Opinions about the Education System.

[Sir I]

In my opinion, it's the worst thing mankind has ever INVENTED ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. I mean, the insane amount of homeworks, fees, how the subject is taught, the starting time, etc.. It feels like it is just made so we can be slaves to the higher ups and to do that, they crushed our curiosity, morality, hopes and dreams, aspirations and actually being free. They don't want us to be free, they don't want us to think, they don't want to teach us real stuff; The only thing they want from us is just to be braindead and not even wanting to read a single book! I'll never forgive those evil higher ups 'till I die. Thank you for reading.
 

 

 

 

Spoiler

But for real, why make things sooooo boring? I just don't want to deal with a subject I'm not interested in and instead follow a subject that I actually want to do and teach the students in the fun way.

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by Sir I
Missed the word want

[Sci]

You would've loved this website called School Survival back in the day. It's only a shell of what it used to be after massive drama, but it was a great community when I was younger.
Anyway yeah I agree.

[Sir I]

2 minutes ago, Sci said:

You would've loved this website called School Survival back in the day. It's only a shell of what it used to be after massive drama, but it was a great community when I was younger.

What is School Survival, and what was the drama?

[Pepi]

I share your thoughts, the school system is ROUGH. And from the things I heard of my older friends in universities, it gets worse.
They are getting their health destroyed, pulling off insane sessions of studying combined with great amounts of stress just to get the certification title to exercise the thing they are passionate about (if doing that doesn't kill your passion, you are amazing.). Of course, they still teach you helpful stuff in universities, but the negatives are greater.

I am one of the nerds, I always took the classes seriously and got good grades. It was thanks to my dedication that I actually learned was what taught, but someone who has a life outside the text books isn't going to learn much.

The schedules are badly planned, especially the morning shift (standard), it's done to benefit the schedules of the parents who also go to work and have to commute. I had to wake up at 6:00AM and do a 1-hour rush to arrive on time. After that, I came home at 12:00PM. Once I had lunch, and a little of relaxing, the time was 3:00PM, depending on the day I had to do homework, prepare for a test or both until 6:00PM.
At that point, the day was over for me, I was too tired to do anything more productive than playing video games or watching some form of entertainment.

The system only teaches you how to memorize, if you memorize the content, it's the easiest way to get good grades with little actual learning. It was made like that because factory jobs are based on memorizing repetitive steps to accomplish a task, and the system carried over from the industrial revolutions to modern times.
Another problem is that the content is not well selected. One common example is basic economics and taxes. I wonder why they don't teach how to cook good foods or idk even basic psychology.
 

One of the biggest problems is that teachers are almost globally badly paid for their job. They have to monitor groups of children for 5–8 hours a day, thought out how to teach the subject, prepare the homework and tests, be good at teaching the content and making the kids learn it.
If teachers had better lives, even on a bad system like ours, they would be capable of making kids learn great things.

I don't know if you are still on the school system, my best advice is to just treat it as a procedure. Get over it with the least amount of effort possible that gets you the highest grades possible, if you see something worth learning put some extra effort.
Keep in mind that if you want to attend a university, I heard that having good grades gives you better chances. Capitalism applied to learning.

 

I didn't have a great experience on secondary school, I had very few friends and the stress from school was enough to cause me some mouth sores when all the exams took place. It also made me unable to get more hobbies.
Thank god the pandemic happened, it allowed me to make all the assignments at my own pace, and it gave me time to learn the subjects better. Hell, I even managed to know the teachers better as they were more relaxed.
Having few friends played to my favor here, as the common case was it disrupting your life by making you locked in the inside of your home.

 

 

[Sci]

On 9/7/2023 at 6:04 PM, Sir I said:

What is School Survival, and what was the drama?

