Classics in school and education in general

[Holbytla]

Yeah but the everyday student (not the exceptional or regressive student) is not as exposed to everyday tasks, as is apparently needed or wanted.
You are assuming further education. What of the average high school kid?

[River]

Um, I covered the basics as a HS kid. Balancing checkbooks and compounding interest was junior high math. Nutrition and exercise was high school health. I covered some of it again in college, but the first hit was in HS.

There's a parental responsibility in this as well. I knew how to fill out a check when I started college because my parents made me watch them when I was a kid. I knew how to budget because they made me listen when they did the household finances. And so on.

[Túrin Turambar]

Someone who studies no science after junior high is scientifically illiterate

In my view, this is the ‘if we don’t teach it in school, people will never learn it’ fallacy, and the related ‘if we teach it in school, people will understand it’.

As to the first, I have no formal education in history above junior high (Year 10). It would take quite a stretch, I think, to call me ‘historically illiterate’. People who have an interest in and aptitude for learning, particularly in a certain area, will come to pick it up. Better to give them a solid grounding.

As to the second, I do have education in science beyond junior. I took physics and chemistry in senior, as I had ideas around that time of becoming an engineer. I can say with some certainty that I learned nothing long-term from the hours I spent sitting in Mr. Burville’s and Mr. Maetam’s classes. Everything I know and understand about science I picked up before or since then. My most valuable science training was probably in primary school, and later through reading books by authors like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, and watching Robert Winston and Stephen Hawking on the telly. I Imagine it is broadly similar for most learning-inclined yet formally-untrained people in all sorts of different fields.

Finally, I think that we have neither the right nor the luxury to try and forcibly educate adults into what we consider to be model citizens. Sixteen-year-olds often have jobs, pay taxes, and have some good idea about what they want to do with their lives. Eighteen-year-olds are adults who can vote, drive, work, and leave or stay in education as they please. Saying to those people ‘you must sit through classes on X because all good citizens understand X’ strikes me as not only highly counterproductive but also morally wrong. By the time I got to Year 12, plenty of students were more interested in going to their jobs than doing homework, or even coming to school. They knew what they wanted to do, and were ready for adulthood. The only thing that would have changed their focus is something that they themselves could see having a practical benefit to be worth the trade-off against work experience and money.

And we can’t afford it to be otherwise. We have an aging population, and so we can’t also keep young people out of the workforce for longer than we need to. In the old days when only the upper classes sought non-technical higher education, people could sit around universities reading Plato until they were 25. These days, when everyone demands equal access to education and the workforce is shrinking, it’s impractical. If anything, we need to turn out trained professionals in less time, not more.

[WampusCat]

I think schools would see more student interest in chemistry classes if they renamed the class Potions.

But seriously, the last thing we need is a citizenry of specialists who have not been exposed to thought beyond their specialty. I want my doctor to know more than medicine and my lawyer to know more than law. Not just for their own intellectual balance, but for what they bring to society.

And considering today's rush of scientific development and the ethical issues that arise from it, we need more people who understand science, not fewer.

[Túrin Turambar]

Yeah but the everyday student (not the exceptional or regressive student) is not as exposed to everyday tasks, as is apparently needed or wanted.
You are assuming further education. What of the average high school kid?

I think that it’s a fair enough question to ask. I’ve wondered before exactly what the point of getting all fifteen-year-olds to learn trigonometry, how to recognise iambic pentameter and how to balance organic equations is. I’ve long suspected that average students would approach core subjects like English, Maths and Science with more enthusiasm if they could see a greater connection between what they were learning and their everyday experience. And more importantly, I think that a great deal of material is simply taught, tested, never returned to and quickly forgotten. I’d rather see less-expansive and more basic curricula where the students actually took more out of it at the end. My school had Advanced Science classes in junior for those interested in taking the sciences in senior, and I think that could be applied easily across the board. The science education needs of a future physicist are not the science education needs of a future chef.

But seriously, the last thing we need is a citizenry of specialists who have not been exposed to thought beyond their specialty. I want my doctor to know more than medicine and my lawyer to know more than law. Not just for their own intellectual balance, but for what they bring to society.

And considering today's rush of scientific development and the ethical issues that arise from it, we need more people who understand science, not fewer.

