Looking back to your school life - did you really learn a lot?

[potatoarms]

Hello

Was just thinking about this, this evening.

When you look back to your school life and everything you learned, do you think you learnt a lot that was useful?

What % of your education do you think you actually remember?

Did you learn more from your parents and friends or was it from school?

Thanks ever so
Potatoarms

 

[2nyRiggz]

school was excellent. i didnt like it back then but it was a big step in what we call "life". School was a challenge back on the islands but it was worth it....Glad my mother MADE me go to college...
Leant alot from my parents as well....my friends? hell no i didnt get anything from those bums


Bless

 

[Blue Velvet]

• Got heavily into art which led to my present career as a designer.
• Learnt a lot from extra-curricular activities... clubs, sports, drama etc.
• Made friendships that continue to this day.

 

[neocell]

Hello

Was just thinking about this, this evening.

When you look back to your school life and everything you learned, do you think you learnt a lot that was useful?

What % of your education do you think you actually remember?

Did you learn more from your parents and friends or was it from school?

Thanks ever so
Potatoarms

Those are very difficult questions to answer "correctly"
There's so much that you learn, but you don't remember learning. How many times does someone ask you a question about how you know something and your answer is, "I don't know, I just know it is." or something along those lines. I think that you (or at least I) learn a lot, not directly from teachers (ie 2 +2 = 4) but from life itself, if you wear that ugly sweater to class again the kids are going to laugh at you and take your lunch etc. Huge social upbringing going on there. It's just very difficult to say how much you actually learnt, and therefore how much you can recall, though usually you only need a little bump to get all that old stored info back into motion. How could I answer the third part after I've rambled on so much already. Sorry, obviously I'm shades of grey, no black or white answers, but for the third I'll go out on a limb and say school

 

[e²Studios]

Most of the experience i use on my job i learned while on the job, or on my own. School prepared me for it but ultimately it was first hand experience that I really learned from.

However what university did teach me was time management, and thats priceless in any job

Ed

 

[Deepdale]

Parents always deserve credit (and in certain cases blame) for the traits that you develop, but school was where the best preparation for the workplace came from.

 

[iSaint]

While school teaches some basics requirements for workplace readiness, it didn't guide me to a place I knew I would be happy and beneficial. I can't blame that entirely on the school, or my parents, but I am learning in my Masters in Teaching classes how more attention is being paid to the diverse learner, and how to help all students feel successful and find their niche. I don't feel I ever received that type of guidance. And I do feel I have some type of learning disability, whether it's my diagnosed depression, or I am or was ADD. It was never discussed thirty years ago when I was having the problems in school as a pre-teen and teen.

That being said, the education institution is struggling to find a happy medium on working with the diverse learner in a classroom where the conglomeration of the student population coexists.

50% parents (some good some not so good)
20% school
15% friends
15% job/life experience

 

[thedude110]

When you look back to your school life and everything you learned, do you think you learnt a lot that was useful?

What % of your education do you think you actually remember?

Did you learn more from your parents and friends or was it from school?

1. Yes, but not "useful" in the way most think, I think. By studying philosophy I learned a love for the useless, which has been wonderfully useful and useless to me. I can't imagine my life if teachers hadn't directed me to Heidegger, Levinas, Stein, Mayer, Moxley.

2. I don't know. I'm not sure education is about remembering as much as it is about being influenced -- books and good teachers have changed my life, even if I don't remember the plot of Jane Eyre. That said, I remember feeling like I was learning to read again when my Prof. taught Jane Eyre. I'm very grateful to my teachers for teaching me how to read word, image and world.

3. It's all a part isn't it? I don't know whom I learned "most" from, but it seems important, if we think of ourselves as learners, to recognize that school is nothing but an organized learning experience. We're hard-wired to be a full-time learning species, like it or not.

 

[Jaffa Cake]

The only stuff I actually remember from school probably isn't that much use to me in day-to-day life, to be honest. And I know that I feel that I learnt more in the first three weeks of my job than I did in the entire three years I spent at university. So I suppose you could say I learnt more from the people that were around me.

Still, if I hadn't learnt what I did at school then I wouldn't have passed my exams, which meant I wouldn't have got into college, and if I hadn't have learnt stuff there I wouldn't have got into university, and if I hadn't learnt stuff at university and graduated I wouldn't have been able to get the job I now have. So I suppose there is something to this book learning lark, after all...

 

[Mudbug]

I look back and think that basically most things that I learned in school are relevant to everyday life, i.e. general use of sentence structures etc., math, a decent working knowledge of geographic locations, etc.

Probably the biggest impact class that I had growing up was a typing class I took in Middle School (Junior High). For some reason back then I saw it as really important, and definitely use what I learned then on an almost constant basis now.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

• Got heavily into art which led to my present career as a designer.
• Learnt a lot from extra-curricular activities... clubs, sports, drama etc.
• Made friendships that continue to this day.

I think that's what I'll take out my my education more then the academic stuff, most of which I seem to teach myself, and/or tend to know beforehand.

 

[yellow]

In college, I learned my Social Security Number.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

In college, I learned my Social Security Number.

I actually just learned mine...

