I was homeschooled my whole life. Among other things, this meant I’d never had a grade before I came to college. Naturally, now that I’m a freshman and I’m getting grades, I’ve been studying with my new friends. They are accustomed to turning in graded assignments, so I can learn from them how to get the professors to positively evaluate my work. For me, getting a good grade is just a hoop to jump through. The professor doesn’t have enough time to personally assess how well I’m learning in her class, so we as students are subjected to the cruder measurements of objective testing.
The students with whom I’ve been studying have a wholly different attitude. They do well in class, not because they learned the material, but because they know how to take the test. I was shocked when one of them actually said he wouldn’t remember the material after the final! Is this normal? Does one just cram information for a test and then push it aside? What kind of learning is that?
I’d understand if these were young men and women who wanted to be electricians or architects or physicists, or any number of other noble vocations for which knowledge of social science and philosophy are largely irrelevant. But many of them want to become economists, or philosophers, or sociologists. Some of them are considering law or medical school. These are straight-A students. Academicians. They took APUSH and IB Calc in high school, are the recipients of large scholarships, have interned with politicians and law firms. At the same time, they can’t tell me how or why we derive the limit of the function as h approaches zero, they can’t list the presidents, they get Iraq and Iran mixed up, and the one who took IB Theory of Knowledge in high school can’t enumerate the epistemologies of Locke, Descartes, Hume, or Kant, and has never heard of Thomas Reid.
And I repeat, these are brilliant people! They get As! They get scholarships! They’re popular and smart! But they don’t care about learning; they care about getting a good grade.
Conversations with others revealed very similar attitudes. The quality of person’s intellect is wrapped up in his or her grade. The smart kids get good grades, the dumb kids get bad grades. “Ugh, Aristotle is so hard,” I heard my friends in Philosophy 161 complaining. Of course he’s hard to read; he’s also so interesting and enlightening and enjoyable if you’re willing to work at it! But the work they put in isn’t the work of student; it’s the work of a factory laborer, drudgingly and grudgingly slogging through a difficult test, then happily selling their book back to get some extra cash. Happily putting away the Nicomachean Ethics, glad to be rid of it, never intending to open it again.
I simply could not understand how one could approach education as if it were so hateful and arduous.
Then I talked to some of them about their public school experiences.
Public school is literally psychotic. Apparently, if you show up late to class too much, you get an in-school suspension. This means you have to sit in a classroom, by yourself, doing nothing, for hours at a time while you’re at school. How on Earth is this at all productive? If the problem is that they’re not learning in class, then intentionally forcing them out of class is certainly no solution. This is normal, it seems, however. “Bad” kids spend a lot of their time alone, with nothing to do.
Are you kidding me? That’s insane! Anyone who is struggling with education is not going to be benefitted by in school suspension; anyone who is causing problem at school will be left with a long stretch of time to himself to muse and seethe and plot; there is no way that suspension solves anything and I can imagine it would be a horrible, dreadful experience.
Then there’s the sleep deprivation. This, too, is apparently normal. Kids finish school, go to their varsity sports practice, come home from school, eat dinner, and do homework until extremely late at night. Then, they wake up the next day at 5 in the morning to get ready for school again. It’s not uncommon for public schoolers to get less than six hours of sleep a night. That’s unhealthy for anyone, but catastrophic for an adolescent. Sleep deprivation is literally a military torture.
Let us not underappreciate the tragedy of this. Between school, homework, and sports, it seems that an American high school student has little time for anything else. Of immediate importance to the student are attractive members of the opposite sex, so most of their time not consumed with school activities or sleeping is often directed toward texting and flirting with crushes and significant others. This leaves little to no time to appreciate things like literature or poetry and music, to read and write and compose, to play board games and talk with friends and family about really important subjects, etc.
Additionally, the environment amongst the students in extremely toxic and hostile. Much of the data I’ve gathered from various public-schoolers suggests that fights were moderately-to-very common, depending on the school. Bullying was a constant presence. Students essentially divide up to into factions and fight each other, if not physically, then in more subtle ways. It seems as if there’s a massive impetus toward acquiring some sort of prestige or social status. This is extremely difficult to do, however, as there is no benchmark standard of prestige, and rather, each group decides on what it most values, and mocks/attacks/bullies those who don’t conform to their standards. Thus, there is a bizarre and stressful atmosphere whereby the actions that render one most successful are simultaneously the actions that contribute most to their disadvantage.
Lastly, we must remember that there is another social impetus toward getting good grades. It is continually hammered into each student that they must get good grades and stay in school, otherwise they won’t have a future. Parents, teachers, and fellow students generally all affirm this sentiment.
So then we have our explanation. Getting grades is mandatory. Learning is optional, even discouraged. It is no wonder that so many of my new friends resent class and homework. All their lives, they’ve faced education as if it is a horrible ordeal, replete with variety of social and personal consequences.
Contrast this to the homeschooler. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, went for a run, showered, dressed, and settled down with some coffee to read Aristotle and teach myself algebra, every day. This isn’t abnormal. I’ve known plenty of homeschoolers who had just as relaxed and laid back an education as I. When I was young, my mother would make tea for everyone and read aloud books to my brothers and I. We had a large whiteboard; when I became stuck with a math problem I would work it on the board with one of my parents watching.
But the best part was not just that learning was fun. It was that there was so much more to life than formalized education. I would finish with my schoolwork by two in the afternoon, fairly regularly. When I was younger, this meant I had all day to trade Pokemon cards and build with Legos, or play with friends, or build forts in the backyard. By the end of high school, it meant I was regularly writing, reading major economic texts, composing music, playing ultimate frisbee, etc. Nearly every homeschooler I know has an extraordinarily rich education, and what’s more, an extraordinarily rich life outside education.
Now I’m at college. The 100 level classes aren’t the best. Lots of objective tests, not a lot of essays or critical thinking, certainly no research. But I’m still learning a lot, because I know how to learn. I’ve spent my life teaching myself things and growing more and more independent in my learning. It simply breaks my heart that for so many others, learning remains burdensome and arduous.