why do we need school?

Just do the work and try not to fall asleep. 5 years ago I was complaining about having to learn physics and chemistry in high school because I thought I would never need to use that crap again. Instead I got to college and realized that Geology really interested me and now I am wishing I had stayed awake in my highschool chemistry classes.

Basically what I am saying is dont sell yourself short. Learn everything you can while you still can because you never know what you might want to do five years later

Let me put it this way:

Who here has the job they thought they would have when they were 15? Quick count of hands plz... thought as much.

Besides that: complaining about math and language and wanting to be a programmer seems slightly contradictory to me...

yes but i know what i want and its getting to the point where i see school as a barrier rather then a boost.

The current school system attempts to give students a well-rounded education. It doesn't succeed for various reasons, and yes it could be tweaked, but the intent is sound. You should have a basic grasp of several subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, biology, english (literature and language), philosophy, history, and sociology. Notice my list has more requirements than your curriculum.

If you think curriculums should be specialized to what the individual wants to do, here are some points to consider:
-knowledge and intelligence are different things. Knowledge can be gained through memorization, intelligence is cognitive and intuitive ability that transcends individual subjects
-there are people literally starving where I'm from because all they've done for the past 50 years is work at a furniture factory. The factories have moved and they don't know anything else.
-the age of enlightenment was primarily spurred on by access to education, institutional or self-taught, and without the age of enlightenment, we'd still be under a feudal system.

I'm a computer science student and can tell you from experience that you will use material from subjects while programming that you never would have dreamed would be useful. Programming is problem solving, and that requires and all around intelligence, not specialized knowledge.

I did the "right" thing and completed high school and an engineering degree.
Electrical Engineering , micro chip design. All chips have internal firmware, and instructions sets which is how they interface with the real world and compiled languages.

If you're in high school, I've written code for as long as you've been alive actually.

The bottom line is that when someone pays you to program you're solving real world problems. One of the biggest challenges I found in working with kids who were good programmers but lacked a real education is that when it came to thinking outside of the world of their paradigm of object oriented programming and solving real world problems they would often times bonk because of their lack of math/science and problem solving skills.

I used to say the same thing but in the future when you're trying to calculate how large to make an array to store data streaming in at a certain bit rate that won't overflow when the data exceeds your expectations or even common stuff like how much flooring you'll need for that house you're trying to fix up for your future wife to make livable, you'll feel better about all of this useless crap for you'll be able to figure this out on your own which is a sense of accomplishment as well as you won't look like a complete dumb a$$.

reply to post by avingard


exactly it doesnt succed. it should be replaced with a more specialized system that doesnt leave anyone behind or force them to learn something they don't need.

reply to post by N. Tesla


The problem with that line of thinking is that people get out and are not very well educated in one area or another. If you take abunch of English classes and no math/science classes, it's to your detriment. As someone else said, America's current public school system is in the tank, but the concept of what you learn is sound. Simply put, if we keep putting out 3rd world minds (ie 1/3rd of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, 1/2 want creationism taught in schools) we'll soon have a 3rd world economy to go with it.

You need a broad education as a foundation for future studies. You only get to learn what you really want when you've gone through everything everyone else has. When graduate school comes, and you really get to decide what you want to learn, it won't be that easy. Trust me, you need to master these so-called "redundant skills" immediately, so that you have any chance of succeeding at higher levels of learning.

A broad education is immensely important in this day and age. You can expect your career to take at least five complete turns in your life time. You need to be able to adapt. Businesses don't flourish by picking a specialty and focusing on that one thing for the entirety of their existence, unless they genuinely want to fail. You need the capability to adapt at any time in your life. A strong knowledge of math, language and history is paramount to this ability to change when you need it most.

Personally, I'm convinced the most successful people in life are those that pursue learning with enthusiasm and the full utilization of all their mental faculties, regardless of the content. If you think any type of learning is irrelevant, then you just won't get where you want to be, ever.

I'll second what Nh_ee's said.

Originally posted by nh_ee
The bottom line is that when someone pays you to program you're solving real world problems. One of the biggest challenges I found in working with kids who were good programmers but lacked a real education is that when it came to thinking outside of the world of their paradigm of object oriented programming and solving real world problems they would often times bonk because of their lack of math/science and problem solving skills.

I retired from programming after 25 years. Basically I was the computer geek, so it was networking back in the day when networks were new, modems (back when the pc was new), all sorts of whacky hardware and software and even blowing code into chips and bit-hacking on the registers in binary code). I've met plenty of "I got out of high school and now I'm programming" folks and frankly, they're okay for some business applications but they don't have the background to do the really interesting stuff.

