worked at an architect's, an archeologist's, a hospital, an epidemiological research institute where I got to use _my own computer_ all day - decided I needed to work with computers, got a summer job there.
earned the President's Award medal
had one class where we stripped an engine over the term
got my first aid certificate
learned how to develop film
took night classes touch typing (on an electric typewriter)
took part in the Irish language school music competition
took German
was in a play
got an award at the Young Scientist
I really developed as a person. I hadn't ever really stopped to think what my life would be like without that development but I suspect it was very beneficial. It certainly wasn't a "doss" - and it started to grow a self determination muscle - find your own work experience, find projects you want to try etc.
I often mention to people that graduate research helped me mature for this same reason. Prior to grad school, I just followed the strict well-defined path modern schooling tends to have - spend most time studying, very limited investment in hobbies and out-of-school friendships, get good grades, focus only on moving to the next year. My grades were great, but it left me as an underdeveloped anxious mess of a person who was incapable of being independent.
Having a few years where I had to do things mostly on my own while still being somewhat 'sheltered' (because a research advisor doesn't have time to babysit, but also won't exploit you the way an employer can) helped me a lot to become my own person and to stop having panic attacks over trivial decisions. At a younger age, the same effect could've been achieved with one year.
Plus, while everyone used to act like missing a year of ~high school would be a permanent blemish on a career, having gone through all this education, I feel that high school was the least consequential part of it. It could easily be replaced with a year of professional 'exploration' with no loss. Especially nowadays, where undergraduate degrees are very common (high school grades can already be entirely forgotten after obtaining a degree), and undergrad programs spend much of the first year redoing a lot of high school material to bring everyone up to the same level.
As a result, when I have children of my own, I plan to emphasize this sort of exploration a lot more.
> but also won't exploit you the way an employer can
Eh, my experience is the opposite. A lot more exploitation in grad school than in industry. It's a lot easier to change jobs than change professors/universities.
I recall multiple cases of formal/semi-formal interventions where other professors or the department had to force an advisor to let the person graduate (they wanted to keep milking them for more papers).
And then when you do graduate, forget a career in research if you can't get recommendation letters from him.
But otherwise, I agree. A ton of benefits if you go to graduate school and don't have an abusive advisor.
(I also took a year off after high school. Never understood why everyone said I was making a big mistake...).
>Eh, my experience is the opposite. A lot more exploitation in grad school than in industry. It's a lot easier to change jobs than change professors/universities.
>I recall multiple cases of formal/semi-formal interventions where other professors or the department had to force an advisor to let the person graduate (they wanted to keep milking them for more papers).
That's kind of what I mean though. In grad school other professors you've worked with might still keep an eye out for you. Under an exploitative employer, the way I was previously, I wouldn't know any better, I had no sense for the value of my time/work and I used to panic about having to send simple emails to people, quitting a job used to sound equivalent to suicide.
For me there's also the factor that as an international student, it's a lot easier for employers to exploit me than a school.
Edit: Although, come to think of it, I do know of other departments at my uni where even other professors can't be relied on to help in such cases. So I guess you're right.
> Under an exploitative employer, the way I was previously, I wouldn't know any better, I had no sense for the value of my time/work and I used to panic about having to send simple emails to people, quitting a job used to sound equivalent to suicide.
Seems the lessons you learned as a grad student are the lessons I learned as an employee :-)
My first job was exploitative. I eventually gave them the middle finger and left. Everyone told me I was crazy: "All jobs are like this. You have to suck it up"
Eh, no. None of my jobs since then have been that bad. Half of them I actually enjoyed.
School for me (in Ireland) was more or less a race to get out of school (+ concomitant bullying) and into university to study what I was interested in (maths - at that point I wasn't able to advance any further on my own and there was nobody who could help/guide me further where I lived) - the idea of adding a year on felt like it would be a waste. In retrospect, yeah I think I made a good call. Happy to see other people getting benefit from it though.
I think OP must have grown up in a pretty affluent neighbourhood. (How many schools have programmes with epidemiological institutes?) If I had done TY in the school I went to with the others in my cohort that did, my experience would have likely been much closer to theirs than to OP's: rarely attending school, drinking, smoking weed, and in some cases not returning back to school at all to finish the leaving cert.
I was much happier getting out of school as soon as I possibly could like yourself.
TY was historically the proviso of South Dublin schools and the more elite boarders. The majority of rural students skipped it and hit University by 17.
OP sounds like he was in a gaelscoil - an Irish language school. The 'epidemiological institute' in question was either RCSI or UCD - fairly standard for 3rd level institutions to have relationships/programmes/open days with various feeder Schools.
The big red herring was the engine module. No 'affluent' school would remotely consider offering a course in stripping an engine over a semester in 1998 - far more likely that those Students were put learning classics, latin or ancient greek.
It sounds like an awesome idea to me. Personally I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life as soon as I discovered computers and how to manipulate them with code, but then on the other hand my sister's youngest two daughters both hit 18 recently and neither had any idea of what they wanted to do.
As a result both of them just got pushed into something at the end.
This isn't really possible today though. You'd be barred from tons of layers of "competitive admission " where you'd needs months of preparation in of itself to "show interest". No trying things out, experience is reserved for those who already have the experience.
In Quebec you find a similar program; elementary school is K-6, and high school is 7-11. Following this you can optionally attend an interstitial educational system called "CEGEP".
It's government funded and costs next to nothing.
CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first-year university courses like calculus, biology etc for a science stream.
However, you are required to take approx 15-20% of your courses in an "opposite" stream to force you to get acquainted with other alternatives before you commit to university. In addition, the structure is much like university (you pick your classes & schedule, class sizes are increased compared to HS, your responsibility is increased) which is a good transition for university if that's where you're headed.
I think it's a wonderful system and I wish it was more widespread.
I went through the CEGEP system in Quebec and honestly credit it with giving me the skills necessary to be successful in university. My high school was very lenient and gave me a lot of flexibility to work on personal projects, and overall that worked out great but I was definitely lacking the grit necessary to dive deep into topics I couldn’t quickly understand.
CEGEP provided an excellent transitionary structure where you had both more responsibility for your actions and results, and also a forgiving safety net. You’re forced to do near-university-level study of subjects in an environment where the professors are able to hold your hand a bit more, will tolerate late assignments, and if you screw up it won’t permanently tank your future academic prospects.
The tuition at CEGEP was free. You just paid a few fees to the school and the student union, which added up to about $120/semester at the time. This made it a lot more palatable to try out a math- or science-heavy stream and switch out of it if you decided it wasn’t something you’d want to continue in university. The gen ed classes were also great.
I'm very jealous of the cegep program, as a resident of neighbouring Ontario. For all my Quebec friends, it just seemed like an amazing way to test different experiences before committing to a degree. In addition, the work you do in cegep counts towards a bachelor's degree, so french students end up finishing their degrees without losing a year.
I googled "quebec educational attainment" and found https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/communique/university-gradu..., which says that "Québec has the highest proportion of people aged 25 to 64 with any postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree (71.2%).". According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/467078/median-annual-fam..., Quebec's median annual family income in 2021 was 96,910, almost the same as the median 98,390. The top "provinces" are Northwest Territories and Yukon, whose ways of doing things, for better or worse, cannot be easily copied to other provinces.
Everybody mocks me when I say this. But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun.
It’s like our biology is smarter than us. If it’s fun our brains are telling us there’s something about it we need. It’s like when you think a girl is cute for the first time. There’s no logic in it to you, but it’s the most logical thing in the world, that’s why it’s fun.
Hans Zimmer used to just like play with all kinds of stuff when he was young just to see what it would sound like.
I listened to an intel exec (after pat came back) and he talked about how he was disassembling and reassembling the house electronics as a kid.
Or me - I would just code for fun and my dad got me some books on it. I hardly ever did any school on it.
If we let kids just do what they want and have fun, I think they would get good at what they love and have fulfilling careers.
If you have to do what your told your whole life - who even wants to live it?
So maybe we just let kids have their freedom. I know it sounds crazy but what if we applied the rights to life liberty and pursuit of happiness to them? I think they would amaze us. Kids are so clever, I think we would have so much creativity our minds would be blown!
To conclude I think that we have a dearth of people who know what to do. So many employees and fewer small businesses. I think if we give kids freedom, the chance to figure out what they like doing, and how to do it, as adults they will be able to start businesses better and manage them.
You haven't accounted for selection bias there. It is quite likely most people don't find a productive activity fun and it is a much better plan to try and be somewhat wealthy doing something that inspires a neutral feeling rather than poor. Much like the girl you find cute on first glance, if you change your mind later then it'd have been a real mistake to over-commit on first impressions.