 

[revenuee]

it's not so much the content, but the act of learning that i have found most beneficial.

being in university i learned the skills the expression. I learned that only those that are willing to put themselves out there will make any impact. I learned that the worst thing you can do is create something that people just call "NICE"

a perfect example of it was last night at a formal that i was invited to participate in few of the creative elements ... i was asked to put together a video yearbook preview, AND design an archway under which people could photograph themselves.

The video yearbook/slide show got an amazing response and i am looking forward to authoring the Full DVD as the person that asked me to do this and I have brainstormed and want to put together <-- everyone LOVED it.

The archway was more of an abstract art piece that i had put together. The theme of the formal was a rock star after party. When the idea of making a photo arch came up, i thought it would be a perfect opportunity to move beyond the traditional archway and design something that would be "interesting". So i approached the arch in it's simplest form. a place underwhich people stand and points up. As i thought about it, and the theme of the party. An industrial, raw look is what manifested itself. The geometric configuration that i presented was met with various observations.

Some people loved, some people hated it ... some people didn't get it. I think my favorite response was ... "It's so you"
the bottom line is ... i learned that if you put yourself out there, failure or not, you have accomplished more then anyone else

 

[heabrook]

Hello

Was just thinking about this, this evening.

When you look back to your school life and everything you learned, do you think you learnt a lot that was useful?

What % of your education do you think you actually remember?

Did you learn more from your parents and friends or was it from school?

Thanks ever so
Potatoarms

I was homeschooled for the most part of my childhood education. I learned a lot because my studies were diverse. I was also able to start college sooner. Percentage wise, it is hard to say... I think we all mainly remember bits and pieces and remember mostly the elements that we felt were interesting or would help us in the long run. College was basically the same way. You learn as much as you can possibly absorb within those 4yrs. I studied graphic design and web design. The most useful information that I learned was from the professors themselves...rather than textbooks. You remember what is most beneficial... after all, we can only store so much before we have a hd failure

 

[erickkoch]

I actually learned how to peel a potato in college.

I took a class in biochemistry and we had to extract an enzyme from a potato. We were all given a potato and a potato peeler.

It seemed logical to me that you scrape the skin off with the serrated edge but I couldn't figure out why everyone else's potato looked clean and mine was all shredded. The professor told me to use the other side of the peeler and it worked!

Years of school and a few thousand tuition dollars later, I can now peel a potato.

 

[heabrook]

I actually learned how to peel a potato in college.

I took a class in biochemistry and we had to extract an enzyme from a potato. We were all given a potato and a potato peeler.

It seemed logical to me that you scrape the skin off with the serrated edge but I couldn't figure out why everyone else's potato looked clean and mine was all shredded. The professor told me to use the other side of the peeler and it worked!

Years of school and a few thousand tuition dollars later, I can now peel a potato.

ah.. that is truly priceless information...

 

[thedude110]

I was thinking about this thread while I was grocery shopping (hold your insults, please) and I came to this realization:

In my life, my family, and in many cases, my friends, have consistently pushed me toward conformity.

It's been my teachers and books that have pushed me to discover who I am, and what it means to be, regardless of social structures.

Education, for me, has been an invitation to non-conformity.

I was fortunate growing up, though -- good public schools, good college, etc....

 

[Koodauw]

Everything up until High School has been very useful. I am yet to determine weather College was a wise investment or not.

 

[Lau]

I do use bits and pieces of what I learnt at school from day to day. However, my enduring memory of secondary school is just of the most awful, crushing boredom, and just not being able to see the end of the lesson, let alone the day. Ugh. With the exception of art lessons, it was all just so uninspiring.

That makes me sound like I was a right grumpy teenager, but actually I read a lot, and loved literature, and was interested in physics, and I enjoyed making and designing stuff out of wood, and making clothes and cooking, and wanted to travel, so wanted to learn a language, and occasionally went to the theatre, and spent a fair bit of time outside climbing trees and riding my bike with my friends.

In spite of that, English Literature, Science, CDT, Domestic Science, French and German, Drama and PE all made me want to chew off my own fist because of the horror and boredom.

At the time I accepted it, messed around a lot with my friends and did my exams in a fairly half arsed manner. Now I look back I don't regret for a second not revising for exams, as I've only had to write them down as a list on the odd form, and I had a great time causing amusing disruption to lessons with my friends.

However, it does seem a shame that a relatively bright teenager with wide interests who started secondary school willing to learn a lot could end up being so disillusioned with the whole system, and this must be happening across the country over and over again. On top of that, as I wasn't a slapper with an attitude problem, I was pretty much tormented my evil slappers with attitude problems from infant school all the way up to sixth form. Something else that you accept at the time, but again I look back and I realise that that affects my confidence even now, when, actually, I'm ok really, and having the wrong socks doesn't mean I'll get punched in the face any more.

It does make me appreciate studying for my design degree every single day I wake up though. Oh, and I'm so glad that I'm an adult! All in all, I'm glad I went to school overall, and my fellow troublemakers at secondary school will be friends for life. I saw a program about that school where you could choose your own lessons (possibly in Cornwall somewhere?) when I was a kid, and I always really wanted to go there. It looked like home schooling but with other kids and teachers. My mum and dad taught me so much, but I liked being taught by teachers, and was fairly social (when I wasn't getting my head kicked in). So somewhere you could get really into something like that school and learn about it and them move on sounded amazing.

 

[eva01]

I learned nothing in High School, just slept through it.

Learning some menial things in college, but i will begin to learn things in medical school