Reacting to “Don’t Stay in School” hate comments

hi I'm Dave from boyinaband today we're gonna look at some of the don't stain school hate comments and also some of the nice and constructively critical ones too so my fragile self-esteem doesn't get shattered this has been a frickin surreal few weeks I released my song don't stay in school and five million views on Facebook later it seems a few of you guys agree with me and I threatened cult artists through this now much better but not everyone agreed with its message that the school syllabus is flawed it was a slightly contentious issue I'm self-serving it someone posted it to Reddit and that day was at the top of the controversial page for the entire freaking website clearly this shows it's something we need to discuss so let's get started first we're gonna take a look at the comments on YouTube there were quite a variety of responses because the majority of you guys that watch me tend to be really respectful but it spread quite quickly outside that group so it's obvious as [ __ ] that you didn't pass high school I get it was hard but you don't need to cry on YouTube that you don't understand why they teach you this information I got 12 GCSEs three a-levels in maths physics and computing and a university degree but even if I had totally dropped out it would not have affected my point whatsoever well this song hit every point I've been thinking about glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way about these things this guy is an idiot much appreciated inside their toilet duck why do you want to fight I had a bad education but I know how to read and write and make some simple operations and it is enough just calm down and don't take it too seriously yeah it's only wasting years of time from every educated human being on the planet no big deal you're a hippie but I have to agree with you thanks bro sexy grill yeah bro that's what your parents are for to teach you bummer excuse me mr. Broderick what parents about that do I deserve a fair chance in life no way bro my parents were awesome I'll be way more valuable to society than you Ballmer okay I was really surprised at the number of people that said it was up to the parents it's basically saying your quality of life should be dictated by luck because some people's parents are uneducated some people's parents frickin suck at parenting and 153 million children's parents are dead but screw them bro bummer or if you're not quite that selfless it's saying I would rather receive first aid from someone taught by their parents than by a qualified teacher at school the 1,000 dislikes our teachers there's a lot of teachers that really supported this message because they don't control what the SIL is I showed my mother who was a teacher that don't stay in school video she said it was excellent and that she can't fault it and there were tons of similar messages from teachers who were as frustrated as we are about this entire system being so inefficient my mom started watching your videos it feels like a reverse playground insult my mom started watching you if you made algebra geometry and higher maths not mandatory how many kids would choose to learn it probably not a single one consequently you'd get generations of people who'd not be able to become scientists or technicians this makes assumptions that kids aren't naturally curious about these kinds of things I'm positing that kids are being put off those topics because they're forced into them because there is a lack of scientists engineers and programmers and that's a whole different issue to address but I don't know whether forcing children to dedicate years of their life the things they have no interest in is the way to encourage them in that after YouTube I also uploaded on Facebook which is where it was the most popular with a hundred and thirty thousand people sharing it ah which would have been fantastic if it wasn't for the fact that they wouldn't let me choose a thumbnail so five million people were presented with this great thanks for that lucky absolutely love this my daughter won't be going to school we home educate and don't let the name fool you home education is a bit of a misnomer we actually spend very little time at home and a lot out and about learning from practical activities everyday experiences and opportunities in our community lots of homeschooling moms really resonated with this message which makes me laugh at the thought of thousands of moms suddenly get into screaming rap music my perception of homeschooling prior to that was crazy Christian fundamentalists holding their kids back in forcing them to wear this but it turns out there's a lot of people on the total other side of the spectrum who were just terrified to let their kids have their creativity beaten out of them in years of their potential development wasted and this can be awesome for kids with well-educated parents but the problem is this is not scalable for start for the majority of families both parents work they don't have time to teach their kids in addition to feeding and clothing and keeping a roof over their heads this change needs to happen in schools from the vibe I got I think if the school system changed a lot of these parents would love to let their kids go their schools are all about indoctrination and dumbing down self education is the way do not go to school I think we need to fix school rather than stop going to it this is useless rhetoric here is an example of a sentence that perfectly describes itself hear this get haircut quit whining and do something productive with your life stop blaming everyone else for your inability to function in a normal society where do so many other people that are against me cares so much about the length of my freakin hair you need to listen to some of my other songs I guess he thinks the world owes him a living and everything that will make him happy get a grip on reality kid I worked hard to build a career for myself so I'm not quite sure what you're talking about there and this wouldn't help me if it was implemented it would help the kids currently in school sounds like you're mad at your parents I love my mom and dad where did you get out from they're incredibly intelligent considerate to people this is unbelievably true education in schools are pointless for the future everyone is forced to find out the most important things about life in their own time which is limited by the waste of time that is school am I the only one who thought it was a girl no I like that you're encouraging a debate on this topic I don't agree with you but life's a method of delivery I wonder if Shakespeare influenced your poetic dissidents more M&M that Shakespeare but thanks for being so reasonable and the top comments on Facebook was this one which had two points to make I went to a pretty damn awful high school worst in my County in fact ended up with a PhD in nuclear physics in the end those isotopes you mentioned my bread and butter day-in day-out mathematics I use daily if not hourly first thing to say the majority of people won't use isotopes or complex algebra in their entire lives and second I'm not saying that we should remove them entirely you would have still been able to learn that stuff but you would have chosen to do so way too much is mandatory in school our current do you want to know what the real problem is with today's society a massive sense of self entitlement there is absolutely no excuse blaming education systems for our general ignorance we can only blame ourselves education systems are the exact solution we came up with to remedy ignorant if we are still ignorant that solution is not working properly we are entitled to it it says so in our human rights education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms that pretty clearly says you should be taught your human rights but I guess it's