i think another thing is that schools are outdated. we really need to implement knowledge on basic knowledge like how to use money wisely how to keep a job how to self improve how to support yourself its literally just English history math science gym media and possibly music with only only 4 of those subjects having any real meaningful impact on the students learning ect.
( I copy and pasted my main comment here so more people can see it ) Bro I feel dumber, as a 6th grader, I'm struggling in almost every subject. I don't want to tell my mother, I've been thinking of suicide but my grades are still average to above average (B through A- ) but her expectations are 95 -100 ( being the african mother she is ) and I am piling up missing assignments, I might not make it to 7th grade.
I think learning loss does exist, maybe not to the extent the media makes it out to be, but it definitely exists, an example being that in the third grade I was taught how to do long multiplication and division and now my younger brother who is in the fifth grade can’t do either.
when I was is school, I think about 7th or 8th grade, I came to understand that you could fuck around and do whatever you want as long as you do what the school wants, and the teacher doesn't even have to like you. I stopped trying and started doing the exact amount of work in the style they wanted, and went elsewhere for learning. My school might have taught me french, but other than that I just had to learn a bunch of math I'll never use.
As someone who took a bunch of AP classes, it’s absurd to me how half of those classes were learning the “style” of AP questions, rather than actual content. It’s a focus on standardized testing, and fitting a mold, over getting smarter and having better understanding of the material
I literally can’t remember learning anything significantly in my APUSH class… our teacher made everything so convoluted and harder than necessary. I ended up taking US history again in college and it was a breeze… and i know time passing and I’m sure i retained things and that helped by the ease at which the professor taught in college compared to hs was just so ridiculous.
AP classes are such a scam. Took 4, hated them with a passion so took a bunch of junior college classes during my senior year. Best part was the junior college was FREE for highschool students, they counted for more units and they were wayyyy less stressful. Always recommend taking college courses early over AP bullcrap
I mean tbf in highschool those ap classes generally only cover entry content which even at the college level tend to focus on comprehension and writing for freshmen especially if structured by entry year but I will say ap should probably be separated into 1st and 2nd year options putting history, social sciences, and languages as first picks and toss the rest to the 2nd year. Still implementation requires support so good luck
Best teacher I ever had flat out said that the modern curriculum sucked and essentially did a speedrun of it in the first half of the year. The rest of the year was dedicated to fun projects and lessons that actually engaged us as a class. They also often play the guitar during tests for us so we wouldn't be too crushed by the silent atmosphere. Making students feel like there is value in learning about something is incredibly easy.
As a teacher, I agree with THAT teacher as I am also THAT teacher in my school. I teach a computer subject even if I'm a science teacher by college degree. I teach what's in the curriculum but I try to inject as much fun as I can into the lessons because the experience in my class is more important than the "skills" I'm supposed to teach.
As a child of two teachers, one at elementary level and the other at middle school/high school level, making learning fun and engaging takes lots and lots of work. It’s easy to come up with creative ideas to make learning fun, but actually planning fun and engaging lessons is HARD. I watched them both work when they came home and during weekends and school breaks. T
@@iansantiago6526 i agree with the importance of general arts, but it also doesn't fit into the school system the way it is currently, as it's really easy for teachers to grade with bias. and in our current economy, arts is a risk that most students aren't willing to take
No subject is a better example of how schools take the fun out of learning than history. Textbooks make historical events feel like reading a dictionary and yet, almost any museum or history documentary feels like delving into an adventure when visited/watched.
In high school, I was always very into history, but some people I knew weren't. The textbooks rarely got touched, even by the few that derived entertainment like me. The moment I started explaining these things, rather than a book written ten years ago to shove as much information onto one pages as possible, they started to enjoy themselves. And I wasn't even very good at teaching.
@@tobiasburke9495I had a teacher who would always try to get student involvement or insert personal anecdotes into history lessons and it made it really fun and for a while I even wanted to be a history teacher
@@BossOfAllTrades No budget or special effect can be compared to the innate desire and capacity for human creation that the oral tradition gives. Even people with minimum wage are people.
As an autistic guy, who learns slowly (but more thoroughly) - I always noticed how I "fell behind" in class. Everyone worked faster than me. Yet I'd have the highest grade by the end. The school system is totally broken
This will sound weird but back a few years ago there was a video that made the rounds from a meeting where Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were promoting cultural ties and trade agreements with each other's country, and part of the press photo op was a bit where they made a blintz pastry filled with some chinese dish for filling The way each leader made their dish was emblematic of their leadership styles. Putin slammed the pastry dough into the frying pan and made a huge fucking mess everywhere, ending up with a shitty looking pastry that was barely held together, while the chef aides around him were visibly sweating and cringing. Xi Jinping was constantly asking the chef aides what to do and following their advice, taking his time and treating the dish with caution because he very clearly cared about getting it right the first time. The emphasis on being first, rather than being correct, is entirely motivated by those who seek to wield power over others by establishing themselves as an authority before anyone who legitimately cares can.
@@Vanity0666 Yeah nowadays everyone wants immediate results, one wrong move and they like boo, then ppl wonder why children loves playing games which they see immediate growth just like how the adults wanted. Like the faster and cheaper trend too, nobody care about long term till it hits them in the face. Like you can't just build a house immediately even if you have the tech to mass product something, you have to examine all of the conditions to operate the machine too.
You had the highest grade in the end... so the system is NOT broken. I'm not sure what point you think you're making - that students who "work faster" but don't learn the material should get better grades than you?
@@grafzeppelin4069 I worded it badly. I meant I fell behind in class, I couldn't keep up with lessons, and I was treated like I couldn't focus. But I just took more time to process things. I always felt dumb because of it, so my final results always shocked me
Honestly, I never thought about how almost dystopian it is that a kid can't go to the bathroom without getting explicit permission, that is until you offhandedly mentioned it. It made me remember back in 3rd grade, when my elementary school made students sign out on a sheet of paper every time they went to the bathroom and sign in when they got back. And the school told my parents they thought I was trying to get out of classes because I 'went to the bathroom too much'. In the moment I was horrified, but looking back I think it was kind of funny the school was so concerned about it, especially since I was so well-behaved otherwise.
my school did this too. also not allowing more than 1 or 2 kids in the bathroom at a time until high school, where they'd maybe let a third kid in if they were feeling good that day. lines would be so long a kid would be out of class for nearly half an hour. they'd also close the bathroom 10 minutes before and after each class so the people signing kids into the digital database to use the bathroom would have their break, so the only time you could even go was during class. just insane all around
I had severe chronic migraines caused by photosensitivity as a child and would regularly be in the nurses office because they were so painful that I could do nothing besides scream puke and eventually lose consciousness, and the school told my parents they thought I was just skipping class and my parents beat the shit out of me for it
yea its insane. doesn't help that schools lose millions in funds if even 10 kids have low attendance, because they care so much about their precious CS funds that they turn the building into a prison instead of making an effort to help kids *want* to stay there. my school has hall monitors stationed at desks outside of every bathroom (which may be closed. gotta check the bathroom schedule! cant use the one in A-hall during 4th period, cause they dont have a bathroom security guard to cover that time idfk) that scan your id and permanently mark the time you went in and left on your grading profile. A classroom cannot have more than 2 students out of the room at one time. during lunch periods, they LOCK THE DOORS on both ends of the hallway that contains the 2 cafe entrances (and 2 bathrooms) so kids don't "sneak" out or in to the cafeterias. our windows are all tinted, so theres no sunlight in the school at all. there is a hall monitor in every hallway, and they will read and mark your pass so that you can't re-use it. it feels like a prison, genuinely. you cannot go anywhere without permission. "help and access" (study hall) is supposed to be a period for you to go to your teachers and get help with their subject, but you can't because you have an assigned room (mostly the cafeterias, which do not get cleaned) for HAP and *can't leave*. You can't go to the library without showing up to the front desk at 7 am and getting 1 (of 3) "library passes" - you literally can't get in without them. Returning an overdue book? sorry, no more library passes. oh, also, if you miss more than 6 classes of one subject, you just don't get credit for the course. even excused absences.
for me growing up i was kind of a "problem child" or whatever. like ik i was not easy to deal with, i regret sm of what i did in school, ik a lot of it was my fault. but like i still have a reason for my actions, not excuses, but explanations, that needed to be addressed but never were. its easy to say "calm down, shut up, dont make a scene, do better next time" but hardly anyone wants to actually face the elephant in the room yk? 2 things can be true at once. yes i was at fault, but that doesnt mean i dont deserve basic respect and compassion, maybe thats what i was lacking all along???? just a thought 🙃
I feel rage when people that couldn't attend school or afford books turned out better than those with endless resources and tools attempt to blame anything but themselves 🤡
@@terrorists-are-among-usI’m talking about ALL the blame. Of course there are going to be people who take their opportunities for granted, always has always will, but there are many other factors besides students just being lazy.
@@saintnicole3209I’ve graduated Highschool as an Honors Student with an almost 4.0 GPA, but personal I have definitely seen many (not ALL) Teachers and Parents blame the students for “being lazy” or “not applying themselves”. It’s crazy to me that we say an entire class or generation of students ALL happen to be “lazy” or “not applying themselves”. You even see it with popular Teacher UA-cam channels or podcasts like Teachers Off Duty. I do also think that Teachers are given a completely unreasonable and unrealistic set of standards to work within that are constantly changing with a workload that is FAR too demanding. We continuously see teachers under intense scrutiny and verbal abuse for doing their damn job. On top of the fear of violence occurring from Parents or Students it just sounds so miserable to be treated the way they are. IMO It’s probably the most dangerous time to be a teacher or student, and it’s our government that failed both groups.
It feels like humans have this weird tendency to assign broad trends to individual choice and personality. Like if we have an epidemic of children who leave school not being able to read, why do so many people ignore any kind of systems-level reform? Why is the blame always placed on individuals whether it be students, parents, or teachers? Its just weird to me how often people actively ignore the way systems impact our lives and the ways we might be able to improve them.
systemic change is slow and laborious, because you have to change the individuals that perpetuate it, usually through lots of different means. looks at the time it took to get the slaves freed, women's suffrage, gay marriage equality or marijuana changes...
I think for some people, it is more important to assign blame than to solve a problem. It is morally uncomfortable to say "This is a problem? The system I participate in has caused that problem." That prompts self-reflection, critical analysis, and leads to calls to action. For many, it is preferable to say "This is a problem? It's the fault of ." It lets them tell themselves "It's not my fault, so I don't need to do anything to fix it." On one hand, I get it. We all have our own shit going on. It can be hard to hear about yet another widespread societal issue when we all feel like we are already at our emotional breaking points. "There's war in the Middle East, starving children in third-world countries, my parents' health is failing, my boss called mandatory overtime this Saturday for like the third week in a row, my kids have like 3 extra-curriculars a day, one of them needs The Talk soon because their sketchy friend showed them porn during their latest hang-out, I still need to make dinner tonight, and now you're telling me the schools are broken?! Lay off and let someone else handle it! It's not MY fault!" On the other hand, if everyone does that, nothing ever changes. And certain political groups have gotten pretty good at taking a message like "We have contributed to a bad situation, and need to work together to fix it" and spinning it with "THOSE PEOPLE are telling us it's OUR fault THEY have problems! Are you going to just let them blame YOU?" Fundamentally, no matter whose fault it is, it is our RESPONSIBILITY to fix things. Or at the very least to support those who have solutions and are willing to fix things.
The tendency you're referring to is actually a rather well-known bias that people exhibit called actor-observer bias. It is very close to how you described it; people tend to attribute their own poor behavior to external issues (e.g. I'm late for work because traffic was bad) yet, at the same time, they tend to attribute others' poor behavior to internal issues (e.g. they're late to work because they have bad time management skills). Of course, this bias might be more related to individuals, however people tend to extrapolate this sort of thinking so as to take a complex issue like struggling youth and boil it down to "laziness," "rowdiness," or whatever other trait they think would "rationally" explain away the problem. Sadly, this sort of thinking only serves to reinforce the social relations our society has arbitrarily deemed as necessary and incentivizes "us vs them" groupthink rather than sincere, critical thinking about the issues that plague our communities.
I feel for the kids who fell apart during COVID school shutdowns. I went back to university to finish my bachelor's degree starting spring 2020 and then just... didn't do anything once classes went totally online.
I had started high school when covid hit. I did the same, just didn’t do anything once online classes started. They still passed everyone. Now I feel so behind. I want to go to college for computer science but its scary since I have such a bad foundation in math, science, and learning in general.
I'm just starting college now after droppig out of highschool in early 2019. It's been... rough, to say the least. I hate this shit and the only reason I suck my teeth through it is because I don't want to grow up to be a broke adult like my parents, who are in their 60s now with no sign of being able to retire.
As a student about who went through "modular learning" in my country. I can confidently say that It Was Hell. For my mental health and educational learning. I never feel school was important, it was Just another means to an end. I didn't feel like I learned anything meaningful. Always Listening Useless Lectures, Always Answering Activities. I didn't have a friend group/support system which only made it W O R S E .
Standardized tests are the reason I failed high school. I used to get detention because my teachers thought I was purposely failing tests to be a ‘rebel’ or something. I could do any assignments, homework, presentations, anything at all and get an A but the second they put a test in front of me I failed miserably. It didn’t matter to the education board if in assignments I was passing at a college level in 5th grade because I was stupid if I couldn’t take tests. They literally put me in special needs cause apparently bad test taking means I had to have a learning disability in their eyes. Anyway school sucks and killed all the passion I had for learning but at least I have a career I’m passionate about that only needed a GED. Yay!
The opposite happened and it honestly sucked, both ends of this situation does, I could pass any test and was considered a smart kid, when in reality I just remembered better than most kids so the tests were the same, yet I failed my classes because I never understood whatever the teacher said which meant I was at best a C average kid, but was never given help simply because I passed a test I just recognized well enough, Im sorry for your time at school and hope you're doing better
It's much easier to cheat doing homework than it is to cheat on a test. So a large gap in performance can signal cheating. Plus, homework doesn't have a time limit, whereas tests do. But on the other hand, in the real world, you will always be allowed to use a calculator or look at the textbook.
@@me-myself-i787 they KNEW i wasnt cheating on homework because in special needs they made us do all of our homework in the classroom in complete silence for an hour and a half. the teacher quite literally stared me down while i did my homework there was no possible way to cheat lol.
What's also frustrating is when you aren't allowed to skip years despite getting perfect grades in every subject. School was hell for me socially and emotionally as an extremely isolated (at the time undiagnosed) autistic woman. The reasoning the teachers gave when I asked to move up was "You'll miss your friends" and I was just flabbergasted. What friends? Literally every student in this class throws paper, pens, books, screams slurs at me every lesson, and you think ANY of them are my friends? Still extremely resentful of those three solid years of abuse in school I didn't need to endure if the UK education system wasn't so understaffed that maybe at least one teacher would've interfered or realised I wasn't f*cking ok. Then some random kid who's getting Cs and Ds get's moved up? Wtf?
I once ended up basically repeating a year of math lessons I already knew by heart (by choice) because (according to what I was told) "someone lost my information". Since I had been placed ahead for my age, they put in me in the default classes I guess? Either way what this meant was that they forced me to take a class I had nothing to learn from whatsoever. It completely killed my interest in mathematic subjects and looking back, it's probably in large part why I started to fall behind later into HS. This is only an anecdote, but the progression system in schools is so completely broken. Filters can't function if they barely even exist, so to speak.
I skipped 2 grades and they refused to continue skipping me up because they were worried about my social development rather than my grades, but this was before 9-11
@@princetbug literally the exact thing happened to me lol. I'm still in high school and my grades are fine but 100% do not represent my knowledge. I constantly have a friend in a class who has an A ask me for help when I have a B or C. Grades are hot garbage.
"What's also frustrating is when you aren't allowed to skip years despite getting perfect grades in every subject. " You should read "Teaching As a Subversive Activity" by Neil Postman.
Honestly, nothing in High School infuriated me more than the kids who made fun of autistic students. I've even had friends who'd show me embarassing videos they made of them, and in those moments I just kinda wanted to clock them in the face, but I didn't do so of course. Some people aren't given the same opportunities as everybody else, sometimes their even snatched away from them unfortunately, but making fun of them for something they have no control over, something that will change the course of their life permanently, is that really that funny? It just pisses me the hell off when perfectly 'normal' people make fun of others for what they don't have. A good reason for why I do is most likely because my friends are certainly autistic, albeit high functioning extreme nerds. Love them for that though, I just wish people treated others like human beings, I mean hell students often even fail to recognize teachers as actual people with lives.
I’ve been seen as ‘smart’ since elementary and nobody really touched me because my ‘studying’ seemed to work but in reality i never even touched a school book and just listened in class. In high school this blew up in my face of course because i discovered that i had an abnormally difficult time reading numbers and letters. But by then nobody cared since i was doing ‘well’ so my grades plummeted and now i have to do the university exam with a very short time limit. Doing things like complex logarithmic problems in under thirty seconds should not be a test for anyone’s intelligence or capability. Or impact them in the long run. Every single one of our math classes is centered around getting faster and faster, not learning the subject properly or acquiring the skills to study.
you my friend are a ‘gifted kid’ i am so thankful for the program at my school that has teachers that genuinely understand that and know how to help, teaching us how to study and other skills that we never used because we are able to intuit things. i hope more people get access to these because it can really make or break the rest of your life :( hope you’re doing well ❣️
Often, gifted kids have poor mental health and struggle with school later on. A huge reason for the poor mental health is 1: A lot of pressure to do well and 2: A lot of gifted kids are undiagnosed neurodivergent kids that don't get the support they need
same!! except I'm kind of the opposite, all through primary school i was the smart child with a really high reading/writing level, but when I started highschool I realized I was awful at focusing on verbal instructions, like if you try to explain math or science to me I'm probably not going to process any of it unless there's subtitles lol
@@Milo-hp9fw I've been in gifted programs since 7th grade, kept up, never got anything but A's, graduated 2nd in class of 400, and currently have a 4.0 GPA in a top college. I was never pressured to do well, I simply wanted to. Mental health is doing fine as well.
it says a lot about our cultural regard for children when i find it heartwarming that y'all took the time to humanize them, and not just shrug them off as dumb miniature aliens who need can only be understood through an adult's lens that reduces or utterly disregards their inner complexity (you know, the same interiority that every human being has!). as someone who went to predominantly black and brown schools since forever, can confirm that the emphasis on discipline was a thing for me and absolutely _ridiculous_ to witness. for the middle and high schools i attended there was a big emphasis on preparing the students for college, yet you could get behavioral infraction marks for something as small as not having your planner present on your desk during class or for wearing a brown belt instead of a black one (both high school), and my principal would literally get red in the face because the way we dragged out the "good morning, mr. blank" at assemblies wouldn't sound "professional" enough (middle school). i'd hear my peers all the time talk about how silly it was that they expected us to be college ready yet infantilized us through the disciplinary system. many didn't take it seriously, which only made some teachers think that was all the more reason why we _couldn't_ handle more freedoms--and it's like, well how do you expect these people to have faith in themselves when you treat them like their potential isn't even a possibility in the first place? that's all to say, i really appreciate the work done on this essay to truly understand and center students' experiences and struggles (and i learned a lot of interesting tidbits along the way!). well done guys~
Fr up until junior and senior year all teachers and staff cared about was discipline. They treat kids like they don't have a brain of their own. Funny enough, they're the same ones to complain about how they feel like they are "babysitting" instead of teaching. Maybe if you respect them enough then maybe they won't act up lmao. I genuinely think a lot of them have a superiority complex, especially since some of their rules and punishments don't matter in the real world.
Since I realized I like learning languages, I suddenly saw all the things language classes in school do wrong. That was the main point that showed me how bad our approach is to education. It took me about 8 years to get fluent in English, studying in school. It took me half a year to be a B2 level at Mandarin Chinese, studying at home. And that's giving school a lot of credit. I still wouldn't be able to speak English if I didn't start watching minecraft youtube skits in 6th grade.
@@Maria-uv9pd I think the biggest things are that: 1. I had good sources that I would pick out myself (made by natives/natives themselves, not out-of-touch foreign sources) 2. I was allowed to progress in my own pace (so some days I could learn a hundred or so words of vocab, and sometimes take several weeks long breaks. I started a year ago, but spent 6 months studying actively, and 6 months not studying at all) 3. I was motivated by being able to engage with the culture and art, rather than just wanting a specific grade. Teachers in Eastern Europe, where I live, are particularly very bad at English most of the time. They struggle a lot with pronounciation and grammar too. The textbooks are also becoming worse and worse in terms of quality. You can ask anyone around here who is fluent in English, and I bet at least 9/10 will tell you that they didn't learn it in school. Either from games or youtube (the luckier ones even lived abroad), meaning that they were also motivated by wanting to engage with some form of media (or communicating with their immediate environment). But that's English, a very different language. Although, I did apply to a beginner Chinese course. Our midterm exam had the same amount of curriculum as the first two levels of duolingo. My thoughts about learning outside of school: I feel like the learning methods that people swear by varies from person to person. I like spaced repetition the most, I am using flashcards for vocabulary and learning apps for grammar. I have to review these every few days until they just stuck. Starting out, I learned the very basics, then I was learning 60 or even more words per day for a while (and reviewing the vocab from like the past 3 days every day), and when I reached a certain number of words, I shifted my focus onto grammar for a few months. I learned vocab during summer break, so I did have a lot of time to do it. But even if I didn't spend all my time learning Mandarin in the summer, you can still learn the same amount in 2-3 years while attending school or working, which is still several times more efficient than learning in school. Others like sentence mining more. They search for sentences in their target language, translate them, and study the grammar. They don't learn words separately, but can extrapolate meaning and information from the small variations between the sentences. Because if you learn "I like apples" and "I like oranges", and you know the meaning of both, you will know which part means "I like", and the names of the fruit. They are also forcing themselves to find out alone how the language works, not being told formulas directly (very similar to how children first learn their mother tongue). These two methods are what come to mind first, but a very generally accepted idea is that as soon as you reach a B2 level, you should start listening to podcasts and such in your free time. Some go for hour-long walks, listening to people converse in the foreign language, getting their daily exercise and learning at the same time. I also joined a discord for language learners and people of various skill levels frequently communicate in their respective channels according to language, from beginner to native. I've been regularly told there that a few things I was taught were also very weird/juvenile patterns of speech (or I was overcomplicating simple expressions), so I definitely needed corrections. The important thing though, is after a few months I could engage in conversations in text form at least, and was always called out on my mistakes by natives and higher-level students. What our books do, however, is give you sentences to parrot, make you repeat the same type of grammar structures a 100 times once, and then move on completely. So it's easy to forget, and you didn't even understand it the first time either. Also, because students need different amounts of time to learn something, it's bad for them to be forced to learn at the same pace. Faster learners are bored, while others who may find specific topics and learning points difficult are left behind (and they don't have the opportunity to find methods that make it easier for them, assuming they were even told about them) There are a lot of ways to do it, students should be allowed to try different things, and mix with others who speak at higher levels. They should be encouraged to find entertainment, like games, movies, books, and learn from them. The feeling when you encounter some sentence in your target language "in the wild", and realize that "oh my god I get it", is a wonderful thing and more should be able to experience it. That's what kept me going most of the time. I'm not an expert on the methodology of language learning, maybe there are things that could make it more efficient for me. But I found something that works, and works better than our education system does.
@@Gurgashufa Hey, fellow language learner here! I took Japanese all 4 years of hs, and even did AP my senior year. Now I am planning to apply to a vocational school in Japan, and am taking the JLPT N5 (the bare minimum level required to be accepted) in a few weeks. I've been studying using a book made specifically for the N5 test, as well as using some other resources I've frequently used over the years, but despite my 4 years of Japanese classes, I still feel like my skills aren't as good as they should be (definitely not my teacher's fault, she was absolutely amazing and one of my favorite teachers), and one of the things I feel like I lacked most was continuous interactions and real-life modeled conversations (convos not revolving around answering questions or describing things to be used in an essay/speaking test), especially since the curriculum was modeled after polite form and was, as I'm sure you can guess, very "textbook-like" and not exactly practically applicable, not to mention being sort of out of date with current ways of speech (discarding the use of certain words, speaking in a simpler manner, etc.). You mentioned that you joined a Discord for language learners, so I'm wondering if you could share the join link or recommend other similar servers? If you've joined any others, that is. Please and thank you :)
@@Maria-uv9pdone motivation, two it forgives your mistakes. you have as many opportunities as it takes for you to truly understand and not just parrot. in school, you are punished for not understanding, this causes you to only want to get out the correct meaning of the sentence, rather than to slowly build a sense for it. i learned german to B2 level in 7 months, and i didnt even study consistently and oftentimes not more than an hour. sure i loved putting in time often, but there were one or two times where i went weeks without practice, yet still i have made tremendous progress. meanwhile german 300 students can’t get out a sentence without a translator
@@Gurgashufalooking back on my 3 years of ASL classes, I'm shocked at how poorly structured the classes were. Even at the end of the year at level 3, many of my classmates couldn't get through a simple conversation, and their grasp of the language was EXTREMELY limited. Besides the fact that after learning a topic we would move on and not touch it again (so everyone forgot all the topic-related vocab and grammar), we barely did any signing or receptive practice, especially in levels 1 and 2. So by the time a lot of students got to level 3, whenever our teacher *did* sign instructions or longer pieces of information, they didn't understand anything at all. The people who were most successful were those that sought out conversational or receptive practice outside of class, which in a highschooler's schedule, is not very common. It's really so frustrating looking back at how much time I wasted because in 3 years I should've been able to learn so much more. Now that I'm learning Korean on my own, speaking and listening practice is usually emphasized as the most important aspects and it's so much more fun. One of the most rewarding parts about learning languages (in my experience) is being able to understand or communicate things that you never could have otherwise, and so many classes just aren't set up in a way that truly helps students internalize language.
"If you want to save the kids, you need to start listening to them" Thank you. Feels like this has always been the case. Adults project their ideals, their wishes, their trauma onto children. We make up rules for them then get mad when they turn out a certain way. And don't trust them to grow and learn from mistakes, or lead us into broader change. Now that I'm out of college, I can look back on all those years of schooling and think "wow that was fucked". Esp standardized testing. I won't give up a chance to shit on the SAT. I went through advanced classes and a prep course, and felt like it only tested me on how to take a long ass test, not anything I actually learned in the prior 3-4 years. A lot of our schools don't prioritize the actual knowledge or even give a fuck about student well being (unless you make good grades, fit the mold). As much as I hate this anti-intellectual and anti-college trend over the years, higher ed did it to itself by being greedy. And our collective knowledge/skill base suffers.
Zoe's story around 34 minutes about the young teacher who said they, as young, female teachers, needed to be extremely strict to make the students respect them... Students NEVER actually respect the strict teachers. They might be diligent to follow all of the rules (to their and their classmates' detriment at times), but they absolutely don't respect that teacher. They hate that teacher. The only students who might respect the strict teacher are students with an aptitude for the subject who are succeeding without bumping into the rules and strict policies. Everyone else just can't wait to be out of that class forever. I can't fathom how someone could go through that many years of education and come out somehow thinking "I've gotta be just like the teachers everyone hates if I want respect."