Again, I think it’s a fallacy to assume that people will only be exposed to that which they are taught in formal education. I was educated using the typical Anglo-Australian model where my education beyond Grade 10 was specific and vocational (save for Senior English) rather than a general and ‘liberal’, and I’ve been exposed to thought beyond those fields a lot.

And we do need more people who understand science, but I don’t think we’ll get them by making everyone take more science classes. Beyond a certain point you can’t make people learn what doesn’t interest them or they don’t see any connection to.

[Primula Baggins]

Not everyone ever does pursue any knowledge beyond what they have to learn in school. An appalling number of Americans, anyway, never buy, borrow, or read another book again in their lives.

If people aren't learning the essentials of science from science classes, then the classes need to change. No one expects everyone to be engaged in science classes, but some basic scientific information and understanding is just as essential to functioning as an adult citizen and consumer as knowing how to read a credit card statement or navigate a public transportation system.

[Lidless]

I had to endure Latin (compulsory) for two years. It is said it teaches you to learn, but then again so does any subject. And so what if it helps you understand the derivation of a word, really! The mental effort of remembering the complex cross-section of tense / gender, and whether it was accusative, dative, genitive, motion towards, not only for the verbs but the nouns as well, and all else that Life Of Brian's 'Romans Go Home' alludes to (a VERY accurate English public school portrayal, BTW)...is a monstrous sapping of a limited number of brain cells. Benefit < Cost.

But if you are interested, 'television' is a mix of Greek ('tele' = far) and Latin ('vision' = seeing).

According to Tolkien, palantír = 'farseeing'.

[nerdanel]

As for the science debate, I'm going to endorse Prim's and River's posts. I wanted to focus in on a different angle of what you said:

Some people don't like the purely vocational approach to tertiary education and think that students should get a general education as well as training for a career. Melbourne University has actually started pushing that, by creating a series of general undergraduate degrees and considering only offering things like law and medicine to postgraduates. A similiar situation to how American universities work, in fact. It's something that I'm fundamentally opposed to, myself. Studying for a profession is already a big enough time and money commitment without being made to spend an extra year or two or three reading Plato or whatever. And while I approve of a general education, that's what Senior High School is for.

We're both trained in law, so I'm going to focus in on that as an example of why I have a different opinion. I feel fairly strongly that law should be offered only as a professional postgraduate degree. I've been giving this a good deal of thought in recent days, because:

(1) I began studying (graduate) law at 17, roughly the same age as undergraduates would study it, and I now feel that they are and I was too young, in the sense of bringing insufficient life experience to the study of law:

(2) Although we're not in the same classes, I'm surrounded by very young-looking undergraduates in the Law Faculty, which turns my thoughts to this issue on a regular basis; and

(3) It is clear to me that American legal education needs substantial reform, and I'm hoping to participate in that process during my career. So the question of whether we should offer an undergraduate option is of interest to me.

I have provisionally concluded that we should not, for these reasons:

(1) In my view, the study of law is the study of what kind of society "we", as communities of individuals, should create through our laws. That is a question that can benefit from increased life experience, in a way that is not true of every other discipline. (As a chemistry major, I don't think that "life experience," as opposed to retrosynthetic experience, would really have helped me to synthesize organic molecules more efficiently in lab.) Now, not all life experience is created equal, and if someone were to spend their time lying on the proverbial beach, I don't think that would prepare them for law school. But someone who receives a solid liberal arts education and then takes (for instance) 1-3 years to do something potentially broadly relevant to the study of law - Peace Corps, Teach for America, intern in a government office, work for a non-profit with a legal advocacy arm, etc - is going to bring a rich perspective to their legal studies that a 17-year-old kid (like me, in 2003!) will not. An environment filled with 24-27+ year-olds, who are in law school based on the previous experiences they've had, is wholly different than an environment filled with 17-year-olds. I was fortunate to be in that 24-27+ year old environment thanks to my law school's increasingly clear policy of admitting mostly people who have taken 1-3+ years after undergrad to work first.

(2) Law is an unusual discipline: two lawyers may have three opinions on whether the study of law falls within the humanities or the social sciences. (I spent thirty minutes last week debating this with a professor, actually.) It intersects with an astounding range of other fields, and it is to the student's advantage to bring expertise in one or more of those other fields to the study of law. "Expertise" meaning "at least at a university level," not "high school". This is particularly true because, depending on one's interests, the undergraduate degree will make one more competitive for post-law school employment. Two of the three post-law school jobs I've held were offered to me partly because I held a B.S. in chemistry. Even for people who have more "usual" undergraduate degrees, their undergrad knowledge will complement and shape their legal studies - consider someone who brings a bachelors-level knowledge of their country's history, political science, or economics with them to law school. They are far more advantageously situated than someone who brings a high school/A-level education to the study of law. I submit that the former group will both contribute more to, and receive more from, their study of law.