Nice website that contained articles about school alternatives, how to organize protests, etc, and had its own forums as well. A refuge, if you will.
Drama has too many details to remember and recall correctly, but one of the catalysts was me starting an SS Discord server, which most people approved of except for the site admin and some others. Then some of the mods banned a person doing actual bad stuff, but the admin demodded them and reinstated the troublemaker, as well as promote a weird yes-man to try upholding false order. War breaks out, lots of old members come back to rebel against the admin. My server was where most of the planning and some of the fighting was done. Eventually it got too chaotic and the admin shut down the forums for good. Site's practically a graveyard now.

[DexterWeinslept]

I think it could be better...but if you try to change anything of the system for BETTER, they will think that you're trying to destroy the entire education system or something like that. At least in my country, every time an "update" comes to the system, it makes it worse, because the new activities are, theoretically, for the benefit of community. But people don't know how to do this activities in their "correct form", so they skip essential parts of learning and they make students get so tired of school and they end up leaving...

[Space Banana]

I despise the education system in my country.

You are overworked for nothing, evaluated unfairly in a highly stressful competition for a mere chance of survival.

You have no time or energy left for yourself and you will have to work very hard for subjects and exams that are not even related to the course you want to apply to. You must have a high score for everything or you're fucking done, regardless of whether you actually like or need the subject or not. Yes, even physical education's score counts. You are nothing but a number to the system.

Your creativity and passion for learning is crushed by the imposition that you must memorize everything and repeat the exact same patterns to squeeze the highest score possible for a small chance of making it out well in the system. This is not learning or even close. The only thing you learn from this is to despise school and how to hold a fart for 8-10 consecutive hours.

You are imprisoned for a whole day, unable to rest, do as you wish or stand up without being punished.

In the end, you might be amazing at the area of your dreams, but you won't be able to join unless you sell your soul to everything that does not fucking matter or is not fucking fair. In comparison, in other countries (usually northern and nordic europe) you would easily enter the area of your dreams without effort regardless of your current skills for it.

Things however get slightly better here when you are already graduated from college and you want to apply for a higher level of education like a post graduation or a masters. In this case, the entry is curriculum-based instead and you can prove your skills with what truly matters in a mostly down-to-earth approach. Your entry score will now be able to be much higher with professional experience or, my favorite, your personal experience, projects, documents, scientific papers, etc.

Yeah sure, if you don't have professional experience and the degree is not in the course family of the masters/post graduation you want to apply to, your entry priority will be low. But the cool thing here is that masters degrees (depending on the university) are fragmented into multiple branches. The post-graduations are also specialized and you have a fair share of them (varies between universities too). This makes it so that there are just about enough slots for most people, so you don't have to worry much about the horrible entry competition that used to be before.

Since this country has (iirc) the 3rd oldest population in the world, there is a lot of old fashioned and boomer mentality, and even the young people probably won't understand or care about this problem. It's even worse if you have autism or a similar condition that makes you hyperfocus on your special interests, but be unable to focus on what does not matter or what you don't care about. The school system is not made for atypical neurological minds. In fact, they want us all to be exact same copies of each other, like a recycled NPC.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Space Banana

[Nyoko]

1 hour ago, Space Banana said:

I despise the education system in my country.

You are overworked for nothing, evaluated unfairly in a highly stressful competition for a mere chance of survival.

You have no time or energy left for yourself and you will have to work very hard for subjects and exams that are not even related to the course you want to apply to. You must have a high score for everything or you're fucking done, regardless of whether you actually like or need the subject or not. Yes, even physical education's score counts. You are nothing but a number to the system.

Your creativity and passion for learning is crushed by the imposition that you must memorize everything and repeat the exact same patterns to squeeze the highest score possible for a small chance of making it out well in the system. This is not learning or even close. The only thing you learn from this is to despise school and how to hold a fart for 8-10 consecutive hours.

You are imprisoned for a whole day, unable to rest, do as you wish or stand up without being punished.

In the end, you might be amazing at the area of your dreams, but you won't be able to join unless you sell your soul to everything that does not fucking matter or is not fucking fair. In comparison, in other countries (usually northern and nordic europe) you would easily enter the area of your dreams without effort regardless of your current skills for it.

