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A teacher's comment, and my response

[The following comment was posted on the "How to Survive School: An Introduction" page. My comments are below and in bold.]

Posted by: Mr. W
14 November 2006
Comments: I am a teacher, and I have to say that I enjoyed reading this article. I too did not enjoy school when I was in "they system." I have to ask "SoulRiser" one question: where did you learn how to write? Did you teach yourself the rules of grammar and sentence structure of the English language, or did you learn that in....school? Obviously, someone had to teach you web design, and how did you know about George Bernard or Albert Einstein? While school may seem like a waste of time and effort because it’s a flawed system that makes learning boring and irrelevant, you, at some point in your life benefited from the public school.

I learned to write in a lot of places. I could write at a very basic level before pre-school, but I always enjoyed writing, so I spent a lot of time writing in my spare time. School taught me the rules of grammar and sentence structure, but I don't remember any of the rules. I always remembered how to write simply by writing a lot. I never use spelling or grammar checkers either. Nobody taught me web design, unless random people on the internet count. I learned most of it through trial and error and looking at other pages' source code. I heard about Einstein in school the first time, and in fact disliked him a lot then because he made the atomic bomb. It was only years later that I discovered that he deeply regretted that discovery and hated school as well. While there's no doubt I got some benefit from public school, I'm still convinced I could have learned everything in a shorter time if I wasn't confined to their curriculum and schedule. Not to mention it'd be a lot more fun and I might actually remember more of it now.

Written by: SoulRiser
22 November 2006

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