understandable you didn't know that since you weren't taught your human rights over on Twitter people were taking to use the hashtag but not everyone liked it your hashtag in song are misleading kids will genuinely think they shouldn't stay in school a lot of people said they're really where's dated with the message of the song but didn't like my choice of title so let me clarify I am NOT saying kids should drop out of school the last lines of the song gave context that don't stay in school is referring to the pointless topics not to students I titled it that way because I don't imagine five million people would be discussing this incredibly important issue if I released the song the syllabus has inefficient aspects to it leading on from this though there were a lot more people saying they were worried kids would take it the wrong way then there were kids taking it the wrong way in fact I saw more kids showing they understood the message and explaining they agree that the syllabus needs to change hey Dave I'm in sixth grade and they are only teaching us one thing that you didn't learn and that is tax just wanted to point that out great message by the way and I do know you are not telling us to drop out of school then the video got posted on reddit in various different context super edgy 22 year old raps about how useless school is but the most successful post was titled he may be British but the point applies in the US as well and it had the top comment I suppose a British response is called for linking to this video from Stephen Fry struggle it's always the children who say sir so what's the point of drama - that's the point of Latin who end up having no job being alcoholic and they find knowledge for its own sake and pleasure information in the history and in the world of nature rubbish actually is getting all of doing things with their [ __ ] a baby now I love Stephen Fry I've been to watch Qi I've heard the Harry Potter audiobooks how we both have a burning passion for electronic music dubstep is my life but if what he said was true perhaps the reason these people ended up jobless an alcoholic was because they were forced for the entire of their formative years for the majority of their waking time to sit in one place learning in a format they didn't resonate with until their intrinsic curiosity was beaten out of them however I don't think it is always those types of people because a huge amount of kids currently in school that commented on this video had really eloquent views on this and have interests they would love to pursue but are forced to waste all of their motivation on learning pointless things they are completely uninterested in not everyone loves learning for the sake of learning and that's okay many of these people just have incredibly specific interests but again I don't hate you Stephen you're still brilliant and the most devoted comment I saw and read it was Google seriously this [ __ ] doesn't stick anymore when you have humanity's collective knowledge at your fingertips you want to learn how to do your taxes [ __ ] YouTube there are a myriad of videos on the subject want to learn how to vote go to the government website maths science English physics are the foundations you're expected to get off your ass and go find things out for yourself too but I guess we got to be edgy yeah [ __ ] school but despite it being the most voted thing it doesn't address the point at all why are we learning this set of things why do you think we should google these certain things why shouldn't we google the quadratic equation why our ops bowl aches specifically more of a priority than knowing how to stop someone bleeding to death we won't all think of every useful bit of information independently of one another a great youtube comment phrased it we don't know what we don't know after all if we all relied on Google we'd miss things we've made mistakes which could easily be rectified by a teacher and lastly one thing I saw a lot on all of the platforms it was uploaded to were people saying things like this what [ __ ] school did he go to I went to a standard British inner-city state school and learned about pretty much everything he is talking about bar tax he went to school and ignored all the things they tried to teach him then made a song pretending they didn't he's ignorant as [ __ ] I recall being taught about tons of stuff he's crying about I think boy in a band might have spent a little too much time dyeing his hair smoking pot and trying to be a rock star and should have spent a little more time paying attention in class about dyeing my hair I really didn't back then I look like Harry Potter if he was a serial killer and I've never done any drugs in my life though American security guards in airports always ask that question but just like the guy who assumed I dropped out even if I was a slacker or took drugs or hated learning my points would still be valid those kinds of ad hominem attacks don't address the issue this argument from people who did get taught some of these things was answered really well by this comment I saw those of you who've gotten decent education 'he's taught what day was not don't see the lesser school systems because you don't come into contact with the people who've been subjected to them it's like how rich people don't have to socialize with those who aren't as well-off there's a huge divide because of the difference in social groups and abilities you're on an almost unattainable tier by default just because you learn basic life skills at a very young age when everyone else has to seek them out otto didactically much later in life if their family isn't responsible or caring enough to teach them exactly freakin exactly that even if you were taught all those things which is great by the way kudos to whichever education system you were in millions of us were not taught them and importantly millions of people currently in mandatory education will still not be taught these things and what I've learned from the thousands of comments from people who make this argument it looks like people don't know that meaning there is a gap in their education as well when it comes down to is that the syllabus was decided hundreds of years ago and what is being taught right now has stemmed from that initial arbitrary decision and has not had any sort of major overhaul despite the jobs and lifestyle were preparing kids for being completely different we've agreed in our human rights that everyone should be taught but we've never had the global conversation about what should be taught ideally we'd have some system where we could all put in the different topics we think are useful for everyone and useful for the most in-demand jobs contrast it with studies showing the amount of time optimally that a kid can spend learning without destroying their mental or physical health and use that to prioritize with scientific evidence which lesson should be taught practically though since that's a bit utopian to put into practice I think most people want something to happen but don't know what they can do so if you've got any ideas I'd love to hear them in the comments I'm gonna release a video soon saying what I'll be doing about the problem and also suggesting some things we can do collectively since loads of you have shown that you actually really tear about this I do not want to just let this video say something and then do nothing there's enough of us here together now that we can make an impact thank you so much to everyone who's posted your comments all over the internet on both sides of the fence I really appreciate it let me know your ideas there in the comments cheers for watching and have a nice day hi I'm Dave from boy in the band sometimes you come across people who completely change your perception of what the human being is capable of today I'm going to show you one of those people