Things however get slightly better here when you are already graduated from college and you want to apply for a higher level of education like a post graduation or a masters. In this case, the entry is curriculum-based instead and you can prove your skills with what truly matters in a mostly down-to-earth approach. Your entry score will now be able to be much higher with professional experience or, my favorite, your personal experience, projects, documents, scientific papers, etc.

Yeah sure, if you don't have professional experience and the degree is not in the course family of the masters/post graduation you want to apply to, your entry priority will be low. But the cool thing here is that masters degrees (depending on the university) are fragmented into multiple branches. The post-graduations are also specialized and you have a fair share of them (varies between universities too). This makes it so that there are just about enough slots for most people, so you don't have to worry much about the horrible entry competition that used to be before.

Since this country has (iirc) the 3rd oldest population in the world, there is a lot of old fashioned and boomer mentality, and even the young people probably won't understand or care about this problem. It's even worse if you have autism or a similar condition that makes you hyperfocus on your special interests, but be unable to focus on what does not matter or what you don't care about. The school system is not made for atypical neurological minds. In fact, they want us all to be exact same copies of each other, like a recycled NPC.

Jesus Christ what the hell did the Prussians invent this time?

Alright, as someone still in the education system in my country, I dislike it, but can live with it. As I have said somewhere else, people where I live will complain about their death if they could, but this is a genuine hatred of everything that has to do with the topic. Just for clarity's sake, I'm of Belgian origin.

While I don't know everything there is to know, I believe the current education system currently in widespread use started in Prussia because it needed soldiers. Then the Industrial Revolution made the Prussian system, with a few modifications for the creativity crushing side of the modern system, take over the old system. Thanks to bureaucracy, democracy and a child's mind, this system has endured to today.
Bureaucracy to slow down any beneficial decisions and drown it in paperwork.
Democracy because the Prussian model trains obedient soldiers, not critically thinking citizens.
And a child's mind, which is malleable to the greatest extent possible. I hope I don't need to explain why that may be a problem in trying to change the system.

My country is currently experiencing a teacher shortage, meaning that some parts of the country simply do not have enough teachers to teach the things that they're trying to teach teens. In practical terms, that means that the schools either have to let the students go, or enslave them to the agenda of the Prussian system. Here, people do care a little about what the children want. Not a lot, mind you, but with protesting France to inspire the southern side of the country, and having a revolution to found it, old-fashioned mentalities are not something that are too prevalent in this place.

In northern Europe, people mostly learn by playing games, and the amount of time forcing you to go to school is lowered to completely gone. That system encourages creativity, and is very effective in making people happy. Class management is also easier if everyone is engaged, so they appear to have cracked the code of the education system. I wouldn't say that your entry chances for the "area of your dreams" would require no effort. Thing is, most universities are either located in wealthy cities or the capital: no in-between. That means transport, and it's a typically European thing to tax half your regular income to exist. The houses the Universities offer cost an arm and a leg, too. With the aging population, that tax is set to either increase, or the pensions are set to decrease so the state doesn't go bankrupt. Due to Russian aggression, Europe should probably also start modernizing its equipment, which costs money, which will have to be taken from somewhere.

And then I haven't even started on the winter costs yet. We were freezing here in Belgium trying to drive down costs, I dare not imagine the pain that next winter will be.

[Pepi]

8 hours ago, Nyoko said:

My country is currently experiencing a teacher shortage, meaning that some parts of the country simply do not have enough teachers to teach the things that they're trying to teach teens. In practical terms, that means that the schools either have to let the students go, or enslave them to the agenda of the Prussian system. Here, people do care a little about what the children want. Not a lot, mind you, but with protesting France to inspire the southern side of the country, and having a revolution to found it, old-fashioned mentalities are not something that are too prevalent in this place.

