in on a lecture by Feynman on the mathematics of potato chip worlds, and have Carl Sagan drop by your dorm for dinner and conversation about silicon based life?

I did not realize until years later what a treasure those experiences were.

ntkachov• 14 years ago

Most of these things, I think, stem from the fact that it's much easier to take care of a class that believes in all 9 facts, than to take care of a class that doesn't.

How many teachers could justify the 5 paragraph essay if all the kids started questioning them on the arbitrariness of that number?

If you reward that kid that's really easy for you to take care off the others will follow, right?

Standardized tests measure your value because they measure the teachers value (in paychecks).

I have little respect for the school system. It's basically rigged to make the teachers lives as simple as possible and make the kids as miserable as possible.

pbhjpbhj2• 14 years ago

I've a rule to let my kids question anything once - they must provide a rationale if they wish to reverse my decision. However, it does sometimes come down to a simple exertion of authority (ie because I say so trumps the unsupported objections). I find now that J at 6 can usually answer my side and rationalise why an a priori arbitrary demand is being made.

Surely any teacher could readily answer a challenge like 'why not 3 paragraphs?' and this is a valid and worthy question for a student.

Unfortunately at some point the student will have to accept irrational or limited reasoning and learn to live with that, eg why does the law require me to learn that.

kitsune_• 14 years ago

Errr? I don't know what schools are like in the Unites States, but I was probably taught the exact opposite of what is presented in this Forbes Article. For instance:

"The people in charge have all the answers." > My history teacher would like to have word with you.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

My issue with that statement is that it it'z misleading.

People in charge have all the answers to that which they are in charge of.

Naturally you resist their domain as you resist their.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

[sorry, incomplete post that was sent on accident]

drzaiusapelord• 14 years ago

This is a great observation. The list is bewildering to me as well. I think the author is trying to play up this strawman of conservative authoritarianism and perhaps reflects her upbringing but I don't think its typical of the American educational experience.

"The best and brightest follow the rules" bothers me the most. From a young age I've been taught by the establishment that inventors and industrialists who purposely broke away from the norm became successful. I think the US encourages this kind of thinking. "There is a very clear, single path to success" is also unforgivable.

Maybe the dangerous lesson here is beware thumbnails of cute authors and easily to digest comic strips that reflect your own biases.

loganfrederick• 14 years ago

There is the danger that your own upbringing is also used as anecdotal evidence.

From my experience in what I'd guess is a stereotypical suburban American public school, going against the norm is not widely supported. It's not so much that it's frowned upon, but more that it's outside "the system" and administrators don't know how to manage people/students trying to break away from the norm, which is their job.

This leads to situations where a student trying to do his/her own thing can't because our society and school systems are filled with red tape that slows down, not enhances, free-thinking.

I do agree that the article is mostly fluff though.

jerf• 14 years ago

They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers." They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a schedule... and probably even the teachers telling you to question authority won't, say, actually let you walk out of the classroom and play basketball, no matter how much they feebly protest that you should question authority. (And if they did, they wouldn't be teaching for long. The system would not permit it.)

Yeah. You had a couple of people mouth some words about nonconformity, while spending hours every day inextricably enmeshed so deeply in a system built around conformity that you apparently can't even see the conformity, if you think that a few people mouthing words without actions was enough to counteract it. The teachers said some words while you were embodied in a contrary system.

Mind you, all that conformity isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like civilization. But I think it is still important to see it, and choose it when you want it, and be aware of what is going on so others can't use it against you, attacking you on a level you can't even perceive.

Also, this article is tripe. I shouldn't have had to elaborate on it in this manner when it should have said it. And those are clearly something more like 5 points than 9; numbered lists strike again.

robododo• 14 years ago

Speaking from anecdote, my relatively crappy, rural, public education in the USA was not like this. I'm guessing the article is written as hyperbole, not to paint a picture of the average US public school.

Of course, it's been ~15 years since high school for me. Perhaps things in the USA have greatly degraded in that time. Public education standards are a major a concern for me with respect to my son's education.

Eliezer• 14 years ago

Did you ever have a word with your history teacher?

Did anyone in your class ever stand up and contradict the history teacher, about anything, and not get slapped down for it? Did the history teacher ever once say, "Huh, I guess you're right about that"?

You are exactly illustrating the point. Your history teacher is the one who gets to have the word.

cafard2• 14 years ago

I don't think I bothered to stand up, but yes, I did contradict my history teacher in 11th grade American history, and lived to tell the tale. He didn't say I was correct, but I'm willing to extend the right to disagree even to teachers.

Hell, my 10th grade religion teacher, Brother something-or-t'other FSC, let a couple of my classmates spend most of an hour saying that they thought the church was all wrong on premarital sex; if I recall correctly, he set aside the class for that purpose. He referred to it as Mr. A and Mr. B shaking the diocese to its foundations, and left it at that. I don't know what grades they got, but the grades didn't keep them out of college.

But: if your history teacher does not have information to convey that you are not aware of, then the school is failing you. You may certainly differ from the teacher or the school board in evaluating the effects of Columbus's arrival or Shay's Rebellion or the Mexican War, but you need to know something about them before you start disagreeing. It is my impression that the American public suffers rather more from lack of information than from enforcement of interpretations.

