Self Taught or School Taught?

Post Reply New Topic

Self taught in most things from grades 1-12, and a mixture of both at the university level. The public schools I went to were the ones in poor neighborhoods. You know, the ones that always get neglected by the system because they never have the money and "those type of kids don't want to learn, anyway".

The schools were run down, un-airconditioned (in 90+ degree weather) and the equipment in my junior high school's science lab was so old it was unusable. Kids there were more likely to end up in prison or pregnant at 15 than with a university degree. I truly believe if it wasn't for me having AS and being curious about everything, I would've ended up a statistic.

I'll be honest. I hated school with every bone in my body. The emotional torture of bullies and failed relationships, not to mention the pressure of doing assignments on time, was just too much to bear. So I dropped out.

It's okay though, because I couldn't have made a decent wage in the career path I wanted. Besides, my family has promised to take good care of me. Society at large might think of someone like me as a failure, but my family doesn't, and their opinions are the only ones that matter.

I don't like going to college.

My mom says I learnt to read by myself. Maybe being self taught would be great for me.

It was very similar for me, although I was thankfully not in that bad a school

I didn't like my elementary and later secondary school too much. I hated spending time with kids who, let's be sincere, in many cases were simply stupid. Literally. I will never forget a girl who asked by our biology teacher didn't know the answer for a question whether a human being is a mammal or not When somebody maliciously told her a bad answer she repeated it with conviction that's true Another "wise differently" young lady was unable to show the nouns and verbs in a sentence. Elementary school is truly fascinating - clever and stupid kids mixed in one class I was always perceived to be a veritable square peg in a round hole by those who were in one class with me. I regret that there's no homeschooling in my country - only those pupils who suffer from any mental or physical disabilities have a chance to know a blessing of homeschooling. Healthy kids who can be taught at home are extremely rare exceptions here. If you're an average child or teenager with quite average intellectual possibilities, school will provide you with everything what you need but if nobody can tell that you're just run of the mill you must look for knowledge and develop your hobbies on your own. Just do I. I learn English in a teacher training college (I'm not going to be a teacher, of course; I only want to know a language better) and it was here where I really liked history. Now I'm going to extend my knowledge concerning this fascinating issue. When I went to secondary school my history teacher's main hobby was making us bored to death I'm also going to start to learn Latin during this summer.There are also some things I'm interested in, for example esotericism which are not taught in schools. In fact school gave me only basics; most things that I know are learned by me on my own, without any help of school.

Your education starts when your years in school end

I think my foundation for learning was at home. I learned to love reading early in life. Consequently, I still love to read about a variety of subjects. I think any truly educated person is largely self-directed, which contributes to success in school and to enjoyment of learning. Roger Bannister mentioned that, growing up, he liked the academic aspect of school, but the social aspect was hard for him. He loved to read and find out about things, which led to a successful career in medicine.

Ah, I'm auto-didact and proud! I sometimes skip class to sit in the library. Though, I do not know wether I will ever substantially benefit from my book-smarts, I right enjoy them.

I can always be found sitting on the floor between the shelves for psychology/philosophy/religion and literature-history/linguistics. School-education tends to bore me, english in particular (english as a foreign language), though some other subjects of which I don't read much by myself can be quite interesting.

You're right there! That has always been MY contention! Even NT people never seem to learn much. If they placed based on ability, and provided the ability for self instruction, they could achieve their goals, and EVERYONE could be smarter. I came up with that idea in the 1st or 2nd grade, and have said it EVER SINCE! Nobody ever listens.

As for humans? Haven't you heard? Humans aren't even animals! I'm curious though, what did SHE say humans were?

Steve

Nothing i learnt in school was worth knowing.

I spent 12 years in jail, I mean school and learned very little. many people actually think they are gaining valuable knowledge and the people passing it out truly believe they are doing good.

I have yet to find a reason that I would need to know that columbus had 3 ships and the names of them. The little tale of columus discovering the country is something that could be covered in a few paragraphs without meaningless details like the names of the ships.

now multiply this nonsense times 12 years and that is what the school system is about. Only people off their damn rockers would use public funds to teach every child how to disect a frog. I just don't have a freaken clue why the overwhelming majority of the population would need to ever waste their time cutting up frogs. A couple of days on the human anotomy might spark somebodies interest in entering the medical profession, but to drag it out in detail for every kid is as pointless as making every kid learn to change their own oil when most ain't never going to do such a thing. The school system would never require every kid to take shop classes because those classes don't create more jobs for academic type people. They only have shop classes to keep the kids who aren't too good in academic work in school longer which grows the teachers power base.