I'm very worried about the slow collapse of the education system, not because I dislike the needed changes, but because it can place the education system in total crisis mode.
This might look inoffensive, but it's dangerous for the following reasons:
 

1) More control to the wrong people:

One of the root causes of the issues regarding education is due to the interests of people that use education as a mean to achieve their goals (like companies wanting obedient workers). If everyone who really cared about education quit the system, it will give those evil people direct control about the education system, and they can choke everyone to it.
For example, they can lock you out of jobs and social services if you don't have certifications in the official schools promoted by the state, essentially forcing parents and society to either comply or make some very big protests.

2) What about the Children?

Children are going to be left in a pretty rough spot. They are either going to face a myriad of problems, in the meantime the system needs to restructure itself. And that restructuring can take a while, maybe from 1-4 years?
It can range from a social questioning to the need of kids having to spend 15 years minimum of their lives to studying, to children being forced into temporary solutions with dire consequences (like the pandemic, but much, much worse).
The worse side effect is that those children will become adults at the helm of society one day. What will happen?

3) I'm a Robot Beep Boop

Are Parents and Teachers going to get replaced? It's already very common for kids to be overly dependent on computers, what's stopping Big Tech from releasing dirt cheap online courses of just high enough quality to surpass the Prussian system? You can also add up tailor made AIs on top, hell they could even make AI Teachers shaped like Skibidi Toilets.

 

We can be sure that something is changing in the Education System. Let's push for something useful.
Other problems that also weaken the Education System are the Demographic Crisis that are coming soon and the overall increasing global trends towards "Literally 1984 + Cyberpunk Dystopias".
Something else I noticed is that in Argentina (where I'm from) teachers have been forced to lower standards because most Children were failing at everything. It's backed by statistics.
The results from the tests made to evaluate the performance of the students gave very reduced numbers compared to past years (before the pandemic), yeah something's wrong here...

[Ken Hisuag]

I was homeschooled, but I believe I experienced something of the "education system" while in college. I'm a strong believer in parental responsibility in the raising of children, as described in the Bible; from this perspective, I interpret the modern approach to education to be wrongfully skewed, inasmuch as parents today seem to believe public education fulfills their obligation to be involved in their children's upbringing. Among other consequences, this results in a truly monumental burden of responsibility upon the system, which must make up the difference for the children of multiple households without the ability to provide adequate attention to each individual; hence the lowering of standards. As already noted, there is an additional conflict of interests from whoever runs the system to prioritize according to self-serving goals, which can range from producing ideal workers, training ideal soldiers, or (more commonly) vetting cultural trends of philosophy and religion. This is to say nothing of the social consequences, but I digress.

In theory, the corporate educational system should support parental upbringing by supplying what may otherwise be lacking therein, e.g. knowledge of the fundamentals (reading, writing, and arithmetic). There's also argument to be made for its place in advanced learning, e.g. universities of specialized education. But in modern practice, lower educational institutions have become increasingly ineffective, and higher educational institutions have become increasingly irrelevant; in both cases, I believe, due to shifting focus toward selfish goals.

[Pepi]

2 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

I was homeschooled, but I believe I experienced something of the "education system" while in college. I'm a strong believer in parental responsibility in the raising of children, as described in the Bible; from this perspective, I interpret the modern approach to education to be wrongfully skewed, inasmuch as parents today seem to believe public education fulfills their obligation to be involved in their children's upbringing. Among other consequences, this results in a truly monumental burden of responsibility upon the system, which must make up the difference for the children of multiple households without the ability to provide adequate attention to each individual; hence the lowering of standards. As already noted, there is an additional conflict of interests from whoever runs the system to prioritize according to self-serving goals, which can range from producing ideal workers, training ideal soldiers, or (more commonly) vetting cultural trends of philosophy and religion. This is to say nothing of the social consequences, but I digress.

In theory, the corporate educational system should support parental upbringing by supplying what may otherwise be lacking therein, e.g. knowledge of the fundamentals (reading, writing, and arithmetic). There's also argument to be made for its place in advanced learning, e.g. universities of specialized education. But in modern practice, lower educational institutions have become increasingly ineffective, and higher educational institutions have become increasingly irrelevant; in both cases, I believe, due to shifting focus toward selfish goals.