If there are 10 people who want to be plumbers but the economy is signalling it needs 20 plumbers then it'd be best if 10 people who don't enjoy plumbing all that much do it for the money. If there are 100 people who want to make a living as an artist and only demand for 1 it'd be better if most of them overruled their instincts and found something more useful to do. Paint as a hobby and live as something else.
I want to play video games. I spent my childhood playing games in every waking moment of my free time that I could get away with. I did the same thing in my young adulthood, and now my current life.
As an adult, unfortunately (lol), family and job take priority and I can't just play video games all day, despite my wishes.
I would have approximately zero productivity if I just did what I thought was fun. I'm sure I'm not alone.
If I don't have some sort of exterior structure or motivator, I will literally get nothing done, and I have no desire to.
Your point is completely relevant for today. That said, it's curious to think about how that attention may have been channeled in a world free from such man made stimulation traps.
> But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun.
This is essentially the philosophy of unschooling[0], which the recurse center[1] follows. I definitely agree with you! Pursuing fun and curiosity has led me to my most productive and moments.
Well I think that's the predicament of the mismatch between one's inner predispositions and what society demands.
If it aligns it's cool and you can reach for the stars, but there is a wide scope of activities that won't make a living. Especially given our origins as hunter-gatherers or explorers, for someone with similar predispositions, what can they really do that fits that? Most likely they'd end spending most of their time playing video games to satiate those urges than to
Patrick Collison (Stripe) credits the Transition Year in Ireland for his computer interest
" Ireland actually has this interesting thing called “transition year,” this year between two major exams of high school or at least Ireland’s high school equivalent.Transition year is a formally designated year that’s optional, where you can go and pursue things that you might not otherwise naturally tend to pursue, and the school tends to be much more permissive of going and spending three months abroad or going and doing some work experience in this area or whatever the case may be. And so, in that year, I basically decided to spend as much of it as possible programming, and so I did that.”"
In Ireland -- with one kid in Junior Cert and one who did Junior Cert, then had an external Transition Year, then self studied for A levels, and one who's done home school/self study through GCSE and now doing A levels.
It's an optional, definitely not universal thing. Not all schools offer it, and even then I get the impression that it's well less than half the students take the opportunity. The implementation is also highly school dependent, which is either totally expected or a complete surprise, given that the rest of the curriculum and tests are all national level standards.
This article paints a far rosier picture than I've really seen from the local experiences, but that's probably as much the lack of drive at the school than anything else.
My eldest's TY experience with us was great -- we took the opportunity to AirB&B around Europe, at least till Covid hit. But we were totally comfortable with dealing with the home schooling part of that for the three of them.
All private and boarder schools have it as mandatory for at least 20 years at this point. The public schools that don't tend to either be in extremely rural areas with low university accession to begin with (and a different focus on things like the Leaving Cert Applied and/or facilitating the Sileage/Farming season).
The school I’m talking about is a public school in one of the bigger towns in Ireland. It’s not predominantly rural, but it’s also not one of the ”good” schools, which here are Catholic.
Kind of like APs, except that you typically study only 3, sometimes 4 subjects for the final two years of high school and then take final exams.
So for my final two years of high school, I only studies math, physics and bio.
In the same way that an AP can sometimes give you a semester's credit at a university, an A-Level can sometimes give you a full year's credit. (Only in US universities, though. In the UK you're expected to have done them, so you don't get extra credit. Though, for the same reason, a bachelors degree in the UK is typically only three years, not four.)
Britain used to have "Ordinary level" (O levels) at age ~16 and "Advanced level" exams (A levels) at ~18. Students usually studied 5-8 O levels and then either left school to pursue a career or went on to study (usually) 3 A levels and go to university.
O levels got replaced back in the 80's. A levels never got renamed.
This was certainly the case in most of Britain. Scotland has a separate education system from England and has today and historically offered different high school level qualifications ("Highers" etc).
The highest qualification you'll get from a school in the UK. Typically studied for between ages 16-18. They are the most common qualification used for university entry by students who go through the UK school system.
Unlike some other systems where students stud a broad spectrum of subjects (with core subjects like maths, english and science being compulsory), students typically only study 3 (or maybe 4) subjects a A level (with subjects being things like "maths", "geography", "chemistry", etc), with no compulsory subjects.
I had this in the U.S. and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My parents signed me up for homeschool every year, but I still did public school. As a result, I just did whatever classes I wanted. Junior year, I realized that I'd have to drop all my fun classes and just do core for the last year and a half to graduate. Decided instead to not graduate and just find books on different topics from the library. Ended up with:
- Huckleberry Finn
- a deep History book on Roman Britain
- a nonfiction coffee table book on space
- an intro to physics workbook
- a Spanish book
- a book on governments around the world
As it happened, I worked through 4 big space books and realized that I was really passionate about space. When I started college it was easy to plan my direction and be motivated because I knew the area I wanted to work in.
20 years ago it was considered a 'doss year' (waste/screw-around etc.), and the general perception was that it was for those that require a little more time in the oven developmentally before proceeding to the next stage. I was a child then so I don't know if that was true, but certainly the majority of people who took it were not academically inclined.
It was both extremes when I did it 15 years ago. Those who needed it just to catch up on what they were supposed to have learned in junior cycle and those who wanted a bunch of extra curriculars for whatever reason. Note that admission to college/university in Ireland is not a motivator for extra curriculars - for school leavers the only things that matter are your overall grades, and for some courses, grades in specific subjects. (For foreign students, over 25s, those with special needs etc. there's a 10% or so allocation for an alternative process which is more subjective application based. But the 90% go through the purely grades based CAO)
Think it varies a lot school to school and sometimes even year to year.
Not in my school: the vast majority who took it (this was the '90s, when it started) were the ones doing almost all honours.
It heavily depends on the school, I would guess, however, but often those who need "more time in the oven" come just as much from the academically inclined side as from the less academically inclined side. For both, it allows them a broader window on who they might be.
Which seems fair enough. There’s already a year difference between the youngest and oldest student in any given class; if you want your children to do well, make sure they’re among the oldest.
The problem is it might come too late to change their self-perception. A year is a lot of time when you’re nine
A year is still a lot then. You can do a lot in a year if you don't have to worry about earning a living and have the time to engage in things that are interesting.
In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed.
Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.
That's not unreasonable if you have good tests that hit the right elements. My experience about 10 years ago with the AP exams were very positive. The tests were good, and even though the classes were taught to the test, they were some of the best classes I ever took.
Education should be about more than just passing standardised tests.
I always remember my history teacher taking an entire term on the battles of the second world war. He brought in videos, old shell casings, all kinds of stuff. Everyone was into it, even kids who normally wouldn't pay attention.
At the end of term he apologised to us, since none of that would be in the test, and now we would have to work harder to get through the exam material. We didn't mind; he had hooked us on the subject.
But that is now rare. Increasingly teachers just teach to the test. And the number of tests the kids have to take keeps rising.
The best you can say about it is everyone gets the same tedious and stressful introduction to everything, which only proves their ability to remember lots of stuff under time pressure.
It's just an example of a teacher engaging their students in a subject by not only teaching to the test.
Here's another one. I had a maths teacher who engaged his students about probability theory through learning about games of chance. We spent some lessons figuring out what advantage we could get in various card games. He also spent some lessons on just "cool" ideas like infinity, zeno's paradoxes and other mind blowing concepts. None of which were on the exam syllabus.
As an aside, history is very much not about facts. It's more about interpretation of incomplete data from many different sources, not all of which are reliable. My Dad said it's more like being a detective (he was a professor of history).
the problem, at least in the US, is that the tests and standards have tightened up without necessarily giving the teachers better training or better productivity tools to teach them, and now their job evaluations also depend on it, so now everybody is optimizing for the test. Usually to the detriment of subjects not on standardized testing like the arts or physical education or anything resembling a break time.
Throw in the fact that in much of the country, teachers have to do things like pull second jobs to get by and beg parents for basic supplies like scissors and paper towels, and it's no wonder everything is falling apart.
Gap Year is taken between 2nd and 3rd level education at the persons own impetus - generally used to backpack around SEA and/or work for a bit in the 'real world'.
Transition Year is the 4th year of 2nd Level in Ireland - the conclusion of the 'Junior Cycle' of secondary school, culminating with the 10-14 Subject 'Junior Certificate' exam at the end of 3rd year. It is a regular year in terms of school attendance, but rather than academic modules structure against a strict curriculum, students tend to do a mix of practical and theoretical skills.
Things like intro to psychology, philosophy, an esoteric language or other college accession style intro classes are popular. Photography/Film Making, Cooking, Self-Defense/Martial Arts classes are all popular on the practical side.
Most of the religious schools (i.e. about 80% of all schools) tend to have a charity component as well - seeing TY students out collecting for Irish Cancer Society or packing bags in a supermarket to fund a local Hospice is pretty standard.
