City Tutoring Discussion Forum

When students perform poorly in school, the usual explanation is that they did not work hard enough, did not pay attention, or simply lacked discipline.

Yet there is a very real possibility that subjects are not fully understood, teachers who may be indifferent, and a host of other issues.

Is the problem primarily with students, or with the educational system itself?

If large numbers of students leave school unable to write well, reason clearly, or perform basic mathematics, should the blame fall mainly on the students, or on the institutions responsible for educating them?

If you struggled in school, what do you believe was the cause?

I think the biggest problems with the current education system are the ideas of "entitlement" and the "rewards" systems.

What is the rewards system?

In the late half of my secondary schooling i missed nearly 200 days of school over 3 years (partial + full day absences). Retrospectively i see the lockdowns definitely desensitized my academic approach. In my final year the mass adoption of AI tools had begun. I believe you should always read for yourself because if it's read for you the reading is subject to manipulation, putting you at risk of being manipulated. I found that school was exactly that. A building where the words are read for you and are overwhelmingly manipulated. My overall absence was certainly driven by this strong conclusion. I have hope for the future school students, i feel that AI might be able to imitate and increase human imagination more than 1 teacher could for 20 kids.

Schooling was a waste of my childhood, I could have learned much more on my own.
Schooling replaces understanding with memorization, it replaces sovereignty with procedure.

This may not have happened to me, but consistently rewarding students (bribing them) for good behavior backfires in the long-run. "Helping" students when they are supposed to work on their own also backfires.

Alazor wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2026 12:52 am This may not have happened to me, but consistently rewarding students (bribing them) for good behavior backfires in the long-run. "Helping" students when they are supposed to work on their own also backfires.

Activities should be autotelic where the ends and the means are unified.
For instance one, doesn't play music to reach the end of the piece, they do it for the intrinsic joy of the music itself. It should be the same with any educational activity.

I was in High School (UK, ages 12-16) From 2019-2022 before getting Homeschooled.
I was put into one of the Special needs Classrooms for my entire stay. It was a glorified Daycare. I didn't learn a single thing that I didn't teach myself.

The Scottish Education system is based on Certificates for different Subjects (such as, Nat.5 maths being Algebra and early trigonometry, while Higher Maths is Calculus)
The Tests for each Subject get done at around Spring to early Summer. You can get taught these Subjects in High Schools or Colleges (Uk College being similar to American Community Colleges) Collages also teach Trades.
I signed up to a college course one year, learning Nat.5 Chemistry, Nat.5 Biology. Nat.5 Maths and Lab skills. I went three days a week for 5-6 hours each day.

I have a friend who got Homeschooled during all of Highschool and he was apart of a social club that met up twice a week. I was apart of a social club that met up once a week.

I would've preferred if my Highschool experience was a Social club with the College Courses for Education.

Hello, I just graduated high school in Canada 4 days ago.

I think the education system itself is a problem, compared to the Indian Education System, I find the Canadian education system quite soft and frankly kind of a circus.

It seems like a circus because the education in Mathematics and Physics is not that rigorous.

For example - We did not do any geometry whatsoever in grade 10 and grade 11, the last time i recall doing geometry was some very very basic circle theorems in grade 9. As a result, I was sitting in a grade 12 class having no idea about geometry, volume or anything to do with shapes. I am currently trying to fix that by studying from Modern Introductory Analysis.

I ended up taking Calculus 12 in this semester in high school, and we were learning limits and our teacher ended up writing a function in piecewise notation. Every single person in the class DID NOT KNOW what a piecewise function was. Gentlemen, this is a calculus grade 12 class. It was understandable as we never even learned piecewise functions in grade 10, 11,12.

This is ridiculous, how can you sit in a calculus class without knowing the definition of a piecewise function?

I am 100% sure NO-ONE in that class even knows about the fundamental real number system axioms.

Also our math teacher was teaching a bit slowly, so we did not even finish the book and ended up skipping Conic Sections. So it just seems like a half assed sloppy attempt to prepare students for calculus.