Lasolimu wrote:Cut to graduation night, every single one of them got a diploma that day with no distinction between those that worked hard and did well and those that were utter failures. :mad:
My problem with public education is that passing has nothing to do with hard work. I got grades and scores good enough to get me in the Honor Society and Mensa, not because I worked hard, but because I liked reading, writing, research, and playing with logic problems. I did generally finish my homework (because my parents would have killed me if I didn't), but I did a lot of it in the ten minutes before class or whatever. My sister, who is a musical genius and is quite successful now working with computers, worked like a dog to get grades lower than mine. Which drove her nuts at the time, but now she figures that school basically taught me how to coast and her how to work. :p:
And some people just aren't made for the kind of work schools were designed for -- entrepreneurs traditionally do poorly at school, because school is geared for fitting people to big corporations, not to teaching people how to take wise risks or to innovate. I've never known a really successful person who wasn't a hard worker, but I've known some people who were total slackers at school who knew how to work hard at other things.
Sadly, kids who could be really good at something non-schoolish often get discouraged by their failure at school and never learn that working hard
at something they can succeed with is worth doing. :(
I also think school poorly serves some of those who're socially oriented and natural leaders, who quickly realize they may be able to pass the classes, but they aren't skilled enough to excel. The only way they can follow their natural talents at school is to convince people that what the school is measuring is meaningless -- which, for a lot of kids, it is! So their natural skills are trained and honed
in a completely unnatural environment, and once they're out of the system, they have no other skills. They are brilliant at manipulating a particular environment, but practically the only "employment" for an adult that works that way is being a client of the welfare system -- or in prison.
The more financially successful guys of that last type can also make excellent Stupid Guests. ;) Disney, like most school systems, rewards the squeaky wheel and is less interested in justice than in keeping things cool on the surface, and in both cases you can game the system like crazy.