I never liked standardized test growing up; I thought they were stupid. But one thing that was on my side is I'm a really good test taker. It was easy, relatively speaking for me to read a question, and then try and just pick the best answer. Sometimes, it would work sometimes it wouldn't. I noticed as I got older a lot of the problems that people had with exams were they just couldn't finish. It's not that they didn't know, they just couldn't finish, so they would spend maybe 10 minutes on one question when maybe they could have continued on answering more questions. I knew growing up that some students had test anxiety; there was something about the exam, whether the fact that it was hard or they just freeze up during those moments really got to them. It's not that they weren't smart. It's just that this one thing was holding them back. And they knew it, and they knew everyone would treat them as though they were stupid because of it.
This is why parents need to prepare children for stressful situations. I did MMA and football, I learned to not freeze up quickly. it’s better to act and get it wrong than do nothing. It was something that has put me at an advantage over my educational peers even after moving on from both
Im the same with test taking except for essay writing for literature classes, I just could not get 5 paragraphs of rhetorical analysis within that 40ish min time limit and even now it takes me days and weeks to write essays for college...
My school often sent me to regional or city olympiads and contests so I don't really have test anxiety. I remember that during the speaking part of a [insert foreign language] olympiad I somehow completely missed the text which I should've based my speech on (literally couldn't find it lol). I only knew the theme and some criteria. Though obviously I scored low, I still managed to give a normal answer and sounded convincing enough to trick my speaking partner (a contestant who I was paired with for the test) into thinking that I actually knew something about the subject. They couldn't believe me at first when I told them later that I made everything up However, my experience didn't save me from freezing up on my advanced math state exam. There were two particular math problems which were very easy and I've solved a billion other similar problems before but exactly that time I couldn't. I couldn't even remember where to start. I didn't want to spiral into more brain numbness so I finished any other tasks I could do, sometimes returning back to these two demons to check if I maybe now could recall something. Didn't work. My brain just shut down every time I looked at that corner of the paper It's not anything of importance to me now but at that time my future kinda depended on it I also didn't want to be frowned upon by my classmates who had this "typical boring clever person nerd.png" image of me which didn't reflect me at all and I was often laughed at or faced confusion if I acted "out of character". Also I didn't want them do think that because if my state exam results were not high enough, then I probably didn't deserve my school marks either and got them.. by other means. Yes, bribery is a thing in my school I don't really know why I wrote all this. Probably to say that even though I was quite confident I wouldn't freeze up as I've managed to escape it numerous times before, the thing still happened.. and it'd definitely happen again. And again
Thank you so much for this. My parents are aghast at how me and my siblings are stumbling in school and college, and it feels impossible to explain all the reasons why.
I think part of the problem is the lack of in person sociality. We have social needs as people, and some of us learn better in certain contexts through social interaction. A camera and mic only go so far. Plus, it can often be a big help to have a person help, not technology.
Do you know how they handled this in the 1917 pandemic? They took kids from population dense area and sent them to the country. Think NYC to Pennsylvania farmland. Historically, it's unclear if many of those kids ever came home. It wasn't a priority to reunite poor families back then. I feel like a lot of parents did their kids wrong, by not prioritizing finding pod groups and replacement activities. Like, this is parenting. Arguably, augmenting what schools provide is a HUGE part of parenting.
I genuinely loved science throughout school, it was my favorite subject. I remember breaking down crying once in my sophomore year biology, because our teacher was spending 80% of the semester so far just getting control of the students, instead of us actually doing anything productive. It just felt like I was in a daycare. The teacher also broke down crying once. Those kids were pretty brutal to her, and she quit after that year. I know the teenage brain is still underdeveloped, but I seriously will never understand why they thought it was funny to make her cry. Like what was happening at home for them to have such a sheer lack of empathy? Reflecting on it now as an adult is kind of disturbing. This is kind of a selfish and maybe self-inflated thought I had at the time, but I was wishing they could just divide us into classes of kids who gave a shit, and kids who didn't, so my education didn't have to suffer. It just didn't feel fair.
The same has happened to me, but with humanities and languages. I was lucky enough to never have been bullied personally, but I was absolutely so fed up with all the immaturity and disrespect around me, to the point I started to get anxiety attacks and crying a lot, only worsening the situation. Medical help wasn't available in the school so with time I just learned to shut down completely. Care about nothing at all: unsurprisingly, my grades dropped for a while until I found myself in a better enrironment. So no, we're not selfish at all, we just wanted basic human decency and education which we could not get from that hellscape. If those people weren't selfish, truly selfish, self centered and rude, we would NOT have to think about excluding them.
I’ve experienced similarly, it’s probably why I have a streak of ferocious responses to disrespect, as I held my tongue back then, and now that I’m in college it frustrates me even further since people are now PAYING to be in a classroom just to not respect the education they’re being given.
@somethingunusual8456 I did get bullied, basically every day since I was 10, up until a few months before HS graduation. Eventually it got so bad I had to go on antidepressants. What sucks is because I spent almost my whole childhood hiding from other people, y'know a time of key social development, socializing as an adult doesn't really come naturally to me. I still hardly speak. I don't know what I did to deserve all that, I think I just went to the school district with the most psychotically sadistic kids.
You need to rid yourself of the idea that these kids' behavior must be the result of something happening 'at home' Popular media gives us this notion that people only traumatize others because they were traumatized themselves or grew up in a bad home. But this is not the case. People who grew up in stable families are just as likely to act immature. There is also a large element of social facilitation, where a behavior seems more appealing because you see others doing it. If we acknowledge that empathy has to be taught, then we should realize that we shouldn't expect much empathy from people who have the least life experience.
@@cyancyborg1477 what those kids did to you is criminal. You should never feel selfish for not wanting to go through that and actually have a nice education. However what is done is done, I hope you got the help you need with socialization and that eventually it is no longer something which feels unsurpassable. You're not alone in this (unfortunately I've heard a lot of similar stories)
"no child left behind" is bad. Sure, being held back you lose all your friends. But being held back keeps you from being held back forever. You can always make new friends
No child left behind was put in place so parents of dumbass kids could blame the schools for their shortcomings. It only actually harmed the more education-inclined students, who were no longer given special attention towards curating a more individualized education plan tailored towards challenging them and developing the same skills as their peers instead of simply assuming they would be smart enough to pass everything without effort forever.
@Vanity0666 aye as a "dumber" kid in school I always felt like deadweight but blaming the parents isn't even the reasons, it's administrative, it looks better if all of your classes advance generally at the same rate then if it was only half of them
At-home schooling was probably the single most soul-crushing, depressing experience I've ever had. I already had a bit of a problem with a depressive lack of motivation in my highschool years, but that form of "education" took what little drive and energy I had and threw it all directly into the same dumpster fire my grades went.
This discussion on the Taylorism management style really hit home. I'm finishing up my PhD and I have to say the first two years were me having to UNLEARN this idea that "grinding it out" leads to success. I had to slow down, take a step back, think deeply and be less "productive" in order to actually carry out my scientific research.
i’m in my 3rd semester of college and want to do same but i feel like time is against me sometimes between my schedule and taking my time to really digest the material
@@flightlesschicken7769 Obviously I need to work hard and I'm under time limits. I need to publish and I need to graduate. But when I first got started I had this approach that working hard meant working all the time. The idea I had, and much of the behavior I observed, was that Grad students stay in the lab late and work over the weekends. So I crammed as many PCRs and assays in as I could in a day. I got in early, worked late...and I kept making mistakes. It took a huge toll on my mental health. I was working so hard why wasn't I getting results? In school you can, and are encouraged, to work long hours studying etc. If you get a couple questions wrong, or take a bad quiz you usually can move on from it or take a lower grade on a meh paper because you have to just keep moving. But with lab work it all builds on itself. If I was moving too fast to push things through to save a day or didn't take time to plan the proper controls I could potentially put myself back a week because I had to start over. Grinding it out just left me tired and not much farther along than if I took my time. So I try to take breaks, and leave at a decent hour. And, importantly, I will give myself time to process my data, and come up with flushed out next steps instead of barrelling into the next thing to get it done. I still work my ass off, but I am cognizant of my limits. I do better work when I read and synthesize from other's work, plan, and take care of myself. I will also shout out to my AMAZING and supportive faculty advisor who reminded me to take care of myself.
At some point we gotta stop blaming the pandemic on every single thing. The schooling system has been on its last wheel for ATLEAST 15 years. The colleges are antiquated also. Aswell as the pay and conditions of teachers. Everyone knows the schooling system has been questionable since the beginning. It’s a matter of sustainability
Schools became communist indoctrination centers 20 years ago. It's not meant to teach you anything useful, it's meant to create docile automatons that aren't aware their rights are being violated.
My biggest problem with this type of content is, I know the school system is shit, I know it broke me, I know it's screwing people over on a constant basis. I know this society is shit. But I have no clue what the hell to do about it. Or if anything CAN be done about it. And I find that very discouraging.
The only thing that can be done has to be fought for by teachers, plus voting out shitty school boards. Easier said than done but there’s not a lot that can be done by individuals directly.
We as individuals HAVE to engage politically at multiple levels. If you have a spare few hours go to school-board meetings. Write or call representatives (the lower the level of government the better, since your voice will be comparatively louder and they will tend to have more individual power) and ask them about what they’ve done in terms of policy and positions to reform the school system. Talk to friends and family about the problem and how we can fix it (this last one is likely the easiest but also has the smallest impact). Unfortunately systemic change requires a large political force and the modern world makes it incredibly difficult for people at the bottom to exercise their political power, so its not something you can just set and forget. It takes work to change the world, but this kind of work has to be done by individuals or nothing will change. Go to meetings you can speak at. Contact your reps about issues you care about. Push friends and family to not just discuss but engage.
A quick biased guide from me: Dont vote as all candidates are mere buerocrats who only serve their interests. There are many things that one can do. For one you could go study education and find solutions. Next, you could (should imo) take action. The form that this demonstration takes hold of should be varied and diverse from protesting to forming militia. Whatever you want to see happen will only happen if something is done. What feels right to you is the path you should take. I can't be a great guide, for i am some random ass youtube comment. But just be creative.
I also feel like teachers believe now that just because we have access to information way easier than they did in their time, they can make us do 20 different papers and essays for the next day, and more than 3 teachers at the time will think this and it just messes up with students. They just read powerpoints instead of teaching and expect us to do amazing... teaching has declined too
One of the last assignments I got in high school prior to COVID was a five page essay due the next day about some very niche European historical event. Like?????????????
Yep, especially when it comes to online textbooks that have homework portions and premade slides. I hate them so much, alongside their online tests. Sometimes I hate school so much, largely because it makes learning boring.
@@chaosbean6320I had a teacher who only taught by online textbook, almost everyone would have failed if he didn’t allowed us to cheat. Yet, ALL the kids were put into the next grade level. This was an advanced class with Algbra 1 for 8th graders. It was pure chaos, literally fires, blood, swearing, screaming, bullying (including the teacher bullying a disabled kid) yet nothing happened to the teacher and the kids are Highschool Freshmen in Geometry unsure how to do stuff they were meant to learn last year.
Oh boy, I very clearly remember how much I despise that shit. When I was in high school a lot of the book just assume I have access to the internet to search for X because they're trying to "develop" my critical thinking. No shit sherlock, I barely have internet access at home so essentially most of the textbook are useless. I also have this teacher that to this day I despise. It was my 12th grade physics teacher. All she did for the entire year was: go to class, sit, let the STUDENT teach the other student about the material in front of the class and then she just handed an exercise paper. Not to mention she had the fucking audacity to mock me behind my back on my friend class, saying how bad of a student i am for having the lowest grade in physics. Even though I tried so hard to understand it because I was very interested in physics, but having undiagnosed adhd make it harder for me, not to mention the shitty textbook and lack of internet access at home. In the end, I ended up giving up studying physics because it just so painful to get reminded of that whenever I tried to study physics.
@@firesagithis is a huge problem yes, but i feel like that’s on the parents to discipline their kid or on the kid to force themselves to listen. stricter education won’t help, it will just leave kids who already don’t care without any education at all since they will give up completely.
@@Quartz512_ I’m sure the teachers are doing their best to provide good education… who is to determine what is “better” when a teacher has to cater for so many pupils in a general classroom?
I started college a few months ago, and it’s wild to me how weird the education system is. I was really deep in the “nerd” groups in highschool, the friends who had below a 4.0 tended to be outliers, so college has been wild. People are all over the spectrum for math and writing, and it’s really interesting
I hate those nerd groups because they make me feel intellectually compromised. I would reckon I am not very smart and it hurts me every time I am reminded of just how stupid I am.
@@MyHeartIsOpen2Youjust remember there are many types of intelligence. having a 4.0 is more a reflection of discipline and memorization than I would say intelligence.
I used to be part of that group. I am now the outlier though lol. Failing 2 of my dual enroll classes. I just can't give a crap anymore. Probably won't get into any colleges, but I don't even really want to do college anyways
im glad that teachers are speaking out about how students are not performing up to standards and how they arent learning because it shows that they care but they are placing the blame on the students and parents while it is not entirely their fault. yes there is some responsibility on the student to try in school and parents to make sure their students are trying their best but at the same time, there is only so much people can do in a broken system
As a student, school literally feels like a game, a game with the highest stakes. Like, for me, it's only about getting highest grades that I can. And, this struggle session goes on for weeks and weeks on end, and I don't have the option to take a mental health day. Like, even though on the surface it might seem like I do get those good grades, I can't keep going on, as at some point I'm going to break. This stuff, compounded with bullying has really been damning to my motivation and my mental health. I even forget sometimes that school is supposed to be about learning. I know this is only me, but I know this is the case for many students around the country. And then, they wonder why a lot of young people want socialism. If school is this tough already, I don't want to imagine how tough actual work might be, knowing that I will slave away my life for a boss that would basically give me the equivalent of pennies.
I really feel this, the only motivation getting me through my classes is the degree even tho the course content is important and interesting, I don't even want to get a job right after I finish I just want a gap year and do nothing. Even on breaks Im always stressed abt something. I'm on my senior year without a proper internship yet but idk if I can even handle the workload when I barely have the energy to even look at applications
I feel the same way as you. It doesn’t help when the older adults in your life are telling you that everything is easiest and peeks at 17 years old. Yet at 17 I got long-haul COVID. They were certainly wrong about 17 being the peak of my life so I hope they are wrong about the workforce being considerably harder then school. But I think most of it comes from them underestimating school rather then overestimating work. But I have been enjoying college and it brings life into my day when I have a professor who I can tell WANTS to be there. I am considering becoming one of the professors because the workforce seems so scary and unaccommodating.
If you aren’t going to college you shouldn’t slave away as it doesn’t matter. If you are going to college then yeah it does matter and it’s just hazing you to filter out the smart and disciplined ones from the rest. Work is about the same or easier than college though.l depending on major. Engineers have much easier jobs for example. Work is also much more fulfilling than school because your rewards are tangible and almost immediate. You aren’t working for the chance at a job you are working for money in your bank account
Real work won't be like this, I promise. You can totally get a pencil pushing job at a financial firm that pays well and you'll be doing school every day for a salary, or you can get literally any other job and work with the real world. All you gotta do at work is show up, and be willing to do what your boss asks. The best part: if you boss gives you performance aptitude tests, or judges you, or even makes you mad at ALL, you can search for a different job. You can find a new manager. Just hang in there, and hopefully the good grades will make your college cheaper! Trust me, getting all C's disqualifies one from most scholarships and stuff, but if you're mostly B, B+, and a few Cs then you'll still qualify and be okay.
I’m currently a 2nd yr in university. I can safely say that all the years of me completely breaking my soul since the beginning of middle school till now and being considered a “smart kid” expected to just know everything presented to me are catching up to me. Ig you can say I’m a young adult now, I feel like I’m fkn useless the moment I can’t understand something. Makes me feel immature. Then I fall behind. I have an extremely rigorous major, I feel like I can’t take it anymore. All the years of me being told to never get below As, try to be the best at everything, shamed for failing just a bit, idk, I feel like I was never taught to process and understand how to learn, especially how to learn efficiently and effectively. I was just thrown info and told to pass a test. But now it seems like am at a point in my life where that isn’t going to work. And I’m being tasked with doing things differently. I’m now expected to be even more smarter and understand everything. I honestly just want to disappear and live somewhere in a mountain lol.
I think parents need to stop relying on phones and electronics to entertain kids... and I also think standardized education needs to end. Putting all students into a box is not good for anybody. Plus, teachers need support from admin. One bad student can ruin the flow of a whole classroom and yet admin will just do nothing and the teacher's hands are tied, too.
@@fullmetal2455 personally i don't think there's such a thing as a bad student. there are bored students and tired students and confused students and students who can't get reasonable accomodations or supports in school. they aren't bad. all people have an innate desire to learn that mostly gets crushed into oblivion while they're in school and turns them into exhausted adults. if children are supported and encouraged and respected, they simply don't turn into "bad students" in the first place. they stay curious and excited and engaged. and maybe a bit excitable or undisciplined but the former is a good thing and a latter is a matter of practice, not something to be punished.
My kid has been suffering. His father was also stationed overseas when Covid started, and then we all moved overseas. Basically 3 major changes happened to him when he was 10 and it was A LOT. My poor kid is still struggling. I had a Zoom meeting yesterday with his school and they are acknowledging the trauma kids feel and they want to support the kids with this. He's getting help in school for his work. He's capable and smart - he just can't get the work done. He struggles. He's such a sweet child, and I will do anything for him. He's never punished for his grades, he's doing his best at his capacity.
as a kid who also moved, STARTED high school during covid and is in a high pressure cluster school, I also feel really lost right now so it’s great to see that atleast some parents are more understanding and supportive :).
Your son needs structure. You need to impress upon him that in the real world, deadlines have meaning. Blowing a deadline may cost you your job as an adult. Blowing a deadline may kill people in certain career fields. This is one of those "tough love" things that I'm grateful my parents forced upon me. I was also a sweet kid who was deemed capable and smart that utterly failed to adhere to deadlines. I got picked on a lot and often used that as a way to hide from my own responsibilities. Mom and Dad fixed that habit of mine and I'm far better off today for their effort. Remember that your son has to be a man in a few short years. Give him the tools for success, even if it means forcing that sweet child to be uncomfortable and do something he evidently doesn't like doing.
As a child of NYC public schools, more or less the teaching style for many of my teachers was as follows: if you got it, you got it, and if you didn't you didn't. Some teachers would have assistance or after-school teaching. Or maybe if you had like a friend who was really good they could help you but if you didn't get it. Sometimes you were just left to figure it out. And this style didn't help anyone in the long-term cause once kids came to more rigorous work, say in junior senior year or even college. If they were just "naturally" smart, they wouldn't have any habits to help them figure something out and process information. Then they had to basically try and create their own study structure from scratch. And if you were just used to getting left behind you eventually stop trying and many people thought process was: I guess I'm just stupid. We were all done bad out here.
I was in college at this time (we mostly had theory + practice days, during which we focused on one course) and I could do anything only because most of the teachers were always online, so after explaining theory there will be a multiple hour window during which teachers would answer and help fixing your mistakes. Trying to online coach 10+ people during one hour lesson is problematic to say the least, it barely works for in-person classes. Keeping the same teaching program was biggest issue, but than again I get that teachers were just thrown into it without any time to prepare too
Perfectly described basically my whole life. I was considered an above average kid in terms of intelligence, academics, drawing, etc. I’d get recognitions and everything but I hated school growing because although sure I was a “smart” child, I still needed help understanding certain things sometimes, but I was usually left on my own to figure it out, it would take me a little longer to figure things out but there wasn’t much help because I was expected to just understand everything, both at home and by teachers (I was usually in honors classes, but I’d sometimes ask certain questions and quite a lot of my past teachers would get mad or annoyed, so I’d simply stay quite to save the embarrassment, I’d see other kids ask similar questions to me and they’d sometimes get mocked and told “did you not take notes?” Or “look at the slides” or the infamous “you would know if you paid attention”. And starting middle school, the moment my grades would fall ever so slightly just from an A to a B, I would get punished, scolded, and shamed. I’d just think I was stupid, and that school was useless. Although I tried my hardest to keep my grades up all the way to high school, got into university and into a pretty competitive portfolio required major, I still feel like I’m somehow behind everyone else. Like I have to re teach myself everything that others already seem to have known and I’m once again expected to have learned before. I feel like I don’t belong there. I’m constantly burnt out, teaching my self everything. I have periods of highs where I’m extremely motivated and then a few hours later I feel like I’m gonna hang myself and that I’m a complete idiot for not understanding the task immediately. Where I see my peers seem to just breeze by. I honestly don’t know where I’m going wrong, but if this is how my future and this career I don’t even feel like I belong in anymore are going to be then I honestly don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life. And it sucks because there are peers who even sometimes just make fun of me or others for not understanding which honestly just adds more fuel to the fire. I don’t really know what I want in my life anymore tbh. Sry for the long rant.
Yeah dawg, I fortunately found schooling super easy even towards the because something more difficult is just more engaging to me. But yeah I never had to study, and never really built a normal sense of discipline, being often called lazy because I never did much extra work in school (because I didn't need to). I really do feel bad for the people who straight up just didn't get the material a lot of times because I know they're not stupid most of the time, just that schools/teachers tend to teach like everyone has the same thought processes and such. Been to a lot of schools in NYC & it all just sucks
It's the same over here on the island (especially in lower income areas) my brother is one of the kids who doesn't get it. He can barely read. He doesn't even care anymore. It just makes me feel awful
Thank you so much for inviting me onto this project! I loved the way you brought so many different things together to create this beautiful mosaic! Amazing work as always, Elliot! 💜
Ahhhh Zoe this collab was SO GOOD!! I was so happy to see you on this video, and I love how thoughtful and reflective you and Elliot are about education. Love you both!
Im a student who passed highschool with straight A's but i feel as if i have learned very little of what i actually need in life. I lack social skills, i can't find motivation to take care of myself, i never actually learned how to retain the information i am taught. I perform well but my mental state suffers.
My Mom’s a Kindergarten teacher, since covid she’s had underdeveloped kids coming into her classroom that aren’t socialized. Many didn’t even know what a grocery store was. It’s not only a school thing, its the lack of socialization these kids are getting as well that was worse when covid hit, but has been prevalent throughout recent years
I go to a state college and was absolutely shocked at how little most people here actually enjoy learning, education, and reading as a concept. I understood in K-12, but I thought people in college would have those traits, in spite of standardized education. People openly scoff at the general education requirements because it “won’t have anything to do with their career” or they “won’t use it in their life.” It shows a complete lack of understanding of what college is supposed to be. This shit has just become white collar trade school. I’ve felt a loss for the kind of secondary education I always dreamed about, in a community of people who WANT to be there, professors who have TIME to actually form connections and teach how they want, and a general attitude of curiosity and learning about the world. It’s just a business. I think the issue of education bleeds into higher education as well.
I felt this when I met this friend group who didn't take their work seriously and I was the only one in the room who would actually do their work on time. Unfortunately, their bad habits started to rub off of me, and because of my mental state, I made big mistakes that messed me up for the worst :/
I found less of those types of people in the higher level classes of my major and now that I'm in graduate school I haven't met a single person like that. My general education requirements were full of those types tho :(
@@GreenGorgeousness this seems like overgeneralization of what the original comment said, no? The problem isn't as simple as "most people in GE classes don't want to learn", but that the structure of high school and early undergraduate programs don't prepare students for the kind of learning and independence required for said higher level courses. You'd be reducing the problem to a kind of circular argument to say "only the students who make it through the rigor of the program are capable of making through the rigor of the program (the ones "generally interested in learning"). I don't totally disagree with the sentiment of what you're saying, but I think there is wayyy more going on than just "people don't want to learn"
I’m currently a senior in college and was a senior in high school when COVID started. Me and a few of my friends have expressed that we feel emotionally stunted. I’m a 21 year old but sometimes I still feel like an 18 year old that never truly got to learn how to navigate the world
I felt that way in college 2008-2012. It caused me to have a bit of a breakdown in the years after graduation. I’m not saying Covid didn’t affect your experience, as I’m sure it did, but you’re not the only generation that feels this way in college. I think it’s a pretty normal thing that many people don’t talk about, so those who feel that way can feel isolated and behind the curve. Just know that feelings of struggling to transition into an adult are very real and very common, and you’re not broken because of it. Give yourself time.
Buddy that aint never gonna change, every year that passes you're gonna tell yourself "nothing feels meaningfully different" until you realize everyone is just faking maturity in an attempt to secure positions of authority over others so they can dictate reality to their little fiefdoms
My loneliness in college made me overschedule and overwhelm myself with responsibilities and workload that I couldn't possibly handle, simply because how much I valued making friends & having to find always think of ways to make new friends, and spending time on cultivating those friendships.
Ended up with me being active in the student radio, studying spanish (full time) while also having an internship, writing applications for a massive foreign thesis project the upcoming semester, other student organizations and having to report from my previous semester having studied abroad. It was a mess. And i didnt even realize it until now.
a teacher recently told me that "its not about grades, its about learning," and it got me thinking alot about this. Because it is about grades. I have always seen school as a game i need to win, the outcome of which will determine my future for who knows how long, and never something to benefit me as a person or a place to learn. Id much rather cheat and get an A than work hard and get a B, because it dosent matter how hard you work or how smart you are, what matters is what you look like on paper. Good grades get you into college, college gets you a job, and a job pays for your wellbeing and life. All we really care about is surviving by any means necessary while our teachers insist on trying to make us learn something for no good reason. Learning is a privilege, one that most of us dont even have the time to think about let alone attempt, and until our teachers realize the reality of the world we live in, where financial stability is a dream and the 'middle class' is basically below the poverty line, there will always be a fundamental difference in the way teachers think and the way students think.
Y’know students really be sitting in class for a good chunk of their life, and I feel that school has become less “fun”, there is almost nothing new in school other than harder classes next year. It’s been sucky after COVID since everyone got locked in, no social life, and when people went back to class it was really boring to go to class, it just didn’t feel worth it, making people procrastinate and not be on level.
This, this, and ALL of this!! The quote at 50:39 really says it all. I have been saying for years now- as I’m continuing to work in schools- that schools should be community resource centers for youth. Elementary school should be about guided play and discovery, middle schools should be more open to the changing interests of students and high schools should allow for student led projects about their interests. My philosophy in the classroom has always been “less of me, more of them”. I just wish more educators in the field would see that the solution is *not* even stricter policies.
Fewer and fewer are choosing to do this work. The shortages are stretching those still in the field. I certainly can't see the way forward - it would take more change than the political will would allow.