The article says it is like a gap year, but during secondary school.
Clearly not the same as taking time off before university when you are already an adult though. Participation in some activities is required, so it's a bit more structured - and I don't think you can take off on your own to travel the world!
The Gap Year is a year-long deferral from university or college. Sometimes, it occurs directly after finishing High School, and other times, it occurs in the middle of your course.
Many countries allow young people (under 30) to live and work in-country under a Working Holiday visa. Both are effectively Young People travelling (aka backpacking).
A gap year is normally between the end of secondary school and starting college (so 18-20 or so). TY is between junior cycle (junior cert, or inter cert if you're older) and senior cycle (leaving cert). So 14-16 year olds (who couldn't legally take a gap year)
my physics A level teacher did something really interesting with us.
we spent a whole class looking at an old O Level question from an exam.
all of us, including the boffins in the class, were completely stumped by it.
he explained it to us at the end, but it did solidify an appreciation in me that, at least 20ish years ago, we definitely had it easier than folks before us.
The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.
(it's not clear to me if this created any standardized tests for students, or just depended on existing ones)
Sounds like it ran from 2009-2015ish. If Bill Gates is going to be brought up, then I guess George W. Bush should be, too, with No Child Left Behind. AFAIK that's what kicked off the trend of standardized testing for students in the U.S.
I was in one of the first years that did transition year, and it was almost nothing but good for me. It got me much more out of my shell and I was able to do subjects I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Art, in particular, thought there weren't enough subsequently in the senior cycle for me to continue with it, sadly. My work placements were fun in different ways: I worked in a electronics repair shop and learned to solder and basic electronics (I already had a healthy respect for high voltage), worked with some architects, and also in a music studio and got an understanding of music production.
I've heard reasons for not doing it, but it's so good for broadening the horizons of who you think you are that almost all of those reasons are almost moot.
I did transition year in 1996/1997, and I think we were only the second class to do it in my school. We took another European language for a year, and I did Art, Home Economics, Metalwork, and Woodworking classes that had no aptitude for and never would have picked for my leaving cert years. They were great and I learned skills that I still use.
For my work placement, I worked in a folk instrument store and learned a lot about acoustic instruments, but also the basics of showing up on time, getting things done, and more. It was invaluable. The reduced pressure meant I could also work at the local McDonald's, and the income from 6 months of shift-work there made a big difference for me and my family. It was a start of some modest savings that allowed me to even consider going to college later (I still had to work through college, but at least it was doable).
Transition Year, the introduction of Free Third Level Education, and the blinded CAO application process for universities were all game changers for me. I grew up in Ballyfermot, a working class part of Dublin, and when I went to college I found out there was still only a tiny handful of people from there who'd had that opportunity. Still so thankful.
That period of the '90s and early 2000s were a bit of a golden age when it came to education. I very much doubt I'd have been able to afford third level if it wasn't for when I went. The full grant and the fact that fees were abolished meant I could actually make ends meet. Didn't hurt that Cork was a pretty inexpensive place to go to college at the time! Second year was more of a struggle with money, but doable. If I could do anything regarding education, it'd be guaranteeing that same chance to people now that we had then.
I took a year off after high school in the US to work part time and take welding and accounting courses at the local community college. Great experience that convinced me that I did actually want to go to university.
I'm pretty sure that if I had taken auto shop or welding in high school (it was still offered, but I was "college-bound" and steered away from anything in that wing of the building) or in a "gap year" I would have ended up doing something in that field. I love making stuff and repairing stuff. I also was interested in computers and programming them, I think there's a lot of overlap there in terms of motivations.
It seems like such a year could be either revelatory or totally miserable, depending what you got and what type of person you are. Just the thought of many of those activities brings me back to all my school year anxieties.
A few things make this effective: freedom to follow one's curiosity, personal responsibility, and intrinsic motivation over extrinsic.
I used to teach public middle school, and I developed a profound belief that how we educate students is entirely backwards.
The things that make an off year effective scales to an entire K-12 program! See the free democratic schools like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school I believe the majority of students would thrive in such a school, if they had the chance.
They have no formal classes, no teachers, no tests. Yet students still learn to read earlier, they read more and at a higher level. They graduate from college at higher rates, and have higher rates of entrepreneurship. I believe this model is a superior pedagogical model for the majority of the population.
"The Sudbury pedagogical philosophy may be summarized as the following: Learning is a natural by-product of all human activity. Learning is self-initiated and self-motivated.
The educational model states that there are many ways to learn and that learning is a process someone does, not a process that is done to him or her; According to the model the presence and guidance of a teacher is not necessary. "
The problem is we are stuck with our current model - even when alternatives have better outcomes, parents just say "well my kid would not do well with that, they are too lazy to even do what we ask." They do not realize that our current model is so broken that disinterest in a student is a perfectly rational response.
For example, I think video game addiction is a natural response to being forced to do something you hate 8-12 hours a day. The fact that the Philly Free School has very few students ever even playing video games at all (but they are allowed to all day if they want) paints a very clear picture that video games are a symptom not a cause.
can't answer for GP but most likely because he is male himself and so speaking to what he knows.
Your question sounds like you are baiting, like you are pretending to be so naive that you are not aware that men and women face different expectations and circumstances growing up, and moreso there is something wrong with expressing concern for boys without also including girls.
Thank you, leftist universalism is really annoying to engage with. You could say, "its important to wash your hands" and they will ask you why you are being ableist and excluding people without hands.
In this case, someone asked completely inoffensive question in an inoffensive way asking for details ... you two went on an angry rant offended. This question literally could have a meaningful answer and someone even tried.
Like, it is not clear whether any leftist even entered the discussion, the question could easily be asked by someone neutral or conservative. But it was definitely not a leftist who took offense over nothing.
Girls hitting puberty 2-3 years younger and being assumed as being more 'responsible' as per traditional gender roles from about the age of cognition.
This is non-withstanding the Western Educational premise of treating 'misbehaving' boys as 'broken' girls, as opposed to facilitating them in a mutually acceptable learning style.
TY was good to me, but I think it could have been better. As the article says, each school does it differently. We did a mini company, where we created knick knacks and tried to sell them. But the entire class of 30 students was one company, which was therefore quite badly organised. I remember the teachers saying that they wouldn't do it that way in future years. There was also orienteering.
And we still did some academic classes. Maths, anyway. And I think some others.
In my school, most of the kids didn't do TY, so there was just one class in TY, which meant that the maths, in particular, was fairly basic: there weren't enough of us for streaming. And jumping back into higher level maths in Fifth Year was, frankly, a bit of a shock to the system.
It works on the other end of the spectrum too. Much of my class just wanted to leave school at 16 to work on the family farm. TY gave them practical experience of running a business, stripping an engine, how to use an manage credit etc. before they went out in the world.
The Cillian Murphy reference seems off. He might have been too old when it was mandated in 1994, even though it was available earlier. Anyone know for sure?
Are there any US parents here who strongly nudged their children to take a transition year? When my girl grows up I'm leaning towards that direction because I really wish someone would have suggested it for me when I was that age.
It's an extra year of your kids at home, and potentially trips abroad. We couldn't afford the trip to France during my TY, so I skipped the trip, but did TY. While this was the '90s and my parents didn't earn enough to pay income tax, they were able to afford it for both myself and my sister, and I don't think they regret it for either of us.
I remember taking part in Debate, MUN, XC, DECA, Wrestling, Quiz Bowl, Volunteering (NHS/CSF), and a bunch of Olympiads in HS and there was always a cost associated with participating (either a fee or the need to travel to the place hosting the EC).
Unsurprisingly, this meant ECs would skew upper middle class and upper class. Sadly, these same ECs are also blockers for college admissions.
I might get hate for this on HN, but this is why I support unweighted GPA, relative class ranking, and SAT/ACT for college admissions - sort of like what the UCs do. It's the least bad option out of the other options. Alternatively, going open entry with university admissions and then ramping up the difficulty with weedout classes is a good option as well.
Open entry would change a lot of things - lots of schools and rankings use drop out rate as a proxy for how useful attending there is, because of the assumption that if the dropout rate is higher, there's a worse education. It would at least upend the old saying about the hardest part about some colleges is getting in.
I agree with the SAT/ACT part - they pushed "holistic review" during Covid but ultimately SAT prep is way lower barrier (Khan Academy) than gobs of ECs.
Open admission is an interesting way to do things. I spent a bit of time in Belgium where the main universities will accept anyone who has a high-school level education. The first year dropout rate can be 70% in some courses. This system seemed to be very well loved by Belgians.