One big problem i see with the "parental responsibility to rise children" is that in today's world, it's not uncommon for both parents to be working, and the side effect is little time left to dedicate to children. And not every parent wants or can leave their children with their other family members.

On a worst case scenario, the children will not know their parents outside of weekends and dinner time (from 6PM to 10PM) and they will have to either leave their children alone or with not very trusted family members or the modern equivalent of maids.

This exacerbates the problem of increasing reliance on technology if the children lack entertainment outside of it. It can also decrease their grades if nobody teaches them how to study and do homework.
One solution could be to place the children on extracurricular activities and hire a teacher for the homework. But that leaves them with no free time, and that's very bad.
 

[The_Trader]

I believe we should ask the fundamental question: what are we training children for? Answering that should also give us the answer.

Basically, moderns society have this belief of progress: destroy old values, mental health, for the sake of bigger numbers for everyone, also some new TV watch etc(you know, consumerism). I mean, that is a never ending race. Not that it is a recent phenomena(ofc not, its human nature), but this was seem to become a religion of sorts lately(in my opinion). Efficiency at what costs? Driving people crazy? Smoking air full of carbon? Children spending barely any time with parents giving them problems etc? Being treated like machines by employers? I am pretty sure people like Jeff Bozos etc could live a infinite amount of times(in the human sense) and still live each life comfortably. But they still have to reinvest that capital to produce more capital an infinite amount of times.

Works must be done for sustenance and other fulfilling of wants only. It simply should not be treated as the primary goal of life. At least, that is what I believe.

 

Edited September 17, 2023 by Saathi

[Nyoko]

20 hours ago, Saathi said:

I believe we should ask the fundamental question: what are we training children for? Answering that should also give us the answer.

Basically, moderns society have this belief of progress: destroy old values, mental health, for the sake of bigger numbers for everyone, also some new TV watch etc(you know, consumerism). I mean, that is a never ending race. Not that it is a recent phenomena(ofc not, its human nature), but this was seem to become a religion of sorts lately(in my opinion). Efficiency at what costs? Driving people crazy? Smoking air full of carbon? Children spending barely any time with parents giving them problems etc? Being treated like machines by employers? I am pretty sure people like Jeff Bozos etc could live a infinite amount of times(in the human sense) and still live each life comfortably. But they still have to reinvest that capital to produce more capital an infinite amount of times.

Works must be done for sustenance and other fulfilling of wants only. It simply should not be treated as the primary goal of life. At least, that is what I believe.

 

That fundamental question can get warped back into the 'perfect soldier' idea that the Prussians used for its school system, They were training kids to become soldiers from essentially out of the womb which as I explained earlier led us into this modern hellscape. We should rather ask two questions for the lower and upper education.

For the lower education, we should focus on what our kids definitely need to survive in the world; stuff like language, math more so for problem-solving than math, economics could theoretically also apply.
For the higher education, we should look at what the children do best and what they want to do to prepare them for a job of some kind. The core principle being what job they should get for the money that is necessary to live.
These principles can also be applied to homeschooling, which should be a choice left to the parents, in my personal opinion.

For the belief of progress, I believe that your view is a little bit skewed. The ones who want to destroy mental health for the sake of bigger numbers are not the same people who want to destroy old values for bigger numbers. While those could be the same, they're often not. Consider Nikola Tesla's actions through a few different lenses, preferably on the opposite sides of a core principle to do with the action you're studying, and witness how the lens warps the truth.

I do agree that materialistic gain has become a religion in and of itself, which more often than not goes against the virtues of religions and is mostly linked to greed, gluttony and lust. It's hard to be a corporation that is generous, but it is easy to be one who might as well exist out of the seven deadly sins save sloth. As such, even though they don't put it in their branding for obvious reasons, the most successful companies are typically greedy. For an example, Disney has lobbied to extend the copyright law every time their recognizable mouse came into danger of passing into the open domain, with success. And I heard rumours that Nintendo has copyrighted entire gameplay mechanics recently. Guess what, that is pure greed.
Even better, were it not for the generosity of Warner Bros. The Happy Birthday song would be subject to copyright.