..are not enough. Most parents even hate non-traditional schools. No, the solution is a sustained mutual aid system designed to help teachers carry the loads of and educate them on the woes of modern schooling. @@bowtiefrenchfry800
I can’t imagine dealing with long covid in grade school. At least in college I could work with my professors and the schedule was less rigid. Grade Schools are so harsh on kids for even just needing to pee. Taking extra time for breaks because you’re struggling with undiagnosed Long Covid would be impossible.
that's my life! it really sucks (i got covid in seventh grade and i'm a high school freshman now, long covid gave me two disorders and ruined my immune system) but you learn how to play catch up pretty quick. for me, every time i get sick i'm mentally out of it for two weeks, even if i'm physically okay enough to show up to school i don't process anything
Adult schools are a thing that exists, and you dont have to be an adult to get a GED, some of the most unconventionally and conventionally intelligent people I know ended up acting out as a result of the environment and lack of real stimulation perpetuated by the standardized education system and were either filtered into continuation schools where they excelled due to the ability to set their own schedules and meet deadlines, or simply obtained their GED through the testing program The schools treat kids like they are inmates in prisons, and are surprised when the culture starts to match the environment they created.
I was in 5th grade starting spring break when COVID happened, so when we went back the next year, I hadnt even passed my 5th grade math assesment, I hadnt even finished the course. And they decided from my grades, "Hey, this kid's doing alright, lets send him ahead" They put me in Pre Algebra in 6TH GRADE. I'm now a freshman doing Trigonometry, And I feel I need to be held back once, but if I let my grades drop, my parents punish me for them.
This video just unlocked some memories holy cow. I went 25 years without knowing I needed glasses and had undiagnosed ADHD, autism and dyslexia for a good chunk of that as well. I didn't even know that dyslexia existed untill the Percy Jackson books came out and I remember running to my mom at age 12 or 13 frantically pointing at the page and telling her that this book character has the same problem as me. (I mostly have the letters "b, p, d, q, m, w" flip or rotate to look like each other [ex: "puppy" can look like "buppy" or "pubby" or "bubpy" "pubpy"] or have some letters change places in words). She didn't believe me and I ended up failing algebra 1 (I was put in an early placement in 8th grade) I remember getting so frustrated during that class because everyone had just switched to smartBoards (they were so much harder to read) that I would just cry because I couldn't keep up, all the letters and numbers were jumbled and I couldn't remember all the steps I needed too. But when I went to go back to college at 23 (after I learned how to learn with my brain, turns out I actually like math alot and I'm really good at it) I took an entrance exam for placement and ended up testing out of math! I fell a bit short in reading but I can only do so much to get accommodations when I'm too old to get a real diagnosis for my dyslexia. (Turns out serif fonts and italics really aggravate it, and asking teachers to just not use italics on exams is very audacious of me when i don't have a diagnosis)
@cakeclaws right?? I'm not sure if it's just my area or something bc there's only one place that does testing and the application I had to fill out says they don't test anyone over 21 which is really weird
High school failed to prepare me for college and now I struggle to keep up with my education. Colleges aren't even as good as high school either they're not teaching which we as college students have to teach ourselves. It is messed up that we are going to debt for a better education when we are just teaching ourselves. The whole school education is messed up and we need to take action.
I graduated two years before the pandemic but I grew up in abuse and neglect, with learning disorders, neurological differences, and undiagnosed mental illness, as well as a neurological disorder… my experience with school is floating by, constantly being confused, never catching up, having to always beg my teachers for extra help just to be able to pass. The only reason I graduated was because (the school rejected my IEP request even though I had been diagnosed with ADHD, Tourette’s, OCD, and MDD, and PTSD at the time because while my math scores were abysmal - I failed algebra 1 four times at that point in my senior year) decided to help me by giving me a tutor from one of the college students studying to teach, and having her help me fill out a small packet every week, until I got 100% on all of them with as many tries as I needed. If it wasn’t for that math teacher I would have flunked. I graduated with the lowest GPA of my class and then continued to struggle in college, with one exception: I had an amazing philosophy teacher who helped me actually like learning again, and helped get me an exemption from my math prerequisites by enrolling me in his logic class which I ACED! The first math test I had ever Aced. But like…. There are a TON of kids like me who don’t get lucky like I have, and don’t get the opportunities or find the right resources to succeed. I am getting my bachelors in film next quarter and going into an MFA program soon after. But I owe ALLLLL of that success to two teachers who managed to reach me over my panic attacks and emotional disregulation And extreme anger. Not many kids get those opportunities. And that really really really needs to change. There are so many talented kids out there with so much potential who are held back purely because they don’t have the proper support. And they deserve a chance!
I can relate so much with the COVID learning loss. I was extremely depressed in the time period. When I started grad school I felt like I was lacking an in depth understanding of many important concepts, so much so I had to go back to them again and revise them again completely. The one course that got affected the most was lab work. Two years of my bachelor's degree were wasted.
Its astonishing how quickly I got depressed from covid, it began with just the lockdowns but then I started relapsing in eating disorder habits and that battle took up my entire first and second year of college, I can barely remember anything from that time period now
Yeah I’m suffering in my 3rd year of undergrad. I’m doing engineering, and honestly my work ethic + study approach is awful. Idk if I’m going to pass some of these classes. I know stem is hard but I feel lost. It’s likely because I did the bare minimum in community college. Covid learning was still somewhat in affect my first year. I honestly didn’t properly learn the fundamentals. Plus I’m still rebuilding the motivation/skills I lost during senior year of HS . And state University is killing me. It’s an entirely new beast. Stem doesn’t come naturally to me but I used to eventually be able to learn and understand stuff with some hard work. I used to love school & and be an honor roll student.
I was starting my undergrad and online classes were still so new to me, on top of needing to learn a new grading platform for classes (Blackboard instead of Google Classroom which I was used to). I failed 2 classes my first semester of college. My gpa has gone up above a 3.0 now but that took 3 years to fix :/ Online classes were HARD
0:58 I’m only a minute in and angry at teachers/administrators. When I was in high school back in the 90s, there was a dress code that all the students had to follow. I wanted to wear an earring, so I checked the dress code and didn’t see anything about it. I knew the administrators were all conservative (rural southern school) so I checked Title XI-all rules have to apply equally for the sexes in school. Female students were wearing five or more earrings in each ear, so I figured one on me wouldn’t be too big a deal. Nope-first day back in senior year, get called to the vice principal’s office. They told me, “Take it out, or we’ll do it for you.” I protested and was told I could take it up with the school board later. Either take it out or get suspended. So I took it out, but I also went to the school board. I made my case, but I was told they had already ruled on dress code that year and that they wouldn’t be ruling again til next year. And since I was a senior, I wouldn’t be able to argue it. I felt so defeated. I’m telling that story to ask this: if my teachers and administrators could muscle me over and make me rip something out of my ear while it’s still healing, in obvious contrivance to the rules and for no reason other than power plays, why couldn’t they enforce mask mandates? Just make it part of the dress code? I know, I know, they were ignorant about masks and wanted to lord it over others. But in doing so, they fundamentally messed with the learning experience of an entire young generation. And I know, the rules came down from on high, but nobody was following the rules when I had to pry my earring out. They were just pushing me around. These school boards need to be ended.
Obviously, you haven't seen what passes for dress codes lately 😅. Also, in my district and probably the one from which you graduated, the school admin probably didn't agree with the mandates anyway and did the bare minimum to appear in compliance.
@@Maria-uv9pd The football players were part of an explicitly Christian organization that would hold hands in a circle around the flag every morning and say prayers for the day. No religious indoctrination in schools though! /sarcasm
If *ANY* of the stuff that happened in my school in the early 2010s happened now it would be viral.....i went to *public* school in the late 2000s and early 2010s in southern louisiana and they spent the entire first two weeks of school every year systematically spending every class period reading every section of our gigantic student rulebook, it was massive and thick and it was part of school policy to keep it on you at all times. they were so strict theyd spend countless amounts of time doing uniform checks lined up in hallways, having students pull up their pant legs to show their socks were the right colors and matching, measuring earrings. Girls were constantly harrassed by teachers about earring size, or makeup, or bracelets. ANy time there was a trend it would get banned immediately. They went as far as to ban certain materials like corduroy and fleece from even being worn. guys had to be clean shaven, short hair one of 5 styles. Girls had to have professional hair. No dyed hair. Girls in high school werent allowed to wear shorts but guys could. It was southern louisiana......90 degrees 90% of the year. WTF. i swear, that the administration and the teachers just loved lording over the kids. you had to follow every phrase or sentence said to a superior with maam or sir or youd be yelled at. "I was going to the restroom maam/sir" "No maam/sir." My trauma memory is the fact every single teacher if they asked a yes or no question and you forgot to say maam or sir after yes or no, they'd yell at you "YES WHAT? YES WHAT?" at you until you replied maam or sir. They were constantly humiliating students and doing really cruel and unusual punishments. Its apparently still going on, as I went to a school not to far from a school that made national headlines in Slidell Louisiana for duct taping kids mouths shut... theres so many kids still trapped in those schools and if they were exposed on social media or tik tok that shit would go viral. I swear the information i have about the school I went to could be grounds for lawsuits and human rights investigations. One girl in my class (i think in like 2011) forgot her PE uniform so they made her walk the track field with no water for the entire PE hour in the humid louisiana heat. Spoiler alert... she had a heat stroke. if *any* of the stuff that happened in my time in louisiana schools happened today, bro theyd have been cancelled and blasted like yesterday. Literally. The cruel and unusual punishments that they dealt out, and the shit ive witnessed. Im not trying to trauma dump I am just saying that this shit is still going on, i am so passionate about it as a 24 year old now because now that im an adult i can see that the adults responsible for the school were... evil? Irresponsible. Not fit for their jobs and extremely out of bounds.
the concept of sciences and social studies being pushed aside is actually terrifying to me. i once had a social teacher say "if i had you pick one subject to be the only one taught in schools it would be social, because social teaches us how to interact with each other and the world around us."
I'd pick science because it also teaches us how the world around us works and there's so many fields of study under that umbrella. Understanding science helps prevent the spread of misinformation that can lead folks astray and we can also learn history through the ways humanity has advanced and we can learn and apply math in ways that can The more I look at it, the more each subject is interconnected and I find it odd that it's common practice to separate and teach each individually as opposed to creating a framework in understanding various learning styles so each student can learn how to learn in ways that work for them, build critical thinking and develop ways to apply these skills.
When I was in seventh grade I’m going to be honest with you we had at least 3 different teachers that year and I don’t think I had more then 8 classes out of the year where we learned social studies. This teacher duo taught science and social studies and I don’t remember one thing of social studies I learned in that class and I’m now a sophomore going into world history next semester. I’m sure it’s even worse for the kids younger than me because that was the year straight out of Covid.
@@inventingko7853 there was so much subject matter that the teacher left out and I cannot completely blame the teachers completely as many of them never had the resources to teach students and they're basically left to "fend for themselves" and have to adapt to a different structure that they weren't used to while getting paid peanuts. That said, many teachers are not doing the best by their students by not teaching them or outright neglecting them altogether. That said, if you learned a decent amount of science, you could understand world history to a degree by the way science has advanced and what motivated these developments and contrast that to the factors that held back advancements. You might be able to recall what little you were taught through indirect means such as through relevant topics you already understand. The best advice I can give is engage with your learning; grab a copy of the syllabus and seek out documentaries, texts, books, etc. as each topic becomes relevant. Find a study buddy a tutor or other resources might help such as a guidance counselor or even your teacher to help you create goals and follow through, even if to catch up so you have peace of mind in knowing you have all your prereqs sorted out beforehand.
If I had to pick one thing, it would be some kind of vocation because one of the most important things in life is staying alive - not starve - and you need a job for that. Outside of that - reading so they could educate on their own.
In my school there are people who openly say racial slurs within 20 feet of a teacher, and they don't do anything, and some openly talk about doing drugs or having drugs. This is 8th grade. I moved from regular classes to honors classes because of the other students in my classes (and partly because I can actually keep up).
Also A VERY big problem is districts, either they are really helpful and try to do their best (very little places do this and it is most likely a small town) or they are running the district like a business. My district is the ladder, and it sucks. My school at least does not reward people equally, people who do good do not get as many tickets to exchange for things as people who do bad and do something good once. The only thing we get for doing good all the time is meaningless awards I wouldn't put on any resume or anything because the curriculum is shit and unintuitive, I don't try hard in any of my classes much if at all because I find the curriculum equivalent to baby mode in doom. My district is also absolutely useless to social problems, my district last year was sued for $20 million because one person was getting constantly bullied and harassed for being gay (imo he was annoying but only because of his personality) and the administration done nothing after asking multiple times to do something, (search "Everett Washington school district lawsuit").
I did this too, sadly they are now letting anyone in. My own grade president talks in brain rot and a very VERY known r@c!st. But, no one cares. He also screams at people plus most people I known that are higher in classes just cheat but most teachers simply don’t really care. Plus the teachers always complain, taking up more education time and causing the class to fall behind. Yet, if the teacher is there they do not really pay attention. They just test us and then throw it out.
I absolutely resonate with this quote. “School Kills Artist” As an artist myself, I remembered when I was younger, I was told to stop ‘doodling’ in my worksheets. And instead of helping me focus more in class, it actually done the opposite. I could never focus in those boring lectures because I could not make a silly comic about a joke my teacher said in class or sketch that pretty girl sitting across from me. I needed something stimulating to do to keep my mind from zoning out which my school has rarely done. Due to the favoured importance of getting a good job, barely any of my friends wanted to take Art as their course in college or even in Secondary. Many wanted to take A Math, POA(business stuff basically) and only the art kids went to art. Even art is considered boring and I think that it is an absolute tragedy. I always wondered why Art had to be watered down to- study this portrait for an hour and copy it exactly to get a grade. Any artistic addition would be considered as ‘risky’ or ‘not in the curriculum’. Schools, no matter how hard they try to engage students, always fall short because of the fear of giving children too much freedom.
Maybe a follow up video discussing what students and parents can reasonably do to improve the situation? It would be nice to have some actionable suggestions towards change even in small ways.
This may be anecdotal, but what your friend said about the curriculum sounded familiar to my 6th grade year. We had 5 core classes (reading, english, math, science, social studies) Three of them (math, science, and social studies) were taught by one teacher. We had 45 minutes for each class, and I distinctly remember doing math in all three. To stay on curriculum schedule. In her attempt to keep us on schedule with math, we fell behind in science first. At first, we extended our math lesson into science, to the point that science was maybe 15 minutes. Then we had science a few times a week. Then it got to the point that math crept into social studies. At the end of that school year, I remember looking at the science section of our state-standardized test and wanting to cry because I didn't recognize half of it. This was 2014-2015 I believe. The "learning loss" is not new, and it's not "learning loss" What I find most comical is the fact that our state doesn't even test on social studies. We fully lost science for around half of our school year. I lost my love for space science in that class, because I wasn't learning space science, I was learning pre-algebra.
Oh, I can explain that! Your state's school accountability model probably weighs ELA and math more than science and history. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just explaining why. Your school's funding, the admins' jobs, etc. were on the line.
I've not finished the video, but a problem with this perspective is how U.S.-focused it is. I teach in a university outside of the U.S., my country has no standardised testing, reading full books and discussing them critically is part of every high school curriculum. Yet the students are behind: they don't answer questions about a text, they don't contribute in class, they don't take notes, they don't ask questions, they don't respect the few deadlines that they have. My university and most in my country provide massive amounts of assistance to people from all walks of life (whether financial or adjustments to their curricula based on any mental health issues or disabilities) and even with those, teaching staff is left with the impression that most students just don't care anymore and expect to gain their bachelor's degree without doing any of their work. I hate talking like this because I was a student not long ago at all and know that life is very hard, but at the same time, we are struggling so much to engage the students and they just don't seem to care. Both me, who is almost the same generation as my students, and my colleagues who have been teaching for 30 years are at a loss. Sorry for this rant. I care a lot about my students and want them to be able to flourish, and I wish I knee how to help.
As someone who's currently in education, and has been in education for most of my life (switched courses, so am on the older side but at a lower level), a lot of people feel like there's no point in anything anymore. Why spend ages getting an education when you won't be able to buy a house? Why spend time getting a job that'll give a good retirement when you'll probably die before then? Why bother with anything, the world sucks and it looks like it's getting worse. Nihilism is really common among young folk nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a contributing factor for a lot of folk. Also, the pandemic really seriously affected a lot of people. I went from being able to do university level astrophysics to struggling with basic mental maths, and based on a lot of other folk in education I've talked to I'm not completely unusual.
My partner is a teacher (non-US) and really flip flops on this! His hourly rate sounds good but every time he actually grades and reads papers 1 by 1, as well as providing a full page of feedback per paper. Then... he makes less than minimum wage... in real terms less than what some of the part time students do. And what do some of these students do? They end up back in class next semester. When he doesn't get pushed into giving at least passing marks, his pleas to the university about cheating and academic dishonesty go actively resisted, what can he do? Just see them 2 years later in the same degree still cheating and getting degrees. He really appreciates the passionate students and hard workers, but I ask myself, if I was in that system, what is the incentive to even work hard? Some students still work hard due to their character and integrity, but it's a total guessing game to which students will actually be into it
Even the students who are disengaged as well. It's a struggle to know what to do, especially when the system incentivises bad behaviour and actively accepts it almost. He sometimes says he just about wishes he only had to deal with people who want to be there. He doesn't want his subject to be a career path.
You don´t give out too many details about how the teaching is done where you work at so excuse me if I make some wild assumptions, but how the hell do you not have "standardised testing"? If you follow a curriculum and have any sort of testing, the testing is "standardized" by definition (You don´t have to be AP, GCSE, etc to be standardized). Critical discussion doesn´t really happen under "curriculums" because what is critical to one person isn´t to another, and the subjective nature of the teacher forces the students to cater to the teacher´s opinions. I did IB, and I can´t tell you how ironic it is how much they champion critical thinking and open ended questions with vague grading criteria, because it ends up forcing students to follow very strict structures to please the teacher. Usually, it meant dumbing down the content severely to avoid your teacher not understanding it. The more freedom you have, the more your success is predicated on the subjective opinion of your teacher. The opinion of a teacher who is overworked and couldn´t care less for Students don´t care because you don´t care (even if you don´t realize you don´t). Students are never afforded the chance to genuinely be allowed to think or act for themselves. It is this very stiffling of their autonomy that turns them into the passive slobs they are stereotyped to be. In fact, our very distrust for minors and lack of communication makes them the way they are. Also I bet your classes are probably pretty boring. Then again, that is mostly not your fault, as the curriculum binds you and having to make something interesting for 30-or so individuals all with unique tastes and perspective is nigh on impossible. That being said, I have seen it happen, where the interest of the students and teachers align. What´s beautiful about this is that it is a feedback loop of success; when student´s needs are catered to, they actually start to give a shit about things and when this happens the teacher enjoys they job evermore. So yeah, in reality it´s not the fault of the students but rather that of a one size fits all sizes curriculum; and that fact isn´t exclusive to the US.
It’s forced learning. Most people being forced to learn something are not gonna be engaged with it. Combined with that fact that student have basically no control in their own learning process. Students are expected to learn at the same pace but that’s not how humans function, we all learn different and at different times.
There’s a kid in my grade who’s known for misbehaving, he threatened to sh00t up the school MULTIPLE TIMES and made a list,, all they do is suspend him for a couple of days. Pre COVID, you would be expelled. The only time that they will ever ACTUALLY discipline a kid is if they’re caught vaping or cheating on a test. I remember a girl at my school started arguing with me and she threatened me with a gun and sent me multiple death threats, I had evidence of this, I told the principal, and all he said was “well it’s your fault for asking her why she was talking about you”. I told him that I had screenshots and he completely ignored me, told me to leave his office. She was never held accountable for her actions (she threatened people all the time and got into fights like every 2-3 business days) until she fought this girl and pulled a knife.
Teacher of 8 years here, I quit my post last month. I simply cannot contend with the current system any more, I can't make the difference or have the impact that I deeply want to with these kids because the overarching mechanisms that schooling exists in does not actually care about them. It all boils down to scores, perception of how the school will look with those scores, and whether we're making enough money from our enrolments - education as a business, rather than a device to guide and build the futures of those who come after we do. And more, exactly as Zoe mentions in her Grading video, this attitude runs through to and poisons the students themselves, I have had countless students ask me things like 'is this on the test?' and if the answer was 'no, but it's an important concept for the whole topic' they didn't want to know, and honestly can you really blame them for that when their whole life they've been told the only thing that matters is their grades? Of course there will be students who don't vibe with school or simply actually don't care, but I'd confidently say those kids are a minority overall, more likely that they simply trying their best but the system just doesn't care enough to slow down and help them get back on track. Leaving my job honestly makes me more sad than I expected it would because I think I know, deep down, I AM a teacher, I love teaching and I really want to help these kids lead fulfilling lives and achieve their goals, it just feels like sometimes I'm on my own in that.
Hi, I’m an elementary teacher👋🏻 currently finishing my senior year/internship of my program. I just wanted to chime in and say that there are fact teachers who genuinely love and advocate for the best interests of their students. I love each and every single one of my kiddos. It’s a broken system, some of us are just doing our best with what we have to work with
Such an important video, and so glad to see our Learning Loss Handbook referenced! For most kids & families, the "return to normalcy" was anything but. Rather than reflect on how damaging normalcy was for most kids, the system doubled down on damaging ideas & practices that only further alienated kids.
I quit grad school for teaching for personal reasons. While i was working in schools after the pandemic, it was very apparent how flawed our system is. The main issue i saw is that if you were poor, your education suffered like 5 times as much during and after the pandemic. You don't get to have your own nice technology. You don't get to hire tutors. You don't get to just focus on school when you're at home because you're also babysitting younger siblings. 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️ we don't care if kids can apply their knowledge. we don't even care if kids see the value that school is actually supposed to give you.
@@nsbd90now Me too, because local taxes create economic disparity and breed resentment among people in the community who think that some extra money taken out of their taxes for education is theft or a waste.
Spring break of 9th grade is when school got initally cancelled and my freshman year of highschool was just lots of Zoom meetings…..I Swear to you I learned NOTHING that year and only relied upon my past knowledge to pass I used to be very prideful in being good at math, science, and other such subjects. Now i’m in my Senior year of Highschool, I no longer have such thoughts. I Know i’m smarter than a lot of other kids, But I who used to pride myself on being in the top of every class just stopped caring and trying to understand after covid. Math/geometry/Algebra and Chemistry/Science/Biology became super confusing after having very little foundation from my freshman year. Eventually everything just became memorize X thing and then forget it in a week or two once unit is over
I was in my last semester of high school during Spring 2020 when COVID forced us online halfway through the semester. I was taking Calculus 3 (Multivariable), Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations through dual enrollment. Went from a 95% average on the exams in them all to barely passing those classes with Cs. Took a gap year before starting college and now I'm graduating this semester with my degree in Math at Georgia Tech with a GPA of 3.9 so it definitely gets better but man you have to love what you do. That was my saving grace to the detriment of all aspects of may life other than school lol.
so i definitely agree with the broader points being made here about the focus of school under capitalism being the creation of workers, and the detrimental effects caused by writing curriculums to help kids pass standardized tests rather than understanding and applying material to the real world. however, as someone in the education field, i’m not sold on your framing of learning loss as something that isn’t actually occurring. when teachers are talking about kids doing worse and worse academically with each passing year, in my experience they’re not talking about grades or test scores. they’re talking about, is this child able to tell me what happened in the story we just read, and what it means? can this child demonstrate to me why x concept in math is true? can they show me that they understand why x historical event was significant? almost everyone i know in the field is saying that fewer kids are able to do these things. almost everyone i know in the field has also told me that negative behaviors are more frequent and more extreme than in the past, and a huge factor is that there is a lack of consequences for those behaviors. what i mean is, if a student is violent to another student or a staff member, or otherwise creates a learning environment that is so unsafe and/or distracting that the rest of the class cannot learn what they need to learn that day, they go the office for like 5 minutes, sit there, and then they return to the classroom as if nothing has happened. and then, usually, they do the behavior again. in my district, the schools are so afraid of the parents that when you call for assistance over the walkie talkies, you’re not allowed to say the name of the child who’s misbehaving because the parents would be embarrassed/raise a stink if they caught wind of it. not joking, that’s the policy; you are not allowed to accurately describe what a child is doing and say who’s doing it. the existence of this policy speaks to how parents discipline their children, which is to say that many just don’t. by behavior i don’t mean talking too much or not being focused on work, i mean throwing furniture, physical violence, calling someone a slur, cussing out adults. yes, there are external factors that cause that behavior, just like there are external factors that cause crime among adults, and we should work to improve those external factors. as a marxist commenting in a community presumably made up of like-minded individuals, that should be a given. but we can’t confuse an explanation for an excuse. many teachers literally feel unsafe at their jobs, and that’s a major factor as to why so many of them are leaving the field. i stopped subbing for secondary schools out of concern for my physical safety and mental health. i realize this stuff is anecdotal, but at the same time, you can’t really quantify these things, so it’s impossible to get anything else. there will never be a satisfactory study showing how well students understand abstract concepts or generally behave over time, because of the abstract and subjective/context-based nature of those things. based on the experiences of nearly every teacher i know, there is in fact a learning loss, and there is in fact a deterioration of behavior over time. i know i wrote a lot here, but my intention is not to be critical or contrarian; as i’ve said, i agree with the general sentiment of this video. my point is more towards the framing of learning loss and behavior deterioration as merely red herrings.
I agree with you 100%. Especially on the no consequences point. A school I worked at literally had a very serious threat and the child was STILL allowed back to school and we weren’t allowed to know who the child was. Terrifying.
i grew up in a very rural area so my middle/elementart school was kinda poor. i remember having the exact same "kid goes to office for 5 minutes" punishment, even when causing extreme distractions. that isnt to say kids were treated nicely either (i specifically remember teachers screaming at us in 2nd grade and watching a classmate get strapped down with a belt to his seat for being overactive in 1st grade), but i dont really believe kids aren't being punished enough nowadays, bc its kind of always been like that. i do notice that richer areas have the attitude you described, but then again, kids still get suspended. i honestly think it depends based on where you're looking
I've found that if one takes care of actually educating kids about stuff instead of just expecting them to memorize an assortment of facts, they are more than capable of absorbing the knowledge and explaining it back to you with their words. Maybe not perfectly, but with a solid enough grasp. I have younger cousins (and also worked as a private tutor for a while) and when it's me doing the explaining of a topic they are struggling with, they do better. And it's not because I'm some sort of miracle educator but because I fundamentally cared about them as people and so, shifted my explanations and examples to stuff familiar to them that they could understand better. I also let them experiment with the subject. In short, I engaged with them and tried my best to focus on them being able to grasp the concepts instead of just memorizing them. And yes, I grew frustrated at times and I know personalized learning would be very difficult to pull off on a large scale. You have to realize richer kids with private tutors simply do better than their peers, it's a matter of privilege too). Kids' capacity to learn hasn't diminished. The quality of how they are taught has. I got to experience it first-hand both in college and in school. Over time, I saw the system's focus shift toward preparing kids to get admitted to higher education centers (here, acceptance is done through a test). More rote memorization at the detriment of engaged learning sessions. I also experienced it with my own teachers. The ones who focused on rote memorization and cared little for their students had even me (the supposedly smartest kid) struggling to pay attention and follow the concepts. It was only when I asked for my older brothers' help that I was able to catch up. Not everyone has that advantage. I can't spit information back to you if I don't understand it. I'm pants at memorization and I know I'm not the only one. I also ask you, is your parent's generation able to do what you just asked in your first paragraph? Because my parents' couldn't (barring exceptions). Neither my grandparents'. If anything, memorization was heavier back then. The kids are just fine, it's the system the one that is reverting back to harmful patterns it never really left behind.