Notably the US has the lowest dropout rate, so obviously they are pre-filtering students hard. That necessarily means that there are lots of people who /could/ have succeeded but were excluded at the admissions stage. The degree to which that's the right choice probably depends on whether you think doing a year of university and then leaving is a huge waste, a horrible failure, or a worthwhile experiment.
(The unique economics of US universities obviously interact with this calculus in pretty major ways.)
That's not really how TY works in Ireland. It's about broadening horizons, not "extracurriculars".
Third level admissions have been done via a points system based on your top six Leaving Certificate (final second level exam) results for decades. It's an impersonal system, but at least fairer than most.
> UC admissions decisions don't use SAT or ACT scores.
Ope. I forgot that changed after COVID.
Pre-COVID SAT/ACT was required.
> Like if you do well in middle school and get into Lowell by the skin of your teeth, should you be penalized for being in the bottom 10%?
Someone is always going to be penalized no matter what. Most schools in California as well as nationally are not specialized or gatekept via entrance exams like Lowell was.
My child is too young for school but my partner and I expect to homeschool. We've talked about gap years in the childs early/mid teens for travel/backpacking/nature excursions. I wish fellowship and apprentice work was more commonplace in the younger years too. Get out of the classroom and experience the real world.
Plenty of family/friends nearby with young families. I'm in a rural area with a tradition of homeschooling so there's weekly/biweekly events/classes. Not really worried about the socialization. Over socializing can be bad too.
We homeschooled. When we worried about our kids' socialization, we yanked them into the bathroom and beat them up for their lunch money.
I'm kidding, but... you want school to build your kids' social skills? Apart from all the pathologies common in schools, you want your kids to grow up to live in an adult world, which is almost completely unlike school.
Yeah, homeschooling can be done where the kids are isolated and never interact with anyone outside the family. It doesn't have to be, though.
> I'm kidding, but... you want school to build your kids' social skills? Apart from all the pathologies common in schools, you want your kids to grow up to live in an adult world, which is almost completely unlike school.
I mean... yes, it seems reasonable to learn social skills from a school setting? Interacting with other people, some of whom dislike/disagree with each other, interacting with other adults, etc. This seems like a reasonable step toward what you describe as 'the adult world' - which, yes, is rather different from school, but that seems a good thing; throwing a child into 'the adult world' without preparation would be crazy, right?
(I'm not trying to deny that one can learn the necessary social skills while being homeschooled, just disagree with the implication that school is not also a good place to develop them)
“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”
― John Taylor Gatto
And put those children in an invisible cage with two adults who will tell them when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, and when to go to bed, and these kids will learn...... what?
I think homeschooling could work for some combinations of parents and kids, but so many discussion sounds like "Of course it's going to work for my kids because I'm different!"
> And put those children in an invisible cage with two adults who will tell them when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, and when to go to bed, and these kids will learn...... what?
Sounds like a typical day for a regular school kid. Most school kids up to a certain age need a parent to wake them up, and don't get to pick their clothes or their food. And get shepherded into the bed.
Not sure what any of this has to do with homeschooling. It's just basic life.
In fact, from the parents I know who home school, the kids actually have more freedoms than school kids do. Their work is tailored to their skill level, so no BS tedious homework. As long as the parents have time, the schedule is flexible as well. If your kid performs better at noon - great! Start then.
So biased toward American public education, in New York City of all places.
For what it's worth, I look back on my time in school with relative fondness. Certainly I don't agree with anything like it 'being a cage' or feeling isolated from other people (????)
I ran it through ChatGPT with a prompt to remove "unnecessary linguistic complications"
Niall Hare, a 63-year-old headteacher in Dublin, explains the importance of bike maintenance and philosophy in Irish culture while discussing what students do during their "transition year" (TY), which is the optional fourth year of the Irish secondary school system. After completing a three-year junior cycle, students can either go straight into the two-year senior cycle or take a transition year, seen as a sort of gap year.
Transition year has no set curriculum but includes mandatory subjects like Irish, English, maths, and PE for two hours a week, along with work experience and career guidance. Schools are free to design the rest of the program. Hare's TY program for 2024-25 includes subjects like Chinese, folklore, law, and workshops on consent and relationships. Students explore a variety of activities, from arts and coding to aviation and boxing.
Although not graded, participation is required. Notable Irish actors Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy both discovered their love for acting during TY. The year provides opportunities for students to explore new interests and develop life skills. Kacey, a current student, talks about overcoming her fear of driving, while others highlight learning practical skills like preparing a CV and using a bus timetable.
TY, which began as a pilot program in 1974 and was rolled out nationally in 1994, now has 99% of schools offering it, and nearly 80% of students participate. It was the brainchild of Richard Burke, who wanted to create a space where students could take a break from the academic grind and explore the arts. The program has evolved to include work experience, reflecting changes in market expectations.
Despite some criticism, including complaints about its cost and accessibility, TY is widely regarded as a positive experience. Studies suggest TY participants score higher on their Leaving Certificate exams. The program allows students to discover new passions, build confidence, and gain life skills, benefiting both students and teachers. However, challenges remain in ensuring equitable access for all students, especially those from lower-income families.
Thanks for providing that. I did read the article, but that is actually a pretty good summary.
I do agree with the other commenter -- despite all of the downvotes they got -- I did find that article especially cumbersome to read. A browser button to rewrite articles in different styles could actually be useful.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
> I wouldn't call the quality and readability of the written text "tangential"
The topic in this comment section is the "transition year" in Irish secondary schools. The format of the website which introduces that topic is tangential to that topic. I don't know where one would get the idea that a tangent that's not about CSS styling is not a tangent.
The topic is also a specific article about that transition year. I don't think that commenting about an article being particularly well-written, easy to understand, or having nice examples would be against the guidelines here.
If discussion of anything but the underlying subject of the link - including references to the writer, quality, and content of the writing - were considered tangential to the point of being against the guidelines to discuss, then surely so would commenting that another comment is against the guidelines.
I'd say so, it doesn't develop any discussion or conversation, it's bike shedding. Even more that overall quality is a question of judgment, I read the article perfectly fine and the writing style wasn't a distraction.
What do you think we gain in the discussion by debating the quality of writing (which was entirely passable) instead of the substance of it? To me it's quite clear: absolutely nothing.
Failed country? By what measure? One of the highest GNPs per person, one of the most democratic, one of the highest winners of novel prizes for literature per population, one of the safest countries in the world, one of the most food secure countries in the world, overall very good and mostly free health and education, a high redistributive tax system, friendly people, easy place to work...
In TY in 1998 I:
worked at an architect's, an archeologist's, a hospital, an epidemiological research institute where I got to use _my own computer_ all day - decided I needed to work with computers, got a summer job there.
earned the President's Award medal
had one class where we stripped an engine over the term
got my first aid certificate
learned how to develop film
took night classes touch typing (on an electric typewriter)
took part in the Irish language school music competition
took German
was in a play
got an award at the Young Scientist
I really developed as a person. I hadn't ever really stopped to think what my life would be like without that development but I suspect it was very beneficial. It certainly wasn't a "doss" - and it started to grow a self determination muscle - find your own work experience, find projects you want to try etc.
I often mention to people that graduate research helped me mature for this same reason. Prior to grad school, I just followed the strict well-defined path modern schooling tends to have - spend most time studying, very limited investment in hobbies and out-of-school friendships, get good grades, focus only on moving to the next year. My grades were great, but it left me as an underdeveloped anxious mess of a person who was incapable of being independent.
Having a few years where I had to do things mostly on my own while still being somewhat 'sheltered' (because a research advisor doesn't have time to babysit, but also won't exploit you the way an employer can) helped me a lot to become my own person and to stop having panic attacks over trivial decisions. At a younger age, the same effect could've been achieved with one year.
Plus, while everyone used to act like missing a year of ~high school would be a permanent blemish on a career, having gone through all this education, I feel that high school was the least consequential part of it. It could easily be replaced with a year of professional 'exploration' with no loss. Especially nowadays, where undergraduate degrees are very common (high school grades can already be entirely forgotten after obtaining a degree), and undergrad programs spend much of the first year redoing a lot of high school material to bring everyone up to the same level.
As a result, when I have children of my own, I plan to emphasize this sort of exploration a lot more.
> but also won't exploit you the way an employer can
Eh, my experience is the opposite. A lot more exploitation in grad school than in industry. It's a lot easier to change jobs than change professors/universities.
I recall multiple cases of formal/semi-formal interventions where other professors or the department had to force an advisor to let the person graduate (they wanted to keep milking them for more papers).
And then when you do graduate, forget a career in research if you can't get recommendation letters from him.
But otherwise, I agree. A ton of benefits if you go to graduate school and don't have an abusive advisor.
(I also took a year off after high school. Never understood why everyone said I was making a big mistake...).