(3) For those who are academically minded, studying something other than law is still-more critical. "Law and" studies are flourishing in the US legal academy: law and economics, law and political science, law and public policy, legal history, jurisprudence (which could be styled law and philosophy), intellectual property law (law and science/technology) and more feature, I think, the strength of a system that requires people to study a minimum of two subjects. The ability to see intersections between subject areas is an important skill for academics. Of course, to do this seriously will require a JD/PhD, but it's a great first step to get the undergrad degree (likely in the PhD field) out of the way.

(4) There is no rush to the "real world". There really, really isn't. Every law student alive grouses constantly about how they want to get out into the "real world", start making money, etc...and within 2-3 years, most of the ones who were halfway decent students start talking about how they (in the words of one of my correspondents, now three years in at a corporate law firm) "really miss those days of being able to study things because they were interesting." There are very few legal jobs that are as continuously mentally stimulating as being in law school; most involve periods of tedious discovery, correspondence, due diligence, etc. In fact, the only two such jobs I've encountered that can rival law school in their unmitigated intellectual intensity are not long-term tenable options for young attorneys: clerking is done for a fixed term, and judging is not an option for usually at least ten years. You have decades and decades to work for The Man (or to be The Man, or, I suppose, The Woman ). I realize that there's a financial issue with spending more years in school. But there are many paths after law school that offer the potential of paying off one's loans expeditiously; it's incumbent on the prospective law student to research those paths in advance, to figure out whether the relevant jobs are likely to be offered to her in a couple of years' time AND whether she can imagine doing the work involved for long enough to pay off the loans. (Alternatively, a number of law schools offer low-income repayment plans that will pay off loans entirely over an 8-10 year track for graduates who are committed to working in the public interest, so that's another option.)

[Holbytla]

Um, I covered the basics as a HS kid. Balancing checkbooks and compounding interest was junior high math. Nutrition and exercise was high school health. I covered some of it again in college, but the first hit was in HS.

There's a parental responsibility in this as well. I knew how to fill out a check when I started college because my parents made me watch them when I was a kid. I knew how to budget because they made me listen when they did the household finances. And so on.

Well I believe there are a huge number of people in this country that are completely inept when it comes to understanding nutrition, and I think that plays right into the obesity issue going on.

Sure I had those classes as well, but they were short classes for maybe half of the year and they covered a broad range of health topics aside from nutrition.
I don't remember anything from those classes and what I know now I had to learn myself. How would kids be taught nutrition at home if their parents are unlearned, which apparently most of the country is?

I can see a far more beneicial societal effect from teaching nutrition than I can teaching trig. I'm not against teaching science or higher forms of math, but I do think it would be beneficial if schools taught more practical subjects that didn't require advanced classes.

[Túrin Turambar]

Not everyone ever does pursue any knowledge beyond what they have to learn in school. An appalling number of Americans, anyway, never buy, borrow, or read another book again in their lives.

If people aren't learning the essentials of science from science classes, then the classes need to change. No one expects everyone to be engaged in science classes, but some basic scientific information and understanding is just as essential to functioning as an adult citizen and consumer as knowing how to read a credit card statement or navigate a public transportation system.

Oh, I agree. I just don’t see the benefit of extending those classes into voluntary education.

(1) In my view, the study of law is the study of what kind of society "we", as communities of individuals, should create through our laws. That is a question that can benefit from increased life experience, in a way that is not true of every other discipline. (As a chemistry major, I don't think that "life experience," as opposed to retrosynthetic experience, would really have helped me to synthesize organic molecules more efficiently in lab.) Now, not all life experience is created equal, and if someone were to spend their time lying on the proverbial beach, I don't think that would prepare them for law school. But someone who receives a solid liberal arts education and then takes (for instance) 1-3 years to do something potentially broadly relevant to the study of law - Peace Corps, Teach for America, intern in a government office, work for a non-profit with a legal advocacy arm, etc - is going to bring a rich perspective to their legal studies that a 17-year-old kid (like me, in 2003!) will not. An environment filled with 24-27+ year-olds, who are in law school based on the previous experiences they've had, is wholly different than an environment filled with 17-year-olds. I was fortunate to be in that 24-27+ year old environment thanks to my law school's increasingly clear policy of admitting mostly people who have taken 1-3+ years after undergrad to work first.

