Posted by OmegaKV on
URL: https://mikraite.arkian.net/Why-modern-western-school-is-shit-tp2378p2379.html

School is meant to prepare you for work so it teaches you the skills that would make you a good worker and punishes you for learning skills that would make you a bad one. You complete the tasks the authority figure gives you without thinking about fundamentals, because if you think about the fundamentals instead of the tasks you are given you might come to the conclusion that the best course of action is something that is against the interests of the authority (e.g. breaking away and starting your own company). I do think that the school system systematically punishes students for thinking about fundamentals. For example, they overwhelm students with a bunch of formulas they have to memorize, and a bunch of obscure problems they have to memorize the "trick" for in order to get the problem right on the exam, so that if they spend time thinking about the fundamentals and derivations they won't have enough time to memorize all the formulas and they will fail the class. I was a C/D student in my first 1.5 years of college but eventually I learned to suck it up and memorize the formulas.