>Eh, my experience is the opposite. A lot more exploitation in grad school than in industry. It's a lot easier to change jobs than change professors/universities.
>I recall multiple cases of formal/semi-formal interventions where other professors or the department had to force an advisor to let the person graduate (they wanted to keep milking them for more papers).
That's kind of what I mean though. In grad school other professors you've worked with might still keep an eye out for you. Under an exploitative employer, the way I was previously, I wouldn't know any better, I had no sense for the value of my time/work and I used to panic about having to send simple emails to people, quitting a job used to sound equivalent to suicide.
For me there's also the factor that as an international student, it's a lot easier for employers to exploit me than a school.
Edit: Although, come to think of it, I do know of other departments at my uni where even other professors can't be relied on to help in such cases. So I guess you're right.
> Under an exploitative employer, the way I was previously, I wouldn't know any better, I had no sense for the value of my time/work and I used to panic about having to send simple emails to people, quitting a job used to sound equivalent to suicide.
Seems the lessons you learned as a grad student are the lessons I learned as an employee :-)
My first job was exploitative. I eventually gave them the middle finger and left. Everyone told me I was crazy: "All jobs are like this. You have to suck it up"
Eh, no. None of my jobs since then have been that bad. Half of them I actually enjoyed.
This is very relevant: https://xkcd.com/1768/
School for me (in Ireland) was more or less a race to get out of school (+ concomitant bullying) and into university to study what I was interested in (maths - at that point I wasn't able to advance any further on my own and there was nobody who could help/guide me further where I lived) - the idea of adding a year on felt like it would be a waste. In retrospect, yeah I think I made a good call. Happy to see other people getting benefit from it though.
I think OP must have grown up in a pretty affluent neighbourhood. (How many schools have programmes with epidemiological institutes?) If I had done TY in the school I went to with the others in my cohort that did, my experience would have likely been much closer to theirs than to OP's: rarely attending school, drinking, smoking weed, and in some cases not returning back to school at all to finish the leaving cert.
I was much happier getting out of school as soon as I possibly could like yourself.
TY was historically the proviso of South Dublin schools and the more elite boarders. The majority of rural students skipped it and hit University by 17.
OP sounds like he was in a gaelscoil - an Irish language school. The 'epidemiological institute' in question was either RCSI or UCD - fairly standard for 3rd level institutions to have relationships/programmes/open days with various feeder Schools.
The big red herring was the engine module. No 'affluent' school would remotely consider offering a course in stripping an engine over a semester in 1998 - far more likely that those Students were put learning classics, latin or ancient greek.
It sounds like an awesome idea to me. Personally I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life as soon as I discovered computers and how to manipulate them with code, but then on the other hand my sister's youngest two daughters both hit 18 recently and neither had any idea of what they wanted to do.
As a result both of them just got pushed into something at the end.
This isn't really possible today though. You'd be barred from tons of layers of "competitive admission " where you'd needs months of preparation in of itself to "show interest". No trying things out, experience is reserved for those who already have the experience.
In Quebec you find a similar program; elementary school is K-6, and high school is 7-11. Following this you can optionally attend an interstitial educational system called "CEGEP".
It's government funded and costs next to nothing.
CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first-year university courses like calculus, biology etc for a science stream.
However, you are required to take approx 15-20% of your courses in an "opposite" stream to force you to get acquainted with other alternatives before you commit to university. In addition, the structure is much like university (you pick your classes & schedule, class sizes are increased compared to HS, your responsibility is increased) which is a good transition for university if that's where you're headed.
I think it's a wonderful system and I wish it was more widespread.
I went through the CEGEP system in Quebec and honestly credit it with giving me the skills necessary to be successful in university. My high school was very lenient and gave me a lot of flexibility to work on personal projects, and overall that worked out great but I was definitely lacking the grit necessary to dive deep into topics I couldn’t quickly understand.
CEGEP provided an excellent transitionary structure where you had both more responsibility for your actions and results, and also a forgiving safety net. You’re forced to do near-university-level study of subjects in an environment where the professors are able to hold your hand a bit more, will tolerate late assignments, and if you screw up it won’t permanently tank your future academic prospects.
The tuition at CEGEP was free. You just paid a few fees to the school and the student union, which added up to about $120/semester at the time. This made it a lot more palatable to try out a math- or science-heavy stream and switch out of it if you decided it wasn’t something you’d want to continue in university. The gen ed classes were also great.
I'm very jealous of the cegep program, as a resident of neighbouring Ontario. For all my Quebec friends, it just seemed like an amazing way to test different experiences before committing to a degree. In addition, the work you do in cegep counts towards a bachelor's degree, so french students end up finishing their degrees without losing a year.
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I googled "quebec educational attainment" and found https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/communique/university-gradu..., which says that "Québec has the highest proportion of people aged 25 to 64 with any postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree (71.2%).". According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/467078/median-annual-fam..., Quebec's median annual family income in 2021 was 96,910, almost the same as the median 98,390. The top "provinces" are Northwest Territories and Yukon, whose ways of doing things, for better or worse, cannot be easily copied to other provinces.
Those two are very likely inflated incomes for people living in awful harsh conditions doing resource extraction.
Stats Canada data disagrees with this. Do you have a source?
Everybody mocks me when I say this. But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun.
It’s like our biology is smarter than us. If it’s fun our brains are telling us there’s something about it we need. It’s like when you think a girl is cute for the first time. There’s no logic in it to you, but it’s the most logical thing in the world, that’s why it’s fun.
Hans Zimmer used to just like play with all kinds of stuff when he was young just to see what it would sound like.
I listened to an intel exec (after pat came back) and he talked about how he was disassembling and reassembling the house electronics as a kid.
Or me - I would just code for fun and my dad got me some books on it. I hardly ever did any school on it.
If we let kids just do what they want and have fun, I think they would get good at what they love and have fulfilling careers.
If you have to do what your told your whole life - who even wants to live it?
So maybe we just let kids have their freedom. I know it sounds crazy but what if we applied the rights to life liberty and pursuit of happiness to them? I think they would amaze us. Kids are so clever, I think we would have so much creativity our minds would be blown!
To conclude I think that we have a dearth of people who know what to do. So many employees and fewer small businesses. I think if we give kids freedom, the chance to figure out what they like doing, and how to do it, as adults they will be able to start businesses better and manage them.
Just my thoughts!
You haven't accounted for selection bias there. It is quite likely most people don't find a productive activity fun and it is a much better plan to try and be somewhat wealthy doing something that inspires a neutral feeling rather than poor. Much like the girl you find cute on first glance, if you change your mind later then it'd have been a real mistake to over-commit on first impressions.
If there are 10 people who want to be plumbers but the economy is signalling it needs 20 plumbers then it'd be best if 10 people who don't enjoy plumbing all that much do it for the money. If there are 100 people who want to make a living as an artist and only demand for 1 it'd be better if most of them overruled their instincts and found something more useful to do. Paint as a hobby and live as something else.
More succinctly, yes, most successful people do what they love but that doesn’t mean that most people who do what they love will be successful.
I want to play video games. I spent my childhood playing games in every waking moment of my free time that I could get away with. I did the same thing in my young adulthood, and now my current life.
As an adult, unfortunately (lol), family and job take priority and I can't just play video games all day, despite my wishes.
I would have approximately zero productivity if I just did what I thought was fun. I'm sure I'm not alone.
If I don't have some sort of exterior structure or motivator, I will literally get nothing done, and I have no desire to.
Your point is completely relevant for today. That said, it's curious to think about how that attention may have been channeled in a world free from such man made stimulation traps.
Likely, I'd just want to do whatever the best man made stimulation trap was at the time
> But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun.
This is essentially the philosophy of unschooling[0], which the recurse center[1] follows. I definitely agree with you! Pursuing fun and curiosity has led me to my most productive and moments.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
[1]: https://www.recurse.com/
Well I think that's the predicament of the mismatch between one's inner predispositions and what society demands.
If it aligns it's cool and you can reach for the stars, but there is a wide scope of activities that won't make a living. Especially given our origins as hunter-gatherers or explorers, for someone with similar predispositions, what can they really do that fits that? Most likely they'd end spending most of their time playing video games to satiate those urges than to
When people engage in activities they genuinely enjoy, they're often more motivated and that's true!
Patrick Collison (Stripe) credits the Transition Year in Ireland for his computer interest
" Ireland actually has this interesting thing called “transition year,” this year between two major exams of high school or at least Ireland’s high school equivalent.Transition year is a formally designated year that’s optional, where you can go and pursue things that you might not otherwise naturally tend to pursue, and the school tends to be much more permissive of going and spending three months abroad or going and doing some work experience in this area or whatever the case may be. And so, in that year, I basically decided to spend as much of it as possible programming, and so I did that.”"
https://networkcapital.beehiiv.com/p/stripe-ceo-patrick-coll...
