Education: High School

I hated High School, but then again I think most people do.  The reason I hated High School more than any other part of my education was because to me it was the time that felt like it had the least to do with educating students.  Before High School I felt like school was about learning.  We learned things we didn't know, which we would use throughout life.  Basic Maths and English among others.  When it came to High School however, it felt like most of what was taught - and I use that word loosely - was a collection of subjects that for the most part just felt like time consumption. 

High School to me, felt like one big exercise in memory and recall.  It felt like for 95% of the year you were fed information, then for 4.9% of the time you revised it, and the final 0.1% was the actual exam which was in essence a way to test your recall.  The only subject I feel needed you to actually comprehend what you had to recall was Maths class, simply because the exam you would be given would contain questions that were unique and had not been seen before.  In every other subject all it seemed you had to do in order to pass was recall everything you were told, it didn't matter at all if you actually understood any of it or not.  However even with Maths class I will say much of what was taught were concepts that I have not used since I left school.

After those exams, fast forward a few years - or even just a few months - and if you asked me and everyone else to resit the exam with no preparation the majority including myself would fail.  The reason being, we never comprehended what we were taught, to an extent where you would be able to do it over without having to go back and revise.  This causes a lot of problems, more so with subjects you actually need when you leave school.  As I said however, most of what we were taught I have never used.  Taking Maths class as an example, I was once able, and fully comprehended how, to solve a quadratic equation, perform simultaneous equations, use vector Maths, use trigonometry to find unknown angles in triangles, among a whole host of other exercises.  Right now, I can't do any of these, and in the 14 years that have passed since High School I have never needed any of it - except Vector Maths but even then I was able to use algorithms to handle it without having to understand it myself.

High School and Education as a whole I feel has been devalued.  No longer is the goal to educate the student, but simply to provide daycare.  That is, if education was ever about learning in the first place, I know my parents had similar experiences, once being able to do all that I noted above, but now incapable as that knowledge has long been lost as it was never used.  The reason I believe Education has turned into daycare however is for the simple reason that it is not a choice.  I never felt as free as the day I started college, when for the first time I was studying something I had a genuine interest in, and I was surrounded by people who were there not because they had to be, but because they chose to be.  College by far was the time of my life when I learned the most through education that I actually went on to use after it.  As for High School before it, and University which came after College, neither felt like anything but a waste of time.  I have a lot to say on the latter but I'll devote a post to that in itself.

I think if you want a society to advance, you have to build on what came before, to iterate.  There are times when it feels like society as a whole does not want people to progress beyond a given level of intelligence.  A time when it feels like education is simply a holding pattern, intended to delay your entry into the next stages of life, not to prepare you for them.  It feels incredulous to believe that the education system we use today has been largely unchanged in the last 50 to 100 years.  Terminology has changed, names of qualifications have changed, subject names have changed, and the focus of some subjects have all changed but the methods, the structure, and what seems to be an ethos have all remained the same. 

What's even harder to believe is the fact that the flaws in these systems have been known about for decades, highlighted repeatedly, by each successive generation, but nothing has changed.  It seems the issue comes to a fore in each generation as they pass through the system and for a short period after, then it is forgotten about.  The mentality that you will never have to go through it again takes hold and the issue is wrote off as something that will never change.  That is of course until you have kids and you are forced to relive the experience vicariously.  Though not all of us go through that; I myself don't have children but if I did then education would be something I would stress over, of that I can be certain.  If not for the issues I have highlighted but for the Hell I endured beyond the syllabus, growing up as a closeted gay guy in an all-male school was not a pretty picture, mix in social awkwardness, glasses, and the fact I was basically a nerd and you can imagine why I hated it so much.