If the primary goal of life was to sell your soul to a corporation, then I'd gladly burn myself at the stake for being a heretic in the thirteenth century than do that. I don't believe any decently sane person would. Enjoying life is the purpose of it. For most people, at minimum.

[Macbeth]

Dude all I can say is that thank God I am no longer in highschool. Those were easily the worst 4 years of my life. I graduated years ago and sometimes I will stare at a wall and just think about much I hated that shit. Feels like it was a prison sentence I had to serve. Looking back the schoolwork was yeah whatever, what made it hell was having no friends.

 

College was infinitely better

Edited October 19, 2023 by Macbeth

[d34thkvm]

On 9/7/2023 at 10:55 PM, Sir I said:

In my opinion, it's the worst thing mankind has ever INVENTED ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. I mean, the insane amount of homeworks, fees, how the subject is taught, the starting time, etc.. It feels like it is just made so we can be slaves to the higher ups and to do that, they crushed our curiosity, morality, hopes and dreams, aspirations and actually being free. They don't want us to be free, they don't want us to think, they don't want to teach us real stuff; The only thing they want from us is just to be braindead and not even wanting to read a single book! I'll never forgive those evil higher ups 'till I die. Thank you for reading.
 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

But for real, why make things sooooo boring? I just don't want to deal with a subject I'm not interested in and instead follow a subject that I actually want to do and teach the students in the fun way.

 

me when i read stirner at 15 

[d34thkvm]

you'll get well some day 

[koakumas]

oh boy, don’t get me started into rating the entire thing plus calling out my school. (warning: uncensored swearing incoming)

 

let’s start with the homework, homework was originally invented to punish students but how the actual fuck did that end up to being everyday homework? are we being punished everyday? is there something i don’t know? and plus it is super rare for me to have no hw besides fridays. BUT WE STILL FUCKIN HAVE THE HW FOR WEEKENDS SOMETIMES. and no shit for the drills, why the fuck we line up when the building is being incinerated? how about just getting tf out of there? still, trampling and slowass people exist but still. no shit for lockdown drills, now we sit in the corner that looks like no one has been there. AND BECOME A JFK HUMAN EXP FARM. and why the fuck did the mention “oh what if animals like bears?” BITCH I DONT LIVE IN THE FOREST. now earthquakes are kinda good bc those desks are strong af, they cooking there. now, about my school, WHY ARE WE NOT ALLOWED IN THE HALLWAYS DURING LUNCH? WE HAVE CLUBS THERE, I HAVE TO BE AT MY FUCKING BAND CLASS DURING LUNCH. so what? I STARVE?! besides, WHY IS MOST OF OUR CLASSES HAVE AN ENTRANCE ON THE OUTSIDE? WHAT IF IT RAINS?! we just walk in the rain? what construction worker decide this? also, who the fuck had the audacity to burn down the school’s auditorium because “oh, i hate trombone, i wanna arson this shit” SO NOW WE HAVE NO PLACE FOR A CONCERT?! oh yeah, the school ain’t paying shit for the construction workers, they help pay for the band instruments, more money to print the school money, school things at the store there, anything BUT the workers

 

jesus fuck, i can go on but if you would be at my school, you would know…

but hopefully this answers the question, apologies for the swearing, i am this mad about my school

Edited January 25 by koakumas
needed to mention the poor construction workers

[Nyoko]

14 hours ago, koakumas said:

oh boy, don’t get me started into rating the entire thing plus calling out my school. (warning: uncensored swearing incoming)