In Ireland -- with one kid in Junior Cert and one who did Junior Cert, then had an external Transition Year, then self studied for A levels, and one who's done home school/self study through GCSE and now doing A levels.
It's an optional, definitely not universal thing. Not all schools offer it, and even then I get the impression that it's well less than half the students take the opportunity. The implementation is also highly school dependent, which is either totally expected or a complete surprise, given that the rest of the curriculum and tests are all national level standards.
This article paints a far rosier picture than I've really seen from the local experiences, but that's probably as much the lack of drive at the school than anything else.
My eldest's TY experience with us was great -- we took the opportunity to AirB&B around Europe, at least till Covid hit. But we were totally comfortable with dealing with the home schooling part of that for the three of them.
All private and boarder schools have it as mandatory for at least 20 years at this point. The public schools that don't tend to either be in extremely rural areas with low university accession to begin with (and a different focus on things like the Leaving Cert Applied and/or facilitating the Sileage/Farming season).
The school I’m talking about is a public school in one of the bigger towns in Ireland. It’s not predominantly rural, but it’s also not one of the ”good” schools, which here are Catholic.
What are A levels, by the way? I hear this a lot on British television but have no context.
Kind of like APs, except that you typically study only 3, sometimes 4 subjects for the final two years of high school and then take final exams.
So for my final two years of high school, I only studies math, physics and bio.
In the same way that an AP can sometimes give you a semester's credit at a university, an A-Level can sometimes give you a full year's credit. (Only in US universities, though. In the UK you're expected to have done them, so you don't get extra credit. Though, for the same reason, a bachelors degree in the UK is typically only three years, not four.)
Britain used to have "Ordinary level" (O levels) at age ~16 and "Advanced level" exams (A levels) at ~18. Students usually studied 5-8 O levels and then either left school to pursue a career or went on to study (usually) 3 A levels and go to university.
O levels got replaced back in the 80's. A levels never got renamed.
This was certainly the case in most of Britain. Scotland has a separate education system from England and has today and historically offered different high school level qualifications ("Highers" etc).
Sorry, yes, my bad. Thank your for the correction
The highest qualification you'll get from a school in the UK. Typically studied for between ages 16-18. They are the most common qualification used for university entry by students who go through the UK school system.
Unlike some other systems where students stud a broad spectrum of subjects (with core subjects like maths, english and science being compulsory), students typically only study 3 (or maybe 4) subjects a A level (with subjects being things like "maths", "geography", "chemistry", etc), with no compulsory subjects.
I had this in the U.S. and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My parents signed me up for homeschool every year, but I still did public school. As a result, I just did whatever classes I wanted. Junior year, I realized that I'd have to drop all my fun classes and just do core for the last year and a half to graduate. Decided instead to not graduate and just find books on different topics from the library. Ended up with: - Huckleberry Finn - a deep History book on Roman Britain - a nonfiction coffee table book on space - an intro to physics workbook - a Spanish book - a book on governments around the world
As it happened, I worked through 4 big space books and realized that I was really passionate about space. When I started college it was easy to plan my direction and be motivated because I knew the area I wanted to work in.
20 years ago it was considered a 'doss year' (waste/screw-around etc.), and the general perception was that it was for those that require a little more time in the oven developmentally before proceeding to the next stage. I was a child then so I don't know if that was true, but certainly the majority of people who took it were not academically inclined.
It was both extremes when I did it 15 years ago. Those who needed it just to catch up on what they were supposed to have learned in junior cycle and those who wanted a bunch of extra curriculars for whatever reason. Note that admission to college/university in Ireland is not a motivator for extra curriculars - for school leavers the only things that matter are your overall grades, and for some courses, grades in specific subjects. (For foreign students, over 25s, those with special needs etc. there's a 10% or so allocation for an alternative process which is more subjective application based. But the 90% go through the purely grades based CAO)
Think it varies a lot school to school and sometimes even year to year.
Not in my school: the vast majority who took it (this was the '90s, when it started) were the ones doing almost all honours.
It heavily depends on the school, I would guess, however, but often those who need "more time in the oven" come just as much from the academically inclined side as from the less academically inclined side. For both, it allows them a broader window on who they might be.
Which seems fair enough. There’s already a year difference between the youngest and oldest student in any given class; if you want your children to do well, make sure they’re among the oldest.
The problem is it might come too late to change their self-perception. A year is a lot of time when you’re nine
TY is typically at 15ish.
A year is still a lot then. You can do a lot in a year if you don't have to worry about earning a living and have the time to engage in things that are interesting.
That's the problem — it might well be far too late.
So the article suggests that has changed - people who take the YT year get significantly higher results in their senior years.
Hard to split that from just age based improved performance though.
Sounds like a great idea.
In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed.
Bring something like this to England, please!
> tests, tests and more tests
Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.
That's not unreasonable if you have good tests that hit the right elements. My experience about 10 years ago with the AP exams were very positive. The tests were good, and even though the classes were taught to the test, they were some of the best classes I ever took.
Education should be about more than just passing standardised tests.
I always remember my history teacher taking an entire term on the battles of the second world war. He brought in videos, old shell casings, all kinds of stuff. Everyone was into it, even kids who normally wouldn't pay attention.
At the end of term he apologised to us, since none of that would be in the test, and now we would have to work harder to get through the exam material. We didn't mind; he had hooked us on the subject.
But that is now rare. Increasingly teachers just teach to the test. And the number of tests the kids have to take keeps rising.
The best you can say about it is everyone gets the same tedious and stressful introduction to everything, which only proves their ability to remember lots of stuff under time pressure.
Is that really kids liking history or is that kids thinking war is cool?
History is also largely a joke subject that's just interesting fun facts and dry US history repeated ad infinitum for most american grade schools.
I would say the only history class that was actually of any value for me in high school was AP modern european history.
It's just an example of a teacher engaging their students in a subject by not only teaching to the test.
Here's another one. I had a maths teacher who engaged his students about probability theory through learning about games of chance. We spent some lessons figuring out what advantage we could get in various card games. He also spent some lessons on just "cool" ideas like infinity, zeno's paradoxes and other mind blowing concepts. None of which were on the exam syllabus.
As an aside, history is very much not about facts. It's more about interpretation of incomplete data from many different sources, not all of which are reliable. My Dad said it's more like being a detective (he was a professor of history).
the problem, at least in the US, is that the tests and standards have tightened up without necessarily giving the teachers better training or better productivity tools to teach them, and now their job evaluations also depend on it, so now everybody is optimizing for the test. Usually to the detriment of subjects not on standardized testing like the arts or physical education or anything resembling a break time.
Throw in the fact that in much of the country, teachers have to do things like pull second jobs to get by and beg parents for basic supplies like scissors and paper towels, and it's no wonder everything is falling apart.
The "will I be punished for not putting additional work into this or can I go watch a movie" is reasonable question.
Is this not the same as a gap year?
I’m Irish but unfortunately never bothered with TY. I live in the UK now so I’ve a limited understanding of TY and the ‘Gap year’.
Gap Year is taken between 2nd and 3rd level education at the persons own impetus - generally used to backpack around SEA and/or work for a bit in the 'real world'.
Transition Year is the 4th year of 2nd Level in Ireland - the conclusion of the 'Junior Cycle' of secondary school, culminating with the 10-14 Subject 'Junior Certificate' exam at the end of 3rd year. It is a regular year in terms of school attendance, but rather than academic modules structure against a strict curriculum, students tend to do a mix of practical and theoretical skills.
Things like intro to psychology, philosophy, an esoteric language or other college accession style intro classes are popular. Photography/Film Making, Cooking, Self-Defense/Martial Arts classes are all popular on the practical side.
Most of the religious schools (i.e. about 80% of all schools) tend to have a charity component as well - seeing TY students out collecting for Irish Cancer Society or packing bags in a supermarket to fund a local Hospice is pretty standard.
The article says it is like a gap year, but during secondary school.
Clearly not the same as taking time off before university when you are already an adult though. Participation in some activities is required, so it's a bit more structured - and I don't think you can take off on your own to travel the world!
It's nothing like a gap year. It's just less academically focused.
The Gap Year is a year-long deferral from university or college. Sometimes, it occurs directly after finishing High School, and other times, it occurs in the middle of your course.
Many countries allow young people (under 30) to live and work in-country under a Working Holiday visa. Both are effectively Young People travelling (aka backpacking).
A gap year is normally between the end of secondary school and starting college (so 18-20 or so). TY is between junior cycle (junior cert, or inter cert if you're older) and senior cycle (leaving cert). So 14-16 year olds (who couldn't legally take a gap year)
The other 5 years of schooling at that level is all about the tests.