In an ideal world, I would agree. People approaching law as a mature-aged student or postgraduate in my classes seemed to have a decided advantage in that regard. Nonetheless, I don’t think that the advantage provided to the new entrant in law school by having a liberal arts education is worth the cost in time, money and lost opportunity. I think that every entrant to university would have a huge advantage in having worked for a few years beforehand, but I also accept that universities might not find making such demands practical. Also, I believe that a great deal of actual law learning comes on-the-job. The law degree does not produce a finished legal thinker, but an initiate.

One of the biggest backlashes against the Melbourne model from other Australian law schools, though, is that it makes it much harder for people from low socio-economic backgrounds to study law. Someone from a poor family will find it harder to support themselves through six or seven years of full-time study than they would through three to five years.

I started law school at 17, like everyone else in Queensland who went to university straight out of high school and was born after March (my state is unusual in that people graduate from high school in the year that they turn 17). My one regret at starting that young is that I started at all – at twenty I would have had a far different perspective in what I wanted from higher education. At that age I was still in the ‘pick subjects that are interesting’ mode from high school.

(3) For those who are academically minded, studying something other than law is still-more critical. "Law and" studies are flourishing in the US legal academy: law and economics, law and political science, law and public policy, legal history, jurisprudence (which could be styled law and philosophy) and more feature, I think, the strength of a system that requires people to study a minimum of two subjects. The ability to see intersections between subject areas is an important skill for academics. Of course, to do this seriously will require a JD/PhD, but it's a great first step to get the undergrad degree (likely in the PhD field) out of the way.

My university shared your opinion, which is why it offered no straight undergraduate law degrees, only double degrees. My other degree is a bachelor of arts in politics and public policy. To be perfectly honest, it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Or rather, it had a few solid subjects amongst a lot that were hardly worth my time studying. That said, other degree combinations like Law/Asian Languages or Law/Commerce are extremely useful, but moreso for their improved employment opportunities than their cross-disciplinary approach.

I enjoy learning, but going to university involves a big personal sacrifice in time, money and lost earning potential. The more my degree wore on, the more I found I could only justify that with the promise of solid employment at the end. Many others I found felt the same way. I knew a lot of regretful arts graduates.

That’s why I oppose any element of coercion in higher education. The student is a consumer, and they should have choice. Going to university is a big sacrifice in time and money, and they should have the chance to get their money’s worth.

[Aravar]

(4) There is no rush to the "real world". There really, really isn't. Every law student alive grouses constantly about how they want to get out into the "real world", start making money, etc...and within 2-3 years, most of the ones who were halfway decent students start talking about how they (in the words of one of my correspondents, now three years in at a corporate law firm) "really miss those days of being able to study things because they were interesting." There are very few legal jobs that are as continuously mentally stimulating as being in law school; most involve periods of tedious discovery, correspondence, due diligence, etc. In fact, the only two such jobs I've encountered that can rival law school in their unmitigated intellectual intensity are not long-term tenable options for young attorneys: clerking is done for a fixed term, and judging is not an option for usually at least ten years. You have decades and decades to work for The Man (or to be The Man, or, I suppose, The Woman ). I realize that there's a financial issue with spending more years in school. But there are many paths after law school that offer the potential of paying off one's loans expeditiously; it's incumbent on the prospective law student to research those paths in advance, to figure out whether the relevant jobs are likely to be offered to her in a couple of years' time AND whether she can imagine doing the work involved for long enough to pay off the loans. (Alternatively, a number of law schools offer low-income repayment plans that will pay off loans entirely over an 8-10 year track for graduates who are committed to working in the public interest, so that's another option.)

This may be true of the US legal system, and will certainly be true of people rushing into City and large provincial solicitor's firms. The Bar, especially the Chancery and Commercial bars are very different. A lot of work is research and giving written advice, which is very like academia.

[JewelSong]

Well I believe there are a huge number of people in this country that are completely inept when it comes to understanding nutrition,

Holby, I think there are huge numbers of people (certainly in this country!) who are completely inept when it comes to understanding ANYTHING.

The idea that it might be interesting to learn about something new is foreign to many people.

