Ugh...
But at least my post about it has made an impression. Katherine of Pie and Palestrina complains about exactly the same thing I experienced in school.
In nearly every class and school I've attended, the teachers and students have approached learning as a necessary evil, and one that you "have" to get through in order to get a job. From then on, however, your reward is to never have to learn anything again. You can spend your leisure time watching hours and hours of television. The idea of knowledge for its own sake is ignored, and most teachers instruct their students to learn the barest of facts about disjointed chunks of our world without making any connections at all.
Lawdy, but how I hated school! And this is why.
Haaaate-ed It!!!
Why oh why didn't Mum homeschool me?! Why did she send me to those mind-numbing child-holding tanks for all those wasted hours when we could have been doing Euclid and combing the beach for invertebrates? It's not like she had a job or anything...
Dang.
~
5 comments:
Thank you for this! I need a focused kick in the pants at times (as an avowed slacker who sometimes homeschools her daugthers solely for the caliber of their future marriage prospects)...
In the seventh grade, we had the track system — with tracks A, B, and C — and being an A track student, I loved it. We covered the material quickly and my fellow students were a joy to study with. My brother, who went through school before, also confirmed the joys of the track system.
But that is discriminatory. In eight grade, everyone was in the same classes. All the classes were effectively C track, only going as fast as the slowest student, and learning became much more a drudgery than it ever had been before.
I coped with school by:
1. becoming a compulsive truant; and
2. going to the public library and reading lots.
However, these two activities were not undertaken at the same time.
Lydia
Thanks, Miss White! I'm glad to know it wasn't just me. This is exactly why I want to homeschool someday; I never want my kids (D.V.) to experience the mass inanity that I had to deal with on a daily basis.
I had exactly two good teachers in high school. One was the choir teacher, who whipped us into a pretty darn good choir. The other was the English teacher who gave me a standing hall pass to the library after the first two weeks of class. I'm still grateful to that woman; I learned more through that than I did in any class in high school.
Come to think of it, she deserves a post...
Being in a contrary mood, let me ask whether you're wanting to study Euclid or geometry.
If you're after geometry, then some modern text books are clearer and better. (We have, after all, advanced a little in two millenia.)
And, if you confine yourself to Euclid, you miss out on the conic sections, which are one of the most elegant and accessible topics in geometry.
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