I've also seen them in class in college, and their ability to create a fairly sophisticated picture of ANY situation is usually very limited.

You might not love geometry (I didn't) but you need to understand the language when you're working with architects. People you work with may be older (and knowing your own country's history is important.) English is vital... if you can't write a clear and concise report or email, your chances of doing anything other than being a low-status code monkey are slim.

Yes, you can get a GED and try for college. But before you do that, start looking at the want ads and see what kind of employee your dream job is hiring. Then start thinking about what you need to do to match that job requirement.

You can choose other paths. The very lucky few succeed. But be aware that most people who take those paths end up failing very badly, so you will need to do a lot of work to make it turn out as you wish.

reply to post by N. Tesla


school is to prepair your mind. They are not there so you can better youself it's to better our society.

I also do think school is unessary same with college. I want to learn stuff that Is about my subject but not some random crap.

schools, and college are nothing but a game. It's about getting high scores.

your GPA is your game points.

Also good luck with being a computer programmer the market is filled with them and most of them can't find work. I am a programmer myself.

I am in college by the way. I get good grades. Just some times I do get mark down for stupid reasons.

and I did failed one class which was federal tax... we had to use tax act demo and submit the return as a final exam grade.

I had a C in the class but when we got to the final exam I tried the demo versions fillled out the return which was right then I went to saving the file. Which a window poped up and said sorry but you need to buy the full version in order to save it.

I quickly e-mailed my professor about it and he said well you must of got quick books instead you need the tax act demo. I told him I do.
Then he said the 2007 editiion and I said yes.

well time ran out and he gave me a 0 on the exam and I failed the class ince the final exam was worth alot of points. So I still got to retake it.

I saw is rating on www.ratemyprofessors.com... which he got very negative ratings. One perosn said he was very rude when beind asked a question.

He never did help anyone. I even asked questions and he told me to look at pages # etc and I go I did. Then I fought around for an hour and another stuff then comes on asking the professor the same question. Then after 3 days me and that studnet found out that the hw problem had some error in the tax calculations and we showed him it and he goes oh I see I will tell the class.

So I am saying I hate school and it's because they don't teach. It's all nothing but a game. You got to get good grades.

I am going for accounting as my major and we had to take a itcs class meanign computer science information technology class. I was the only one that got an A and I was pissed.

I felt I wasted my time. I already knew progarmming and hardware engineering.

so that class went over binary, and how to use ms access and word and excel.

They then told us what a cpu and a gpu is and all about computer hardware whcih I knew. I asked him if there is anyway I can test out of this class and he said no.

The teacher never lectured or anything we showed up in a computer lab and read the book and done the hw.

I was done 2 weeks before the class ended meanign the end of the semester.

The teacher smiled and told me I don't need to come and showed me my final grade which was an A.

He told me that he wishes that most of his students was like me. and I smiled and didn't say anything.

So I am saying it's not because of bad grades.. he is saying he feels that there is no point to go to school.

The schools are in charge of the game. They make the rules they have the refs and your the player.

it's all about the grades. I know alot of people who cheat in class since middle school and still currently in college they still do it without getting caught.

well they got caught 2 times but they were friendly enough with the teacher which the teacher told him you know I am supposed to tell the dean about this and you would be kicked out of college and so he said that next time he will do such a thing if he finds out that you done it again.

Which the same teacher does caught the same kid again and lets him off with another warning.

This kid I know from middle school to high school and now to college. He still pulls it off.

He has a gpa of 3.4 and has high grades. I ask him questions about physics since he already took a physics class in high shcool and I asked him about ohms law. He didn't know what it was. Yet I had friends that were in that physics class that told me they were taught it and showed me the text book which shows they were not lieing.


So I just see school and college as a game. You need get better grade no matter what.

I seen alot of cheaters still cheat and get away with it and then I see them get high honros and also a discount on car insurance even thought I know couple times they were pulled over for drunk driving.

So schoo is nothing but a game.

I suggest you buy books from phd people that love to teach that is how I learned programming and also hardware engineering.

I bought alot of books and currently just baught a book on advance todays graphics programming. Meaning making your own graphics proccessor in code.



[edit on 1-12-2008 by computerwiz32]

[edit on 1-12-2008 by computerwiz32]

That's right Byrd.
And that's what I'm saying to the kid is that programming is all about solving real world problems. Not just writing code.