[vison]

I don't know that Americans are more inclined to be stupid or ignorant than anyone else, but they certainly have more opportunities to be so. It seems that a specific kind of ignorance is much admired these days, and I live with 2 kids who are really into that program.

Tay is in grade 11 and struggling. Much of his struggle is because "school is boring". Well, yes. I thought a lot of school was paralyzingly boring, too. But for some reason - and I honestly don't know what the reason was- I liked to do well and so I did. It was important to me. And, luckily for me, it came easily. My mind ran on that track of literacy and literacy, loving to read, is still the best indicator of how a student will do in school. But then, school WAS my social life and my contact with the outer world. The only "modern" communication device we had in our house was a party-line telephone, and my parents would not allow us to tie up that phone for hours and hours.

That was then and this is now. Many parents, and I am one, I freely admit, have allowed their kids to live in this alternate world - and once they're in there, they don't want to come out. The social networking thing is enormously popular and while I understand it, I abhor it.

So Tay is not taking "English literature", he is taking "Comm." and supposedly learning how to USE English. Since he used to read happily and well, this new inability to comprehend written English seems largely and recently self-induced, but you can't argue with a brick wall and if there was ever a brick wall, it's Tay.

He is one of many. He is one of most, according to his teachers. Texting 2,000 times a month - he might as well have his I-phone hooked directly into his nervous system. It pretty well is.

Learning to write a cheque is easy. Reconciling a bank statement is not so easy. Operating a budget is not so easy. If kids were taught the basics of consumer finance, and were able to understand the message I recently got on my credit card (37 years to pay off about $1700!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then the world might be a different place. Consumer finance is a quagmire of difficult English and complicated arithmetic: a deadly combination, IMHO. And yet everyone jumps into that quagmire blithely, thinking "Oh, I can make the payments!"

Things move very fast nowadays. There is no time to think. And we are inundated with information and have no tools to separate the necessary from the frivolous and kids are not taught to make that distinction - it's all the same: All equally worthless.

If I was really Queen of the Universe, teenaged boys would be confined to a distant island with no mod. cons., and forced to hunt savage beasts with their bare hands. 100 miles off in the sea the girls would have their own island. If they managed to connect, it would mean they had learned to build some sort of boat, which means they would have learned something.

[JewelSong]

From Star Trek: TOS - "Court Martial"

Cogley: What's the matter? Don't you like books?
Kirk: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space.
Cogley: A computer, huh? I got one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents, a synthesis of all the great legal decisions written throughout time. I never use it.
Kirk: Why not?
Cogley: I've got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something--my library. Thousands of books.

One can never have too many books...

[yovargas]

If I was really Queen of the Universe, teenaged boys would be confined to a distant island with no mod. cons., and forced to hunt savage beasts with their bare hands. 100 miles off in the sea the girls would have their own island. If they managed to connect, it would mean they had learned to build some sort of boat, which means they would have learned something.

[Nin]

Well, I don't know much about american school systems. In Swiss system, you usually graduate from higher secondary school at the age of 19 and can start university after that. So far, same in Germany.

I "jumped" a year and was at the university at the age of 18, more than happy to drop maths for the rest of my life. I don't remember anything from my higher maths class. Nothing about how to calculate probabilities, about analysis or trigonometry. Yet, I spoke more or less fluently French (enough to start studying at a university in French), my English was learned mostly at school and I had had four years of latin. Maybe for me, maths was what Latin was for Lidless or German for Wampus. We all forget a lot of what we learn at school. That's normal. And in fact, we forget, what is not interesting for us.

In my work, I often see kids who are excellent students in German, in bilingual immersion programm, great in history, but they have to take maths strong option (we have only one math teacher who speaks German) and they struggle and fail. Those are very smart kids and hard-working, they "get" so many things - but they just don't get maths. I think if you made it compulsory in a university programm, there would be an entire category of people whom you put aside, who don't have this kind of mathematical intelligence. Like me.

I don't know what it means, when you put in grades. My son is twelve and just started lower secondary school with science option (not latin ). His choice. His grades are excellent. But he does not enjoy to read - except mangas - but take him to a science experiment, he will jump for joy. This kid lives surrounded by books and knows greek mythology better than me at his age (two teachers at home, deadly mixture). But he does not read. (So, vison, what is Tay's age?). I am quite strict on his computer time and he does a lot of sport and plays an instrument. It does work, so far.

