Growing up, I started out a public schooler and then went on to be homeschooled by my mom, which was a very great and important experience for me. She took us out of the public school system because we faced bullies and negative environments from all the badasses, but she also did it because she was seeing that the school system really was not doing it's job that well to educate us. It wasn't until our mom started homeschooling us that me and my siblings actually got a grasp on things that the school system was failing at. She has always been an extremely intelligent woman, who studied writing in college back in the 90s, so she was pretty fit for the job.
Fast forward two decades, and the education system is still failing. A lot more than it did before. I'm fortunate to have the intelligent mother I had, because her schooling has enabled me to do well in adult life now in my own recent studies and exams. However, it still has not been easy when you're a homeschooler who is reintroduced to the foolishness of the modern teaching system.
The structure of education...
It seems to be in recent decades that while the education system calls itself trying to make learning easier for youth, I think it's made it harder. There is a sort of way it has where it seems to try to dumb things down for kids to get, yet actually overcomplicates them with ridiculous new age methods like "reading actively." I'm not sure how it is in other nations exactly, but I know here in America, our learning structures are not working well. We have a lot of 12 and 13 year-olds who are still reading as if they barely understand it, or as if they've been taught numbing memorization without much comprehension. You can tell it when they read out loud, still sounding like 5 year-olds just learning how to pronounce the words. I'm not saying that's their fault, I'm saying that the system has failed them.
Despite how our presidents have wanted to make the world think our kids are so smart, they're not. And it's not exactly their fault. America ranks 14th on the education world scale, and China is 1st. Our teaching methods are the problem. Some people think we're not teaching hard enough, but is that really the problem? Or is it that we're not teaching practically enough? While others think we're actually very lax in our teaching. In some areas I would say so, yes. But mostly the problem is that we are not giving youth enough practical learning. Our children don't know the state capitals anymore and can't find America on a map. And we are increasingly trying to cover up parts of our history we don't want kids to know about.
Algebra...
Algebra is the worst and the dumbest of it all, I think. It's actually the thing that gives most kids - and even adults - great anxiety in getting ahead in education. Somewhere along the way a group of mathematicians decided that using letters and numbers together would be the way to learn something, and would be required for us to have to learn. And they didn't care whether they thought it was a great idea or not, they just cared that it's their idea and they want us to get it into their heads.
The textbooks tell us that algebra was started by ancient Babylonians, Arabs, Greeks, and Persians, and when you read about it in depth on Wikipedia that is true. But that doesn't mean we're supposed to do it. Those people created a mathematical system for their cultures at those particular times in the world, for whatever reason they needed them for, and it worked for them. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the whole world was supposed to do it, nor does it mean that their systems are necessarily relevant for these times, but for those times in the early development of civilization.
Nothing spells more idiocy to me than algebra in the learning system. Math experts have been trying to convince us for years that we use 'linear equations,' 'slopes,' 'y-intercepts,' and 'polynomials' in our every day lives already. And that's still Bullshit. Positives and negatives are one thing, but not the rest. The average person does not keep up with and manage their check books, bank accounts, bank statements, and monthly bill costs with any of that foolishness. Nor do we use it in cooking. We all use basic math that gets the job done for our calculations a lot easier than x - 8 + 5x, or t500 + (30x + 2).
No matter how much those experts try to tell us, it's not going to make sense. If it really made any kind of logical sense then there would not be such a high number of books and YouTube videos showing us how to do it. It's like a bunch of dumb nerds who created this alphanumerical language they only understand among themselves really just wanted us all to learn it so we can see how smart they think they are.
It has not ceased to be a headache for the majority of us, and it never will. Algebra remains to make no sense to most people, and it's very frustrating to learn. And even worse when you are required to sit in class and do it. I've had two learning instructors tell me they themselves never had any of that nonsense growing up either, and one of them said her 4th grader is even having to learning it! And that she herself is at a loss of how to help her daughter. So it's really gotten to the point that we're forcing kids to learn it younger and younger? I even once read a blog from a math teacher who also admitted himself that what we're teaching kids is hurting more than helping:
Algebra teachers sell students a cheap distortion of the real world while insisting at the same time that it really is the real world. The cognitive dissonance is obvious and terrible. Students know the difference. It cheapens my relationship to them and their relationship to mathematics when you ask me to lie to them. It’s like offering someone lust or manipulation while insisting that it’s love. Not only are the short-term consequences devastating but it makes that person distrustful or wary of the real thing. Make no mistake. We are making an alien of algebra. We are doing real damage here.
https://blog.mrmeyer.com/2010/one-of-many-reasons-why-students-hate-algebra/
Unless you're studying to be an engineer, physical therapist, astrophysicist, etc. algebra is nowhere near important for the average child or adult and should have no place in their daily curriculum.