When i was in high school in the 10's, we had whole conversations with our teachers on how funding is directly related to state test scores so the teachers have to shove as much into kids as possible
My school has almost erased social studies, which is so much worse given that I’m in a small town, making less lessons about the past supporting the terrible ideologies many in my town have.
You single-handedly explained how I felt during the whole COVID learn at home period. I never felt covid was the sole factor in the effect of many students falling behind. (Including me), but it felt more like an energizer in realizing just HOW fragile and weak the support beams of the American education system really was. Throughout my entire time in school, all the way from 6th-grade to my senior year in high school. I felt like all I was learning was obedience. Every single subject matter went over my head. I could tell you how to solve x = y in a math problem. But not ACTUALLY how to apply what I'm learning in the real world. I can remember vividly in my math class during 12th grade. One student straight up asked our teacher, "how are we going to use any of this in the real-world?" and the teacher basically responded with "you will at some point" without actually going into detail/giving an example. LIKE WHAT!? Also can we talk about how lethargic the grading system feels. Like, " oh cool I got an 80 on my test." ok but WHAT does an 80 mean in terms of my understanding of the material? The grading system feels like a generic band-aid fix to needing to find out how well students understand what they're being taught. Like ITS better than NOTHING. But there HAS to be a more effective way to understand how well a student understands the content. Also American government, plz pay teachers more. They deserve it for basically fueling the future workforce. The governments like "oh man I wonder why our students grades suck" BECAUSE YALL DONT PAY UR DARN TEACHERS WHAT THEY DESERVE. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Take care!
This reminds me of how behind my sister is in her classes. She was never the brightest but she still doesn't understand the basics like fractions and percentages which gets introduced at around year 3. She's in year 10. I can't imagine how behind her classmates could be since she's not stupid, she just didn't pay attention to the online lessons during the lockdown just like many other kids did.
@@joeystar1043 No definitely, im not saying its totally school or covids fault but the lack of discipline kids would have thanks to being at home all day certainly wouldn't help. At least if she was at school she wouldn't of had the choice to slack off as much.
I was homeschooled during covid so it really only cut off my social life at my church. But as far as everything else school wise i never had these problems. But since I've been going to school at a private one I've heard how it affected my friends and I'm very thankful I didn't go through it.
This might be my favorite video of yours yet. I always had the ick towards my upper level classes as it was less about learning and more about the ‘style’ of questions asked. It was less about building knowledge and more about just demonstrating what your teacher wanted to hear. It was less about building your skills and more to be a chattel work slave. All this in the guise of how it’s the only way to get into a good school, especially an ivy. Because what would be more better than cleansing the individuality and creativity of kids, urging them to pick the rest of the course of their life whilst also knocking them down with any criticism by saying they ‘haven’t lived yet’.
On the ‘bathroom pass’ thing, our middle school was horrible when it came to that. Firstly, only five people were allowed to use the bathroom during class. If your name wasn’t on the list that day, too bad, you can’t use the bathroom. Secondly, there could only be three people in each bathroom at a time (there were two bathrooms in each grade, but you were only allowed to use the bathroom in your specific hallway) You’d have to sit there in class spamming the online ‘hallpass’, because the odds were around twelve other kids across classes were also trying to use the bathroom. If someone is on their period, it could be near impossible on certain days to use the bathroom.
Wanted to share that Portland, OR’s Portland Teachers Association is currently on strike to fight for both teachers and students. Portland Public Schools just announced they won’t have students return to school before Nov 27th. All that is to say, I’m glad we are talking about this 💖
Great video!! I saw a lot of these videos and thought a lot about education in the last few weeks. I think the whole thing with “no child left behind” needs to be abolished. There’s no shame in failing a class and when the parents can’t afford tutoring or the school doesn’t provide good tutoring, it’s definitely better for the child to revise the class. I’m not American and I failed math ones and it definitely benefited me in the long run. I got a new math teacher and she was so much better at teaching and I got a lot better. About the last part. I’m Austrian and here university is basically free. We have to pay 22€ per Semester. I think that’s much better than any system
Students need democratic, student centered education with competency based and self regulated learning, meaningful feedback instead of grades, child integration, more qualitative, ipsative, formative, criterion references assessment over alternatives, no homework, and a socially oriented curriculum structured in a coherent way that provides context, abstract understanding, and orientation.
Sounds great as a concept, but how is a teacher supposed to plan a context-inclusive, individually -paced curriculum for 75 students (especially when a fair number of them already lag in prior knowledge and basic academic skills). Maybe it could be done, but teachers would need extensive retraining - not just 2 hours of PD. I went through licensing about ten years ago and I never once saw PBL or collaborative learning in practice. Some teachers are excellent and innovative, but lots of us are regular types and need a lot of demonstration and guided practice. I can't count the times when I thought I had an engaging participatory lesson with true learning and it fell completely flat. Sorry that I'm ranting, but I feel so adrift as a teacher - never good enough and no clear path to improvement.
I was studying at university (a more practice-focused one, which in Germany is called "Hochschule") during covid and jezuz. I imediatelly dropped out right after. I could barely hold on to my sanity normally (later realizing i had undiagnosed auADHD which made me unaware of my actual issues making studying harder) and with covid my way of learning was suddenly not an option anymore. I need to do things physically, I can't learn through reading manuals or books. And on top of that I had lost any progress I thought I had made through socialization. I ended up making 0 friends. I couldn't reconnect with my peers and I was stuck with sitting in an abusive home with an abusive unemployed single-parent mother. Now I am part of the demographic of unemployed neurodivergent people. I'm trying hard to find a job every day and I already fail at doing interviews due to my awkwardness from being neurodivergent. Going through school was liberating and allowed me to avoid my neurodivergent executive dysfunction, but the moment I was dropped into the adult world after graduating, all hope I was fed of becoming a great artist was instantly lost. I have no future.
Wow this is so relatable, but if I were female I think college would of been so much more difficult. I feel the creative flow has been stripped from me once getting into the adult world. It's rough
holy shit im in same position, same country too we dont even get any support despite being borderline disabled. its hellish to be diagnosed in the first place
As another auDHDer I am fucking suffering right now in college. Textbooks have super esoteric language and unwieldy sentences. For the most part I like what I'm studying but there's so much bullshit I have to learn at the same time (and I do not mean social sciences) that it just feels useless. I'm seriously considering just dropping out. I'm trying so fucking hard but nobody sees it because I have an _invisible disability_ and everybody in my life thinks I'm "gifted" because I did well through elementary and middle school.
It’s crazy watching this and seeing the same issues in the doctorate program I’m in. Our entire class truly hates our classes, which is insane because we all were so passionate about what we were studying before they came in and decided that we needed to fit their mold of what a good student is. Equally insane, doctorate programs are supposed to teach you free thinking
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. Can't wait to go on my own deep dive and check out the other creators! Aa a first year kindergarten teacher, this has really been insightful. I have been very frustrated with the school curriculum and how it makes school not fun and in turn forces teacher sto use extrinstic motivation and behaviorist tactics for classroom management to encourage compliance. It is essentially dog training children. I feel like I'm just training them for a 9-5. This is why I have been doing a lot of research into the montessori method. I look forward to finishing this video later today!!
This couldn’t be more true, I’m a recent graduate and I HATED school, which sucks because I was really into science, the curriculum fails to engage us and it feels like all that they care about are tests. I didn’t start enjoying school until I got to college
Def agree with the reading thing, I got bullied out of reading by the school librarian in elementary school around 2nd to 4th grade, even going as far as to have me dragged away from parts of the library, banning me from certain areas, and refusing to let me check out books. I've slowly been trying to heal that inner child by learning more about my newly diagnosed reading disability and gathering books to read. I haven't managed to finish one full book yet, (granted many of them are heavy and political, so not the easiest) post-HS assigned books I did like and sometimes reread or mangas, but I think I'll get there. I've talked it over with my therapist a lot, and I am also going to try reading easier fiction materials and rereading kids' books I read all the time as a kid and loved before I was bullied or during, in order to kind of reignite that spark. I love to read when I can get into it, and now that I have hearing aids to help with sound distractions, and might get reading glasses when I get my eyes checked, I think I have a shot. I had reading glasses as a kid and just wanna see if I need them again, just in case. I hope this works! I wanna get back to my 3rd grade level of love for reading where I'd fall asleep with a book on my chest and glasses dripping off my face.
As a college student who is actually doing very well but suffering in terms of mental health, I feel lost as to how I should think about school after learning about these aspects of the education system. Although I am interested in the topics I study, the never ending stress and anxiety is definitely slowly sucking the enjoyment out of everything. But it just feels like an impossible task to distance myself from striving for academic validation after working so hard to succeed.
I'm just so burnt out from college. Class of 2020, started university late. Forgot basically everything from high school, haven't made any real friends; can't even connect with people the way I used to. All I want is escapism, it's addicting. I "failed" my first paper today, it was a C- and a failure compared to how I usually/used to do. I don't want t o slip further, but school is such a disaster; my classes are jokes the professors don't even take seriously. How am I supposed to care when not even my instructors do? Why am I even still doing this?
I was royally messed up bc of cvid in college. We couldn't go to lecture that we paid for and books were withheld but we were still tested and then the teachers were unprepared because they didn't have books either so our tests online were out of order and everyone failed. Every single person. I kept screeshots of the frustration of teachers and students but was told there is no point in fighting against the specific institution and I wouldn't win. Idk might revisit it later because I have all my fellow students testimonials
I used to consistently finish my high school english lit work way faster than everyone else, without sacrificing quality. I also used to bring a book to read for when i inevitably ran out of stuff to do in class. One would think that my various english teachers would like the fact that i was a) finishing work quickly and getting good grades, as well as b) reading independently to fill my free time rather than passing notes to friends. But all 3 teachers i had throughout high school all consistently tried to get me into trouble for reading. In English Lit class. My grade 11 teacher even gave me detention for repeatedly trying to read Macbeth a month before we were due to start reading it as a class. They didnt care that i was ahead of class, and refused to give me extra work to fill the spare time i had. Im canadian, so obviously my experiences dont count towards the AMERICAN school system problems, but we very much have similar issues up here.
22:11 this is probably the first time I'd ever been asked if I was having my needs met in the context of school. I graduated high school 6 years ago and had to teach myself to look out for my own needs after I had moved out. Zoe asking "are these children's needs being met? Are their emotional needs being met? Are they being treated like human beings by schools, by their parents?" rattled me to my core because I needed that question a long time ago and didn't know it
this must be an unnerving realization to have; the demeaning-ness of jumping through hoops for school and academics, of going through all these hoops and not even questioning it is painful. At the very least you got to graduate from that system, and at least you now can see where the empathy should be presented and inherent in it though!!
I literally got passed through all my classes to the next grade throughout the entire schooling experience. I only started properly learning real concepts outside of school on the job. I’m literally able to build generators on an assembly line quickly and accurately and so many people are surprised at how fast I can learn new things as well. I’ve been told I’m slow my entire life that this feels like I’m finally getting what I need to learn, something I’ve been deprived of for years. I feel I can finally heal and I’ve now gained a newfound desire to learn more, not just building generators but so much more.
The word for what happened to you is social promotion. This is how I got a room full of 8th graders half of whom could barely do basic arithmetic. Female elementary teachers are notoriously bad at teaching even arithmetic because they don’t appreciate the value of drilling the kids and having contests and so forth. The average navy Quartermaster with a GED or just a high school diploma could teach kids better than that. This is because the enlisted QMs entire job is arithmetic. I know because I was such a navigator and it enabled me to remedy the kid’s deficiencies in math. But I never took calculus I was just good at arithmetic having gotten a history degree. Nobody knows what to do with kids who don’t learn. For obvious reasons you can’t flunk people out of school anymore like in my grandfather’s day. He was born in 1890. As late as the early ‘40s only 25% of adults graduated from high school.
My mom has been a teacher for 17 years, and if I've learned one thing about it from her, it's to graduate and never interact with the US school system ever again.
Former teacher here. The students behavior getting out of control after the pandemic was definitely the final straw, however, it's very obviously not their fault. We can't be bothered to regulate guns in this country, which is a constant fear among teachers and students. Parents don't seem to want to be involved with their children but want micromanage teachers. Literally no matter what you do as a teacher, you are wrong. There is very little support, especially for substitute and temp staff. But really for 2 years we had parents who complained about having to care for their own children, who couldn't teach their children but criticize teachers who are doing far more than teaching their 1 child. Parents have no respect, they teach their children to have no respect and then wonder why teachers quit.
I could tell stories about the way parents on my campus behave, but nobody would believe me because they are so absurd. But truly some of these parents are their own kids’ worst enemies.
I’m a student but even during Covid my parents still had us use manners and even when I couldn’t pay attention to school my parents try to keep me on track so when I got to school I felt like I was ahead by only having common sense when in reality I can understand deep meaning in reading but can’t spell correctly and is constantly losing focus being “ ahead of the class” when the ability the kids that act out have I don’t know and school doesn’t have a systems or resources to help me instead of telling me “I’m doing great I’m smart “ or “ better behaved” when my struggles are being undermined.
Blaming parents isn't the solution, imagine coming home from 9-5 shifts trying to scrape by to pay for utilities, rent or a mortgage and food, car and health insurance. Then you get a call hearing 🤓: Jonathan has been underperforming in science class I'd be mad at my son but I'd also have questions for the teachers like what does he do in class all day 🤷
@@fullmetal2455 in that case then jonathan should reach out to the teacher; i think that's not what the op is talking about. op might be referring to the rise in gen alpha children in schools and how disrespectful they tend to be (there are tons of videos covering this, you should check it out because it's genuinely interesting! not disagreeing because i do agree with your comment to an extend but just trying to clarify what i think op is saying!)
If you treat children as lesser just because of their age, as they grow older, they will grow distain towards those who treat them as lesser, children work on the basis of self-preservation as much as any other person. If you waste years of someones limited, precious life, close to 1/3 of it, they will grow to despise teachers, its the formation of bias. If you want children to succeed in life, then stop forcing them to sit in chairs and learn what they are mandated by the state to learn, and let them understand and explore life; I dont understand how anyone could tell another person who theyll never understand how to act, and be baffled when the results of fucking with a persons mind results in insanity. I am insane. School has made me insane, and many of my close friends have followed suite; If you want to stop this, dont blame me, dont blame teachers, blame the governmental institution that mandates all of the suffering. NEVER should you continue to derolve someone to insanity. The slow deprecation of mental sanity coupled with a hatrid towards societal function only leads to reasonable assumptions via insanity. Insanity is not changing the moral bounds in which an action is made, it is changing the justification for such action. Please do not ever throw your child in a school and make them feel awful for their poor grades, you will create a monster.
Even as a college student the changes were hard to deal with but it wasn’t solely due to classes that grades fell for me. I was dealing with the stress of lockdown, worrying about my parents, and the state of the world. It was my lowest point mentally and I can’t imagine how much worse that must have been for a lot of kids forced to grow up in this sort of world.
One subject that’s atrophied to learning to the test is Irish in Irish schools. Other languages are taught to be understood and spoken but Irish is taught like everyone has a baseline we no longer have and then we memorise to pass the tests. And I despise it for it. It makes people hate the subject. I encourages no interest in it and people who continue it beyond second level are doing it in spite of how it’s taught. I deeply care for it and I expressed to my teacher at the time that I wasn’t going to learn to the test. I was going to learn to speak and write Irish and be able to take the exams on my ability in the language, not my ability to regurgitate it on the day. And it worked (though I had been lucky and attended a language school for primary level so I was not starting form 0) I passed my exams, maybe not to the same degree of excellence my memorising peers did because I had a different focus. I did that exam using my actual knowledge and my learned adaptability so that when a topic I wanted didn’t come up, I wasn’t screwed. I knew how to construct an essay in the language about something. I wasn’t stuck like others who only learned off the order of letters in the handed out essay examples. I felt better for it and instead of leaving school feeling bitter about my experience and encouraged not to promote the language to my children or advocate for a reform, I was filled with love for it that made me want to preserve it.
Suspensions happen a lot in my school, but the problem with suspensions is that we see it as a break from school. It’s only really a problem if the parents get mad, and if they don’t then we literally get a break.
Just throwing this out there: kids refuse to read text books, but they're more than willing to watch 5+ hour video essays. Food for thought. Perhaps there's also issues with the way the curriculum is being presented. As much as I hate to admit it: a lot of people my generation dont like reading. I personally enjoy writing a lot, but reading is one of those things that can be very hit or miss. Though I do recognize that its something I should invest more time into going forward, if not just for my own personal growth and development. I grew up consuming most of my stories from video games and manga.
Well yeah, part of education reform would be having more options for how material is gotten across. I read a lot, and love reading but I've never gotten on with reading non fiction. I just find it hard. But I love listening to video essays (or lectures, or lessons). As a result I actually did well in school since the classroom lecture model of education suits me. But I have friends who are the opposite, who like reading non fiction but hate sitting still for a lecture, and they struggled in school. I have other friends who can only really learn by doing and applying, and again school wasn't tailored to them.
There are an amassment of reasons why the vast majority of people in these schools despise it. For a decent part of them, that reason is the authoritarianism that schools enforce; When a government, or in this case institution departing from that government try's to restrict the rights of a group of people who are younger, it will only end negatively; Children are younger people, they are nothing more or less than the accumulation of physical matter you are made of. What makes people ´older´ is that they have more experience. Children often have less experience, and more importantly, they have less positive experiences that make them believe that life is worth living. When you combine an institution that dehumanizes and puts people in boxes, and people who are younger, and have less of a reason to believe that life is worth living, youll get a resulting populace that is unhappy, apathetic, and despising towards government affairs. Realistically speaking, the more you try and force children to learn instead of letting them learn, the more people who will grow up to be ticking timebombs waiting to give their life to do anything towards their cause
you don't get to learn in the real world through video essays covering everything you need to know. an emphasis on reading and comprehending text is extremely important to be able to succeed in the professional world. Reading keeps you more closely connected to not just the material, but the ability to participate in the community surrounding the material, since writing is the primary mode of communication for.... nearly everything in the world. Someone writing a science paper for peer-review isn't going to make a video essay explaining what's going on in it. Someone writing documentation for an API isn't going to write a video essay explaining everything going on. I find it kind of funny to hear kids complain they aren't being prepared for the real world, and then they say stuff like this.
@@1SquidBoy and why is your way of interpreting information the only way? I suffer from a lack of mental imagery and as such find it much easier to see information in person, or through video documentation Speaking on the behalf of someone you don’t know is foolish, in my opinion
I live in Brazil and here we have an alarmingly difference between private and public school, then when we graduate high school there's a Vestibular (admission exam) to get into the public universities. Who do you think get the limited spots on public uni, the majority of kids who can't pay for education in the public school system that is VERY deficient and is only getting worse due to government neglect? or the private school kids who had great education preparing they for exam sice middle school, who could definitely afford private university?
This made me realize I'm the only one out of my four siblings to get a full K-12 education in person. Damn not taking that for granted anymore because now kids have to catch up because of circumstances that were out of their control. I hope we can better support these students/ppl as we go forward.
We need to let teachers teach and give them the support and funds they need, get school boards to chill, and actually instill a love of learning in kids rather than cramming info in their heads just to pass tests. The way school systems work is so broken.
A core issue is "how can you figure out which schools need help if you don't have an objective way of measuring what they're supposed to know and if they're learning it?" Say there are no more standardized tests. How do you distinguish struggling or successful schools from each other? I agree that it's a messed up system, but it's tough to find an equitable solution.
I was homeschooled all my life, so for me COVID wasn’t that big of a change. While I loved homeschooling, I did struggle with motivation and not getting distracted for most of my life right up until I started college, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for all the kids who didn’t grow up with it and suddenly had to learn how to have personal accountability and independence.
I’ve recently started my junior year of high school. My chemistry teacher has said multiple times flat out that we will not use any of this in our lives, and that his goal is to just make us pass the tests. I’ve realized how dystopian this all is, there is no passion for learning- even from the teachers. Even the teachers are aware of the system we have and that we are only being used to pass tests and work, not for genuinely learning and choosing a future we will love.
one of the issues with the unschooling america proposal as you described is that it focuses on learning as a means of acquiring skills rather than learning itself being something with inherent value which ignores a lot of stuff that isnt important to know for the market yet are still valuable and meaningful such as history and literature
One thing about tests. They are really helpful in the process of learning. It was proven scientifically. And no, I'm not talking about the tests I did in school, I'm talking about tests that I did on my own while trying to learn something new. Tests generally do help in acquiring knowledge a lot. It's just that it's not the grade that should be the focus but the acquired knowledge itself. While learning new topic try testing yourself once in a while, you can even start the learning by trying to do the test on a topic that you try to learn. It will highlight for you what is important in the stuff that you will learn and already get you a little familiar with the material, plus you will get motivated once you see how much progress you made later doing another test on the same topic.
self-testing is interesting, but I do wonder if testing in general is just not for everyone and not good for the relationships people build between mental health through intelligence, and the impressions that testing shouldn't be for everyone. (myself included) moreover with people who get pre-test anxiety and with people who learn differently. In a way, yes that does have it's own intricate benefits, but always try to keep in mind the balance between testing for yourself and testing to go past your limits/do more than you can handle for the sole sakes of seeing how far your physicality and intellectuality goes. (Test as a trial, and not as a ways to stress, if that makes sense)
@@sealluv Definitely not for everyone! My teachers realized this with me in high school. I’d do assignments and answer questions in class, but give put a test in front of me on anything I have extensive knowledge on, and I’ll either do extremely poorly, or straight up fail. I’ve encountered a lot of people with this same experience, and it makes schooling suck a lot. As well as making your grades not reflect your actual knowledge. I was lucky enough to have teachers that would accommodate this and just weighed my assignment grades heavier than tests, or just straight up give me an assignment instead of a test. Sadly, most people don’t have those kinds of teachers or resources.
Tests themselves are generally not the problem. It's when tests become the only thing that matter. Tests can be immensely useful, but in the school I'm in, I don't actually get to see what I did wrong. How I could improve. All it matters is that I pass the test, how many I got right and wrong without the context of knowing where I went wrong.
School doesn't usually teach me much, i just learn it once and forget it later. The classes i really learn stuff in are the classes i enjoy, i remember all my science and zoology classes because im interested in it and the teachers where amazing. Ive always disliked English because i have to read stuff im not interested in, i have to write unnecessarily long essays on something i dont enjoy, the drawing out of sentences and paragraphs are so boring. Math class has been both enjoyable and easy, and hard and i dreaded it. The teacher helps if theyre good but my best teachers where the teachers that bended the curriculum to make it interesting and engaging.
There's something called the Big Picture approach to learning (I think it's only in Australia, but there's probably similar ones in other countries). From year 10, you get 4 'interest projects' a year, one for each term. You get to choose these projects, and for 10 weeks the school (and/or Big Picture) will bring in people who work in the field of your interest, have you go on excursions to universities to learn about the interest as a ghost student, and the student makes research questions to ask these people and unis. Want to be a designer and don't know how to sew? School pays for the classes. Want to be a brick layer but have no idea where to start? Well, now you have a temp job! You do have to do your core subjects like a regular school, but for the most part you're learning about something you're actually interested in, with a big end of term presentation at the end to show off everything you've learnt. In your final year, you get to choose one big interest project for the whole year. This learning approach is mainly directed for neurodivergent teens and as of now, only private schools can do this. I think that it's much better than the current school system and should be applied everywhere, especially because they recently made it so you can get into (certain) universities with this learning style. Do other countries have this/something similar, and do you think it's better than the current system?
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i think another thing is that schools are outdated. we really need to implement knowledge on basic knowledge like how to use money wisely how to keep a job how to self improve how to support yourself its literally just English history math science gym media and possibly music with only only 4 of those subjects having any real meaningful impact on the students learning ect.
Bro this is decades of cascading generational parental neglect and the lack of basic “I love you, you can do it” imo
( I copy and pasted my main comment here so more people can see it ) Bro I feel dumber, as a 6th grader, I'm struggling in almost every subject. I don't want to tell my mother, I've been thinking of suicide but my grades are still average to above average (B through A- ) but her expectations are 95 -100 ( being the african mother she is ) and I am piling up missing assignments, I might not make it to 7th grade.
I think learning loss does exist, maybe not to the extent the media makes it out to be, but it definitely exists, an example being that in the third grade I was taught how to do long multiplication and division and now my younger brother who is in the fifth grade can’t do either.
when I was is school, I think about 7th or 8th grade, I came to understand that you could fuck around and do whatever you want as long as you do what the school wants, and the teacher doesn't even have to like you. I stopped trying and started doing the exact amount of work in the style they wanted, and went elsewhere for learning. My school might have taught me french, but other than that I just had to learn a bunch of math I'll never use.
As someone who took a bunch of AP classes, it’s absurd to me how half of those classes were learning the “style” of AP questions, rather than actual content. It’s a focus on standardized testing, and fitting a mold, over getting smarter and having better understanding of the material
I thought the exact same way
Im taking AP Lang this year and my teacher is a grader for the exam and gave us an essay formula to pass the section of the exam it's wild
I literally can’t remember learning anything significantly in my APUSH class… our teacher made everything so convoluted and harder than necessary. I ended up taking US history again in college and it was a breeze… and i know time passing and I’m sure i retained things and that helped by the ease at which the professor taught in college compared to hs was just so ridiculous.
AP classes are such a scam. Took 4, hated them with a passion so took a bunch of junior college classes during my senior year. Best part was the junior college was FREE for highschool students, they counted for more units and they were wayyyy less stressful.
Always recommend taking college courses early over AP bullcrap
I mean tbf in highschool those ap classes generally only cover entry content which even at the college level tend to focus on comprehension and writing for freshmen especially if structured by entry year but I will say ap should probably be separated into 1st and 2nd year options putting history, social sciences, and languages as first picks and toss the rest to the 2nd year. Still implementation requires support so good luck
Best teacher I ever had flat out said that the modern curriculum sucked and essentially did a speedrun of it in the first half of the year. The rest of the year was dedicated to fun projects and lessons that actually engaged us as a class. They also often play the guitar during tests for us so we wouldn't be too crushed by the silent atmosphere. Making students feel like there is value in learning about something is incredibly easy.
As a teacher, I agree with THAT teacher as I am also THAT teacher in my school. I teach a computer subject even if I'm a science teacher by college degree. I teach what's in the curriculum but I try to inject as much fun as I can into the lessons because the experience in my class is more important than the "skills" I'm supposed to teach.
Awesome!
