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lizardlady · Apr 18, 2015, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by felicia0923

I cannot relate to this because I loved school. But as a kid growing up, all of the other kids hated school and it seems to be a universal thing. Not the social part, but the learning part. Why is this? Why did I appreciate it when the other ones groaned and grunted about schoolwork and homework?

I work with kids who do not attend school. I've heard at least a zillion reasons for not liking school, some make very good sense. Some are bogus nonsense.

reasons I've heard or observed for not attending/liking school include, in no particular order

"School starts too early" - doesn't matter what time school starts, they don't want to drag themselves out of bed and go to school. (I consider this one of the bogus ones. If they didn't stay up until the wee wee hours of the morning playing videos games they would be able to wake up in the morning.)

Let's face it folks, academics are not for everyone. Some people excel at repairing things, working with plants. I think it's a shame that schools in my area have eliminated vocational/technical programs. Let's bring back those programs for the students who do well in those areas instead of trying to force them into a program that does not suit them.

This is very much not a politically correct statement, but not everyone is a candidate for Mensa. Intelligence is on a bell curve. There are students who struggle to making barely passing grades. Learning is hard work for them. Who likes going some place where you work as hard as you can and you're still not successful.

Bullying is a reality in schools. Doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to figure out that a person is not going to like going to a place where they are treated like shite.

I admire teachers. They have an incredibly stressful and challenging job. That said there are some who need to find another way to earn a living either because they just plan are bad at teaching, have burned out and just don't care or a dozen other reasons.
A subset of the above is those teachers who treat all students as if they are all the same. Different people have different learning styles, ya gotta teach in a way that the student comprehends.

I see a scarily large number of kids with undiagnosed learning disorders or mental health problems that interfere with learning. Again, how can we expect a kid to want to go some place where they are set up to fail? I'm likely to take some heat for this, but another subset are those kids with a diagnosed disorder, such as ADHD, but the parents refuse to put them on medication. Yes, the decision to medicate is the parent's right, but how can you expect a child to learn when they can not sit still long enough to absorb the information?

Someone mentioned the regimentation of school. There are those free spirits who chafe in that environment. I remember thinking in high school that it seemed their (school) goals was to turn us all in to automatons.

Then there are the kids who come from families/environments that do not value education. I can't tell you how many kids I've worked with whose parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents never finished school. The parents take the attitude that they are doing okay (usually on public assistance or working some minimum wage job) without and education, so why should their kids bother?