The whole system is a big scam, my town spend around $3,000 per grammer school student on teachers wages, yet has a school budget for all of K true 12 of over $12,000 per student,plus the state covers the teachers pensions along with passing out money to build new schools. the real cost per student is probably around $15,000. How many children in the country ? There is millions of people feeding off the school spending and the average idiot adult who saw for themselves what goes on in schools don't get what a total waste of time and money it is for the amount of knowledge gained for all the hours & money involved.

I saw someplace my state require 1000 hours of classroom instruction a year, that averages out to 20 hours a week and out of those hours how many are spent on BS ? Anyone could do better on their own investing 20 hours a week teaching themselves plus eliminate the travel time and all the other nonsense time involved with school.

Somebody posted something about nouns & verbs, does knowing something like that give somebody a feeling of superiority over people who don't know that minor thing, yet know many other things ?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the blueprint for public education. teach everyone to read & write and do basic math and select the best and brightest with the most potential to send to a high school. It was never supposed to be everyone goes to high school when many people don't have the capability of doing anything more than blue collar jobs. Than out of the people who make it to high school, once again weed out the lower achievers and send the best and brightest to college and the ones who didn't make it into college would be office clerk type people.

The school system became a total joke when people learned there was money to be made in education, from the people supplying the frogs, to the people earning money as teachers. the teachers unions grew real powerful when the 1965 equal rights law was passed and employers used a new means to discriminate against minorities by requiring a high school deploma which many minorities didn't have back than. Now they have up'ed the anti to get a decent job by requiring college degree's and no police record to continue the job discrimnation. I call it the paper ceiling where people can no longer advance at their jobs, because if some smart white guy was promoted, they would also have to offer promotions to smart minorities, they get around it by now requiring people to be able to afford to buy a better job work permit so they can continue to discriminate against minorities as much as possable.

wh***y can't keep them all out of the office, but have done a damn good job of it and reserved the better jobs for their own stupid kids.

The teachers union is now nothing more than a giant blackmail organization pretending to give people something for their money. What people are buying is a better job work permit if they can afford it. Pretty much people have to bribe the government to get a better job work permit and go through years of BS nonsense to get the work permit.

My nephew just graduated college, he went to private schools from the 7th grade on and than a expensive college. My sister asked him how much his schooling was helping him with the computer job he landed, he told her he could do the job even if he never went to college because he learned about computers at home.

If my sister had taken all the money she spent on schools over the last 10 years and invested it, along with my nephew dropping out of school and getting a job at 16 and investing part of his earnings, they would be rich. Instead they are deep in debt.


don't even get me going on this subject, I went through years of BS after graduating high school because i didn't know nothing, all because of the worthless anal system and the moron teachers. Just a bunch of arrogent bastards who have the average moron brainwashed they are doing them a big favor by screwing them out of their money and giving them next to nothing fot it. Stupid teachers are so brainwashed they actually think they are Gods gift to society.

COME ON! Some people in shop are a LOT smarter than some of the math teachers, and shop has about as muc reason as the type of biology you speak of.

Still, I agree with the bulk of what you say. And the bit on the frogs? The COST, senseless destruction, and exposure to things like formaldihyde is STUPID! And with NO real benefit!



Well, continuing education IS a bit harder if you can't remember the ABSURDLY SIMPLE idea of a verb being an action, and a noun being a person, place, or thing! Then again, WHY have us study the same inane thing OVER AND OVER AND OVER again? If we get it, we get it! ******NEXT******! !! !! !!



I STILL like MY idea better of placing based on ability, and self paced instruction.



Let me guess, YOU'RE not white!? If ONLY you knew! Then again, I have to agree with some of what you said.



MAN are you right there. As for the "afford it" you keep talking about? How much does it cost today? There are now federal loans, scholarships, savings programs, and loans ON TOP of that! Just the final loans, ALONE are up to over $40,000 a YEAR! Can ANYONE afford that? BTW it is ILLEGAL for there to be one for WHITES! So whites have to either be RICH, or get the dregs! Most whites DO earn less than $40,000!



The sad thing is most colleges know LITTLE about computers. Just take a look at some of the classes! Learning about them YOURSELF as a SINCERE INTEREST is the best way



My point EXACTLY!




I actually had one "teacher" in college that claimed she knew, and taught what 4-5 other classes taught. She made it look like she was in mensa(due to arrogance, vague references, and mensa publications). I hope not! She was the DUMBEST "teacher" I ever personally knew. She couldn't even teach her OWN class right, and clearly knew nothing about the areas she claimed to know so much about.

