However, the problems I tried to discuss about in this article, are not solely educational, but political and social, as well. We must think what the education tries to achieve. Casting aside really basic stuff, what has the school offered you outside of the current socio-economical system that tries to survive its existence, pretty much like a biological organism? And furthermore, is the current way of learning optimal?

I too agree that I learned a few things from school, but, honestely, I think that most of the time there was wasted. Now, that I am in the university, I feel that I can spend my time more productively, since the free time I now have can help me learn things that in school I couldn’t, not because of ability, but because of time-constraint and exhaustion.

If you remember absolutely nothing from school, as you said, how can you write this blog? Or do basic math, like when you go shopping? (OK, you can relay on a calculator for the math thin.)

What I mean is that not remembering the classes does not mean that you didn’t learn.

I know it may sound pedant, but since you said you are still to find someone how remembers what they learned in school, I can’t say you found him. I do remember a lot of stuff I learned in school. I remember how to read and write (better in my mother language than in English), I remember how to do basic math, and calculus, how to create, read and interpret a graph; a lot of stuff of history and geography (you can ask for concrete examples if you think it is just an impression of remembering history and geography). As for college, I remember even better, I learned electronics, advanced math, programming and I grant you that I still do remember most of these things.

Maybe what is being proposed works for people from humanities, but I strongly disagree that it would work for people from sciences and engineering.

If you want to contact me about this, just send me an e-mail

Is there a way I could connect with students, or recent students, using this website to get this feedback?

Great post. I too dream of a day when the education system is reformed into a practical one and fun one that really encourages learning.

There are just so many things with school that are fundamentally horribly wrong.

One example, classes are often spread over a full semester or year, with classes two or more times a week, and with that class lasting hours. And with almost no teaching going on. For example, I attend a Spanish class for about 2.5 hours twice week in college. Almost nothing is taught. The majority of the time is just filled with stupid cultural stuff and boring and inefficient Spanish language games that don’t really help much. Then we are told to go home, read from a ridiculously un-intuitively-written $150 dollar text book (i.e. teach ourselves), and do some boring homework. Not only is this not specialized to the student, what I always end up doing is getting the information from studyspanish.com and spending five or ten minutes mastering whatever we were supposed to study. So why can’t we just do all our learning in class? Maybe a couple 1-hour classes a week spread over a couple months with no homework? That would do the trick!

It is also stupid that people are supposed to do like 4 different subjects in one semester. Because what happens is that your mind gets divided focuses. If there would be only one or two classes that are taught in an efficient way, in like a one or two month period, that would be much better.

Another example is a typography class I was looking at. Spending three hours twice a week for five months is one way of learning typography. Spending two days reading about it in some “For Dummies” book would accomplish the same goal. But alas, degrees are needed for jobs when resourcefulness and knowledge aren’t looked at.

And what’s the deal with textbooks? In High School I had all these textbooks that I never read. They took forever to explain something in a really sloppy way. I bought cliffs notes (which are very cheap compared to textbooks), and spend 5 pages in one of those for what’s covered in 25 textbook pages. IS THERE SOME LAW THAT SAYS SCHOOLS CAN’T USE CLIFFS NOTES AS COURSE MATERIAL?!

Of course, there are larger fundamental problems that, if solved, would render the above problems irrelevant. But you see the stupidity.

I HATE SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE LEARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHY CAN’T THERE BE A REVOLUTION OR REFORMATION TO ALIGN THE TWO?