That teacher sounds great :)
As a child of two teachers, one at elementary level and the other at middle school/high school level, making learning fun and engaging takes lots and lots of work. It’s easy to come up with creative ideas to make learning fun, but actually planning fun and engaging lessons is HARD. I watched them both work when they came home and during weekends and school breaks. T
@@iansantiago6526 i agree with the importance of general arts, but it also doesn't fit into the school system the way it is currently, as it's really easy for teachers to grade with bias. and in our current economy, arts is a risk that most students aren't willing to take
No subject is a better example of how schools take the fun out of learning than history. Textbooks make historical events feel like reading a dictionary and yet, almost any museum or history documentary feels like delving into an adventure when visited/watched.
In high school, I was always very into history, but some people I knew weren't. The textbooks rarely got touched, even by the few that derived entertainment like me. The moment I started explaining these things, rather than a book written ten years ago to shove as much information onto one pages as possible, they started to enjoy themselves. And I wasn't even very good at teaching.
@@tobiasburke9495I had a teacher who would always try to get student involvement or insert personal anecdotes into history lessons and it made it really fun and for a while I even wanted to be a history teacher
Being passionate about a subject is almost always going to net better results.@@tobiasburke9495
how you comparing high budget films to minimum wage workers
@@BossOfAllTrades No budget or special effect can be compared to the innate desire and capacity for human creation that the oral tradition gives. Even people with minimum wage are people.
As an autistic guy, who learns slowly (but more thoroughly) - I always noticed how I "fell behind" in class. Everyone worked faster than me. Yet I'd have the highest grade by the end. The school system is totally broken
This will sound weird but back a few years ago there was a video that made the rounds from a meeting where Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were promoting cultural ties and trade agreements with each other's country, and part of the press photo op was a bit where they made a blintz pastry filled with some chinese dish for filling
The way each leader made their dish was emblematic of their leadership styles.
Putin slammed the pastry dough into the frying pan and made a huge fucking mess everywhere, ending up with a shitty looking pastry that was barely held together, while the chef aides around him were visibly sweating and cringing.
Xi Jinping was constantly asking the chef aides what to do and following their advice, taking his time and treating the dish with caution because he very clearly cared about getting it right the first time.
The emphasis on being first, rather than being correct, is entirely motivated by those who seek to wield power over others by establishing themselves as an authority before anyone who legitimately cares can.
@@Vanity0666 Yeah nowadays everyone wants immediate results, one wrong move and they like boo, then ppl wonder why children loves playing games which they see immediate growth just like how the adults wanted. Like the faster and cheaper trend too, nobody care about long term till it hits them in the face. Like you can't just build a house immediately even if you have the tech to mass product something, you have to examine all of the conditions to operate the machine too.
You had the highest grade in the end... so the system is NOT broken. I'm not sure what point you think you're making - that students who "work faster" but don't learn the material should get better grades than you?
@@Vanity0666 Then Einstein clapped.
@@grafzeppelin4069 I worded it badly. I meant I fell behind in class, I couldn't keep up with lessons, and I was treated like I couldn't focus. But I just took more time to process things. I always felt dumb because of it, so my final results always shocked me
Honestly, I never thought about how almost dystopian it is that a kid can't go to the bathroom without getting explicit permission, that is until you offhandedly mentioned it.
It made me remember back in 3rd grade, when my elementary school made students sign out on a sheet of paper every time they went to the bathroom and sign in when they got back. And the school told my parents they thought I was trying to get out of classes because I 'went to the bathroom too much'. In the moment I was horrified, but looking back I think it was kind of funny the school was so concerned about it, especially since I was so well-behaved otherwise.
my school did this too. also not allowing more than 1 or 2 kids in the bathroom at a time until high school, where they'd maybe let a third kid in if they were feeling good that day. lines would be so long a kid would be out of class for nearly half an hour. they'd also close the bathroom 10 minutes before and after each class so the people signing kids into the digital database to use the bathroom would have their break, so the only time you could even go was during class. just insane all around
I had severe chronic migraines caused by photosensitivity as a child and would regularly be in the nurses office because they were so painful that I could do nothing besides scream puke and eventually lose consciousness, and the school told my parents they thought I was just skipping class and my parents beat the shit out of me for it
yea its insane. doesn't help that schools lose millions in funds if even 10 kids have low attendance, because they care so much about their precious CS funds that they turn the building into a prison instead of making an effort to help kids *want* to stay there.
my school has hall monitors stationed at desks outside of every bathroom (which may be closed. gotta check the bathroom schedule! cant use the one in A-hall during 4th period, cause they dont have a bathroom security guard to cover that time idfk) that scan your id and permanently mark the time you went in and left on your grading profile. A classroom cannot have more than 2 students out of the room at one time. during lunch periods, they LOCK THE DOORS on both ends of the hallway that contains the 2 cafe entrances (and 2 bathrooms) so kids don't "sneak" out or in to the cafeterias. our windows are all tinted, so theres no sunlight in the school at all. there is a hall monitor in every hallway, and they will read and mark your pass so that you can't re-use it.
it feels like a prison, genuinely. you cannot go anywhere without permission. "help and access" (study hall) is supposed to be a period for you to go to your teachers and get help with their subject, but you can't because you have an assigned room (mostly the cafeterias, which do not get cleaned) for HAP and *can't leave*. You can't go to the library without showing up to the front desk at 7 am and getting 1 (of 3) "library passes" - you literally can't get in without them. Returning an overdue book? sorry, no more library passes.
oh, also, if you miss more than 6 classes of one subject, you just don't get credit for the course. even excused absences.
@@Vanity0666L parents!🤬
@@cadencase5216 yea they're insane
I feel an indescribable amount of rage when all the blame for kids not doing well in school is placed on the kids
for me growing up i was kind of a "problem child" or whatever. like ik i was not easy to deal with, i regret sm of what i did in school, ik a lot of it was my fault. but like i still have a reason for my actions, not excuses, but explanations, that needed to be addressed but never were. its easy to say "calm down, shut up, dont make a scene, do better next time" but hardly anyone wants to actually face the elephant in the room yk? 2 things can be true at once. yes i was at fault, but that doesnt mean i dont deserve basic respect and compassion, maybe thats what i was lacking all along???? just a thought 🙃
I feel rage when people that couldn't attend school or afford books turned out better than those with endless resources and tools attempt to blame anything but themselves 🤡
@@terrorists-are-among-usI’m talking about ALL the blame. Of course there are going to be people who take their opportunities for granted, always has always will, but there are many other factors besides students just being lazy.
who is blaming the kids? i am a teacher and we get ALL of the blame. never once have i seen people blame the kids
@@saintnicole3209I’ve graduated Highschool as an Honors Student with an almost 4.0 GPA, but personal I have definitely seen many (not ALL) Teachers and Parents blame the students for “being lazy” or “not applying themselves”. It’s crazy to me that we say an entire class or generation of students ALL happen to be “lazy” or “not applying themselves”. You even see it with popular Teacher UA-cam channels or podcasts like Teachers Off Duty. I do also think that Teachers are given a completely unreasonable and unrealistic set of standards to work within that are constantly changing with a workload that is FAR too demanding. We continuously see teachers under intense scrutiny and verbal abuse for doing their damn job. On top of the fear of violence occurring from Parents or Students it just sounds so miserable to be treated the way they are. IMO It’s probably the most dangerous time to be a teacher or student, and it’s our government that failed both groups.
It feels like humans have this weird tendency to assign broad trends to individual choice and personality. Like if we have an epidemic of children who leave school not being able to read, why do so many people ignore any kind of systems-level reform? Why is the blame always placed on individuals whether it be students, parents, or teachers? Its just weird to me how often people actively ignore the way systems impact our lives and the ways we might be able to improve them.
👏👏👏 preach
One word: capitalism
systemic change is slow and laborious, because you have to change the individuals that perpetuate it, usually through lots of different means. looks at the time it took to get the slaves freed, women's suffrage, gay marriage equality or marijuana changes...
I think for some people, it is more important to assign blame than to solve a problem. It is morally uncomfortable to say "This is a problem? The system I participate in has caused that problem." That prompts self-reflection, critical analysis, and leads to calls to action. For many, it is preferable to say "This is a problem? It's the fault of ." It lets them tell themselves "It's not my fault, so I don't need to do anything to fix it."
On one hand, I get it. We all have our own shit going on. It can be hard to hear about yet another widespread societal issue when we all feel like we are already at our emotional breaking points. "There's war in the Middle East, starving children in third-world countries, my parents' health is failing, my boss called mandatory overtime this Saturday for like the third week in a row, my kids have like 3 extra-curriculars a day, one of them needs The Talk soon because their sketchy friend showed them porn during their latest hang-out, I still need to make dinner tonight, and now you're telling me the schools are broken?! Lay off and let someone else handle it! It's not MY fault!"
On the other hand, if everyone does that, nothing ever changes. And certain political groups have gotten pretty good at taking a message like "We have contributed to a bad situation, and need to work together to fix it" and spinning it with "THOSE PEOPLE are telling us it's OUR fault THEY have problems! Are you going to just let them blame YOU?"
Fundamentally, no matter whose fault it is, it is our RESPONSIBILITY to fix things. Or at the very least to support those who have solutions and are willing to fix things.
The tendency you're referring to is actually a rather well-known bias that people exhibit called actor-observer bias. It is very close to how you described it; people tend to attribute their own poor behavior to external issues (e.g. I'm late for work because traffic was bad) yet, at the same time, they tend to attribute others' poor behavior to internal issues (e.g. they're late to work because they have bad time management skills). Of course, this bias might be more related to individuals, however people tend to extrapolate this sort of thinking so as to take a complex issue like struggling youth and boil it down to "laziness," "rowdiness," or whatever other trait they think would "rationally" explain away the problem. Sadly, this sort of thinking only serves to reinforce the social relations our society has arbitrarily deemed as necessary and incentivizes "us vs them" groupthink rather than sincere, critical thinking about the issues that plague our communities.
I feel for the kids who fell apart during COVID school shutdowns. I went back to university to finish my bachelor's degree starting spring 2020 and then just... didn't do anything once classes went totally online.
I had started high school when covid hit. I did the same, just didn’t do anything once online classes started. They still passed everyone. Now I feel so behind. I want to go to college for computer science but its scary since I have such a bad foundation in math, science, and learning in general.
I'm just starting college now after droppig out of highschool in early 2019. It's been... rough, to say the least. I hate this shit and the only reason I suck my teeth through it is because I don't want to grow up to be a broke adult like my parents, who are in their 60s now with no sign of being able to retire.
As a student about who went through "modular learning" in my country. I can confidently say that It Was Hell. For my mental health and educational learning.
I never feel school was important, it was Just another means to an end. I didn't feel like I learned anything meaningful. Always Listening Useless Lectures, Always Answering Activities. I didn't have a friend group/support system which only made it W O R S E .
@@Nobodyishom3Me too.
Some things aren't effective being virtualized, including education
Standardized tests are the reason I failed high school. I used to get detention because my teachers thought I was purposely failing tests to be a ‘rebel’ or something. I could do any assignments, homework, presentations, anything at all and get an A but the second they put a test in front of me I failed miserably. It didn’t matter to the education board if in assignments I was passing at a college level in 5th grade because I was stupid if I couldn’t take tests. They literally put me in special needs cause apparently bad test taking means I had to have a learning disability in their eyes. Anyway school sucks and killed all the passion I had for learning but at least I have a career I’m passionate about that only needed a GED. Yay!
Sorry to hear that, wow!
The opposite happened and it honestly sucked, both ends of this situation does, I could pass any test and was considered a smart kid, when in reality I just remembered better than most kids so the tests were the same, yet I failed my classes because I never understood whatever the teacher said which meant I was at best a C average kid, but was never given help simply because I passed a test I just recognized well enough,
Im sorry for your time at school and hope you're doing better
It's much easier to cheat doing homework than it is to cheat on a test. So a large gap in performance can signal cheating. Plus, homework doesn't have a time limit, whereas tests do.
But on the other hand, in the real world, you will always be allowed to use a calculator or look at the textbook.
@@me-myself-i787 they KNEW i wasnt cheating on homework because in special needs they made us do all of our homework in the classroom in complete silence for an hour and a half. the teacher quite literally stared me down while i did my homework there was no possible way to cheat lol.
some of my teachers thought it would be a good idea to only grade standardized tests, and I went from an A student to an F student.
What's also frustrating is when you aren't allowed to skip years despite getting perfect grades in every subject. School was hell for me socially and emotionally as an extremely isolated (at the time undiagnosed) autistic woman. The reasoning the teachers gave when I asked to move up was "You'll miss your friends" and I was just flabbergasted. What friends? Literally every student in this class throws paper, pens, books, screams slurs at me every lesson, and you think ANY of them are my friends? Still extremely resentful of those three solid years of abuse in school I didn't need to endure if the UK education system wasn't so understaffed that maybe at least one teacher would've interfered or realised I wasn't f*cking ok. Then some random kid who's getting Cs and Ds get's moved up? Wtf?
I once ended up basically repeating a year of math lessons I already knew by heart (by choice) because (according to what I was told) "someone lost my information". Since I had been placed ahead for my age, they put in me in the default classes I guess?
Either way what this meant was that they forced me to take a class I had nothing to learn from whatsoever. It completely killed my interest in mathematic subjects and looking back, it's probably in large part why I started to fall behind later into HS.
This is only an anecdote, but the progression system in schools is so completely broken. Filters can't function if they barely even exist, so to speak.
I skipped 2 grades and they refused to continue skipping me up because they were worried about my social development rather than my grades, but this was before 9-11
@@princetbug literally the exact thing happened to me lol. I'm still in high school and my grades are fine but 100% do not represent my knowledge. I constantly have a friend in a class who has an A ask me for help when I have a B or C. Grades are hot garbage.
"What's also frustrating is when you aren't allowed to skip years despite getting perfect grades in every subject. " You should read "Teaching As a Subversive Activity" by Neil Postman.
Honestly, nothing in High School infuriated me more than the kids who made fun of autistic students. I've even had friends who'd show me embarassing videos they made of them, and in those moments I just kinda wanted to clock them in the face, but I didn't do so of course. Some people aren't given the same opportunities as everybody else, sometimes their even snatched away from them unfortunately, but making fun of them for something they have no control over, something that will change the course of their life permanently, is that really that funny? It just pisses me the hell off when perfectly 'normal' people make fun of others for what they don't have. A good reason for why I do is most likely because my friends are certainly autistic, albeit high functioning extreme nerds. Love them for that though, I just wish people treated others like human beings, I mean hell students often even fail to recognize teachers as actual people with lives.
I’ve been seen as ‘smart’ since elementary and nobody really touched me because my ‘studying’ seemed to work but in reality i never even touched a school book and just listened in class. In high school this blew up in my face of course because i discovered that i had an abnormally difficult time reading numbers and letters. But by then nobody cared since i was doing ‘well’ so my grades plummeted and now i have to do the university exam with a very short time limit. Doing things like complex logarithmic problems in under thirty seconds should not be a test for anyone’s intelligence or capability. Or impact them in the long run. Every single one of our math classes is centered around getting faster and faster, not learning the subject properly or acquiring the skills to study.
I'd swear on any number of objects that I didn't really learn math until I started to crochet and sew regularly. So I'm inclined to agree.
you my friend are a ‘gifted kid’
i am so thankful for the program at my school that has teachers that genuinely understand that and know how to help, teaching us how to study and other skills that we never used because we are able to intuit things. i hope more people get access to these because it can really make or break the rest of your life :(
hope you’re doing well ❣️
Often, gifted kids have poor mental health and struggle with school later on. A huge reason for the poor mental health is 1: A lot of pressure to do well and 2: A lot of gifted kids are undiagnosed neurodivergent kids that don't get the support they need
same!! except I'm kind of the opposite, all through primary school i was the smart child with a really high reading/writing level, but when I started highschool I realized I was awful at focusing on verbal instructions, like if you try to explain math or science to me I'm probably not going to process any of it unless there's subtitles lol
@@Milo-hp9fw I've been in gifted programs since 7th grade, kept up, never got anything but A's, graduated 2nd in class of 400, and currently have a 4.0 GPA in a top college. I was never pressured to do well, I simply wanted to. Mental health is doing fine as well.
it says a lot about our cultural regard for children when i find it heartwarming that y'all took the time to humanize them, and not just shrug them off as dumb miniature aliens who need can only be understood through an adult's lens that reduces or utterly disregards their inner complexity (you know, the same interiority that every human being has!).
as someone who went to predominantly black and brown schools since forever, can confirm that the emphasis on discipline was a thing for me and absolutely _ridiculous_ to witness. for the middle and high schools i attended there was a big emphasis on preparing the students for college, yet you could get behavioral infraction marks for something as small as not having your planner present on your desk during class or for wearing a brown belt instead of a black one (both high school), and my principal would literally get red in the face because the way we dragged out the "good morning, mr. blank" at assemblies wouldn't sound "professional" enough (middle school). i'd hear my peers all the time talk about how silly it was that they expected us to be college ready yet infantilized us through the disciplinary system. many didn't take it seriously, which only made some teachers think that was all the more reason why we _couldn't_ handle more freedoms--and it's like, well how do you expect these people to have faith in themselves when you treat them like their potential isn't even a possibility in the first place?
that's all to say, i really appreciate the work done on this essay to truly understand and center students' experiences and struggles (and i learned a lot of interesting tidbits along the way!). well done guys~
Fr up until junior and senior year all teachers and staff cared about was discipline. They treat kids like they don't have a brain of their own. Funny enough, they're the same ones to complain about how they feel like they are "babysitting" instead of teaching. Maybe if you respect them enough then maybe they won't act up lmao. I genuinely think a lot of them have a superiority complex, especially since some of their rules and punishments don't matter in the real world.
They were trying to get you to form habits of discipline at a young age, when it is easiest to do so.
@@kwyatt261that’s one hell of a way to teach discipline
Great comment and I think you’re spot on with cultural regard to children. So sick of adults stripping children of their humanity.
100%
Since I realized I like learning languages, I suddenly saw all the things language classes in school do wrong. That was the main point that showed me how bad our approach is to education.
It took me about 8 years to get fluent in English, studying in school. It took me half a year to be a B2 level at Mandarin Chinese, studying at home.
And that's giving school a lot of credit. I still wouldn't be able to speak English if I didn't start watching minecraft youtube skits in 6th grade.
What factors made the most difference in your opinion?
@@Maria-uv9pd I think the biggest things are that:
1. I had good sources that I would pick out myself (made by natives/natives themselves, not out-of-touch foreign sources)
2. I was allowed to progress in my own pace (so some days I could learn a hundred or so words of vocab, and sometimes take several weeks long breaks. I started a year ago, but spent 6 months studying actively, and 6 months not studying at all)
3. I was motivated by being able to engage with the culture and art, rather than just wanting a specific grade.
Teachers in Eastern Europe, where I live, are particularly very bad at English most of the time. They struggle a lot with pronounciation and grammar too. The textbooks are also becoming worse and worse in terms of quality. You can ask anyone around here who is fluent in English, and I bet at least 9/10 will tell you that they didn't learn it in school. Either from games or youtube (the luckier ones even lived abroad), meaning that they were also motivated by wanting to engage with some form of media (or communicating with their immediate environment).
But that's English, a very different language. Although, I did apply to a beginner Chinese course. Our midterm exam had the same amount of curriculum as the first two levels of duolingo.
My thoughts about learning outside of school:
I feel like the learning methods that people swear by varies from person to person. I like spaced repetition the most, I am using flashcards for vocabulary and learning apps for grammar. I have to review these every few days until they just stuck.
Starting out, I learned the very basics, then I was learning 60 or even more words per day for a while (and reviewing the vocab from like the past 3 days every day), and when I reached a certain number of words, I shifted my focus onto grammar for a few months. I learned vocab during summer break, so I did have a lot of time to do it. But even if I didn't spend all my time learning Mandarin in the summer, you can still learn the same amount in 2-3 years while attending school or working, which is still several times more efficient than learning in school.
Others like sentence mining more. They search for sentences in their target language, translate them, and study the grammar. They don't learn words separately, but can extrapolate meaning and information from the small variations between the sentences. Because if you learn "I like apples" and "I like oranges", and you know the meaning of both, you will know which part means "I like", and the names of the fruit. They are also forcing themselves to find out alone how the language works, not being told formulas directly (very similar to how children first learn their mother tongue).
These two methods are what come to mind first, but a very generally accepted idea is that as soon as you reach a B2 level, you should start listening to podcasts and such in your free time. Some go for hour-long walks, listening to people converse in the foreign language, getting their daily exercise and learning at the same time.
I also joined a discord for language learners and people of various skill levels frequently communicate in their respective channels according to language, from beginner to native. I've been regularly told there that a few things I was taught were also very weird/juvenile patterns of speech (or I was overcomplicating simple expressions), so I definitely needed corrections. The important thing though, is after a few months I could engage in conversations in text form at least, and was always called out on my mistakes by natives and higher-level students.
What our books do, however, is give you sentences to parrot, make you repeat the same type of grammar structures a 100 times once, and then move on completely. So it's easy to forget, and you didn't even understand it the first time either.
Also, because students need different amounts of time to learn something, it's bad for them to be forced to learn at the same pace. Faster learners are bored, while others who may find specific topics and learning points difficult are left behind (and they don't have the opportunity to find methods that make it easier for them, assuming they were even told about them)
There are a lot of ways to do it, students should be allowed to try different things, and mix with others who speak at higher levels. They should be encouraged to find entertainment, like games, movies, books, and learn from them. The feeling when you encounter some sentence in your target language "in the wild", and realize that "oh my god I get it", is a wonderful thing and more should be able to experience it. That's what kept me going most of the time. I'm not an expert on the methodology of language learning, maybe there are things that could make it more efficient for me. But I found something that works, and works better than our education system does.
@@Gurgashufa Hey, fellow language learner here! I took Japanese all 4 years of hs, and even did AP my senior year. Now I am planning to apply to a vocational school in Japan, and am taking the JLPT N5 (the bare minimum level required to be accepted) in a few weeks. I've been studying using a book made specifically for the N5 test, as well as using some other resources I've frequently used over the years, but despite my 4 years of Japanese classes, I still feel like my skills aren't as good as they should be (definitely not my teacher's fault, she was absolutely amazing and one of my favorite teachers), and one of the things I feel like I lacked most was continuous interactions and real-life modeled conversations (convos not revolving around answering questions or describing things to be used in an essay/speaking test), especially since the curriculum was modeled after polite form and was, as I'm sure you can guess, very "textbook-like" and not exactly practically applicable, not to mention being sort of out of date with current ways of speech (discarding the use of certain words, speaking in a simpler manner, etc.). You mentioned that you joined a Discord for language learners, so I'm wondering if you could share the join link or recommend other similar servers? If you've joined any others, that is. Please and thank you :)
@@Maria-uv9pdone motivation, two it forgives your mistakes. you have as many opportunities as it takes for you to truly understand and not just parrot. in school, you are punished for not understanding, this causes you to only want to get out the correct meaning of the sentence, rather than to slowly build a sense for it. i learned german to B2 level in 7 months, and i didnt even study consistently and oftentimes not more than an hour. sure i loved putting in time often, but there were one or two times where i went weeks without practice, yet still i have made tremendous progress. meanwhile german 300 students can’t get out a sentence without a translator
@@Gurgashufalooking back on my 3 years of ASL classes, I'm shocked at how poorly structured the classes were. Even at the end of the year at level 3, many of my classmates couldn't get through a simple conversation, and their grasp of the language was EXTREMELY limited. Besides the fact that after learning a topic we would move on and not touch it again (so everyone forgot all the topic-related vocab and grammar), we barely did any signing or receptive practice, especially in levels 1 and 2. So by the time a lot of students got to level 3, whenever our teacher *did* sign instructions or longer pieces of information, they didn't understand anything at all. The people who were most successful were those that sought out conversational or receptive practice outside of class, which in a highschooler's schedule, is not very common. It's really so frustrating looking back at how much time I wasted because in 3 years I should've been able to learn so much more.
Now that I'm learning Korean on my own, speaking and listening practice is usually emphasized as the most important aspects and it's so much more fun. One of the most rewarding parts about learning languages (in my experience) is being able to understand or communicate things that you never could have otherwise, and so many classes just aren't set up in a way that truly helps students internalize language.
"If you want to save the kids, you need to start listening to them"
Thank you. Feels like this has always been the case. Adults project their ideals, their wishes, their trauma onto children. We make up rules for them then get mad when they turn out a certain way. And don't trust them to grow and learn from mistakes, or lead us into broader change.
Now that I'm out of college, I can look back on all those years of schooling and think "wow that was fucked".
Esp standardized testing. I won't give up a chance to shit on the SAT. I went through advanced classes and a prep course, and felt like it only tested me on how to take a long ass test, not anything I actually learned in the prior 3-4 years. A lot of our schools don't prioritize the actual knowledge or even give a fuck about student well being (unless you make good grades, fit the mold). As much as I hate this anti-intellectual and anti-college trend over the years, higher ed did it to itself by being greedy. And our collective knowledge/skill base suffers.
Zoe's story around 34 minutes about the young teacher who said they, as young, female teachers, needed to be extremely strict to make the students respect them...
Students NEVER actually respect the strict teachers. They might be diligent to follow all of the rules (to their and their classmates' detriment at times), but they absolutely don't respect that teacher. They hate that teacher. The only students who might respect the strict teacher are students with an aptitude for the subject who are succeeding without bumping into the rules and strict policies. Everyone else just can't wait to be out of that class forever. I can't fathom how someone could go through that many years of education and come out somehow thinking "I've gotta be just like the teachers everyone hates if I want respect."
I never liked standardized test growing up; I thought they were stupid. But one thing that was on my side is I'm a really good test taker. It was easy, relatively speaking for me to read a question, and then try and just pick the best answer. Sometimes, it would work sometimes it wouldn't. I noticed as I got older a lot of the problems that people had with exams were they just couldn't finish. It's not that they didn't know, they just couldn't finish, so they would spend maybe 10 minutes on one question when maybe they could have continued on answering more questions.
I knew growing up that some students had test anxiety; there was something about the exam, whether the fact that it was hard or they just freeze up during those moments really got to them. It's not that they weren't smart. It's just that this one thing was holding them back. And they knew it, and they knew everyone would treat them as though they were stupid because of it.
This is why parents need to prepare children for stressful situations. I did MMA and football, I learned to not freeze up quickly. it’s better to act and get it wrong than do nothing. It was something that has put me at an advantage over my educational peers even after moving on from both
Im the same with test taking except for essay writing for literature classes, I just could not get 5 paragraphs of rhetorical analysis within that 40ish min time limit and even now it takes me days and weeks to write essays for college...