> it consistently fails to produce better results
The performance of the English education system has improved markedly over the past couple of decades. At least, as measured by tests!
my physics A level teacher did something really interesting with us.
we spent a whole class looking at an old O Level question from an exam.
all of us, including the boffins in the class, were completely stumped by it.
he explained it to us at the end, but it did solidify an appreciation in me that, at least 20ish years ago, we definitely had it easier than folks before us.
Sounds like Bill Gates has gotten a hold of your school system as well.
sounds like you have something to say but can't be bothered to say it
I was curious, so I googled it. I'm guessing GP is talking about this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/...
The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.
(it's not clear to me if this created any standardized tests for students, or just depended on existing ones)
Sounds like it ran from 2009-2015ish. If Bill Gates is going to be brought up, then I guess George W. Bush should be, too, with No Child Left Behind. AFAIK that's what kicked off the trend of standardized testing for students in the U.S.
Gates Foundation put an outsized amount of money into getting support for Common Core, standardized testing and merit pay for teachers.
- https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billio...
The world doesn't revolve around the US, you know...
I was in one of the first years that did transition year, and it was almost nothing but good for me. It got me much more out of my shell and I was able to do subjects I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Art, in particular, thought there weren't enough subsequently in the senior cycle for me to continue with it, sadly. My work placements were fun in different ways: I worked in a electronics repair shop and learned to solder and basic electronics (I already had a healthy respect for high voltage), worked with some architects, and also in a music studio and got an understanding of music production.
I've heard reasons for not doing it, but it's so good for broadening the horizons of who you think you are that almost all of those reasons are almost moot.
I did transition year in 1996/1997, and I think we were only the second class to do it in my school. We took another European language for a year, and I did Art, Home Economics, Metalwork, and Woodworking classes that had no aptitude for and never would have picked for my leaving cert years. They were great and I learned skills that I still use.
For my work placement, I worked in a folk instrument store and learned a lot about acoustic instruments, but also the basics of showing up on time, getting things done, and more. It was invaluable. The reduced pressure meant I could also work at the local McDonald's, and the income from 6 months of shift-work there made a big difference for me and my family. It was a start of some modest savings that allowed me to even consider going to college later (I still had to work through college, but at least it was doable).
Transition Year, the introduction of Free Third Level Education, and the blinded CAO application process for universities were all game changers for me. I grew up in Ballyfermot, a working class part of Dublin, and when I went to college I found out there was still only a tiny handful of people from there who'd had that opportunity. Still so thankful.
That period of the '90s and early 2000s were a bit of a golden age when it came to education. I very much doubt I'd have been able to afford third level if it wasn't for when I went. The full grant and the fact that fees were abolished meant I could actually make ends meet. Didn't hurt that Cork was a pretty inexpensive place to go to college at the time! Second year was more of a struggle with money, but doable. If I could do anything regarding education, it'd be guaranteeing that same chance to people now that we had then.
I took a year off after high school in the US to work part time and take welding and accounting courses at the local community college. Great experience that convinced me that I did actually want to go to university.
I'm pretty sure that if I had taken auto shop or welding in high school (it was still offered, but I was "college-bound" and steered away from anything in that wing of the building) or in a "gap year" I would have ended up doing something in that field. I love making stuff and repairing stuff. I also was interested in computers and programming them, I think there's a lot of overlap there in terms of motivations.
I still love making and repairing stuff. The pay and physical toil are better behind a keyboard though.
It seems like such a year could be either revelatory or totally miserable, depending what you got and what type of person you are. Just the thought of many of those activities brings me back to all my school year anxieties.
A few things make this effective: freedom to follow one's curiosity, personal responsibility, and intrinsic motivation over extrinsic.
I used to teach public middle school, and I developed a profound belief that how we educate students is entirely backwards.
The things that make an off year effective scales to an entire K-12 program! See the free democratic schools like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school I believe the majority of students would thrive in such a school, if they had the chance.
They have no formal classes, no teachers, no tests. Yet students still learn to read earlier, they read more and at a higher level. They graduate from college at higher rates, and have higher rates of entrepreneurship. I believe this model is a superior pedagogical model for the majority of the population.
"The Sudbury pedagogical philosophy may be summarized as the following: Learning is a natural by-product of all human activity. Learning is self-initiated and self-motivated.
The educational model states that there are many ways to learn and that learning is a process someone does, not a process that is done to him or her; According to the model the presence and guidance of a teacher is not necessary. "
Check out:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools
https://www.phillyfreeschool.org/why-it-works
The problem is we are stuck with our current model - even when alternatives have better outcomes, parents just say "well my kid would not do well with that, they are too lazy to even do what we ask." They do not realize that our current model is so broken that disinterest in a student is a perfectly rational response.
For example, I think video game addiction is a natural response to being forced to do something you hate 8-12 hours a day. The fact that the Philly Free School has very few students ever even playing video games at all (but they are allowed to all day if they want) paints a very clear picture that video games are a symptom not a cause.
And finally, a damning indictment of our current model; https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
I think a lot of the mental illness for young boys is that the education ladder deprives them of responsibility until way past maturity.
Out of curiosity, why do you think that's a problem for boys, in particular?
can't answer for GP but most likely because he is male himself and so speaking to what he knows.
Your question sounds like you are baiting, like you are pretending to be so naive that you are not aware that men and women face different expectations and circumstances growing up, and moreso there is something wrong with expressing concern for boys without also including girls.
Maybe, hopefully, I'm reading you wrong.
Thank you, leftist universalism is really annoying to engage with. You could say, "its important to wash your hands" and they will ask you why you are being ableist and excluding people without hands.
In this case, someone asked completely inoffensive question in an inoffensive way asking for details ... you two went on an angry rant offended. This question literally could have a meaningful answer and someone even tried.
Like, it is not clear whether any leftist even entered the discussion, the question could easily be asked by someone neutral or conservative. But it was definitely not a leftist who took offense over nothing.
Girls hitting puberty 2-3 years younger and being assumed as being more 'responsible' as per traditional gender roles from about the age of cognition.
This is non-withstanding the Western Educational premise of treating 'misbehaving' boys as 'broken' girls, as opposed to facilitating them in a mutually acceptable learning style.
This program does not sound like an added responsibility.
This seems to disprove the idea that a year off from school will necessarily be a serious setback.
Closing schools during covid might seem to support it, but there was also a global pandemic going on at the time.
It would be interesting to compare TY during the pandemic vs. non-pandemic years.
TY was good to me, but I think it could have been better. As the article says, each school does it differently. We did a mini company, where we created knick knacks and tried to sell them. But the entire class of 30 students was one company, which was therefore quite badly organised. I remember the teachers saying that they wouldn't do it that way in future years. There was also orienteering.
And we still did some academic classes. Maths, anyway. And I think some others.
In my school, most of the kids didn't do TY, so there was just one class in TY, which meant that the maths, in particular, was fairly basic: there weren't enough of us for streaming. And jumping back into higher level maths in Fifth Year was, frankly, a bit of a shock to the system.
It works on the other end of the spectrum too. Much of my class just wanted to leave school at 16 to work on the family farm. TY gave them practical experience of running a business, stripping an engine, how to use an manage credit etc. before they went out in the world.
The Cillian Murphy reference seems off. He might have been too old when it was mandated in 1994, even though it was available earlier. Anyone know for sure?
He was born in '76, so it's possible his school was a trial school a few years earlier, but doesn't seem likely.
https://archive.is/duzFR
Are there any US parents here who strongly nudged their children to take a transition year? When my girl grows up I'm leaning towards that direction because I really wish someone would have suggested it for me when I was that age.
I worked at the MIT Media Lab Europe and in the army for my transition yeah.
Oh and drank a lot of beer. Great times!
> What he really wanted to close was the cultural gap between rich and poor
This sounds great!
> Then there is the financial aspect of TY: some parents just can’t afford it.
oh for fuck's sake
It's an extra year of your kids at home, and potentially trips abroad. We couldn't afford the trip to France during my TY, so I skipped the trip, but did TY. While this was the '90s and my parents didn't earn enough to pay income tax, they were able to afford it for both myself and my sister, and I don't think they regret it for either of us.
Yep! Good extracurriculars are expensive.
I remember taking part in Debate, MUN, XC, DECA, Wrestling, Quiz Bowl, Volunteering (NHS/CSF), and a bunch of Olympiads in HS and there was always a cost associated with participating (either a fee or the need to travel to the place hosting the EC).
Unsurprisingly, this meant ECs would skew upper middle class and upper class. Sadly, these same ECs are also blockers for college admissions.
I might get hate for this on HN, but this is why I support unweighted GPA, relative class ranking, and SAT/ACT for college admissions - sort of like what the UCs do. It's the least bad option out of the other options. Alternatively, going open entry with university admissions and then ramping up the difficulty with weedout classes is a good option as well.
