Is secondary school a waste of time?

Hi Arran,

Really interesting post. 

School definitely teaches us things. I am in no doubt about that. However, is what we learn in school of value to us as individuals and to our society as a whole?

 I think that John Taylor Gatto says it best:

The following are excerpts from his book ‘Dumbing Us Down, The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling…’

The 7 lessons of compulsory schooling…

1. Confusion. Everything is taught out of context.
2. Class Position. Students are taught that they are measurable, comparable, and must stay (in which group) they are put.
3. Indifference. Children are taught not to care too much about anything even though they must appear as if they do. (Any subject, project etc. which ignites an individual’s passion is cut down to size to suit the curriculum.)
4. Emotional Dependency (or as I would offer; an external locus of evaluation) through rewarding ‘good behaviour’ i.e. school rule followers; and punishing bad behaviour i.e. anything the school does not personally condone, such as free thinkers.
5. Intellectual Dependency. ‘Good’ students are taught to wait until they are told what they should be learning/doing/interested in by an authority figure.
6. Provisional Self-Esteem. Kids are taught that their self-esteem relies on being told, by an authority figure, whether they are of any worth.
7. One can’t hide. We teach students that they are constantly watched, monitored, evaluated- Surveillance which extends into the home and private time too via homework.

Yes, there are definitely lessons to be learnt at school. But I don’t think those lessons have as much to do with maths, history or science as people may wish them to. I think those lessons are mainly to do with training kids to become dependent, controllable adults.

No.

For me secondary school was often a living nightmare, but not a waste of time.

At school as I got older I, and I suspect most children pick up knowledge and behaviour that is not taught in the classroom.  It's the experience that matters!

It may have been bad in general, but staying at home would have been even worse.

And being taught in a classroom with others is an experience worth having.  There's nothing stopping one from educating themselves at home in their own time.

And for me personally, primary school was even worse.   There I learnt almost nothing, in secondary school I was actually trying to catch up with what others learnt in primary school.

As for  school being preparation for employment ???????

I keep thinking back to the contentious issue of school uniforms and how strictly some schools enforce the rules. Excluding pupils for minor infringements.  The schools argument is that this prepares students for the workplace.

An episode of the 1980s comedy 'Are you being served?'. Involved work uniform policy being enforced.  And the staff complaining that this nonsense belongs in schools and NOT in the workplace.

Agreed that a lot of the curriculum content is out of step with the skills maybe considered useful for application in the real world.  However, it might foster an interest in further subject exploration, however it helps if the teacher is able to have the timetabled hours and the ability to bring those subjects to life and be able to contextualise them in order for them to appear relevant.

 A lot of learning at a school setting can be considered a passive act, you sit in a classroom and receive knowledge....sometimes there is limited scope to be able to allow students to explore, go off tangent, challenge thoughts, ideas and theories.  It depends if you want a society of questioning minds.... also people are individuals and learn in different ways - practical, academic etc...so it is a challenge to find a framework that suits all.

I used to write degree programmes which needed to be endorsed by industry....some vocational qualifications follow the same remit... the secondary school curriculum seems to be lead centrally by macro government ideals.  Take the GCSE history curriculum...still tutors, stewarts, industrial revolution...britain as monarchy and empire...would it be more useful to understand more recent historical events and contextualise those? who knows?