My schools motto was literally "born to create good test takers"
My school often sent me to regional or city olympiads and contests so I don't really have test anxiety. I remember that during the speaking part of a [insert foreign language] olympiad I somehow completely missed the text which I should've based my speech on (literally couldn't find it lol). I only knew the theme and some criteria. Though obviously I scored low, I still managed to give a normal answer and sounded convincing enough to trick my speaking partner (a contestant who I was paired with for the test) into thinking that I actually knew something about the subject. They couldn't believe me at first when I told them later that I made everything up
However, my experience didn't save me from freezing up on my advanced math state exam. There were two particular math problems which were very easy and I've solved a billion other similar problems before but exactly that time I couldn't. I couldn't even remember where to start. I didn't want to spiral into more brain numbness so I finished any other tasks I could do, sometimes returning back to these two demons to check if I maybe now could recall something. Didn't work. My brain just shut down every time I looked at that corner of the paper
It's not anything of importance to me now but at that time my future kinda depended on it
I also didn't want to be frowned upon by my classmates who had this "typical boring clever person nerd.png" image of me which didn't reflect me at all and I was often laughed at or faced confusion if I acted "out of character". Also I didn't want them do think that because if my state exam results were not high enough, then I probably didn't deserve my school marks either and got them.. by other means. Yes, bribery is a thing in my school
I don't really know why I wrote all this. Probably to say that even though I was quite confident I wouldn't freeze up as I've managed to escape it numerous times before, the thing still happened.. and it'd definitely happen again. And again
@@Thermascorchrepeated head injuries did not make you smarter
Thank you so much for this. My parents are aghast at how me and my siblings are stumbling in school and college, and it feels impossible to explain all the reasons why.
I think part of the problem is the lack of in person sociality. We have social needs as people, and some of us learn better in certain contexts through social interaction. A camera and mic only go so far. Plus, it can often be a big help to have a person help, not technology.
@@caiden3396u have to agree technology helped 100 times more then a person help
The person isnt required to agree. Technology fills in only specific sub areas for someone as an aid a guide. Interaction fills in the other
@@the_expidition427 it's not 2005 boomer
Do you know how they handled this in the 1917 pandemic? They took kids from population dense area and sent them to the country. Think NYC to Pennsylvania farmland. Historically, it's unclear if many of those kids ever came home. It wasn't a priority to reunite poor families back then.
I feel like a lot of parents did their kids wrong, by not prioritizing finding pod groups and replacement activities. Like, this is parenting. Arguably, augmenting what schools provide is a HUGE part of parenting.
I genuinely loved science throughout school, it was my favorite subject. I remember breaking down crying once in my sophomore year biology, because our teacher was spending 80% of the semester so far just getting control of the students, instead of us actually doing anything productive. It just felt like I was in a daycare.
The teacher also broke down crying once. Those kids were pretty brutal to her, and she quit after that year. I know the teenage brain is still underdeveloped, but I seriously will never understand why they thought it was funny to make her cry. Like what was happening at home for them to have such a sheer lack of empathy? Reflecting on it now as an adult is kind of disturbing.
This is kind of a selfish and maybe self-inflated thought I had at the time, but I was wishing they could just divide us into classes of kids who gave a shit, and kids who didn't, so my education didn't have to suffer. It just didn't feel fair.
The same has happened to me, but with humanities and languages. I was lucky enough to never have been bullied personally, but I was absolutely so fed up with all the immaturity and disrespect around me, to the point I started to get anxiety attacks and crying a lot, only worsening the situation. Medical help wasn't available in the school so with time I just learned to shut down completely. Care about nothing at all: unsurprisingly, my grades dropped for a while until I found myself in a better enrironment.
So no, we're not selfish at all, we just wanted basic human decency and education which we could not get from that hellscape. If those people weren't selfish, truly selfish, self centered and rude, we would NOT have to think about excluding them.
I’ve experienced similarly, it’s probably why I have a streak of ferocious responses to disrespect, as I held my tongue back then, and now that I’m in college it frustrates me even further since people are now PAYING to be in a classroom just to not respect the education they’re being given.
@somethingunusual8456 I did get bullied, basically every day since I was 10, up until a few months before HS graduation. Eventually it got so bad I had to go on antidepressants.
What sucks is because I spent almost my whole childhood hiding from other people, y'know a time of key social development, socializing as an adult doesn't really come naturally to me. I still hardly speak.
I don't know what I did to deserve all that, I think I just went to the school district with the most psychotically sadistic kids.
You need to rid yourself of the idea that these kids' behavior must be the result of something happening 'at home'
Popular media gives us this notion that people only traumatize others because they were traumatized themselves or grew up in a bad home. But this is not the case.
People who grew up in stable families are just as likely to act immature. There is also a large element of social facilitation, where a behavior seems more appealing because you see others doing it.
If we acknowledge that empathy has to be taught, then we should realize that we shouldn't expect much empathy from people who have the least life experience.
@@cyancyborg1477 what those kids did to you is criminal. You should never feel selfish for not wanting to go through that and actually have a nice education. However what is done is done, I hope you got the help you need with socialization and that eventually it is no longer something which feels unsurpassable. You're not alone in this (unfortunately I've heard a lot of similar stories)
"no child left behind" is bad. Sure, being held back you lose all your friends. But being held back keeps you from being held back forever. You can always make new friends
No child left behind was put in place so parents of dumbass kids could blame the schools for their shortcomings.
It only actually harmed the more education-inclined students, who were no longer given special attention towards curating a more individualized education plan tailored towards challenging them and developing the same skills as their peers instead of simply assuming they would be smart enough to pass everything without effort forever.
yup
SAY IT LOUDER! 😭😭
@Vanity0666 aye as a "dumber" kid in school I always felt like deadweight but blaming the parents isn't even the reasons, it's administrative, it looks better if all of your classes advance generally at the same rate then if it was only half of them
@@fullmetal2455wdym going to a school where gangs were normal keeping the schools holding back was worse... its the sad truth
At-home schooling was probably the single most soul-crushing, depressing experience I've ever had. I already had a bit of a problem with a depressive lack of motivation in my highschool years, but that form of "education" took what little drive and energy I had and threw it all directly into the same dumpster fire my grades went.
This discussion on the Taylorism management style really hit home. I'm finishing up my PhD and I have to say the first two years were me having to UNLEARN this idea that "grinding it out" leads to success. I had to slow down, take a step back, think deeply and be less "productive" in order to actually carry out my scientific research.
Kids grind it out because curriculums have time limits
i’m in my 3rd semester of college and want to do same but i feel like time is against me sometimes between my schedule and taking my time to really digest the material
Care to elaborate what you mean, OP?
@@flightlesschicken7769 Obviously I need to work hard and I'm under time limits. I need to publish and I need to graduate. But when I first got started I had this approach that working hard meant working all the time. The idea I had, and much of the behavior I observed, was that Grad students stay in the lab late and work over the weekends. So I crammed as many PCRs and assays in as I could in a day. I got in early, worked late...and I kept making mistakes. It took a huge toll on my mental health. I was working so hard why wasn't I getting results? In school you can, and are encouraged, to work long hours studying etc. If you get a couple questions wrong, or take a bad quiz you usually can move on from it or take a lower grade on a meh paper because you have to just keep moving. But with lab work it all builds on itself. If I was moving too fast to push things through to save a day or didn't take time to plan the proper controls I could potentially put myself back a week because I had to start over. Grinding it out just left me tired and not much farther along than if I took my time. So I try to take breaks, and leave at a decent hour. And, importantly, I will give myself time to process my data, and come up with flushed out next steps instead of barrelling into the next thing to get it done. I still work my ass off, but I am cognizant of my limits. I do better work when I read and synthesize from other's work, plan, and take care of myself.
I will also shout out to my AMAZING and supportive faculty advisor who reminded me to take care of myself.
This is an interesting comment and I'd like to know more.
At some point we gotta stop blaming the pandemic on every single thing. The schooling system has been on its last wheel for ATLEAST 15 years. The colleges are antiquated also. Aswell as the pay and conditions of teachers. Everyone knows the schooling system has been questionable since the beginning. It’s a matter of sustainability
Schools became communist indoctrination centers 20 years ago. It's not meant to teach you anything useful, it's meant to create docile automatons that aren't aware their rights are being violated.
We’re not blaming the pandemic. The blame lies on the causes of the problem, not the spotlight.
Did you even watch the video 😭
@@felix.mp3639 I think they're agreeing w the video and moreso addressing their comment to ppl who think that way
My biggest problem with this type of content is, I know the school system is shit, I know it broke me, I know it's screwing people over on a constant basis. I know this society is shit. But I have no clue what the hell to do about it. Or if anything CAN be done about it. And I find that very discouraging.
The only thing that can be done has to be fought for by teachers, plus voting out shitty school boards. Easier said than done but there’s not a lot that can be done by individuals directly.
We as individuals HAVE to engage politically at multiple levels. If you have a spare few hours go to school-board meetings. Write or call representatives (the lower the level of government the better, since your voice will be comparatively louder and they will tend to have more individual power) and ask them about what they’ve done in terms of policy and positions to reform the school system. Talk to friends and family about the problem and how we can fix it (this last one is likely the easiest but also has the smallest impact).
Unfortunately systemic change requires a large political force and the modern world makes it incredibly difficult for people at the bottom to exercise their political power, so its not something you can just set and forget. It takes work to change the world, but this kind of work has to be done by individuals or nothing will change.
Go to meetings you can speak at. Contact your reps about issues you care about. Push friends and family to not just discuss but engage.
A quick biased guide from me: Dont vote as all candidates are mere buerocrats who only serve their interests. There are many things that one can do. For one you could go study education and find solutions. Next, you could (should imo) take action. The form that this demonstration takes hold of should be varied and diverse from protesting to forming militia. Whatever you want to see happen will only happen if something is done. What feels right to you is the path you should take. I can't be a great guide, for i am some random ass youtube comment. But just be creative.
You're right, this is entertainment, not a call to action
@@idkanymore8070"don't vote"
"Take action"
So..... vote? A militia won't solve school issues.
I also feel like teachers believe now that just because we have access to information way easier than they did in their time, they can make us do 20 different papers and essays for the next day, and more than 3 teachers at the time will think this and it just messes up with students. They just read powerpoints instead of teaching and expect us to do amazing... teaching has declined too
One of the last assignments I got in high school prior to COVID was a five page essay due the next day about some very niche European historical event. Like?????????????
Yep, especially when it comes to online textbooks that have homework portions and premade slides. I hate them so much, alongside their online tests.
Sometimes I hate school so much, largely because it makes learning boring.
@@chaosbean6320I had a teacher who only taught by online textbook, almost everyone would have failed if he didn’t allowed us to cheat. Yet, ALL the kids were put into the next grade level. This was an advanced class with Algbra 1 for 8th graders. It was pure chaos, literally fires, blood, swearing, screaming, bullying (including the teacher bullying a disabled kid) yet nothing happened to the teacher and the kids are Highschool Freshmen in Geometry unsure how to do stuff they were meant to learn last year.
Oh boy, I very clearly remember how much I despise that shit. When I was in high school a lot of the book just assume I have access to the internet to search for X because they're trying to "develop" my critical thinking. No shit sherlock, I barely have internet access at home so essentially most of the textbook are useless.
I also have this teacher that to this day I despise. It was my 12th grade physics teacher. All she did for the entire year was: go to class, sit, let the STUDENT teach the other student about the material in front of the class and then she just handed an exercise paper. Not to mention she had the fucking audacity to mock me behind my back on my friend class, saying how bad of a student i am for having the lowest grade in physics. Even though I tried so hard to understand it because I was very interested in physics, but having undiagnosed adhd make it harder for me, not to mention the shitty textbook and lack of internet access at home. In the end, I ended up giving up studying physics because it just so painful to get reminded of that whenever I tried to study physics.
Anyone else ever read something and say to themselves "wow there is no way anyone over 14 wrote this"
We don't need stricter education, we need better education.
We really need less education and more vocational training. Liberal arts education doesn’t “take” with people of below average intelligence.
But how can better education be given when students don’t even listen… it can’t be no listening and just iPad or computer work right?
@@firesagithis is a huge problem yes, but i feel like that’s on the parents to discipline their kid or on the kid to force themselves to listen. stricter education won’t help, it will just leave kids who already don’t care without any education at all since they will give up completely.
@@firesagi The question you should be asking is WHY the students don't listen. Answering that question is the first steo to better education
@@Quartz512_ I’m sure the teachers are doing their best to provide good education… who is to determine what is “better” when a teacher has to cater for so many pupils in a general classroom?
I started college a few months ago, and it’s wild to me how weird the education system is. I was really deep in the “nerd” groups in highschool, the friends who had below a 4.0 tended to be outliers, so college has been wild. People are all over the spectrum for math and writing, and it’s really interesting
I hate those nerd groups because they make me feel intellectually compromised. I would reckon I am not very smart and it hurts me every time I am reminded of just how stupid I am.
@@MyHeartIsOpen2Youjust remember there are many types of intelligence. having a 4.0 is more a reflection of discipline and memorization than I would say intelligence.
@KalmAMwell for one I made my UA-cam name breast milk gaming
@@augisettdiscipline and memorization are the most important skills in life.
I used to be part of that group. I am now the outlier though lol. Failing 2 of my dual enroll classes. I just can't give a crap anymore. Probably won't get into any colleges, but I don't even really want to do college anyways
im glad that teachers are speaking out about how students are not performing up to standards and how they arent learning because it shows that they care but they are placing the blame on the students and parents while it is not entirely their fault. yes there is some responsibility on the student to try in school and parents to make sure their students are trying their best but at the same time, there is only so much people can do in a broken system
As a student, school literally feels like a game, a game with the highest stakes. Like, for me, it's only about getting highest grades that I can. And, this struggle session goes on for weeks and weeks on end, and I don't have the option to take a mental health day. Like, even though on the surface it might seem like I do get those good grades, I can't keep going on, as at some point I'm going to break. This stuff, compounded with bullying has really been damning to my motivation and my mental health. I even forget sometimes that school is supposed to be about learning. I know this is only me, but I know this is the case for many students around the country. And then, they wonder why a lot of young people want socialism. If school is this tough already, I don't want to imagine how tough actual work might be, knowing that I will slave away my life for a boss that would basically give me the equivalent of pennies.
I really feel this, the only motivation getting me through my classes is the degree even tho the course content is important and interesting, I don't even want to get a job right after I finish I just want a gap year and do nothing. Even on breaks Im always stressed abt something. I'm on my senior year without a proper internship yet but idk if I can even handle the workload when I barely have the energy to even look at applications
I feel the same way as you. It doesn’t help when the older adults in your life are telling you that everything is easiest and peeks at 17 years old. Yet at 17 I got long-haul COVID. They were certainly wrong about 17 being the peak of my life so I hope they are wrong about the workforce being considerably harder then school. But I think most of it comes from them underestimating school rather then overestimating work.
But I have been enjoying college and it brings life into my day when I have a professor who I can tell WANTS to be there. I am considering becoming one of the professors because the workforce seems so scary and unaccommodating.
If you aren’t going to college you shouldn’t slave away as it doesn’t matter. If you are going to college then yeah it does matter and it’s just hazing you to filter out the smart and disciplined ones from the rest. Work is about the same or easier than college though.l depending on major. Engineers have much easier jobs for example. Work is also much more fulfilling than school because your rewards are tangible and almost immediate. You aren’t working for the chance at a job you are working for money in your bank account
Real work won't be like this, I promise. You can totally get a pencil pushing job at a financial firm that pays well and you'll be doing school every day for a salary, or you can get literally any other job and work with the real world.
All you gotta do at work is show up, and be willing to do what your boss asks. The best part: if you boss gives you performance aptitude tests, or judges you, or even makes you mad at ALL, you can search for a different job. You can find a new manager.
Just hang in there, and hopefully the good grades will make your college cheaper! Trust me, getting all C's disqualifies one from most scholarships and stuff, but if you're mostly B, B+, and a few Cs then you'll still qualify and be okay.
I’m currently a 2nd yr in university. I can safely say that all the years of me completely breaking my soul since the beginning of middle school till now and being considered a “smart kid” expected to just know everything presented to me are catching up to me. Ig you can say I’m a young adult now, I feel like I’m fkn useless the moment I can’t understand something. Makes me feel immature. Then I fall behind. I have an extremely rigorous major, I feel like I can’t take it anymore. All the years of me being told to never get below As, try to be the best at everything, shamed for failing just a bit, idk, I feel like I was never taught to process and understand how to learn, especially how to learn efficiently and effectively. I was just thrown info and told to pass a test. But now it seems like am at a point in my life where that isn’t going to work. And I’m being tasked with doing things differently. I’m now expected to be even more smarter and understand everything. I honestly just want to disappear and live somewhere in a mountain lol.
Kids are so much smarter than the system gives them credit for, we’re human beings not robots
Exactly
yeah but what can us robots do about it
I think parents need to stop relying on phones and electronics to entertain kids... and I also think standardized education needs to end. Putting all students into a box is not good for anybody. Plus, teachers need support from admin. One bad student can ruin the flow of a whole classroom and yet admin will just do nothing and the teacher's hands are tied, too.
Great thoughts . . . especially the first one.
What do you think should be done about the bad student
@@fullmetal2455 personally i don't think there's such a thing as a bad student. there are bored students and tired students and confused students and students who can't get reasonable accomodations or supports in school. they aren't bad. all people have an innate desire to learn that mostly gets crushed into oblivion while they're in school and turns them into exhausted adults. if children are supported and encouraged and respected, they simply don't turn into "bad students" in the first place. they stay curious and excited and engaged. and maybe a bit excitable or undisciplined but the former is a good thing and a latter is a matter of practice, not something to be punished.
My kid has been suffering. His father was also stationed overseas when Covid started, and then we all moved overseas. Basically 3 major changes happened to him when he was 10 and it was A LOT. My poor kid is still struggling. I had a Zoom meeting yesterday with his school and they are acknowledging the trauma kids feel and they want to support the kids with this. He's getting help in school for his work. He's capable and smart - he just can't get the work done. He struggles. He's such a sweet child, and I will do anything for him. He's never punished for his grades, he's doing his best at his capacity.
thank you for being so understanding and patient with your child. the world needs more parents like you.
as a kid who also moved, STARTED high school during covid and is in a high pressure cluster school, I also feel really lost right now so it’s great to see that atleast some parents are more understanding and supportive :).
Make sure HE knows that you're proud of him and that you acknowledge his struggles ❤
Hope you and him are getting better and he is his own unique person and individual that is capable of anything!
Your son needs structure. You need to impress upon him that in the real world, deadlines have meaning. Blowing a deadline may cost you your job as an adult. Blowing a deadline may kill people in certain career fields.
This is one of those "tough love" things that I'm grateful my parents forced upon me. I was also a sweet kid who was deemed capable and smart that utterly failed to adhere to deadlines. I got picked on a lot and often used that as a way to hide from my own responsibilities.
Mom and Dad fixed that habit of mine and I'm far better off today for their effort.
Remember that your son has to be a man in a few short years. Give him the tools for success, even if it means forcing that sweet child to be uncomfortable and do something he evidently doesn't like doing.
As a child of NYC public schools, more or less the teaching style for many of my teachers was as follows: if you got it, you got it, and if you didn't you didn't.
Some teachers would have assistance or after-school teaching. Or maybe if you had like a friend who was really good they could help you but if you didn't get it. Sometimes you were just left to figure it out. And this style didn't help anyone in the long-term cause once kids came to more rigorous work, say in junior senior year or even college. If they were just "naturally" smart, they wouldn't have any habits to help them figure something out and process information. Then they had to basically try and create their own study structure from scratch. And if you were just used to getting left behind you eventually stop trying and many people thought process was: I guess I'm just stupid.
We were all done bad out here.
I was in college at this time (we mostly had theory + practice days, during which we focused on one course) and I could do anything only because most of the teachers were always online, so after explaining theory there will be a multiple hour window during which teachers would answer and help fixing your mistakes. Trying to online coach 10+ people during one hour lesson is problematic to say the least, it barely works for in-person classes. Keeping the same teaching program was biggest issue, but than again I get that teachers were just thrown into it without any time to prepare too
Perfectly described basically my whole life. I was considered an above average kid in terms of intelligence, academics, drawing, etc. I’d get recognitions and everything but I hated school growing because although sure I was a “smart” child, I still needed help understanding certain things sometimes, but I was usually left on my own to figure it out, it would take me a little longer to figure things out but there wasn’t much help because I was expected to just understand everything, both at home and by teachers (I was usually in honors classes, but I’d sometimes ask certain questions and quite a lot of my past teachers would get mad or annoyed, so I’d simply stay quite to save the embarrassment, I’d see other kids ask similar questions to me and they’d sometimes get mocked and told “did you not take notes?” Or “look at the slides” or the infamous “you would know if you paid attention”. And starting middle school, the moment my grades would fall ever so slightly just from an A to a B, I would get punished, scolded, and shamed. I’d just think I was stupid, and that school was useless. Although I tried my hardest to keep my grades up all the way to high school, got into university and into a pretty competitive portfolio required major, I still feel like I’m somehow behind everyone else. Like I have to re teach myself everything that others already seem to have known and I’m once again expected to have learned before. I feel like I don’t belong there. I’m constantly burnt out, teaching my self everything. I have periods of highs where I’m extremely motivated and then a few hours later I feel like I’m gonna hang myself and that I’m a complete idiot for not understanding the task immediately. Where I see my peers seem to just breeze by. I honestly don’t know where I’m going wrong, but if this is how my future and this career I don’t even feel like I belong in anymore are going to be then I honestly don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life. And it sucks because there are peers who even sometimes just make fun of me or others for not understanding which honestly just adds more fuel to the fire. I don’t really know what I want in my life anymore tbh. Sry for the long rant.
I feel like all those years of being the failure smart kid are beginning to catch up to me in the most crucial moments of my career and life.
Yeah dawg, I fortunately found schooling super easy even towards the because something more difficult is just more engaging to me. But yeah I never had to study, and never really built a normal sense of discipline, being often called lazy because I never did much extra work in school (because I didn't need to). I really do feel bad for the people who straight up just didn't get the material a lot of times because I know they're not stupid most of the time, just that schools/teachers tend to teach like everyone has the same thought processes and such. Been to a lot of schools in NYC & it all just sucks
It's the same over here on the island (especially in lower income areas) my brother is one of the kids who doesn't get it. He can barely read. He doesn't even care anymore. It just makes me feel awful
Thank you so much for inviting me onto this project! I loved the way you brought so many different things together to create this beautiful mosaic! Amazing work as always, Elliot! 💜
I’d love to hear your thoughts on unschooling once they’re more fully formed! I was homeschooled growing up, and knew a few unschooled kids.
Ahhhh Zoe this collab was SO GOOD!! I was so happy to see you on this video, and I love how thoughtful and reflective you and Elliot are about education. Love you both!
Love the colab
HI ZOE!!!
i was thinking “she’s awesome time to subscribe” only to find that i’m already subbed haha
Im a student who passed highschool with straight A's but i feel as if i have learned very little of what i actually need in life. I lack social skills, i can't find motivation to take care of myself, i never actually learned how to retain the information i am taught. I perform well but my mental state suffers.
My Mom’s a Kindergarten teacher, since covid she’s had underdeveloped kids coming into her classroom that aren’t socialized. Many didn’t even know what a grocery store was. It’s not only a school thing, its the lack of socialization these kids are getting as well that was worse when covid hit, but has been prevalent throughout recent years
I go to a state college and was absolutely shocked at how little most people here actually enjoy learning, education, and reading as a concept. I understood in K-12, but I thought people in college would have those traits, in spite of standardized education. People openly scoff at the general education requirements because it “won’t have anything to do with their career” or they “won’t use it in their life.” It shows a complete lack of understanding of what college is supposed to be. This shit has just become white collar trade school. I’ve felt a loss for the kind of secondary education I always dreamed about, in a community of people who WANT to be there, professors who have TIME to actually form connections and teach how they want, and a general attitude of curiosity and learning about the world. It’s just a business. I think the issue of education bleeds into higher education as well.
I felt this when I met this friend group who didn't take their work seriously and I was the only one in the room who would actually do their work on time. Unfortunately, their bad habits started to rub off of me, and because of my mental state, I made big mistakes that messed me up for the worst :/
Well said, holy shit
I found less of those types of people in the higher level classes of my major and now that I'm in graduate school I haven't met a single person like that. My general education requirements were full of those types tho :(
Same. It really sucks you HAVE to go into the specialist programs before you meet people genuinely interested in learning.
@@GreenGorgeousness this seems like overgeneralization of what the original comment said, no?
The problem isn't as simple as "most people in GE classes don't want to learn", but that the structure of high school and early undergraduate programs don't prepare students for the kind of learning and independence required for said higher level courses. You'd be reducing the problem to a kind of circular argument to say "only the students who make it through the rigor of the program are capable of making through the rigor of the program (the ones "generally interested in learning"). I don't totally disagree with the sentiment of what you're saying, but I think there is wayyy more going on than just "people don't want to learn"
I’m currently a senior in college and was a senior in high school when COVID started. Me and a few of my friends have expressed that we feel emotionally stunted. I’m a 21 year old but sometimes I still feel like an 18 year old that never truly got to learn how to navigate the world
I felt that way in college 2008-2012. It caused me to have a bit of a breakdown in the years after graduation. I’m not saying Covid didn’t affect your experience, as I’m sure it did, but you’re not the only generation that feels this way in college. I think it’s a pretty normal thing that many people don’t talk about, so those who feel that way can feel isolated and behind the curve. Just know that feelings of struggling to transition into an adult are very real and very common, and you’re not broken because of it. Give yourself time.
@melissaabrego1884 I'm 23 in college and feel the same
I reckon this is very normal
About to be 21 and yeah it’s rough
Buddy that aint never gonna change, every year that passes you're gonna tell yourself "nothing feels meaningfully different" until you realize everyone is just faking maturity in an attempt to secure positions of authority over others so they can dictate reality to their little fiefdoms
My loneliness in college made me overschedule and overwhelm myself with responsibilities and workload that I couldn't possibly handle, simply because how much I valued making friends & having to find always think of ways to make new friends, and spending time on cultivating those friendships.
Ended up with me being active in the student radio, studying spanish (full time) while also having an internship, writing applications for a massive foreign thesis project the upcoming semester, other student organizations and having to report from my previous semester having studied abroad. It was a mess. And i didnt even realize it until now.
hey, 🫂
a teacher recently told me that "its not about grades, its about learning," and it got me thinking alot about this. Because it is about grades. I have always seen school as a game i need to win, the outcome of which will determine my future for who knows how long, and never something to benefit me as a person or a place to learn. Id much rather cheat and get an A than work hard and get a B, because it dosent matter how hard you work or how smart you are, what matters is what you look like on paper. Good grades get you into college, college gets you a job, and a job pays for your wellbeing and life. All we really care about is surviving by any means necessary while our teachers insist on trying to make us learn something for no good reason. Learning is a privilege, one that most of us dont even have the time to think about let alone attempt, and until our teachers realize the reality of the world we live in, where financial stability is a dream and the 'middle class' is basically below the poverty line, there will always be a fundamental difference in the way teachers think and the way students think.
Y’know students really be sitting in class for a good chunk of their life, and I feel that school has become less “fun”, there is almost nothing new in school other than harder classes next year. It’s been sucky after COVID since everyone got locked in, no social life, and when people went back to class it was really boring to go to class, it just didn’t feel worth it, making people procrastinate and not be on level.