I actually worked with these guys out of college as a systems programmer ...

From Wikipedia: Windows NT

Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS and RSX-11. The operating system was designed to run on multiple instruction set architectures and multiple hardware platforms within each architecture. The platform dependencies are largely hidden from the rest of the system by a kernel mode module called the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer).

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


is he really complaining about math???


if he wants to be a programmer... then well he better be good at math.

programming is nothing but writing code in a logical way using math.

if you go to the guts of programming it's nothing but logic gates... made by transistors.

well good luck with programming. I hear in todays job market. I hear that programmers don't get any respect at the job because your easily replaceable.

the point of public school has become essentially day care. its a place where parents drop their kids off when they go to work.

reply to post by N. Tesla



Apparently you don't agree because we're saying the exact opposite...


There is no such thing as something you 'don't need' to learn. You might not need it to function or live well, but you need it to be a better person.

The school system is not as effective as it should be, but that's not because they're teaching too much, it's how they're teaching it and their low standards.

If it were me in charge, you would be having discussion/lecture type classes where you wouldn't have homework or write papers, but you'd be required to think and understand concepts instead of memorizing. You'd also be covering a lot more subjects.

The first step to ignorance is saying "I don't need to learn that". You're sitting in the class anyway. The subject may not be that interesting, but you're in the classroom anyway so make the best out of it. Most of life's lessons are learned the hard way from experience, so be thankful for what you can learn in the relative safety of a classroom.

I was the same at school; but my parents gave me a real hard time.
I wanted to leave home as soon as possible and I realised my best chance of escape was to have good grades.

I really hated English, but if you have poor grammar and spelling then people in business will not take you seriously. Your report or letter is someone's first impression of you and if it is sloppy they you will be considered lazy and your work will be full of errors.
One of my friends works in a shop and he hires staff to stack shelves and operate the tills. For every position available he has hundreds of applicants, how does he work out to to interview? He looks at their application form, if it is full of errors and spelling mistakes they do not get interviewed. You may think this is unfair, but it is how the world is.

You say that you want to be a programmer;
but you don't, you just think you do!

Like one of the other posters I left school and worked in electronics, it was the cool subject at the time and through that I moved into PC hardware, networks and programming. I have since done all sorts of work in technology I do quite a bit of paid work in website design and SEO.

My point is the www wasn't even invented when I left school, so you cannot know now what you will want to do in the future. You could end up working with things people haven't even imagined yet.

You can use the excuse that you can always learn about these subjects later on, but someone who already has this knowledge will always be one step ahead of you!

I'm a senior in HS and I can't wait to leave! Public HS for me is just a place I go and sit around for 7 hours a day. Nothing of actual purpose is going down. The only thing I've got to look forward too is the occasional cool teacher who likes for the students to go outside of the box... Which is restricted since the teachers cant really teach what they want.

In US History last year we stopped at Clinton... No 9/11. The teacher said we were just taught to the state test and then the rest we could do whatever we wanted.

I am in German and learn more about the English language in there than I do in English class. I was never taught the ins and outs of English grammar in high school, I don't even remember when I was...4th..5th grade? It's embarrassing to be in class when my German teacher asks us to put sentences into certain tenses bases on the structure of the sentence and no one knows. But, I'm supposed to remember this stuff 5 years later when I'm 15 to learn a new language when I'm almost an adult.

This may be an unique experience to my school but I have a teacher who cannot spell. Literally (also some classroom control problems too! kids change the attendance sheet, etc...). He's a science teacher and it's not like he can't spell math words but he cannot spell "nucleus", "sphere", and many other words I can't come up with right now. The last 4 years it has been spread around that we must do great on the state tests to make the school look good, and yet obviously they do not screen their teachers???

Now I go to a "top 1%" in the nation school, so it must be worse elsewhere?

Originally posted by StevenDye

I learned that I have gotten more out of working 40 hours a week at wally world than high school ever got me.

But a Doctor who studied hard all the way through school and went into further education will have gotten more out of school than you did from your work at wally world.

It all depends on how you treat it.

And, strangely enough, that doctor also gets a hell of a lot more money (Something these kids seem to think is all they need in order to keep working happily in a dead end menial job for the next 40 years) than he'd get doing his 40 hours at wally world.