Channel: Boyinaband

Views: 6,198,782

Rating: 4.9451766 out of 5

Keywords: don't stay in school, boyinaband, boy in a band, comments, hate comments, react to, react, reddit, facebook, youtube, twitter, school, syllabus, education, ken robinson, steven fry

Id: BJIu7pE0lBA

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 21 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/theoneandonlygio]

An outstandingly reasonable and logical response. Agree or disagree, this is how constructive conversation begins. Education is something that we should always be looking to improve, which means sometimes at least considering entirely different methods or systems. Change isn't necessarily bad, just different and hopefully better... But people get upset when you ask them to consider changing their worldview and become argumentative. He may or may not have the answer but it's good that he's keeping the conversation (not argument) alive.

[u/sgrundy]

I didn't see it linked so here is the original "Don't Stay in School" video

[u/[deleted]]

The only thing he seems not to touch on:

A lot of what we are taught in schools is the thinking skills required to digest knowledge. It's not necessarily about the thing being taught you, it's about the skill required to learn that thing.

Take cursive writing as an example. People always like to rag on it. "I was told we would need to write in cursive but no one ever does!". Well yeah, that was a lie, you don't need to write in cursive. But you know why we still teach it? Because writing in cursive requires you to develop fine motor skills. It requires you to apply attention to fine detail. It requires you to understand that there can be multiple abstract symbols that have the same meaning.