This, this, and ALL of this!! The quote at 50:39 really says it all. I have been saying for years now- as I’m continuing to work in schools- that schools should be community resource centers for youth. Elementary school should be about guided play and discovery, middle schools should be more open to the changing interests of students and high schools should allow for student led projects about their interests. My philosophy in the classroom has always been “less of me, more of them”. I just wish more educators in the field would see that the solution is *not* even stricter policies.
It’s not fair for teachers to be responsible for fixing all of society’s woes. Who would even do this work?
Fewer and fewer are choosing to do this work. The shortages are stretching those still in the field. I certainly can't see the way forward - it would take more change than the political will would allow.
there's sudbury schools if you're into that
..are not enough. Most parents even hate non-traditional schools. No, the solution is a sustained mutual aid system designed to help teachers carry the loads of and educate them on the woes of modern schooling. @@bowtiefrenchfry800
Couldn't have said it better.
I can’t imagine dealing with long covid in grade school. At least in college I could work with my professors and the schedule was less rigid. Grade Schools are so harsh on kids for even just needing to pee. Taking extra time for breaks because you’re struggling with undiagnosed Long Covid would be impossible.
that's my life! it really sucks (i got covid in seventh grade and i'm a high school freshman now, long covid gave me two disorders and ruined my immune system) but you learn how to play catch up pretty quick. for me, every time i get sick i'm mentally out of it for two weeks, even if i'm physically okay enough to show up to school i don't process anything
Adult schools are a thing that exists, and you dont have to be an adult to get a GED, some of the most unconventionally and conventionally intelligent people I know ended up acting out as a result of the environment and lack of real stimulation perpetuated by the standardized education system and were either filtered into continuation schools where they excelled due to the ability to set their own schedules and meet deadlines, or simply obtained their GED through the testing program
The schools treat kids like they are inmates in prisons, and are surprised when the culture starts to match the environment they created.
I was in 5th grade starting spring break when COVID happened, so when we went back the next year, I hadnt even passed my 5th grade math assesment, I hadnt even finished the course. And they decided from my grades, "Hey, this kid's doing alright, lets send him ahead" They put me in Pre Algebra in 6TH GRADE. I'm now a freshman doing Trigonometry, And I feel I need to be held back once, but if I let my grades drop, my parents punish me for them.
@@TheEnvixity. i don't think youre legally allowed to be on youtube without parental supervision or consent
@@Vanity0666 I am, I'm over 13
This video just unlocked some memories holy cow. I went 25 years without knowing I needed glasses and had undiagnosed ADHD, autism and dyslexia for a good chunk of that as well.
I didn't even know that dyslexia existed untill the Percy Jackson books came out and I remember running to my mom at age 12 or 13 frantically pointing at the page and telling her that this book character has the same problem as me. (I mostly have the letters "b, p, d, q, m, w" flip or rotate to look like each other [ex: "puppy" can look like "buppy" or "pubby" or "bubpy" "pubpy"] or have some letters change places in words).
She didn't believe me and I ended up failing algebra 1 (I was put in an early placement in 8th grade) I remember getting so frustrated during that class because everyone had just switched to smartBoards (they were so much harder to read) that I would just cry because I couldn't keep up, all the letters and numbers were jumbled and I couldn't remember all the steps I needed too.
But when I went to go back to college at 23 (after I learned how to learn with my brain, turns out I actually like math alot and I'm really good at it) I took an entrance exam for placement and ended up testing out of math! I fell a bit short in reading but I can only do so much to get accommodations when I'm too old to get a real diagnosis for my dyslexia. (Turns out serif fonts and italics really aggravate it, and asking teachers to just not use italics on exams is very audacious of me when i don't have a diagnosis)
being "too old" to get a diagnosis is absolutely absurd man
@cakeclaws right?? I'm not sure if it's just my area or something bc there's only one place that does testing and the application I had to fill out says they don't test anyone over 21 which is really weird
High school failed to prepare me for college and now I struggle to keep up with my education. Colleges aren't even as good as high school either they're not teaching which we as college students have to teach ourselves. It is messed up that we are going to debt for a better education when we are just teaching ourselves. The whole school education is messed up and we need to take action.
Letting you guys know I graduated high school as an A/B student with a 3.9
Feel that brother, learning higher level math like differential equations and discrete math is hell when your professors don’t really explain shit
Yeah, you actually have to put in work when you're a college aged adult. They're not going to spoon feed you. Surprise.
I found college to be much less interesting high school with only handful of lecturer that actually want to teach
yeah because in college, all you pay for is the syllabus and study everything inside it yourself....
I graduated two years before the pandemic but I grew up in abuse and neglect, with learning disorders, neurological differences, and undiagnosed mental illness, as well as a neurological disorder… my experience with school is floating by, constantly being confused, never catching up, having to always beg my teachers for extra help just to be able to pass. The only reason I graduated was because (the school rejected my IEP request even though I had been diagnosed with ADHD, Tourette’s, OCD, and MDD, and PTSD at the time because while my math scores were abysmal - I failed algebra 1 four times at that point in my senior year) decided to help me by giving me a tutor from one of the college students studying to teach, and having her help me fill out a small packet every week, until I got 100% on all of them with as many tries as I needed. If it wasn’t for that math teacher I would have flunked. I graduated with the lowest GPA of my class and then continued to struggle in college, with one exception: I had an amazing philosophy teacher who helped me actually like learning again, and helped get me an exemption from my math prerequisites by enrolling me in his logic class which I ACED! The first math test I had ever Aced. But like…. There are a TON of kids like me who don’t get lucky like I have, and don’t get the opportunities or find the right resources to succeed.
I am getting my bachelors in film next quarter and going into an MFA program soon after. But I owe ALLLLL of that success to two teachers who managed to reach me over my panic attacks and emotional disregulation And extreme anger. Not many kids get those opportunities. And that really really really needs to change. There are so many talented kids out there with so much potential who are held back purely because they don’t have the proper support. And they deserve a chance!
Are you ok?
I can relate so much with the COVID learning loss. I was extremely depressed in the time period. When I started grad school I felt like I was lacking an in depth understanding of many important concepts, so much so I had to go back to them again and revise them again completely. The one course that got affected the most was lab work. Two years of my bachelor's degree were wasted.
Its astonishing how quickly I got depressed from covid, it began with just the lockdowns but then I started relapsing in eating disorder habits and that battle took up my entire first and second year of college, I can barely remember anything from that time period now
Yeah I’m suffering in my 3rd year of undergrad. I’m doing engineering, and honestly my work ethic + study approach is awful. Idk if I’m going to pass some of these classes. I know stem is hard but I feel lost. It’s likely because I did the bare minimum in community college. Covid learning was still somewhat in affect my first year.
I honestly didn’t properly learn the fundamentals.
Plus I’m still rebuilding the motivation/skills I lost during senior year of HS . And state University is killing me. It’s an entirely new beast.
Stem doesn’t come naturally to me but I used to eventually be able to learn and understand stuff with some hard work. I used to love school & and be an honor roll student.
I was starting my undergrad and online classes were still so new to me, on top of needing to learn a new grading platform for classes (Blackboard instead of Google Classroom which I was used to). I failed 2 classes my first semester of college. My gpa has gone up above a 3.0 now but that took 3 years to fix :/ Online classes were HARD
0:58 I’m only a minute in and angry at teachers/administrators. When I was in high school back in the 90s, there was a dress code that all the students had to follow. I wanted to wear an earring, so I checked the dress code and didn’t see anything about it. I knew the administrators were all conservative (rural southern school) so I checked Title XI-all rules have to apply equally for the sexes in school. Female students were wearing five or more earrings in each ear, so I figured one on me wouldn’t be too big a deal. Nope-first day back in senior year, get called to the vice principal’s office. They told me, “Take it out, or we’ll do it for you.” I protested and was told I could take it up with the school board later. Either take it out or get suspended. So I took it out, but I also went to the school board. I made my case, but I was told they had already ruled on dress code that year and that they wouldn’t be ruling again til next year. And since I was a senior, I wouldn’t be able to argue it. I felt so defeated.
I’m telling that story to ask this: if my teachers and administrators could muscle me over and make me rip something out of my ear while it’s still healing, in obvious contrivance to the rules and for no reason other than power plays, why couldn’t they enforce mask mandates? Just make it part of the dress code? I know, I know, they were ignorant about masks and wanted to lord it over others. But in doing so, they fundamentally messed with the learning experience of an entire young generation. And I know, the rules came down from on high, but nobody was following the rules when I had to pry my earring out. They were just pushing me around. These school boards need to be ended.
Obviously, you haven't seen what passes for dress codes lately 😅.
Also, in my district and probably the one from which you graduated, the school admin probably didn't agree with the mandates anyway and did the bare minimum to appear in compliance.
@@Maria-uv9pd The football players were part of an explicitly Christian organization that would hold hands in a circle around the flag every morning and say prayers for the day. No religious indoctrination in schools though! /sarcasm
@@Maria-uv9pdr/whoosh
So much fuzz for just a stupid piercing.
If *ANY* of the stuff that happened in my school in the early 2010s happened now it would be viral.....i went to *public* school in the late 2000s and early 2010s in southern louisiana and they spent the entire first two weeks of school every year systematically spending every class period reading every section of our gigantic student rulebook, it was massive and thick and it was part of school policy to keep it on you at all times. they were so strict theyd spend countless amounts of time doing uniform checks lined up in hallways, having students pull up their pant legs to show their socks were the right colors and matching, measuring earrings. Girls were constantly harrassed by teachers about earring size, or makeup, or bracelets. ANy time there was a trend it would get banned immediately. They went as far as to ban certain materials like corduroy and fleece from even being worn.
guys had to be clean shaven, short hair one of 5 styles. Girls had to have professional hair. No dyed hair. Girls in high school werent allowed to wear shorts but guys could. It was southern louisiana......90 degrees 90% of the year. WTF.
i swear, that the administration and the teachers just loved lording over the kids. you had to follow every phrase or sentence said to a superior with maam or sir or youd be yelled at. "I was going to the restroom maam/sir" "No maam/sir." My trauma memory is the fact every single teacher if they asked a yes or no question and you forgot to say maam or sir after yes or no, they'd yell at you "YES WHAT? YES WHAT?" at you until you replied maam or sir. They were constantly humiliating students and doing really cruel and unusual punishments.
Its apparently still going on, as I went to a school not to far from a school that made national headlines in Slidell Louisiana for duct taping kids mouths shut... theres so many kids still trapped in those schools and if they were exposed on social media or tik tok that shit would go viral. I swear the information i have about the school I went to could be grounds for lawsuits and human rights investigations. One girl in my class (i think in like 2011) forgot her PE uniform so they made her walk the track field with no water for the entire PE hour in the humid louisiana heat. Spoiler alert... she had a heat stroke.
if *any* of the stuff that happened in my time in louisiana schools happened today, bro theyd have been cancelled and blasted like yesterday. Literally. The cruel and unusual punishments that they dealt out, and the shit ive witnessed. Im not trying to trauma dump I am just saying that this shit is still going on, i am so passionate about it as a 24 year old now because now that im an adult i can see that the adults responsible for the school were... evil? Irresponsible. Not fit for their jobs and extremely out of bounds.
the concept of sciences and social studies being pushed aside is actually terrifying to me. i once had a social teacher say "if i had you pick one subject to be the only one taught in schools it would be social, because social teaches us how to interact with each other and the world around us."
This is insane to me. Is it really this way in USA? In Poland the school pushed as many science and social studies subjects as possible on us
I'd pick science because it also teaches us how the world around us works and there's so many fields of study under that umbrella. Understanding science helps prevent the spread of misinformation that can lead folks astray and we can also learn history through the ways humanity has advanced and we can learn and apply math in ways that can
The more I look at it, the more each subject is interconnected and I find it odd that it's common practice to separate and teach each individually as opposed to creating a framework in understanding various learning styles so each student can learn how to learn in ways that work for them, build critical thinking and develop ways to apply these skills.
When I was in seventh grade I’m going to be honest with you we had at least 3 different teachers that year and I don’t think I had more then 8 classes out of the year where we learned social studies. This teacher duo taught science and social studies and I don’t remember one thing of social studies I learned in that class and I’m now a sophomore going into world history next semester. I’m sure it’s even worse for the kids younger than me because that was the year straight out of Covid.
@@inventingko7853 there was so much subject matter that the teacher left out and I cannot completely blame the teachers completely as many of them never had the resources to teach students and they're basically left to "fend for themselves" and have to adapt to a different structure that they weren't used to while getting paid peanuts. That said, many teachers are not doing the best by their students by not teaching them or outright neglecting them altogether.
That said, if you learned a decent amount of science, you could understand world history to a degree by the way science has advanced and what motivated these developments and contrast that to the factors that held back advancements. You might be able to recall what little you were taught through indirect means such as through relevant topics you already understand.
The best advice I can give is engage with your learning; grab a copy of the syllabus and seek out documentaries, texts, books, etc. as each topic becomes relevant. Find a study buddy a tutor or other resources might help such as a guidance counselor or even your teacher to help you create goals and follow through, even if to catch up so you have peace of mind in knowing you have all your prereqs sorted out beforehand.
If I had to pick one thing, it would be some kind of vocation because one of the most important things in life is staying alive - not starve - and you need a job for that. Outside of that - reading so they could educate on their own.
In my school there are people who openly say racial slurs within 20 feet of a teacher, and they don't do anything, and some openly talk about doing drugs or having drugs. This is 8th grade. I moved from regular classes to honors classes because of the other students in my classes (and partly because I can actually keep up).
Also A VERY big problem is districts, either they are really helpful and try to do their best (very little places do this and it is most likely a small town) or they are running the district like a business. My district is the ladder, and it sucks. My school at least does not reward people equally, people who do good do not get as many tickets to exchange for things as people who do bad and do something good once. The only thing we get for doing good all the time is meaningless awards I wouldn't put on any resume or anything because the curriculum is shit and unintuitive, I don't try hard in any of my classes much if at all because I find the curriculum equivalent to baby mode in doom. My district is also absolutely useless to social problems, my district last year was sued for $20 million because one person was getting constantly bullied and harassed for being gay (imo he was annoying but only because of his personality) and the administration done nothing after asking multiple times to do something, (search "Everett Washington school district lawsuit").
It is sick and bullying is also ramlat and they do nothing
I did this too, sadly they are now letting anyone in. My own grade president talks in brain rot and a very VERY known r@c!st. But, no one cares. He also screams at people plus most people I known that are higher in classes just cheat but most teachers simply don’t really care. Plus the teachers always complain, taking up more education time and causing the class to fall behind. Yet, if the teacher is there they do not really pay attention. They just test us and then throw it out.
I absolutely resonate with this quote. “School Kills Artist”
As an artist myself, I remembered when I was younger, I was told to stop ‘doodling’ in my worksheets. And instead of helping me focus more in class, it actually done the opposite. I could never focus in those boring lectures because I could not make a silly comic about a joke my teacher said in class or sketch that pretty girl sitting across from me. I needed something stimulating to do to keep my mind from zoning out which my school has rarely done.
Due to the favoured importance of getting a good job, barely any of my friends wanted to take Art as their course in college or even in Secondary. Many wanted to take A Math, POA(business stuff basically) and only the art kids went to art. Even art is considered boring and I think that it is an absolute tragedy. I always wondered why Art had to be watered down to- study this portrait for an hour and copy it exactly to get a grade. Any artistic addition would be considered as ‘risky’ or ‘not in the curriculum’.
Schools, no matter how hard they try to engage students, always fall short because of the fear of giving children too much freedom.
Maybe a follow up video discussing what students and parents can reasonably do to improve the situation? It would be nice to have some actionable suggestions towards change even in small ways.
This may be anecdotal, but what your friend said about the curriculum sounded familiar to my 6th grade year. We had 5 core classes (reading, english, math, science, social studies) Three of them (math, science, and social studies) were taught by one teacher. We had 45 minutes for each class, and I distinctly remember doing math in all three. To stay on curriculum schedule.
In her attempt to keep us on schedule with math, we fell behind in science first. At first, we extended our math lesson into science, to the point that science was maybe 15 minutes. Then we had science a few times a week. Then it got to the point that math crept into social studies. At the end of that school year, I remember looking at the science section of our state-standardized test and wanting to cry because I didn't recognize half of it. This was 2014-2015 I believe. The "learning loss" is not new, and it's not "learning loss"
What I find most comical is the fact that our state doesn't even test on social studies. We fully lost science for around half of our school year. I lost my love for space science in that class, because I wasn't learning space science, I was learning pre-algebra.
Oh, I can explain that! Your state's school accountability model probably weighs ELA and math more than science and history. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just explaining why. Your school's funding, the admins' jobs, etc. were on the line.
I've not finished the video, but a problem with this perspective is how U.S.-focused it is. I teach in a university outside of the U.S., my country has no standardised testing, reading full books and discussing them critically is part of every high school curriculum. Yet the students are behind: they don't answer questions about a text, they don't contribute in class, they don't take notes, they don't ask questions, they don't respect the few deadlines that they have. My university and most in my country provide massive amounts of assistance to people from all walks of life (whether financial or adjustments to their curricula based on any mental health issues or disabilities) and even with those, teaching staff is left with the impression that most students just don't care anymore and expect to gain their bachelor's degree without doing any of their work. I hate talking like this because I was a student not long ago at all and know that life is very hard, but at the same time, we are struggling so much to engage the students and they just don't seem to care. Both me, who is almost the same generation as my students, and my colleagues who have been teaching for 30 years are at a loss.
Sorry for this rant. I care a lot about my students and want them to be able to flourish, and I wish I knee how to help.
As someone who's currently in education, and has been in education for most of my life (switched courses, so am on the older side but at a lower level), a lot of people feel like there's no point in anything anymore. Why spend ages getting an education when you won't be able to buy a house? Why spend time getting a job that'll give a good retirement when you'll probably die before then? Why bother with anything, the world sucks and it looks like it's getting worse.
Nihilism is really common among young folk nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a contributing factor for a lot of folk. Also, the pandemic really seriously affected a lot of people. I went from being able to do university level astrophysics to struggling with basic mental maths, and based on a lot of other folk in education I've talked to I'm not completely unusual.
My partner is a teacher (non-US) and really flip flops on this! His hourly rate sounds good but every time he actually grades and reads papers 1 by 1, as well as providing a full page of feedback per paper. Then... he makes less than minimum wage... in real terms less than what some of the part time students do. And what do some of these students do? They end up back in class next semester. When he doesn't get pushed into giving at least passing marks, his pleas to the university about cheating and academic dishonesty go actively resisted, what can he do? Just see them 2 years later in the same degree still cheating and getting degrees. He really appreciates the passionate students and hard workers, but I ask myself, if I was in that system, what is the incentive to even work hard? Some students still work hard due to their character and integrity, but it's a total guessing game to which students will actually be into it
Even the students who are disengaged as well. It's a struggle to know what to do, especially when the system incentivises bad behaviour and actively accepts it almost.
He sometimes says he just about wishes he only had to deal with people who want to be there. He doesn't want his subject to be a career path.
You don´t give out too many details about how the teaching is done where you work at so excuse me if I make some wild assumptions, but how the hell do you not have "standardised testing"? If you follow a curriculum and have any sort of testing, the testing is "standardized" by definition (You don´t have to be AP, GCSE, etc to be standardized). Critical discussion doesn´t really happen under "curriculums" because what is critical to one person isn´t to another, and the subjective nature of the teacher forces the students to cater to the teacher´s opinions. I did IB, and I can´t tell you how ironic it is how much they champion critical thinking and open ended questions with vague grading criteria, because it ends up forcing students to follow very strict structures to please the teacher. Usually, it meant dumbing down the content severely to avoid your teacher not understanding it. The more freedom you have, the more your success is predicated on the subjective opinion of your teacher. The opinion of a teacher who is overworked and couldn´t care less for
Students don´t care because you don´t care (even if you don´t realize you don´t). Students are never afforded the chance to genuinely be allowed to think or act for themselves. It is this very stiffling of their autonomy that turns them into the passive slobs they are stereotyped to be. In fact, our very distrust for minors and lack of communication makes them the way they are.
Also I bet your classes are probably pretty boring. Then again, that is mostly not your fault, as the curriculum binds you and having to make something interesting for 30-or so individuals all with unique tastes and perspective is nigh on impossible. That being said, I have seen it happen, where the interest of the students and teachers align. What´s beautiful about this is that it is a feedback loop of success; when student´s needs are catered to, they actually start to give a shit about things and when this happens the teacher enjoys they job evermore.
So yeah, in reality it´s not the fault of the students but rather that of a one size fits all sizes curriculum; and that fact isn´t exclusive to the US.
It’s forced learning. Most people being forced to learn something are not gonna be engaged with it. Combined with that fact that student have basically no control in their own learning process. Students are expected to learn at the same pace but that’s not how humans function, we all learn different and at different times.
There’s a kid in my grade who’s known for misbehaving, he threatened to sh00t up the school MULTIPLE TIMES and made a list,, all they do is suspend him for a couple of days. Pre COVID, you would be expelled. The only time that they will ever ACTUALLY discipline a kid is if they’re caught vaping or cheating on a test. I remember a girl at my school started arguing with me and she threatened me with a gun and sent me multiple death threats, I had evidence of this, I told the principal, and all he said was “well it’s your fault for asking her why she was talking about you”. I told him that I had screenshots and he completely ignored me, told me to leave his office. She was never held accountable for her actions (she threatened people all the time and got into fights like every 2-3 business days) until she fought this girl and pulled a knife.
Teacher of 8 years here, I quit my post last month. I simply cannot contend with the current system any more, I can't make the difference or have the impact that I deeply want to with these kids because the overarching mechanisms that schooling exists in does not actually care about them.
It all boils down to scores, perception of how the school will look with those scores, and whether we're making enough money from our enrolments - education as a business, rather than a device to guide and build the futures of those who come after we do.
And more, exactly as Zoe mentions in her Grading video, this attitude runs through to and poisons the students themselves, I have had countless students ask me things like 'is this on the test?' and if the answer was 'no, but it's an important concept for the whole topic' they didn't want to know, and honestly can you really blame them for that when their whole life they've been told the only thing that matters is their grades?
Of course there will be students who don't vibe with school or simply actually don't care, but I'd confidently say those kids are a minority overall, more likely that they simply trying their best but the system just doesn't care enough to slow down and help them get back on track.
Leaving my job honestly makes me more sad than I expected it would because I think I know, deep down, I AM a teacher, I love teaching and I really want to help these kids lead fulfilling lives and achieve their goals, it just feels like sometimes I'm on my own in that.
Hi, I’m an elementary teacher👋🏻 currently finishing my senior year/internship of my program. I just wanted to chime in and say that there are fact teachers who genuinely love and advocate for the best interests of their students. I love each and every single one of my kiddos. It’s a broken system, some of us are just doing our best with what we have to work with
Such an important video, and so glad to see our Learning Loss Handbook referenced! For most kids & families, the "return to normalcy" was anything but. Rather than reflect on how damaging normalcy was for most kids, the system doubled down on damaging ideas & practices that only further alienated kids.
I quit grad school for teaching for personal reasons. While i was working in schools after the pandemic, it was very apparent how flawed our system is. The main issue i saw is that if you were poor, your education suffered like 5 times as much during and after the pandemic. You don't get to have your own nice technology. You don't get to hire tutors. You don't get to just focus on school when you're at home because you're also babysitting younger siblings. 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️ we don't care if kids can apply their knowledge. we don't even care if kids see the value that school is actually supposed to give you.
I find it so weird that school taxes are only local, rather than spread throughout the entire state-wide system.
@@nsbd90now Me too, because local taxes create economic disparity and breed resentment among people in the community who think that some extra money taken out of their taxes for education is theft or a waste.
Spring break of 9th grade is when school got initally cancelled and my freshman year of highschool was just lots of Zoom meetings…..I Swear to you I learned NOTHING that year and only relied upon my past knowledge to pass
I used to be very prideful in being good at math, science, and other such subjects. Now i’m in my Senior year of Highschool, I no longer have such thoughts. I Know i’m smarter than a lot of other kids, But I who used to pride myself on being in the top of every class just stopped caring and trying to understand after covid. Math/geometry/Algebra and Chemistry/Science/Biology became super confusing after having very little foundation from my freshman year. Eventually everything just became memorize X thing and then forget it in a week or two once unit is over
I was in my last semester of high school during Spring 2020 when COVID forced us online halfway through the semester. I was taking Calculus 3 (Multivariable), Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations through dual enrollment. Went from a 95% average on the exams in them all to barely passing those classes with Cs.
Took a gap year before starting college and now I'm graduating this semester with my degree in Math at Georgia Tech with a GPA of 3.9 so it definitely gets better but man you have to love what you do. That was my saving grace to the detriment of all aspects of may life other than school lol.
"The problem is being invented to sell the solution," is a great line that also describes all of advertising
so i definitely agree with the broader points being made here about the focus of school under capitalism being the creation of workers, and the detrimental effects caused by writing curriculums to help kids pass standardized tests rather than understanding and applying material to the real world.
however, as someone in the education field, i’m not sold on your framing of learning loss as something that isn’t actually occurring. when teachers are talking about kids doing worse and worse academically with each passing year, in my experience they’re not talking about grades or test scores. they’re talking about, is this child able to tell me what happened in the story we just read, and what it means? can this child demonstrate to me why x concept in math is true? can they show me that they understand why x historical event was significant? almost everyone i know in the field is saying that fewer kids are able to do these things.
almost everyone i know in the field has also told me that negative behaviors are more frequent and more extreme than in the past, and a huge factor is that there is a lack of consequences for those behaviors. what i mean is, if a student is violent to another student or a staff member, or otherwise creates a learning environment that is so unsafe and/or distracting that the rest of the class cannot learn what they need to learn that day, they go the office for like 5 minutes, sit there, and then they return to the classroom as if nothing has happened. and then, usually, they do the behavior again. in my district, the schools are so afraid of the parents that when you call for assistance over the walkie talkies, you’re not allowed to say the name of the child who’s misbehaving because the parents would be embarrassed/raise a stink if they caught wind of it. not joking, that’s the policy; you are not allowed to accurately describe what a child is doing and say who’s doing it. the existence of this policy speaks to how parents discipline their children, which is to say that many just don’t. by behavior i don’t mean talking too much or not being focused on work, i mean throwing furniture, physical violence, calling someone a slur, cussing out adults.
yes, there are external factors that cause that behavior, just like there are external factors that cause crime among adults, and we should work to improve those external factors. as a marxist commenting in a community presumably made up of like-minded individuals, that should be a given. but we can’t confuse an explanation for an excuse. many teachers literally feel unsafe at their jobs, and that’s a major factor as to why so many of them are leaving the field. i stopped subbing for secondary schools out of concern for my physical safety and mental health.
i realize this stuff is anecdotal, but at the same time, you can’t really quantify these things, so it’s impossible to get anything else. there will never be a satisfactory study showing how well students understand abstract concepts or generally behave over time, because of the abstract and subjective/context-based nature of those things. based on the experiences of nearly every teacher i know, there is in fact a learning loss, and there is in fact a deterioration of behavior over time.
i know i wrote a lot here, but my intention is not to be critical or contrarian; as i’ve said, i agree with the general sentiment of this video. my point is more towards the framing of learning loss and behavior deterioration as merely red herrings.