I felt the same way in high school and just refused to do any homework. So I only did reports, projects, and exams which were worth the most points anyways. I passed with all C's and D's.
I was really into computers at the time and dabbled in programming and networking so right after high school I did my CCNA and began working. I really didn't like it so I decided to start taking classes that interested me at a local community college, which was awesome because I was able to do what I wanted, and I picked classes that were in the afternoon so I could sleep in.

Once you get into college its a completely different experience. You don't have to get up at 7am and do 8 hours of school. I setup my own schedule so my earliest class is at 11am so I can sleep in a bit. Latest class lasts to 7pm. I'm only in classes about 1 to 5 hours a day depending on the day.

Best of all you mainly don't have any homework (unless its english or something) and only tests (occasionally projects) which it seems you are mainly good at doing.

Anyways. I wish I had dropped out of HS, got my GED at 16 and then started community college (which is easy as hell btw) full time so I could have had an associates by the time my peers would be graduating high school. Giving me 2-3 more years at a university.

Also to the person who says an associates is worthless, should check out this site and look at some of the numbers:

en.wikipedia.org...

High school drop out average median salary: $23,013
Associates Degree: $51,934

These numbers are for households with the householder holding the degree.

Also if you plan on doing programming, or anything really, the best advice I can give is to do really really really good in math.

If you took lower level courses in HS you will have to make it up later on in college. Most employers don't care if you know a lot about computers they still want to see a degree. One guy I met in college already had a decent job paying him 40k doing computer related work but he was in college to get a degree because he would not be able to advance anywhere beyond his position if he did not do so.

So while I agree a lot of the courses are BS, really try in the ones you will need or like, such as math and science, and just do the minimum requirements for the others.

Also math, some employers that hire out of college before a person graduate also want to see a transcript of your grades. (That's where doing good in math comes in) Analytical minds get great jobs from my experience.

reply to post by bloodcircle


The difference between a couple who are both M.D's and hard working people, and a couple working at wallymart is about 966k from what I have been hearing.

If you get to a high enough education level, just having you on a companies payroll is enough for them. For example, if you have your CCIE, you can easily make 150k, and another 100k just by being on a company payroll while not really doing anything more than checking in once a week. Reason being is that a tech company looks more credible if they have an on call CCIE person that they can show off to clients.

Same in the doctor case. This guy is a great surgeon, he is being paid 300k to be on call by one place, but works in Hartford Hospital making another 350k on top of his wifes salary who also is a surgeon bringing in 350k. That's 1 million a year pre-tax.
Wallymart couple: maybe 8 an hour * 40 hours a week, * 52 weeks a year.
$33,280 Pre-tax.

Although being a doctor takes a lot more than 40 hours of your time a week, as well as costing a ton in education in the beginning. If you are willing to work hard enough, and then keep going with the work once you're done with school, the possibilities are endless.

The real fun starts once you finish all your general education requirements and do only what your degree requires.

It comes down to: What do you want to do with your life? What are you going to do, to get there? And, How FAR are you willing to go?

I wish I could say that I sympathisize with you - but I don't. I went to Highschool - I graduated with an Advanced Diploma. Trust me, I hated it. I hated the Math Classes, I hated the Calculus (which was a requirement to graduate in Alberta), I hated the Science Classes (which again was a requirement to graduate). I hated all the classes that I didn't think I would ever need -- until I applied for Post Secondary and realized that I had JUST barely met the requirements to get in.

Trust me, you don't want to find out later on in life that you can't have what you want because you didn't like Highschool or apply yourself nearly as much as you should have.

Highschool is prepping you for College and for University. Most Bachelorette programs (in Canada anyway) force you to take a bunch of courses in a bunch of different areas in the first 1 - 2 years. How is having 6 credits in French or Spanish going to help me become a Psychologist? How is taking English going to help me be a Psychologist? Yeah I have yet to answer that question, but you know, the fact remains I still HAVE to do them if I WANT my desired Career. Now that I've completed those courses, I get to PICK the classes which are specialized towards my degree. Its great and they're classes I'm interested in.

Having crappy marks sure can limit you when it comes to getting what you want. Hang in there and get your Diploma. Apply yourself and do the work. I know it seems like a pain, and waste of time right now but these courses your taking and the marks your getting, will in fact shape your future.

I graduated from College with a Diploma in Business Management, you would think that when I applied to University they would want my College Transcripts...NOPE...They wanted BOTH. They wanted my Highschool transcript AND my College transcript. 5 years later and they STILL want to know what kind of student I was in highschool...

Its worth it to put in the extra effort, and graduate with a nice GPA.

- Carrot



[edit on 12/1/2008 by CA_Orot]