(Edit: my stories are from the days of the beginning of the 1970s, for what that's worth.)

ktizo5• 14 years ago

I always suspected that the way that schools were set up was borrowed heavily from the old establishments for training the children of the lower ranks of the aristocracy in how to be military officers.

The regimentation and rote of your average maths classroom was obviously never designed for teaching the subject, yet is the main memory of the experience for most people, rather than what is supposedly being taught.

gaius2• 14 years ago

Ironically, schools that were set up like that produced more literate and numerate kids, i.e. Grammar schools. In fact these were a key route to social mobility for bright but poor kids. They were killed off by politicians who relied on the lower classes for their votes...

UK-AL3• 14 years ago

Except many exist today, and there mostly populated by the middle class with ridiculously low levels of poor people. Like 1% on free school meals and majority were tutored for the entry test? Most poor people can't afford tutors.

With stats like that, they REINFORCE class structure, not break it.

And do poor people want to pay for the education of the elites? Which is what current grammars effectivly do.

ktizo5• 14 years ago

More literate and numerate kids got selected for grammar school, that was the point.

Pointing out that those who leave grammar school have high literacy and numeracy hardly demonstrates that it is a good way of teaching, when the intake for grammar schools is those with high levels of numeracy and literacy already.

If you want to look at a true education revolution look to Finland, which is about as far from the grammar school systems as you can get, but also has an astoundingly high level of educational excellence.

planetguy3• 14 years ago

I thought one of the things we'd learned over the last decades was that when the hippies took over the education department and took all the regimentation and repetition out of the classroom, the result was a bunch of students who didn't understand the material.

Meanwhile, Asian schools were cranking out kids who had actually understood the material. How 'bout that?

ktizo5• 14 years ago

If you think hippies have removed all the regimentation and repetition from schools, can you please explain the existence of repetition and regimentation in schools. Or am I imagining it?

gravitronic• 14 years ago

Having gone through north american public schools I definitely agree with most of the article's points.

However most of those graphs make absolutely no sense. Clearly the author was being a free spirit on "how to make a graph" day.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

They didn't look particularly ironic to you?

Thrymr• 14 years ago

The author of the Forbes article also has a blog which features this sort of tongue-in-cheek graphics:

http://thisisindexed.com

dsirijus• 14 years ago

It could be argued that all those sentiments listed are actually driving force that accounts for most of the creativity now.

PaperclipTaken3• 14 years ago

There's a big difference in how students are taught and what students are thought to think from school to school, which is mostly correlated with income bracket. It's not that our leadership structure or general society has this 'keep the poor down' mentality, it has to do with the general mentality of the teachers and the general mentality of the students.

Think of the demographics of the teachers. In low income areas, the teachers are much more likely to be people that grew up in poor income areas themselves. Generally, that also means that they will be less familiar with higher-level concepts like 'when given lined paper, write the other way.' Even if they've heard these quotes and can tell you what they mean, they are less likely to be able to answer questions like 'Why 5 paragraphs?' and 'When in real life am I going to use the Pythagoras theorem?'

In high income areas, you are much more likely to get teachers that come from high income families themselves, which means they are much more likely to have gone to a reputable school. My high school (William Fremd High School) is seated in a high income area, and actually had several teachers (2 or 3) with Oxford level degrees. Many teachers in the English department actively rejected the idea of a 5 paragraph model, and told you to write the essay 'until it was done.' Many of the teachers, having been through some level of engineering school themselves, could tell you that the Pythagoras theorem is very important to things like Architecture and mechanical engineering, and that the seemingly useless mathematics you are learning actually have very powerful real life applications.

pbhjpbhj2• 14 years ago

>Many teachers in the English department actively rejected the idea of a 5 paragraph model

Hmm. There are problems with that - writing to a limit / self editting is a skill in itself. Work needs to be equable in format to be readily compared.

Should every piece of prose be written to a format requirement, no. Should the idea of writing to a particular format be rejected? No IMO.

johnohara• 14 years ago

True danger is serious business. Approaching an unexploded IED is dangerous. So is going in to reactor #2 to pump out radioactive water.

There's a difference between incorrect and dangerous.

mhurron• 14 years ago

Dangerous does not have to mean deadly.

parfe2• 14 years ago

Said from your safe little bubble. Dangerous is "I might misstep by half an inch and orphan the children."

The college educated computer workers who post here haven't experienced danger since climbing trees as children. And certainly don't experience danger professionally.

Roofing a house is dangerous. Delivering Pizza is dangerous.

Picking between State U vs Private U? Choosing between Python and Ruby? Choosing between iOS vs Android for your initial deployment? Choosing VC A over VC B? Telling your Boss he's wrong? Calling any of that dangerous is an insult to people who face real danger daily.

goblin89• 14 years ago

This one's great IMO: “Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.”

Not exactly well-phrased—I believe prolonged sitting is indeed not quite fun for various physiological reasons. However, this makes it fair:

“You are trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of allocated vacation.”

It appears to be about splitting life into work and vacation despite the alternative of doing things you love and loving things you do. (It's hard to convince people, though. They continue hate most of they regular 9-to-6 day and watch TV in the evening.)

cafard2• 14 years ago

There's a bunch of straw men in the emergency room today.

K2h• 14 years ago

Nothing like a proper education to give you all the reasons an idea can't be done - instead of giving you the tools and confidence to tackle a problem no on else has even thought of and succeed. I'm still looking for the later.

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