The Future of Education
High Tech High, a charter school in Silicon Valley, is closing. I found out about this thanks to Scoble (ROBERT SCOBLE KNOWS EVERYTHING! -- Starter For 10, great movie :D). I wrote a little comment on that post, and I think I should just copy and paste it here:
This sounds a lot like the charter school I attend in Vacaville, about 45 minutes away from SF. I am an 18 year old Senior at Buckingham Charter Magnet High School (www.bcmhs.org). We too are a small (less than 400, including staff) school, and we are currently located in the middle of a shopping plaza (kind of weird to explain to people). We too are underfunded. We too have a teacher, student, and parent body of people that are grateful to be attending such a great school. There is nothing more motivating to students than a teacher that *loves* to teach. This is rare, but it seems like they are a commodity at Charter schools.
The public school system has been a *complete* failure, and in the future, all of these schools will be moving towards the small, community-oriented charter system. There is going to be a privatization of education in the near future. The educational problem that we face in America is much like the Social Security problem: large Public Schools have been a disaster, and charter schools are the only way we have been able to fix this problem.
I believe Buckingham is in it’s 5th or 6th year as a school (I am a senior), and we have quickly climbed to the #2 school in our district as far as performance. There is obviously something unique about this type of education; when you put academia back to the forefront of school, you will see a major change in student performance.
Just logically think about it: public schools have major gang, drug and alcohol problems (which is obviously different depending on where you live). When you come to a charter school with 360 kids and a waiting list of 200 students, there is a huge culture change. Suddenly gangs can be carefully watched; teachers begin to know their students personally; counselors care about getting their students into college. I love Charter schools.
One thing I do miss is the sports and school pride/history that goes along with going to a large public school. But who cares? I’ve gotten a much better education at Buckingham than I would have at any other school in my district, I am convinced of this. With that being said, I *still* think the education system has failed to fully prepare me for a University (Stanford/Santa Clara/Pt Loma) like I think it should have. The only way to get around that is: Private schooling.
Uniforms may not be so bad after all?
Ahh, the Suburbs
I thought this was hilarious... From Paul Graham's Why Nerds are Unpopular essay
If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children
Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.
And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.
If Only Paul Graham could come to Graduation…
In 2005, Paul Graham wrote a speech to high school kids. He comments that he was never able to give the speech, but I wish he could come to my school and give it at my Graduation. To say that it is amazing would be an understatement. I got a kick out of one of the footnotes:
Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you're taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.
This speech will really change your life (if you're in high school). And his essay on nerds and popularity is also a great read.
Rant on Education
I feel like I am stagnating in my "traditional" education at high school right now.
When I can't see the current/future value in what I am learning, it becomes completely pointless and irrelevant to me. I understand why they want to teach people in Primary School all the concepts and stuff, but the only way you are going to really learn something is if you go out and learn on your own. When I say "learn on your own", I am talking about picking up books, or going and doing an internship in a field that you want to be in, or simply Googling a subject and finding out everything there is to know about it. I learned more about Silicon Valley working for MonVia in these last few months than any teacher could have ever taught me.
The best way to learn something is just by going out and doing it; book knowledge is good to an extent. I'm not saying that reading isn't useful -- it definitely helps out a lot. I believe that being able to read and synthesizing valuable tangible information will open up more doors for you than anything else you can do while you still young. But I am tired of "Information Overload". How is knowing about an Amoeba going to help me when I am out in the real world trying to make a living? Shouldn't my education be more focused on something tangible? Capitalism? Managing money? How about a course based on Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor? At least learning about this stuff will help me put food in my stomach after High School is over.
I am glad for everything I learned up until 8th grade. Then I got into high school and took all these science classes that I could have cared less about (still don't care for them). I did terribly in all of them (B's and C's) because I never saw any value in what I was learning. It was, and still is, useless information to Sam Purtill. I am never going to give a **** about the Periodic Table; it's not something that I will ever specialize in. I'm sure there are some kids in my school that are fascinated by the Periodic Table and how many electrons are in Plutonium. Great for them, let them take the Science classes (Mrs. Rausch and Mrs. Page are awesome teachers) and let them know that information. When I have a question about Plutonium, I'll go to them and ask. I don't need to know everything!!
I am so tired of Information Overload though. It is the result of the internet. I don't care about EVERYTHING; I'm never going to act like I do.
I do believe there are three things that everyone should be proficient in by the end of High School:
- English - writing and speaking
- Math - up to Algebra 2
- Spanish - this should be taught starting in Kindergarten. Everyone legal US Citizen in California needs to speak Spanish fluently if they want to survive in 15 years
And beyond that, kids should start specializing. They should find something they like and start taking classes in it. I wish there were Java courses. Computer Science courses. Something that I actually care about and would be extremely motivated to do. I garauntee if we had a Computer Science class at my school I would get 100% in it every single semester.
Education needs help: there are three things I want in my education.
- Tangible - the instructor should be able to explain to me why I need to know this crap
- Valuable - this is going to take me farther in life if I learn it
- Relevant - wake up call: this is the 21st century. Would any of this information matter to me now if I went out and got a job?
I don't like things the way they are.