In different school systems, different fields decide who is not only going to be good, but excellent. It can be Latin or maths or here, sometimes, German. It could be, and I would favour this, music. Let them learn harmony and composition, there is hardly anything more difficult in the world. And if you learn difficult things, the easy things come on their own.

My son has "nutrition" at school. They learn some cooking and also about basic facts of nutrition (what is carb, why do we need it, etc etc). His teacher gave them some facts and then askes for more examples and he could give them all. Then, she told, he had nothing to learn in her class... I never talked to thim about food in scientific terms - but we cook fresh meals daily, I tell him, why I want him to eat that and that - he combines all that in no time. This is parental work. School brings the scientific terms - but the knowledge comes from home. And not everything can be learned or taught in school.

Edited for horrible spelling

[vison]

Tay will be 16 in December.

What happens now to Tay is up to Tay.

Some kids have to learn the hard way. But those are the lessons that stick with you.

His school's vice-principal, who has been teaching for 15 years or so, has not yet learned that kids just shut their ears off when they hear things like: "You need an education because . . . or. . . you'll regret this in 10 years . . . or . . . you'll have to work for bosses you don't like . . . etc., etc."

The counsellor, on the other hand, does understand that.

The teenage brain is a whole different brain from an adult brain.

[Impenitent]

Tay will be 16 in December.

What happens now to Tay is up to Tay.

Some kids have to learn the hard way. But those are the lessons that stick with you.

<snip>

The teenage brain is a whole different brain from an adult brain.

Yes it is.

My daughter has effectively left school - she has not put in her exit forms but she hasn't attended this whole last term of the year.

The issues she's been struggling with - depression, anxiety, lack of direction - are slowly getting better. Her mood is better. She likes her psychiatrist and sees him twice a week. Sometimes she comes home buoyant after her session, sometimes he pushes her and she comes home grumpy. We no longer worry that she'll harm herself when she's out of our sight.

She's 17, almost 18. She doesn't have Year 11. We have no idea what she's going to do next year.

We recently toured a vocational college, checking out the students and the curriculum and examples of work output, and the experience vividly demonstrated for her that she's smarter than the average bear. In fact, she's an intellectual and academically more than competent bear. But the education system doesn't cater for her.

Like Tay, she says the experience of sitting in the classroom is boring; she's not engaged because she's not challenged; she sees no point at all in some of the tasks they are required to perform or the material they must learn for assessment because in her view, they will not facilitate what she wants to do in future. Although she doesn't know what she wants to do in her future.

Education should do two things, in my view: First, teach students how to think, how to learn, how to be seekers of knowledge. Second, it should guide them towards knowledge that will help them in navigating life, both in practical terms (how to wire a house) and in philosophical terms (the big-picture implications of humanity harnessing the resources of the earth for our needs).

I'm not sure it does that. Certainly for my daughter, a smart, caring, intellectually-inclined kid, the education system has not managed to engage her. I don't think the inclusion of Latin in her curriculum would have done it.

[JewelSong]

Even the best education in the world, with the most engaging curriculum and terrific teachers, won't do a damn thing for a student who has decided that he/she doesn't want to learn.

There has to be an opening - even if it's just a crack - for the teacher to pour the learning through. If the kid has sealed him/herself up tight, there ain't nothing gonna get in there.

That doesn't mean that, as a teacher, you should give up. A good teacher continues to try to find and use those (sometimes rare) "teachable moments" to spark the kid's interest. Sometimes a disinterested kid can suddenly catch fire and start to learn like a house afire!

But, in my experience, most kids who have completely disengaged do so out of a kind of defeat. They have very low self-esteem and a fatalistic view of life. Why bother trying, when they will probably fail anyway? (Or so they rationalize it to themselves.) To save face, they claim that the subject or the teacher or the presentation is "boring" or "too easy" or "stupid" or whatever.

In order to learn, one must decide to invest...and to take a risk. Some kids won't.

[Holbytla]

It's impossible to cater to every child as far as an overall curriculum goes. I just wish that the general structure were based more in the practical range.
Kids that need special attention get it, in this country anyway, with special ed, advanced classes, and individual education plans if needed.

The curriculum seems to evolve over time and subjects like Latin seem to get dropped. Maybe it is time for the education system to make some changes and gear more toward practical applications.

Raise your hand if you use any type of math beyond algebra.

Bueller. Bueller.