Steve

white guy

sure some people who take shop classes are smart, but it's pointless having everyone take classes they have no interest in. The shop kid cutting up a frog is pointless, just the same as it would be pointless to send a girl that would never ever in her life even think of changing her own oil to shop class to do such a thing.

My nephew was forced to take anthropology in college,nothing more than a rippoff to create a job for somebody who studied something pretty worthless in the market place and in effect my nephew and sister funded the teachers hobby by the college system requiring my nephew to take the class so the teacher can go spend summers digging in the dirt someplace.

Put Muffy down the auto shop which she has no interest in yet is a rather bright girl and than call her stupid because she could care less about getting what they are teaching. She would be bored by the subject and wouldn't pay much attention to it, just enough to humor the teacher and get by with a passing grade to get it over with, that is the samething some people do with english class.

Look at the way people drive,most of the people driving like idiots aren't stupid, they just don't apply themselves to getting all the details and think it's good enough to make it from one place to the next without crashing into something.

I couldn't have told you what I noun or verb was, yet you managed to read my post. I can write good enough to get by, same as the average person can drive good enough to get by even if they don't know a lot of the rules or the road,like I don't know a lot of the rules of writing. Just don't care same as some doctor or lawyer don't care about all the rules of the road,just know enough to get by. They are the worst drivers on the road according to insurance company studies.

There are dumb people that can't be taught much or fugure much out.
There are people who can be taught and are like a computer,if they aren't programmed to answer a question or solve a problem, forget it.
There are people with excellent memories who can excel academically and have no common sense.
There are people with rotten memories who have common sense and problem solving skills.

very few have it all and very few have none of it,yet we have a school system run by academic types who haven't a clue what to do with kids who don't fit into the college bound mold because they aren't academic types like the teachers. They actually make kids with excellant problem solving skills and great common sense into nothings if they aren't able to excel academically do to something like a bad memory or no interest in the lame subject matter being dished out.

Many people aren't too good with math and manage to get college degree's and than believe they are smarter than the average person, yet are financial morons. The dumbest ones run for public office

With what is available now to people, the school system should be done away with so the kids aren't comparing themselves to the other kids and thinking they are dumb if they don't keep up right from the start, many quickly give up trying and are really just late starters.

Just imagine if everyone home schooled their children what could be done with all the money spent on k thru 12 schools the money could do wonders along with freeing up all that labor which could be put to better use and if the older teenagers without the academic skills weren't vegitating in some dumbed down high school curriculum they could also be working.

If you are saying you ARE white(aka caucasian), you could have fooled me with your rhetoric making all whites sound like RICH, RACIST, and POWERFUL!



You missed my point! I actually AGREE with you there! Besides, a little knowledge in the wronge hands CAN be a dangerous thing! 8-(



YEAH! And they have those stupid discovery programs illustrating dreams and nightmares of someones idea about how things MIGHT have happened BILLIONS of years ago as if they filmed it LIVE! ********STUPID*******! AGAIN, WE AGREE!





But decent grammer and language is entirely different. It should be COMMON knowledge! Maybe we could publicize say 20,000 words, in order of use. School could DEMAND everyone know 5,000, and provide the ability to learn all 20,000 in a formal situation. That would set the floor lower than it is now, and the ceiling is probably higher, and it would be easier to learn the 20,000 in order, etc...



Many don't crash ONLY because of liability, others avoiding them, or dumb luck!



It figures. Still, the lack of such basic knowledge is unreal and senseless. We ARE talking about something taking SECONDS to learn!



If they placed people right, and provided self directed instruction, everyone could do their best in their own way.



Well, I am not that great with math, but FAR from a moron, and even far from simply a financial moron. I would certainly have been a LOT better at math if I took it when I wanted, as opposed to taking english so much. I wasn't crazy about history either. HECK, they are rewriting some history, etc...



If they DID place according to knowledge, and provide self paced instruction, most of those concerns would not be needed.



Tell me about it! One of my stories.(TRUE STORIES by the way!! !! !) Is about a huge(perhaps 30+) people I saw flying every week. I happened to be at the airport on the same flight THEY were on! They seemed LOW CLASS!! !! BLUE COLLAR!! !! ! And yet these guys flew from LAX to San Jose EVERY WEEK!?!?!?!?!? MAN was I curious! Yet I stopped asking strangers about such things LONG ago! I tried to figure out what was going on! I listened carefully! They spoke of "Their kids"! HUH????? THEIR Kids? I thought TEACHERS? NAW, TOO blue collar, etc.... After a couple weeks of this, I just HAD to know! I ASKED! Can you guess what they were?????? COME ON, GUESS!! !! !!




