REALITY IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

[Kieran76]

I think a lot of people have no understanding of just exactly how much our hands are tied when it comes to teaching and the curriculum. We teach what we are told to teach, if people are against the collection of fact based learning, then protest about Gove's changes to the curriculum. He seems intent on making school exactly as he remembered it as it did okay for him.

[Charlie]

I loved school but wish I'd never gone as, twenty years on, a large percentage of my thoughts are not really mine but a propogation of my conditioning.

[Kieran76]

What would you have done instead then? And would whatever you did instead not end up with the same level as 'conditioning' as you put it.

[Charlie]

I would have liked to have been home schooled up to a certain point - just until my reading, writing and numeracy were good, then left to educate myself with good books of my choosing as I'd rather my mind be seeded by the wise, cheerful and insightful, rather than seeded by teachers, peers, parents and society.

Maybe it's impossible to go through life without any conditioning, but there are varying degrees of conditioning. In schools we aren't taught to think for ourselves, or even to be ourselves, we're told we must think a certain way and be a certain way, it's a one shoe fits all policy and that's bull****. We're all happiest, most relaxed and at our best when we're being who we naturally are.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

You'd just would've found different ways to kill the planet.

PLANET KILLER!

[Kieran76]

In schools we aren't taught to think for ourselves, or even to be ourselves, we're told we must think a certain way and be a certain way, it's a one shoe fits all policy and that's bull****. We're all happiest, most relaxed and at our best when we're being who we naturally are.

This is simply not true.
At school at the beginning of the term we introduce the topic for that term half/half term and ask the children the key questions of -

1. What do you already know about this topic/subject?
2. What would you like to know about it?
3. How are you going to find this out?
4 What resources do you need and what skills will you be using?

This notion that schools do nothing to develop thinking skills is false. Each week a different group of children in our year group do their own year group assembly in front of 70 other kids. They decide the topic of the assembly, decide who will say what, show what ever they want. They make films, do drama, quizzes etc. When we are doing topic work different groups of children will be studying different things and prsenting their learning back to the class. This one shoe fits all policy bears no relation to the school I work at and the school I will be starting at in September where I had to do a presentation about how I would inspire and motivate the children in my phase group and what challenges I would forsee and what skills I had to overcome them.

[Charlie]

My school was nothing like that. Besides choosing between a few subjects at the end of form 2 we had no say in what we were taught and certainly no say in how it was taught. But that was a while ago now so maybe education has moved on somewhat.

But still, the very concept of having to be somewhere at a fixed time every day, of having to obey another's rules, stupid **** like having to raise your hand and request you leave the room so you can carry out a natural bodily function, it's an affront to what is natural.

[Kieran76]

You will have to explain to me what is natural then.

[EJG1980]

Something isn't automatically bad because it's "not natural" or automatically good because it is natural.

[Kieran76]

The reason children ask for permission to leave the room is an incredibly simple one. Safety. Surely no-one would disagree that a teacher should have a pretty good idea where the children whose safety they are legally responsible for actually are in case of an emergency.

[Family Fry]

Ever since my sister in law became a teacher and the stories I have heard from her makes me think we are just living in a vastly different world to when I was at school, even from a parenting perspective. Also there is an ideal of what people expect teachers to do in schools as to what their actual job is. Teachers aren't baby sitters/parents 2.0 and they can only do SO much all of which has to also be supported at home.
It's such a sad state when I hear stories about children being FULLY supported in schools and having a total LACK of support from their own parents. Gave me a new found respect for teachers and what they have to actually put up with also, all in the name of educating children to a specific level.

[QualityChimp]

Anybody who is a teacher or knows one is fully aware of how hard they work.

People seem to base their expert knowledge about what teachers do on when they were at school, so they think the teachers are having milk breaks, nap time and going home at 3pm.

The reality is, the good ones are working until later than most other work places clock off, then carry on at home and usually have work at weekends.

They're unappreciated by people who don't know better (including parents) and the Government is moving the goalposts so they have to retire later and with less pension. Oh, and they've had a pay freeze for five years now.

[Adam Stone]

EDIT: Great video :-)

[Charlie]

You will have to explain to me what is natural then.

You know what's natural. Following your heart is natural. Obeying your body is natural. All the rules and regulations in school, being graded, being praised, being punished, being conditioned to think in terms of right and wrong and good and bad, slowly being stripped of your individuality and creativity and moulded into a citizen who complies and accepts the status quo, that **** ain't natural.

[85 78 73 81 85 69]

Although it is something that I hold dear to me, as I think everybody should, education is never going to be and probably never should be a simple thing to discuss in a

Actually, forget it!

I typed up a load of stuff but I'm not going to bother and I'm just going to go with the much lazier and simpler YouTube option, it nowhere near covers everything but I find this short video does have a few really important bullet points.