I agree with you 100%. Especially on the no consequences point. A school I worked at literally had a very serious threat and the child was STILL allowed back to school and we weren’t allowed to know who the child was. Terrifying.
i grew up in a very rural area so my middle/elementart school was kinda poor. i remember having the exact same "kid goes to office for 5 minutes" punishment, even when causing extreme distractions. that isnt to say kids were treated nicely either (i specifically remember teachers screaming at us in 2nd grade and watching a classmate get strapped down with a belt to his seat for being overactive in 1st grade), but i dont really believe kids aren't being punished enough nowadays, bc its kind of always been like that. i do notice that richer areas have the attitude you described, but then again, kids still get suspended. i honestly think it depends based on where you're looking
I've found that if one takes care of actually educating kids about stuff instead of just expecting them to memorize an assortment of facts, they are more than capable of absorbing the knowledge and explaining it back to you with their words. Maybe not perfectly, but with a solid enough grasp.
I have younger cousins (and also worked as a private tutor for a while) and when it's me doing the explaining of a topic they are struggling with, they do better. And it's not because I'm some sort of miracle educator but because I fundamentally cared about them as people and so, shifted my explanations and examples to stuff familiar to them that they could understand better. I also let them experiment with the subject. In short, I engaged with them and tried my best to focus on them being able to grasp the concepts instead of just memorizing them.
And yes, I grew frustrated at times and I know personalized learning would be very difficult to pull off on a large scale. You have to realize richer kids with private tutors simply do better than their peers, it's a matter of privilege too).
Kids' capacity to learn hasn't diminished. The quality of how they are taught has. I got to experience it first-hand both in college and in school. Over time, I saw the system's focus shift toward preparing kids to get admitted to higher education centers (here, acceptance is done through a test). More rote memorization at the detriment of engaged learning sessions.
I also experienced it with my own teachers. The ones who focused on rote memorization and cared little for their students had even me (the supposedly smartest kid) struggling to pay attention and follow the concepts. It was only when I asked for my older brothers' help that I was able to catch up. Not everyone has that advantage. I can't spit information back to you if I don't understand it. I'm pants at memorization and I know I'm not the only one.
I also ask you, is your parent's generation able to do what you just asked in your first paragraph? Because my parents' couldn't (barring exceptions). Neither my grandparents'. If anything, memorization was heavier back then.
The kids are just fine, it's the system the one that is reverting back to harmful patterns it never really left behind.
When i was in high school in the 10's, we had whole conversations with our teachers on how funding is directly related to state test scores so the teachers have to shove as much into kids as possible
My school has almost erased social studies, which is so much worse given that I’m in a small town, making less lessons about the past supporting the terrible ideologies many in my town have.
You single-handedly explained how I felt during the whole COVID learn at home period. I never felt covid was the sole factor in the effect of many students falling behind. (Including me), but it felt more like an energizer in realizing just HOW fragile and weak the support beams of the American education system really was. Throughout my entire time in school, all the way from 6th-grade to my senior year in high school. I felt like all I was learning was obedience. Every single subject matter went over my head. I could tell you how to solve x = y in a math problem. But not ACTUALLY how to apply what I'm learning in the real world. I can remember vividly in my math class during 12th grade. One student straight up asked our teacher, "how are we going to use any of this in the real-world?" and the teacher basically responded with "you will at some point" without actually going into detail/giving an example. LIKE WHAT!? Also can we talk about how lethargic the grading system feels. Like, " oh cool I got an 80 on my test." ok but WHAT does an 80 mean in terms of my understanding of the material? The grading system feels like a generic band-aid fix to needing to find out how well students understand what they're being taught. Like ITS better than NOTHING. But there HAS to be a more effective way to understand how well a student understands the content. Also American government, plz pay teachers more. They deserve it for basically fueling the future workforce. The governments like "oh man I wonder why our students grades suck" BECAUSE YALL DONT PAY UR DARN TEACHERS WHAT THEY DESERVE. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Take care!
This reminds me of how behind my sister is in her classes. She was never the brightest but she still doesn't understand the basics like fractions and percentages which gets introduced at around year 3. She's in year 10. I can't imagine how behind her classmates could be since she's not stupid, she just didn't pay attention to the online lessons during the lockdown just like many other kids did.
Well she did make the stupid choice of not paying attention to the lessons
@@joeystar1043 No definitely, im not saying its totally school or covids fault but the lack of discipline kids would have thanks to being at home all day certainly wouldn't help. At least if she was at school she wouldn't of had the choice to slack off as much.
@@nadia3824 That was just unlucky then
I was homeschooled during covid so it really only cut off my social life at my church. But as far as everything else school wise i never had these problems. But since I've been going to school at a private one I've heard how it affected my friends and I'm very thankful I didn't go through it.
This might be my favorite video of yours yet. I always had the ick towards my upper level classes as it was less about learning and more about the ‘style’ of questions asked. It was less about building knowledge and more about just demonstrating what your teacher wanted to hear. It was less about building your skills and more to be a chattel work slave. All this in the guise of how it’s the only way to get into a good school, especially an ivy. Because what would be more better than cleansing the individuality and creativity of kids, urging them to pick the rest of the course of their life whilst also knocking them down with any criticism by saying they ‘haven’t lived yet’.
U ain't becoming a chattle slave because of the demands you need to uphold in your classes
On the ‘bathroom pass’ thing, our middle school was horrible when it came to that. Firstly, only five people were allowed to use the bathroom during class. If your name wasn’t on the list that day, too bad, you can’t use the bathroom. Secondly, there could only be three people in each bathroom at a time (there were two bathrooms in each grade, but you were only allowed to use the bathroom in your specific hallway) You’d have to sit there in class spamming the online ‘hallpass’, because the odds were around twelve other kids across classes were also trying to use the bathroom. If someone is on their period, it could be near impossible on certain days to use the bathroom.
Wanted to share that Portland, OR’s Portland Teachers Association is currently on strike to fight for both teachers and students. Portland Public Schools just announced they won’t have students return to school before Nov 27th.
All that is to say, I’m glad we are talking about this 💖
Great video!! I saw a lot of these videos and thought a lot about education in the last few weeks. I think the whole thing with “no child left behind” needs to be abolished. There’s no shame in failing a class and when the parents can’t afford tutoring or the school doesn’t provide good tutoring, it’s definitely better for the child to revise the class. I’m not American and I failed math ones and it definitely benefited me in the long run. I got a new math teacher and she was so much better at teaching and I got a lot better. About the last part. I’m Austrian and here university is basically free. We have to pay 22€ per Semester. I think that’s much better than any system
Students need democratic, student centered education with competency based and self regulated learning, meaningful feedback instead of grades, child integration, more qualitative, ipsative, formative, criterion references assessment over alternatives, no homework, and a socially oriented curriculum structured in a coherent way that provides context, abstract understanding, and orientation.
@@ceciliacole5098 😂 you're kinda right it's not a bad thing though
Sounds great as a concept, but how is a teacher supposed to plan a context-inclusive, individually -paced curriculum for 75 students (especially when a fair number of them already lag in prior knowledge and basic academic skills).
Maybe it could be done, but teachers would need extensive retraining - not just 2 hours of PD. I went through licensing about ten years ago and I never once saw PBL or collaborative learning in practice. Some teachers are excellent and innovative, but lots of us are regular types and need a lot of demonstration and guided practice. I can't count the times when I thought I had an engaging participatory lesson with true learning and it fell completely flat.
Sorry that I'm ranting, but I feel so adrift as a teacher - never good enough and no clear path to improvement.
When you find a way to do this while teaching 170 kids a year let me know.
I think rhetoric, communication, and social psychology would help engage students.🙂@@Maria-uv9pd Good knowledge to have in general.
I would love self learning... or the ability to just take the GED exam by myself or something instead of going through regular high school graduation.
I was studying at university (a more practice-focused one, which in Germany is called "Hochschule") during covid and jezuz. I imediatelly dropped out right after. I could barely hold on to my sanity normally (later realizing i had undiagnosed auADHD which made me unaware of my actual issues making studying harder) and with covid my way of learning was suddenly not an option anymore. I need to do things physically, I can't learn through reading manuals or books. And on top of that I had lost any progress I thought I had made through socialization. I ended up making 0 friends. I couldn't reconnect with my peers and I was stuck with sitting in an abusive home with an abusive unemployed single-parent mother. Now I am part of the demographic of unemployed neurodivergent people. I'm trying hard to find a job every day and I already fail at doing interviews due to my awkwardness from being neurodivergent. Going through school was liberating and allowed me to avoid my neurodivergent executive dysfunction, but the moment I was dropped into the adult world after graduating, all hope I was fed of becoming a great artist was instantly lost. I have no future.
Wow this is so relatable, but if I were female I think college would of been so much more difficult. I feel the creative flow has been stripped from me once getting into the adult world. It's rough
holy shit im in same position, same country too
we dont even get any support despite being borderline disabled. its hellish to be diagnosed in the first place
i need to get out of this country holy moly
As another auDHDer I am fucking suffering right now in college. Textbooks have super esoteric language and unwieldy sentences. For the most part I like what I'm studying but there's so much bullshit I have to learn at the same time (and I do not mean social sciences) that it just feels useless. I'm seriously considering just dropping out. I'm trying so fucking hard but nobody sees it because I have an _invisible disability_ and everybody in my life thinks I'm "gifted" because I did well through elementary and middle school.
It’s crazy watching this and seeing the same issues in the doctorate program I’m in. Our entire class truly hates our classes, which is insane because we all were so passionate about what we were studying before they came in and decided that we needed to fit their mold of what a good student is. Equally insane, doctorate programs are supposed to teach you free thinking
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. Can't wait to go on my own deep dive and check out the other creators! Aa a first year kindergarten teacher, this has really been insightful. I have been very frustrated with the school curriculum and how it makes school not fun and in turn forces teacher sto use extrinstic motivation and behaviorist tactics for classroom management to encourage compliance. It is essentially dog training children. I feel like I'm just training them for a 9-5. This is why I have been doing a lot of research into the montessori method.
I look forward to finishing this video later today!!
This couldn’t be more true, I’m a recent graduate and I HATED school, which sucks because I was really into science, the curriculum fails to engage us and it feels like all that they care about are tests. I didn’t start enjoying school until I got to college
Def agree with the reading thing, I got bullied out of reading by the school librarian in elementary school around 2nd to 4th grade, even going as far as to have me dragged away from parts of the library, banning me from certain areas, and refusing to let me check out books. I've slowly been trying to heal that inner child by learning more about my newly diagnosed reading disability and gathering books to read. I haven't managed to finish one full book yet, (granted many of them are heavy and political, so not the easiest) post-HS assigned books I did like and sometimes reread or mangas, but I think I'll get there. I've talked it over with my therapist a lot, and I am also going to try reading easier fiction materials and rereading kids' books I read all the time as a kid and loved before I was bullied or during, in order to kind of reignite that spark.
I love to read when I can get into it, and now that I have hearing aids to help with sound distractions, and might get reading glasses when I get my eyes checked, I think I have a shot. I had reading glasses as a kid and just wanna see if I need them again, just in case. I hope this works! I wanna get back to my 3rd grade level of love for reading where I'd fall asleep with a book on my chest and glasses dripping off my face.
As a college student who is actually doing very well but suffering in terms of mental health, I feel lost as to how I should think about school after learning about these aspects of the education system. Although I am interested in the topics I study, the never ending stress and anxiety is definitely slowly sucking the enjoyment out of everything. But it just feels like an impossible task to distance myself from striving for academic validation after working so hard to succeed.
I'm just so burnt out from college. Class of 2020, started university late. Forgot basically everything from high school, haven't made any real friends; can't even connect with people the way I used to. All I want is escapism, it's addicting. I "failed" my first paper today, it was a C- and a failure compared to how I usually/used to do. I don't want t o slip further, but school is such a disaster; my classes are jokes the professors don't even take seriously. How am I supposed to care when not even my instructors do? Why am I even still doing this?
The problem with these videos is, it are only the students watching this.
I was royally messed up bc of cvid in college. We couldn't go to lecture that we paid for and books were withheld but we were still tested and then the teachers were unprepared because they didn't have books either so our tests online were out of order and everyone failed. Every single person. I kept screeshots of the frustration of teachers and students but was told there is no point in fighting against the specific institution and I wouldn't win. Idk might revisit it later because I have all my fellow students testimonials
I used to consistently finish my high school english lit work way faster than everyone else, without sacrificing quality. I also used to bring a book to read for when i inevitably ran out of stuff to do in class.
One would think that my various english teachers would like the fact that i was a) finishing work quickly and getting good grades, as well as b) reading independently to fill my free time rather than passing notes to friends. But all 3 teachers i had throughout high school all consistently tried to get me into trouble for reading. In English Lit class. My grade 11 teacher even gave me detention for repeatedly trying to read Macbeth a month before we were due to start reading it as a class.
They didnt care that i was ahead of class, and refused to give me extra work to fill the spare time i had.
Im canadian, so obviously my experiences dont count towards the AMERICAN school system problems, but we very much have similar issues up here.
22:11 this is probably the first time I'd ever been asked if I was having my needs met in the context of school. I graduated high school 6 years ago and had to teach myself to look out for my own needs after I had moved out. Zoe asking "are these children's needs being met? Are their emotional needs being met? Are they being treated like human beings by schools, by their parents?" rattled me to my core because I needed that question a long time ago and didn't know it
this must be an unnerving realization to have; the demeaning-ness of jumping through hoops for school and academics, of going through all these hoops and not even questioning it is painful. At the very least you got to graduate from that system, and at least you now can see where the empathy should be presented and inherent in it though!!
I literally got passed through all my classes to the next grade throughout the entire schooling experience. I only started properly learning real concepts outside of school on the job. I’m literally able to build generators on an assembly line quickly and accurately and so many people are surprised at how fast I can learn new things as well. I’ve been told I’m slow my entire life that this feels like I’m finally getting what I need to learn, something I’ve been deprived of for years. I feel I can finally heal and I’ve now gained a newfound desire to learn more, not just building generators but so much more.
The word for what happened to you is social promotion. This is how I got a room full of 8th graders half of whom could barely do basic arithmetic. Female elementary teachers are notoriously bad at teaching even arithmetic because they don’t appreciate the value of drilling the kids and having contests and so forth. The average navy Quartermaster with a GED or just a high school diploma could teach kids better than that. This is because the enlisted QMs entire job is arithmetic. I know because I was such a navigator and it enabled me to remedy the kid’s deficiencies in math. But I never took calculus I was just good at arithmetic having gotten a history degree. Nobody knows what to do with kids who don’t learn. For obvious reasons you can’t flunk people out of school anymore like in my grandfather’s day. He was born in 1890. As late as the early ‘40s only 25% of adults graduated from high school.
My mom has been a teacher for 17 years, and if I've learned one thing about it from her, it's to graduate and never interact with the US school system ever again.
Former teacher here. The students behavior getting out of control after the pandemic was definitely the final straw, however, it's very obviously not their fault. We can't be bothered to regulate guns in this country, which is a constant fear among teachers and students. Parents don't seem to want to be involved with their children but want micromanage teachers. Literally no matter what you do as a teacher, you are wrong. There is very little support, especially for substitute and temp staff. But really for 2 years we had parents who complained about having to care for their own children, who couldn't teach their children but criticize teachers who are doing far more than teaching their 1 child. Parents have no respect, they teach their children to have no respect and then wonder why teachers quit.
I could tell stories about the way parents on my campus behave, but nobody would believe me because they are so absurd. But truly some of these parents are their own kids’ worst enemies.
I’m a student but even during Covid my parents still had us use manners and even when I couldn’t pay attention to school my parents try to keep me on track so when I got to school I felt like I was ahead by only having common sense when in reality I can understand deep meaning in reading but can’t spell correctly and is constantly losing focus being “ ahead of the class” when the ability the kids that act out have I don’t know and school doesn’t have a systems or resources to help me instead of telling me “I’m doing great I’m smart “ or “ better behaved” when my struggles are being undermined.
Blaming parents isn't the solution, imagine coming home from 9-5 shifts trying to scrape by to pay for utilities, rent or a mortgage and food, car and health insurance. Then you get a call hearing
🤓: Jonathan has been underperforming in science class
I'd be mad at my son but I'd also have questions for the teachers like what does he do in class all day 🤷
@@fullmetal2455 in that case then jonathan should reach out to the teacher; i think that's not what the op is talking about. op might be referring to the rise in gen alpha children in schools and how disrespectful they tend to be (there are tons of videos covering this, you should check it out because it's genuinely interesting! not disagreeing because i do agree with your comment to an extend but just trying to clarify what i think op is saying!)
If you treat children as lesser just because of their age, as they grow older, they will grow distain towards those who treat them as lesser, children work on the basis of self-preservation as much as any other person.
If you waste years of someones limited, precious life, close to 1/3 of it, they will grow to despise teachers, its the formation of bias.
If you want children to succeed in life, then stop forcing them to sit in chairs and learn what they are mandated by the state to learn, and let them understand and explore life; I dont understand how anyone could tell another person who theyll never understand how to act, and be baffled when the results of fucking with a persons mind results in insanity.
I am insane. School has made me insane, and many of my close friends have followed suite; If you want to stop this, dont blame me, dont blame teachers, blame the governmental institution that mandates all of the suffering.
NEVER should you continue to derolve someone to insanity. The slow deprecation of mental sanity coupled with a hatrid towards societal function only leads to reasonable assumptions via insanity. Insanity is not changing the moral bounds in which an action is made, it is changing the justification for such action.
Please do not ever throw your child in a school and make them feel awful for their poor grades, you will create a monster.
Even as a college student the changes were hard to deal with but it wasn’t solely due to classes that grades fell for me. I was dealing with the stress of lockdown, worrying about my parents, and the state of the world. It was my lowest point mentally and I can’t imagine how much worse that must have been for a lot of kids forced to grow up in this sort of world.
One subject that’s atrophied to learning to the test is Irish in Irish schools. Other languages are taught to be understood and spoken but Irish is taught like everyone has a baseline we no longer have and then we memorise to pass the tests. And I despise it for it. It makes people hate the subject. I encourages no interest in it and people who continue it beyond second level are doing it in spite of how it’s taught. I deeply care for it and I expressed to my teacher at the time that I wasn’t going to learn to the test. I was going to learn to speak and write Irish and be able to take the exams on my ability in the language, not my ability to regurgitate it on the day. And it worked (though I had been lucky and attended a language school for primary level so I was not starting form 0) I passed my exams, maybe not to the same degree of excellence my memorising peers did because I had a different focus. I did that exam using my actual knowledge and my learned adaptability so that when a topic I wanted didn’t come up, I wasn’t screwed. I knew how to construct an essay in the language about something. I wasn’t stuck like others who only learned off the order of letters in the handed out essay examples.
I felt better for it and instead of leaving school feeling bitter about my experience and encouraged not to promote the language to my children or advocate for a reform, I was filled with love for it that made me want to preserve it.
Suspensions happen a lot in my school, but the problem with suspensions is that we see it as a break from school. It’s only really a problem if the parents get mad, and if they don’t then we literally get a break.
Just throwing this out there: kids refuse to read text books, but they're more than willing to watch 5+ hour video essays.
Food for thought. Perhaps there's also issues with the way the curriculum is being presented. As much as I hate to admit it: a lot of people my generation dont like reading. I personally enjoy writing a lot, but reading is one of those things that can be very hit or miss. Though I do recognize that its something I should invest more time into going forward, if not just for my own personal growth and development. I grew up consuming most of my stories from video games and manga.
Well yeah, part of education reform would be having more options for how material is gotten across. I read a lot, and love reading but I've never gotten on with reading non fiction. I just find it hard. But I love listening to video essays (or lectures, or lessons). As a result I actually did well in school since the classroom lecture model of education suits me. But I have friends who are the opposite, who like reading non fiction but hate sitting still for a lecture, and they struggled in school. I have other friends who can only really learn by doing and applying, and again school wasn't tailored to them.
The issue that I have is that textbooks typically have too much filler in them for no reason
There are an amassment of reasons why the vast majority of people in these schools despise it. For a decent part of them, that reason is the authoritarianism that schools enforce;
When a government, or in this case institution departing from that government try's to restrict the rights of a group of people who are younger, it will only end negatively;
Children are younger people, they are nothing more or less than the accumulation of physical matter you are made of. What makes people ´older´ is that they have more experience.
Children often have less experience, and more importantly, they have less positive experiences that make them believe that life is worth living. When you combine an institution that dehumanizes and puts people in boxes, and people who are younger, and have less of a reason to believe that life is worth living, youll get a resulting populace that is unhappy, apathetic, and despising towards government affairs.
Realistically speaking, the more you try and force children to learn instead of letting them learn, the more people who will grow up to be ticking timebombs waiting to give their life to do anything towards their cause
you don't get to learn in the real world through video essays covering everything you need to know. an emphasis on reading and comprehending text is extremely important to be able to succeed in the professional world. Reading keeps you more closely connected to not just the material, but the ability to participate in the community surrounding the material, since writing is the primary mode of communication for.... nearly everything in the world. Someone writing a science paper for peer-review isn't going to make a video essay explaining what's going on in it. Someone writing documentation for an API isn't going to write a video essay explaining everything going on. I find it kind of funny to hear kids complain they aren't being prepared for the real world, and then they say stuff like this.
@@1SquidBoy and why is your way of interpreting information the only way? I suffer from a lack of mental imagery and as such find it much easier to see information in person, or through video documentation
Speaking on the behalf of someone you don’t know is foolish, in my opinion
I live in Brazil and here we have an alarmingly difference between private and public school, then when we graduate high school there's a Vestibular (admission exam) to get into the public universities. Who do you think get the limited spots on public uni, the majority of kids who can't pay for education in the public school system that is VERY deficient and is only getting worse due to government neglect? or the private school kids who had great education preparing they for exam sice middle school, who could definitely afford private university?
This made me realize I'm the only one out of my four siblings to get a full K-12 education in person. Damn not taking that for granted anymore because now kids have to catch up because of circumstances that were out of their control. I hope we can better support these students/ppl as we go forward.
We need to let teachers teach and give them the support and funds they need, get school boards to chill, and actually instill a love of learning in kids rather than cramming info in their heads just to pass tests. The way school systems work is so broken.
A core issue is "how can you figure out which schools need help if you don't have an objective way of measuring what they're supposed to know and if they're learning it?" Say there are no more standardized tests. How do you distinguish struggling or successful schools from each other? I agree that it's a messed up system, but it's tough to find an equitable solution.
I was homeschooled all my life, so for me COVID wasn’t that big of a change. While I loved homeschooling, I did struggle with motivation and not getting distracted for most of my life right up until I started college, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for all the kids who didn’t grow up with it and suddenly had to learn how to have personal accountability and independence.
I’ve recently started my junior year of high school. My chemistry teacher has said multiple times flat out that we will not use any of this in our lives, and that his goal is to just make us pass the tests.
I’ve realized how dystopian this all is, there is no passion for learning- even from the teachers. Even the teachers are aware of the system we have and that we are only being used to pass tests and work, not for genuinely learning and choosing a future we will love.
one of the issues with the unschooling america proposal as you described is that it focuses on learning as a means of acquiring skills rather than learning itself being something with inherent value which ignores a lot of stuff that isnt important to know for the market yet are still valuable and meaningful such as history and literature
I was so excited to hear that you were covering this topic and I’m still processing a major part of my degree being spent at home.
One thing about tests. They are really helpful in the process of learning. It was proven scientifically. And no, I'm not talking about the tests I did in school, I'm talking about tests that I did on my own while trying to learn something new. Tests generally do help in acquiring knowledge a lot. It's just that it's not the grade that should be the focus but the acquired knowledge itself.
While learning new topic try testing yourself once in a while, you can even start the learning by trying to do the test on a topic that you try to learn. It will highlight for you what is important in the stuff that you will learn and already get you a little familiar with the material, plus you will get motivated once you see how much progress you made later doing another test on the same topic.
self-testing is interesting, but I do wonder if testing in general is just not for everyone and not good for the relationships people build between mental health through intelligence, and the impressions that testing shouldn't be for everyone. (myself included) moreover with people who get pre-test anxiety and with people who learn differently. In a way, yes that does have it's own intricate benefits, but always try to keep in mind the balance between testing for yourself and testing to go past your limits/do more than you can handle for the sole sakes of seeing how far your physicality and intellectuality goes. (Test as a trial, and not as a ways to stress, if that makes sense)
@@sealluv Definitely not for everyone!
My teachers realized this with me in high school. I’d do assignments and answer questions in class, but give put a test in front of me on anything I have extensive knowledge on, and I’ll either do extremely poorly, or straight up fail. I’ve encountered a lot of people with this same experience, and it makes schooling suck a lot. As well as making your grades not reflect your actual knowledge.
I was lucky enough to have teachers that would accommodate this and just weighed my assignment grades heavier than tests, or just straight up give me an assignment instead of a test. Sadly, most people don’t have those kinds of teachers or resources.
Tests themselves are generally not the problem. It's when tests become the only thing that matter. Tests can be immensely useful, but in the school I'm in, I don't actually get to see what I did wrong. How I could improve. All it matters is that I pass the test, how many I got right and wrong without the context of knowing where I went wrong.
School doesn't usually teach me much, i just learn it once and forget it later. The classes i really learn stuff in are the classes i enjoy, i remember all my science and zoology classes because im interested in it and the teachers where amazing. Ive always disliked English because i have to read stuff im not interested in, i have to write unnecessarily long essays on something i dont enjoy, the drawing out of sentences and paragraphs are so boring. Math class has been both enjoyable and easy, and hard and i dreaded it. The teacher helps if theyre good but my best teachers where the teachers that bended the curriculum to make it interesting and engaging.
There's something called the Big Picture approach to learning (I think it's only in Australia, but there's probably similar ones in other countries). From year 10, you get 4 'interest projects' a year, one for each term. You get to choose these projects, and for 10 weeks the school (and/or Big Picture) will bring in people who work in the field of your interest, have you go on excursions to universities to learn about the interest as a ghost student, and the student makes research questions to ask these people and unis. Want to be a designer and don't know how to sew? School pays for the classes. Want to be a brick layer but have no idea where to start? Well, now you have a temp job! You do have to do your core subjects like a regular school, but for the most part you're learning about something you're actually interested in, with a big end of term presentation at the end to show off everything you've learnt. In your final year, you get to choose one big interest project for the whole year. This learning approach is mainly directed for neurodivergent teens and as of now, only private schools can do this. I think that it's much better than the current school system and should be applied everywhere, especially because they recently made it so you can get into (certain) universities with this learning style. Do other countries have this/something similar, and do you think it's better than the current system?
Aww I'm envious, I'm Aussie but went to an underfunded rural school 🥺 I'm just grateful we had electives! Meant I could study biology :>