Open entry would change a lot of things - lots of schools and rankings use drop out rate as a proxy for how useful attending there is, because of the assumption that if the dropout rate is higher, there's a worse education. It would at least upend the old saying about the hardest part about some colleges is getting in.
I agree with the SAT/ACT part - they pushed "holistic review" during Covid but ultimately SAT prep is way lower barrier (Khan Academy) than gobs of ECs.
Open admission is an interesting way to do things. I spent a bit of time in Belgium where the main universities will accept anyone who has a high-school level education. The first year dropout rate can be 70% in some courses. This system seemed to be very well loved by Belgians.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/eag_highlights-2010-...
Notably the US has the lowest dropout rate, so obviously they are pre-filtering students hard. That necessarily means that there are lots of people who /could/ have succeeded but were excluded at the admissions stage. The degree to which that's the right choice probably depends on whether you think doing a year of university and then leaving is a huge waste, a horrible failure, or a worthwhile experiment.
(The unique economics of US universities obviously interact with this calculus in pretty major ways.)
That's not really how TY works in Ireland. It's about broadening horizons, not "extracurriculars".
Third level admissions have been done via a points system based on your top six Leaving Certificate (final second level exam) results for decades. It's an impersonal system, but at least fairer than most.
Relative class ranking is a poor measure for students who gained entry (by merit) to a selective high school.
Like if you do well in middle school and get into Lowell by the skin of your teeth, should you be penalized for being in the bottom 10%?
> UC admissions decisions don't use SAT or ACT scores.
Ope. I forgot that changed after COVID.
Pre-COVID SAT/ACT was required.
> Like if you do well in middle school and get into Lowell by the skin of your teeth, should you be penalized for being in the bottom 10%?
Someone is always going to be penalized no matter what. Most schools in California as well as nationally are not specialized or gatekept via entrance exams like Lowell was.
Imagine the top 10% of middle school students in SF go to Lowell. Half of those will be in the bottom half of the graduating class.
So 5% of students in SF (half of the best 10%) might not get into their UC of choice, just because they managed to get into Lowell.
That's a lot of students' futures we're talking about. Why penalize half of the best students in SF?
My child is too young for school but my partner and I expect to homeschool. We've talked about gap years in the childs early/mid teens for travel/backpacking/nature excursions. I wish fellowship and apprentice work was more commonplace in the younger years too. Get out of the classroom and experience the real world.
How do you plan on your child building out their social skills? Surely a couple of playdates a week with a few other kids isn’t going to cut it.
From what I've seen, surely going to school doesn't cut it either :-)
Let's not cherry pick. Plenty of people have adverse social outcomes due to school.
Plenty of family/friends nearby with young families. I'm in a rural area with a tradition of homeschooling so there's weekly/biweekly events/classes. Not really worried about the socialization. Over socializing can be bad too.
We homeschooled. When we worried about our kids' socialization, we yanked them into the bathroom and beat them up for their lunch money.
I'm kidding, but... you want school to build your kids' social skills? Apart from all the pathologies common in schools, you want your kids to grow up to live in an adult world, which is almost completely unlike school.
Yeah, homeschooling can be done where the kids are isolated and never interact with anyone outside the family. It doesn't have to be, though.
> I'm kidding, but... you want school to build your kids' social skills? Apart from all the pathologies common in schools, you want your kids to grow up to live in an adult world, which is almost completely unlike school.
I mean... yes, it seems reasonable to learn social skills from a school setting? Interacting with other people, some of whom dislike/disagree with each other, interacting with other adults, etc. This seems like a reasonable step toward what you describe as 'the adult world' - which, yes, is rather different from school, but that seems a good thing; throwing a child into 'the adult world' without preparation would be crazy, right?
(I'm not trying to deny that one can learn the necessary social skills while being homeschooled, just disagree with the implication that school is not also a good place to develop them)
“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.” ― John Taylor Gatto
And put those children in an invisible cage with two adults who will tell them when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, and when to go to bed, and these kids will learn...... what?
I think homeschooling could work for some combinations of parents and kids, but so many discussion sounds like "Of course it's going to work for my kids because I'm different!"
> And put those children in an invisible cage with two adults who will tell them when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, and when to go to bed, and these kids will learn...... what?
Sounds like a typical day for a regular school kid. Most school kids up to a certain age need a parent to wake them up, and don't get to pick their clothes or their food. And get shepherded into the bed.
Not sure what any of this has to do with homeschooling. It's just basic life.
In fact, from the parents I know who home school, the kids actually have more freedoms than school kids do. Their work is tailored to their skill level, so no BS tedious homework. As long as the parents have time, the schedule is flexible as well. If your kid performs better at noon - great! Start then.
> cage > isolation > interruptions > ridicule > shame
I wonder if this person's view on schools is at all biased.
I'd say someone who taught in NYC public schools for 30 years and won teacher of the year award is a good resource to learn from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
So biased toward American public education, in New York City of all places.
For what it's worth, I look back on my time in school with relative fondness. Certainly I don't agree with anything like it 'being a cage' or feeling isolated from other people (????)
I very much found it to be a cage.
That's unfortunate for you
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I ran it through ChatGPT with a prompt to remove "unnecessary linguistic complications"
Niall Hare, a 63-year-old headteacher in Dublin, explains the importance of bike maintenance and philosophy in Irish culture while discussing what students do during their "transition year" (TY), which is the optional fourth year of the Irish secondary school system. After completing a three-year junior cycle, students can either go straight into the two-year senior cycle or take a transition year, seen as a sort of gap year.
Transition year has no set curriculum but includes mandatory subjects like Irish, English, maths, and PE for two hours a week, along with work experience and career guidance. Schools are free to design the rest of the program. Hare's TY program for 2024-25 includes subjects like Chinese, folklore, law, and workshops on consent and relationships. Students explore a variety of activities, from arts and coding to aviation and boxing.
Although not graded, participation is required. Notable Irish actors Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy both discovered their love for acting during TY. The year provides opportunities for students to explore new interests and develop life skills. Kacey, a current student, talks about overcoming her fear of driving, while others highlight learning practical skills like preparing a CV and using a bus timetable.
TY, which began as a pilot program in 1974 and was rolled out nationally in 1994, now has 99% of schools offering it, and nearly 80% of students participate. It was the brainchild of Richard Burke, who wanted to create a space where students could take a break from the academic grind and explore the arts. The program has evolved to include work experience, reflecting changes in market expectations.
Despite some criticism, including complaints about its cost and accessibility, TY is widely regarded as a positive experience. Studies suggest TY participants score higher on their Leaving Certificate exams. The program allows students to discover new passions, build confidence, and gain life skills, benefiting both students and teachers. However, challenges remain in ensuring equitable access for all students, especially those from lower-income families.
Thanks for providing that. I did read the article, but that is actually a pretty good summary.
I do agree with the other commenter -- despite all of the downvotes they got -- I did find that article especially cumbersome to read. A browser button to rewrite articles in different styles could actually be useful.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I suggest you re-read this list: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I wouldn't call the quality and readability of the written text "tangential", it's not about the CSS styling.
I don't think it's quite as bad as the above commenter seems to think it is, but they're welcome to that opinion.
> I wouldn't call the quality and readability of the written text "tangential"
The topic in this comment section is the "transition year" in Irish secondary schools. The format of the website which introduces that topic is tangential to that topic. I don't know where one would get the idea that a tangent that's not about CSS styling is not a tangent.
The topic is also a specific article about that transition year. I don't think that commenting about an article being particularly well-written, easy to understand, or having nice examples would be against the guidelines here.
If discussion of anything but the underlying subject of the link - including references to the writer, quality, and content of the writing - were considered tangential to the point of being against the guidelines to discuss, then surely so would commenting that another comment is against the guidelines.
Is the overall quality tangential?
I'd say so, it doesn't develop any discussion or conversation, it's bike shedding. Even more that overall quality is a question of judgment, I read the article perfectly fine and the writing style wasn't a distraction.
What do you think we gain in the discussion by debating the quality of writing (which was entirely passable) instead of the substance of it? To me it's quite clear: absolutely nothing.
'Bike shedding', in the context of the current Irish bike shed controversy - heh
What is the Irish bike shed controversy?
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2024/09/06/its-not-eve...
Oof! Too soon!
Folklore?
Great. Let's model a failed country.
If they were smart they would start with adding more and reducing it.
Failed country? By what measure? One of the highest GNPs per person, one of the most democratic, one of the highest winners of novel prizes for literature per population, one of the safest countries in the world, one of the most food secure countries in the world, overall very good and mostly free health and education, a high redistributive tax system, friendly people, easy place to work...
Lol. Cope harder.