 

let’s start with the homework, homework was originally invented to punish students but how the actual fuck did that end up to being everyday homework? are we being punished everyday? is there something i don’t know? and plus it is super rare for me to have no hw besides fridays. BUT WE STILL FUCKIN HAVE THE HW FOR WEEKENDS SOMETIMES. and no shit for the drills, why the fuck we line up when the building is being incinerated? how about just getting tf out of there? still, trampling and slowass people exist but still. no shit for lockdown drills, now we sit in the corner that looks like no one has been there. AND BECOME A JFK HUMAN EXP FARM. and why the fuck did the mention “oh what if animals like bears?” BITCH I DONT LIVE IN THE FOREST. now earthquakes are kinda good bc those desks are strong af, they cooking there. now, about my school, WHY ARE WE NOT ALLOWED IN THE HALLWAYS DURING LUNCH? WE HAVE CLUBS THERE, I HAVE TO BE AT MY FUCKING BAND CLASS DURING LUNCH. so what? I STARVE?! besides, WHY IS MOST OF OUR CLASSES HAVE AN ENTRANCE ON THE OUTSIDE? WHAT IF IT RAINS?! we just walk in the rain? what construction worker decide this? also, who the fuck had the audacity to burn down the school’s auditorium because “oh, i hate trombone, i wanna arson this shit” SO NOW WE HAVE NO PLACE FOR A CONCERT?! oh yeah, the school ain’t paying shit for the construction workers, they help pay for the band instruments, more money to print the school money, school things at the store there, anything BUT the workers

 

jesus fuck, i can go on but if you would be at my school, you would know…

but hopefully this answers the question, apologies for the swearing, i am this mad about my school

Well, someone's more than frustrated, but you should really consider not running during a fire as most deaths occur because of trampling. Use your human empathy to imagine yourself in the position of someone being trampled, you'd curse the existence of everyone who trampled you.

Lockdown drills sound like they're the American dystopia version where the schools are actively getting built into csgo maps (someone even got arrested for making their school a csgo map) so I, an European who does not have a gun nor a military base near me, cannot help you with it.

The hallway thing is probably to restrict any potential shooters movement during the period, as that is the time when the most amount of lives can be robbed. The only other option than giving up band class, which both you and I know you're not going to give up, ever, is bringing a lunchbox of any kind to the band class... unless that's also disallowed.

You bring an umbrella, a hood or a hat. If all of those items are banned then I would gladly drag the person who made those rules to their rightful place: as a student in their own school. From a design standpoint, the entrances on the outside exist to give people fresh air before ventilation was a concept and currently can be used to escape a building quickly.

At least that school is doing better than Belgium in terms of finances, but they should definitely pay the construction workers more or they're going to create a building that might as well be as infamous as Belgian roads. If a road does not have potholes, then they're working on the road or it is your lucky day where the road is not broken.

Please go on, vent all of your frustration with the school out so we can have a collected conversation about your school, maybe even find a way to solve a couple of those problems.
And swearing is a perfectly natural thing to do when you are that mad about your school's honestly extreme policies, don't apologize. In fact, here's a Flemish swearword that has been seared into my brain, so you can broaden your knowledge of swearwords:
Godver-miljarde-vlammende-miljarde-domme-dju
Which roughly translates to:
Goddamn-million-flaming-million-it-goddamnit.

 

Now for something completely different:

On 9/13/2023 at 4:00 AM, Pepi said:

I'm very worried about the slow collapse of the education system, not because I dislike the needed changes, but because it can place the education system in total crisis mode.
This might look inoffensive, but it's dangerous for the following reasons:
 

1) More control to the wrong people:

One of the root causes of the issues regarding education is due to the interests of people that use education as a mean to achieve their goals (like companies wanting obedient workers). If everyone who really cared about education quit the system, it will give those evil people direct control about the education system, and they can choke everyone to it.
For example, they can lock you out of jobs and social services if you don't have certifications in the official schools promoted by the state, essentially forcing parents and society to either comply or make some very big protests.

2) What about the Children?

Children are going to be left in a pretty rough spot. They are either going to face a myriad of problems, in the meantime the system needs to restructure itself. And that restructuring can take a while, maybe from 1-4 years?
It can range from a social questioning to the need of kids having to spend 15 years minimum of their lives to studying, to children being forced into temporary solutions with dire consequences (like the pandemic, but much, much worse).
The worse side effect is that those children will become adults at the helm of society one day. What will happen?

