The main point of school is to learn to interact with other people

When i talk to people they say that school is to learn, but the majority of things you learn in classes are either useless in life, or something you could learn on your own. Therefor, the main point of school is social interaction. What do you think?

RobbieFTW wrote:When i talk to people they say that school is to learn, but the majority of things you learn in classes are either useless in life, or something you could learn on your own. Therefor, the main point of school is social interaction. What do you think?

You know I can't speak to this philosophy of young ppl who actually may be going to sham schools that don't teach shit, but my HS education was valid and I did use much of what they taught me. Yes, it is dated - society and the world have changed in the last half century as it continues to do, which is why hard facts are perhaps not so important as the ability to discern things in a changing world. Which is what was being taught in my HS.

I COULD have learned things on my own but WOULD I? And don't discount social interaction. It is the basis of our whole civilization and if school can mold that then it is an important part of education. Perhaps I hear all these arguments against organized education because it is being put forth by ppl who have never known a world without the Internet.

My daughter got her Bachelors and is now working on her Masters thru this medium - my grandson got his primary education thru it homeschooling. But even this free-wheeling medium needs structure and the verdict is not in yet on what happens in the absence of that social interaction. (Isn't that what we are doing now?) Perhaps the office of the near future will change and ppl will log on instead of going to a place and punching a timeclock. Perhaps this isolated individualistic approach to education is going to be the norm someday. But Hey, I'm here and my education started in the stone age. (chalk on slate)

It doesn't matter how popular you are with everybody, if you can't read and write worth a damn the only thing you're set up for in life is to fail.


I was homeschooled so that 'social interaction' crap had to actually wait until AFTER school when the other kids got home, 8 AM to 3 PM on weekdays was about learning, and maybe homeschoolers just pay more attention to what curriculum's important but I find it amazing how much a lot of the stuff I learned has come in handy over the years.

RobbieFTW wrote:When i talk to people they say that school is to learn, but the majority of things you learn in classes are either useless in life, or something you could learn on your own. Therefor, the main point of school is social interaction. What do you think?

thats basicly pretty much all wat i went for, least in high school

Supernova wrote:I was homeschooled so that 'social interaction' crap had to actually wait until AFTER school when the other kids got home, 8 AM to 3 PM on weekdays was about learning, and maybe homeschoolers just pay more attention to what curriculum's important but I find it amazing how much a lot of the stuff I learned has come in handy over the years.

I just want to mention that everyone homeschools differently, and not all homeschoolers are limited to neighborhood kids for companionship. Most of my kids' friends are other homeschooled kids that we've met through support groups, which has turned out nicely because the parents of those kids have become MY friends, so we have done lots of things together as families.

They do have a few friends who attend regular school and are unavailable during certain hours.

I think whether school is more about learning or more about social time depends largely on the school and the individual student. If my school had offered more courses that I found interesting, I'm sure I would have spent more time learning while in school. Most of what I truly learned, I learned on my own. Much of what I "learned" in high school was simply memorized long enough to regurgitate onto a test paper, then promptly discarded as useless or boring.

RobbieFTW wrote:When i talk to people they say that school is to learn, but the majority of things you learn in classes are either useless in life, or something you could learn on your own. Therefor, the main point of school is social interaction. What do you think?

Maybe that's true after a certain high school grade level, and while I do think that at least thirty-five percent of school is about learning to cope with/interact with peers (and to accept authority from adults other than your parents), I wouldn't be so blase as to say that most of what could learned at school could be learned outside of it. Especially not if you have a specific career goal in mind.

Chris wrote:I wouldn't be so blase as to say that most of what could learned at school could be learned outside of it. Especially not if you have a specific career goal in mind.

Depends upon your resources. I think just about anything taught in school can be learned outside of it; it just won't necessarily be free.

I think that idea is crap. School is SUPPOSED to be about education, NOT social interaction. Newsflash, we can get social interaction outside of school too.

And I never had time to do much interacting in school and I highly doubt they gave you MORE time to do that as the grades went up.

School's purpose today is to keep kids doing something. The stuff they learn isn't taught in a way that they'll remember, and the interaction is crap.

Exactly, that's the problem, every kid I see who's going to school today is being set up to fail in life because they are not taught phonetics, not taught reading comprehension, not taught to write because we use computers with spellcheck, but damn it if they don't have plenty of time during school hours to 'interact' with everyone else. Hell, the teachers here aren't even worthy of that title because they spend all day playing Pictionary and Blink with the kids. So we're not even using our tax dollars for education clearly, so why should everybody have to pay taxes for a mandatory playground center for kids to go to 5 days a week for 9 months of the year?

Chris wrote:

RobbieFTW wrote:When i talk to people they say that school is to learn, but the majority of things you learn in classes are either useless in life, or something you could learn on your own. Therefor, the main point of school is social interaction. What do you think?

Maybe that's true after a certain high school grade level, and while I do think that at least thirty-five percent of school is about learning to cope with/interact with peers (and to accept authority from adults other than your parents), I wouldn't be so blase as to say that most of what could learned at school could be learned outside of it. Especially not if you have a specific career goal in mind.

For the most part.

The point of school is to learn critical thinking.

There's a good amount of truth to your statement, just keep in mind "school" is a very general term and there are other scenarios of schools with more specific missions than just learning interactions - cooking school, driving school, votech schools, etc.