GIVE UP????



OK, I'll tell you!



They were.......



*******BUS DRIVERS!! !!*******

OK, that sounds STUPID, RIGHT? And SENSELESS! I mean COME ON? WHY were they going to all that trouble?

Because they made MORE in San Jose than in LA! OK, that STILL sounds stupid, but get ready for MORE stupidity! Their plane tickets were PAID FOR! And their HOTEL was PAID FOR! SO, in addition to the salary, they probably paid about $450 or more EXTRA each week! This means that, if they paid what a local starbucks paid for a coffee server, and the bus drivers worked 40 hours a week, then they paid $1,250 a WEEK PER BUS DRIVER! For a 52 week year, that is $65,000/year PER DRIVER!

BTW They said this was because there weren't enough drivers in San Jose.

Steve

If you are saying you ARE white(aka caucasian), you could have fooled me with your rhetoric making all whites sound like RICH, RACIST, and POWERFUL!



You missed my point! I actually AGREE with you there! Besides, a little knowledge in the wronge hands CAN be a dangerous thing! 8-(



YEAH! And they have those stupid discovery programs illustrating dreams and nightmares of someones idea about how things MIGHT have happened BILLIONS of years ago as if they filmed it LIVE! ********STUPID*******! AGAIN, WE AGREE!





But decent grammer and language is entirely different. It should be COMMON knowledge! Maybe we could publicize say 20,000 words, in order of use. School could DEMAND everyone know 5,000, and provide the ability to learn all 20,000 in a formal situation. That would set the floor lower than it is now, and the ceiling is probably higher, and it would be easier to learn the 20,000 in order, etc...



Many don't crash ONLY because of liability, others avoiding them, or dumb luck!



It figures. Still, the lack of such basic knowledge is unreal and senseless. We ARE talking about something taking SECONDS to learn!



If they placed people right, and provided self directed instruction, everyone could do their best in their own way.



Well, I am not that great with math, but FAR from a moron, and even far from simply a financial moron. I would certainly have been a LOT better at math if I took it when I wanted, as opposed to taking english so much. I wasn't crazy about history either. HECK, they are rewriting some history, etc...



If they DID place according to knowledge, and provide self paced instruction, most of those concerns would not be needed.



Tell me about it! One of my stories.(TRUE STORIES by the way!! !! !) Is about a huge(perhaps 30+) people I saw flying every week. I happened to be at the airport on the same flight THEY were on! They seemed LOW CLASS!! !! BLUE COLLAR!! !! ! And yet these guys flew from LAX to San Jose EVERY WEEK!?!?!?!?!? MAN was I curious! Yet I stopped asking strangers about such things LONG ago! I tried to figure out what was going on! I listened carefully! They spoke of "Their kids"! HUH????? THEIR Kids? I thought TEACHERS? NAW, TOO blue collar, etc.... After a couple weeks of this, I just HAD to know! I ASKED! Can you guess what they were?????? COME ON, GUESS!! !! !!




GIVE UP????



OK, I'll tell you!



They were.......



*******BUS DRIVERS!! !!*******

OK, that sounds STUPID, RIGHT? And SENSELESS! I mean COME ON? WHY were they going to all that trouble?

Because they made MORE in San Jose than in LA! OK, that STILL sounds stupid, but get ready for MORE stupidity! Their plane tickets were PAID FOR! And their HOTEL was PAID FOR! SO, in addition to the salary, they probably paid about $450 or more EXTRA each week! This means that, if they paid what a local starbucks paid for a coffee server, and the bus drivers worked 40 hours a week, then they paid $1,250 a WEEK PER BUS DRIVER! For a 52 week year, that is $65,000/year PER DRIVER!

BTW They said this was because there weren't enough drivers in San Jose.

Steve

I've always had problems learning by myself.

I'm not sure if it is lack of motivation or procrastination. I simply listened to teachers / lecturers and didn't spend too much time on self study - not even revising for exams. Books are just too hard for me to follow - I have to concentrate too hard for too long to read textbooks. I feel like a total fraud for gaining a bachelors and masters degree. I really don't know how I got here. I always paid for the course material and the books lie unused on my shelf. I think I have some problem with my long term memory - I cannot remember hardly any childhood experiences and forget things I've learnt after a few weeks.