3) I'm a Robot Beep Boop

Are Parents and Teachers going to get replaced? It's already very common for kids to be overly dependent on computers, what's stopping Big Tech from releasing dirt cheap online courses of just high enough quality to surpass the Prussian system? You can also add up tailor made AIs on top, hell they could even make AI Teachers shaped like Skibidi Toilets.

 

We can be sure that something is changing in the Education System. Let's push for something useful.
Other problems that also weaken the Education System are the Demographic Crisis that are coming soon and the overall increasing global trends towards "Literally 1984 + Cyberpunk Dystopias".
Something else I noticed is that in Argentina (where I'm from) teachers have been forced to lower standards because most Children were failing at everything. It's backed by statistics.
The results from the tests made to evaluate the performance of the students gave very reduced numbers compared to past years (before the pandemic), yeah something's wrong here...

From when this was originally posted, the world wasn't burning with the flames of war and radicalism too much, which is why I glossed over it. With recent developments, however, I believe both my and the next generation in the line will have to be politically active due to the absolute turmoil the world is becoming. So let us go through these three topics through the lens of politics both domestic and foreign.

1) More control to the rich wrong people

An expression of worry that we can eventually go back to Victorian era living standards, which basically everyone, if not everyone in this bubble agrees is the worst outcome. The current system makes people express themselves even in the harsh conditions that Koakumas has illustrated wonderfully. Thus, the children would push against that system, which will either lead to what is called a social conflict or a full revolution. Should they remain in power, may I present to you that no hegemony has ever lasted. We would get a second chance in the far future, hopefully we won't squander it then.

2) What about the Children?

The problems of the school system are already beginning to affect the children, the pandemic only really speeding up the process. A child's psychology is designed for learning basic life skills and curiosity with a bit of creativity mixed in there, not discipline, obedience and punishment. This has in turn caused pessimism to spread across the world like wildfire which has now started to boil into radicalism, polarization and war. A child who is only punished will eventually believe that punishment is love, leading to narcissism, arrogance and wrath. We need some sort of easy access to cheap study materials so the children can do self-study while people are fixing the education system or switching to the objectively superior Northern European system. The children may help or hinder the progress of change, as is the nature of change.
If they hinder the change, then more problems are going to start exploding before people eventually decide to change either the education system or other fundamental systems that keeps the wheel of stagnation turning. (what a sentence.) That means that more shootings are going to happen, more wars are going to break out and polarization is going to get worse.
If they endorse the change, there are still going to be problems, but the wheel of progress would start turning again as the status quo is threatened and people can stop being nihilistic about the future. Amongst the problems are the wars already happening, even more bureaucracy and people against change either because they directly profit from it or are too nihilistic to think change will change anything, among other things.

3) Technological Domination

Society has become increasingly dependent on computers, mostly because it means the rich get richer. While I will admit I am dependent on computers, it is presumptuous to assume everyone suddenly lost the ability to think critically about what they consume. That is a product of the Prussian system doing it's job, as much as people despise it. Technological domination, as I put it, would result in a technocracy where the word of a machine means more than human thought. That is not to say that technology can help alleviate the education crisis with some easy-to-access, informative self-study sites, which would help alleviate the burden of teachers and be a first step away from the Prussian system. Despite Pepi's fear that AI teachers are going to exist, which will eventually happen, I'll admit, I don't think that is for the near future of my and the next generation.

4) Dystopia

You know, dystopias are a product of utopias; that is to say, no dystopia can exist without an utopia. One could even argue that one man's utopia is another man's dystopia, which is exactly what I am going to argue here. Think about who the ruling class is of the current pax (pax Americana, pretentious for hegemony of America despite literally translating to American peace) and how well off they are. Then think about whose bodies that prosperity was founded upon... What I have proposed here is a change to at the bare minimum challenge the utopia the ruling class have created for themselves and hope for an outcome in favour of the common folk.