Stress...
I know that a lot of public schoolers and college students tend to face a lot of stress with their studies and exams, and I can understand now. There is even a part of me that can even slightly understand it when some of them try to cheat. Education in today's times is generally not a fun experience anymore, and the expectations on students are high. And, yes, learning should be fun, because you get actively engaged and pick up on what you're learning well and faster, and when it's not fun you don't care.
So it seems like what the education system has done is try to up the ante as a way of combatting what they think is laziness or weakness in students by giving them a lot of ridiculous material, and students aren't supposed to complain about it. I remember Obama's half-hearted address to kids in school during his first term, advising them to try to leave their problems at home and stay focused on the work while in class. Easy for you to say when you didn't have to be force-fed nonsensical algebra and unimportant science, and especially if you're not one of the kids living in an abusive household, going to school hungry, or having your lights or gas off cuz your family wasn't able to pay the bill. Bureaucratic Bullshitters are the last people I wanna hear from about education.
My 20 year-old Latina friend of 3 years now on Google regularly tells me of the stresses she deals with trying to study for exams in college that have her wrung out. She partly is to blame because she does often take on too many classes that I've told her to take it easy with, but even without those she has told me how terrible it is to have to rush to finish assignments that she says the teachers do not even explain well. She says she doesn't sleep well sometimes, she's gained weight, and she's even had missed periods for months at a time because she's so stressed. Even an Arab girl here on GaG told me the same thing. And my brother talks to a girl in Greece online who also has told him that her college studies are killing her and have robbed her of sleep. So apparently the education failure spawns into other nations as well.
World competition...
In recent months, what I've seemed to realize is that how education is set up is so that we all can compete with each other as nations. I know, I know, it's not a new idea and most of us are familiar with it. That's still what it comes down to. But I'm talking about it in a deeper way, particularly for America.
America sees that the kids in China, Korea, and India are much smarter than ours, so we're pushing them to try to be just as smart, in all the wrong ways with foolish math and science. We're basically saying to students, "Come on, you can do it, you can do it. The people on the other side of the pond are getting ahead of us and outpacing us in the world scene, so suck it and step it up. You can do this too, come on, come on!"
Education is not really set up for kids to actually learn real life real world skills and understanding, it's set up so that they can be meat-processed through career-seeking mindsets. Careers are what power the corporate empires and "global economy." Corporate empires and the global economy is how governments operate and compete with each other. That's what it all boils down to.
Careers...
And to help pull in more and more people, America advertises big careers as being the most desirable thing with great pay and benefits, and it works. A lot of people go to college to study for a career mostly because it's about job security for them and getting lots of money. That hasn't changed. Sure, there are people out there who have a passion for what they do and really love their jobs, but many more are just in it for the money and benefits, and unhappy. They have the job skills but little to no life skills, intelligence, or understanding. America has done this. And it has done it very well, especially as we do our best to pull more women into college and the career field.
We've been told for some years now that girls are outpacing boys in education and graduating from college more, but this has been part of the plan. It's been of no real achievement on the part of females. I used to track this topic years ago. I remember back in the late '90s and 2000s we were always hearing people complain about how girls are failing in school and that schools are not doing enough to help them. Then suddenly overnight in the mid-2000s we started hearing how girls are now outdoing boys in school, how badly boys were falling behind, and how many more females were advancing to college and graduating. This is because the system is passing more girls through so they can get a chance in the career field and even things out, as is hoped. Not because girls suddenly sprouted steroid Bomar brains that could actually challenge boys.
What is actually happening...
Everything falls into a certain order in education based on government and world competition. And it's doing its damage. Government plays a huge part in it as it does with everything else. These are the same people who try to hide certain parts of history so we don't know the truth. Knowing the truth means we would have a very different outlook on things. And having a different outlook means we have to re-write our textbooks and re-educate society. The government doesn't want that. You may call this a conspiracy theory, I call it reality.
For decades they've been hiding the truth about ancient Egyptian caves full of relics and tombs in the Grand Canyon, to the point that it's a federal crime if anyone gets too close. And they're hiding the truth about all other kinds of - what is called - pre-Columbian Trans-Atlantic contact. Which means many other nations in the ancient world ventured to the Americas thousands of years before colonial Europeans ever did. To the established science world this kind of historical truth is known as 'fringe science' or 'pseudoscience' as a way of downplaying it and devaluing it, but it still doesn't stop it from being true.
That's just one example of my point. How education is carried out is all part of an external plan. It isn't made to be a practical thing anymore. It's all about sowing seeds early on so that our youth can slave away at ridiculous exams, and go on to a world of careers that benefit a world system.
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