[appplication]

I am a similar learner, though not quite the same. Mostly for me it’s a focus thing. If I’m focused in, I learn very quickly, but if not, I fall behind hopelessly. College lectures were next to impossible for me, as I had such a hard time focusing, ended up in academic probation and managed to turn it around enough to graduate.

Years later, I went back and got my MS online. That was incredible. Recorded lectures meant I could pause and rewind when I lost focus. I really enjoyed my classes because now the most stressful part of it was no longer an issue.

It’s incredible our entire public school system is based on the assumption every student learns things in the same way at the same rate.

[fnordpiglet]

But how can it scale if it doesn’t assume that? It really has to cater to some statistical center of gravity and at some point cut off the outliers. Otherwise you need to pay for a private education because essentially you’re asking for custom tailored schooling. The fact that my parents couldn’t afford private schooling is no one’s fault - I don’t blame the public school system for things being the way things are honestly despite the level of abject misery I felt in it. In fact I’m a huge fan of it - I learned more than I would have without it and value the fact that everyone no matter how poor gets access to it.

Some public schools try to do differentiation but it’s really expensive and impractical at scale. The quality of teacher, resources, and teacher training required if very high. I think every effort to try is worth doing, but the more you try without increasing the amount of funding, training, and selectivity in teacher hiring (which is impractical given the scarcity of high quality teachers relative to the population size) the worse you do for everyone.

I don’t agree vouchers and school choice helps this fwiw. The issues don’t go away by diffusing administration of schools to more organizations, you just end up spending a lot more tax payer money on a lot more administrative staff at a lot more schools with a lot less focus on that center of mass outcome.

The reality is despite how intolerable my childhood was I found my way - and I know many who do. People are resilient and overcome adversity all the time in many shapes.