Writing in cursive might not be important, but the things you pick up in the process of learning it are valuable.

Similarly, trigonometry isn't that useful in everyday life, but most trig questions aren't about triangles. They're about problem solving. And the American old west isn't that important, but a respect for historical context is.

Baseball isn't that important of a skill either, but the physical activity involved sure is. I think people "get it" with sports for some reason, that it's not really about the sport itself. No idea why it's hard to understand that everything we learn has similar multifaceted dynamics.

That being said, I don't think our education system is perfect, and a lot of the things boyinaband is pointing out are things that should be added to the curriculum. But if we're going to talk about what should be in and what should be discarded, make sure you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

[u/thatguy52]

http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

This RSA Animate video on Education was the first time I ever thought that education and schooling are two different things. It seems the problem of putting kids in one end of school and getting them out educated is only getting worse.

[u/MetalClocker]

"We've agreed in our human rights that everyone should be taught, but we've never had the global conversation about what should be taught. Ideally, we would have some system where we could all put in the the different topics we think would be useful for everyone and useful for the most in demand jobs contrasted with studies showing the amount of time optimally that a kid could spend learning without destroying their mental or physical health and use that to prioritize the scientific evidence which lessons should be taught."

I completely agree with this quote, and I also agree that this is way too Utopian of an idea. Too many factors keep our education (in the US, and a lot of the rest of the world) from changing in such a positive direction. While people can argue which negative factor has the most influence, I'm going to say money is the biggest evil.

Decisions about how we teach our kids are made mostly by those with the most money. I think a lot of studies have been done one what's best to educate children, but studies have also been done on which curriculums could harm certain businesses, organizations, and even governments, and that's where a lot of these strict and unproductive curriculums come from.

I agree that the educational system is fucked, that the entire system in general is corrupt, but I have hope that enough attention will be brought to this subject to get it to change, even just a little bit.

Completely agree with his message, and loved the responses to asshole internet comments.

[u/Gaarulf]

And still people don't see the point... It's not about removing math and the current topics being learned, but that we should reconsider how the school works as a whole in 2015. I saw a positive trend in the school I went to (Norway), we got smaller classes with more teachers per students than previously, so that everyone got more time with the teacher. We started to get more individual in the way we learned and what we learned. Everyone had math, but one group was more advanced than the others. And that's okay, I didn't want to learn "complex" math when I was 14, so I didn't and focused harder in our Norwegian course.

The point is, the standard one size fits all education system isn't fitting everyone.

[u/somethingaboutits]

I didn't learn much from my public school in San Diego. I had the same English teacher from 10-12, and all we did was steal from her, hide her alarm, set it to 23 hours, and hide it in someone's desk. All she did was sit at her desk while we filled out worksheets.

I took several years of graphic design classes, but they didn't offer any programming or 3d animation/modeling classes - so I went to Blender and Python on my own, at home.

I was told I didn't do my homework, but I spent my free time learning the freeware Blender circa 2004, and trying desperately to learn Python and C++ with what few free tools were available to me.

But rest assured, I read all the politically enforced novels like House on Mango Street, and Things Fall Apart. Thank God I was exposed to standard form instead of learning how to file my taxes. Praise Allah no one told me about how to interview for a job, but instead, was pounded with the Jain Schaffer style of writing essays. My high school accepted one style of essay: Intro -> Content, Content, Content -> Conclusion.

Community college was 100% the exact opposite of my experience at public schools.

KhanAcademy and the like are amazing. Kids these days are lucky to not know how difficult it was to find free education options for programming languages.

[u/[deleted]]

Education is vitally important.

High school, as it stands, is not.

[u/questions_for_ya]

When I was in high school (over 20 years ago), I asked my teachers why I was being taught various things like quadratic equations. I was told they wanted the students to be 'well rounded' individuals, so we didn't have too many dancers and not enough scientists.

So, our current syllabus is basically designed to maintain a stable economy. If that isn't a good enough reason to change it, I don't know what is.