I’ve been curious about the schooling experiences of users here for a while, and I’m trying to get a feel for how common some situations are among this community. In particular, did you like or dislike it, generally speaking? Did anyone have strongly negative experiences with school, or persistent areas of frustration? What was the pace of schooling like for you, and were you satisfied with it? What sort of long-term impact did your experience there have on you?
Home-schooled for ten years. I disliked math, but did pretty well at all subjects. We had to take standardized tests every year to make sure we were actually getting educated, I tested graduate level at age ten or eleven. On return to the US, attended a private religious school with some supplementary classes at the local public. Both were complete jokes. Students in the US aren’t educated at all, from what I saw. We learned things in high school I’d been taught when I was six. “I before E except after C” type shit. Since I didn’t need to do any work, I spent my time indulging my immature and rebellious nature. I graduated top of my class with the record for most disciplinary actions ever taken against a student. They actually refused to name a valedictorian that year. Good times!
I learned that schooling isn’t education, and the worst thing people do is conflate the two. I liked the peer group at school, I learned a lot about navigating social situations, girls, status, etc. I learned less than nothing in academic terms.
University was mostly more of the same, though I did finally meet a couple professors (out of dozens) who actually taught things, and challenged me. I learned a lot in their classes. Mostly though, college was just a choice whether to write what would get the professor to give me an A, or write what was true and have to appeal it to the dean of students when they tried to fail me for political disagreements.
Overall, my opinion is that with a couple of stellar exceptions, school is a monumental waste of time, money and talent and is the single greatest impediment to education we have.
Bad experience; damaged me.
I was the smart kid in a small country school. The other kids were pretty mean and excluded me. Small enough place that there was no clique of nerds to join.
I’ve still got a chip on my shoulder about it; I’m working on that.
I never needed to do homework at home, so I didn’t learn how to study until college. That was also not ideal. Would have been better for me if I had learned sooner.
Bad experience. The highlight was getting out early. Managed to graduate high school at 16. That was great.
Miserable waste of time, was almost never offered opportunities to learn. Largely ignored teachers and read books during class. I felt like it was a profound injustice that I was punished for doing so.
I now have kids of my own and will be home-schooling them.
Kiwi here. Bored out of my mind by school until about 16. I recall my mum telling me that one of my great-aunts (a school teacher herself) had always said that school was boring to prepare you for life, which was boring. Mum stopped after I, having duly considered the matter, announced that if life was as boring as school I’d commit suicide. (Incidentally life has been far more interesting than school.)
Also I struggled socially until I went to high school. Intermediate school (age 11 & 12) I recall as the low point particularly, but then I also went through puberty and had a serious and painful health problem.
I wasn’t bullied after my Dad showed me how to throw a punch – I must have been about 5 or 6 – NZ parenting – and I worked out how to adapt the idea to verbal conflicts, but there were a number of times that people tried to bully me.
Basically I spent years trying to escape into books and being irritated by the fixation of the NZ education system on the idea that I should read books that reflected my life, which was what I desperately wanted to escape.
High school was much better – single-sex girls, quite academically focused, I made a lot more friends and despite girls-school we met boys and dated, and I had some excellent teachers and the subject material got harder in the last two years.
One big NZ difference: when it came to picking what university to attend, given that I wanted to do engineering I had two choices in the whole country.
Incidentally NZ public (state) primary schools had Christian education as a normal subject when I went through and by Christian I mean “God and Jesus exist” type stuff. Parents could withdraw their kids but I recall only one family doing so. Yet NZ is much more secular than the USA.