Just look at how much time students spend zoning out in class, “learning”. It’s trivial to come up with a better way to use that time.
School isn’t about learning. Zoning out in class can be a rational choice on the part of a student. If your goal is to acquire the credentials school provides and a required component of that is a certain attendance level but you get little of value from the class then zoning out can be a rational response. This describes much of my school career.
When I was in those situations, I would usually read a book, or ponder something, and periodically check to see if the teacher was saying anything important. It was like an enforced study time. That’s more rational than sitting there vegetating. (The downside is that some of the most boring teachers would get ticked off. Still worth it, though.)
I would usually pay attention to the actual lesson unless it was review over what we’d already been assigned to read or otherwise not new information. At that point, and otherwise when question and answer or assignment writing was going on and I was finished the assignment, I would mostly tune out the teacher and spend my time drawing on the backs and margins of my worksheets. I never in any other period of my life did as much artwork as I did while bored or distracted in high school, and I think it’s because for many reasons I don’t bother with well enough to control I am usually tired, and prefer to piss away my time with small “entertainments” like YouTube videos which are almost always available than invest my time in things which require more of an energy commitment despite also being more rewarding.
Or I would nap on my desk. Got in trouble for it surprisingly rarely.
Maybe we should put the X-is-not-about-X stuff on the wiki so we can accumulate datapoints. I mean, for schooling I have 2 (lack of use of the proven superior spaced presentation/spaced repetition over the prevalent massed presentation; lack of sensible school hours for high schools), but most people interested in the topic will never come across these.
School isn’t about learning. Zoning out in class can be a rational choice on the part of a student. If your goal is to acquire the credentials school provides and a required component of that is a certain attendance level but you get little of value from the class then zoning out can be a rational response. This describes much of my school career.
When I was in those situations, I would usually read a book, or ponder something, and periodically check to see if the teacher was saying anything important. It was like an enforced study time. That’s more rational than sitting there vegetating. (The downside is that some of the most boring teachers would get ticked off. Still worth it, though.)
I would usually pay attention to the actual lesson unless it was review over what we’d already been assigned to read or otherwise not new information. At that point, and otherwise when question and answer or assignment writing was going on and I was finished the assignment, I would mostly tune out the teacher and spend my time drawing on the backs and margins of my worksheets. I never in any other period of my life did as much artwork as I did while bored or distracted in high school, and I think it’s because for many reasons I don’t bother with well enough to control I am usually tired, and prefer to piss away my time with small “entertainments” like YouTube videos which are almost always available than invest my time in things which require more of an energy commitment despite also being more rewarding.
Or I would nap on my desk. Got in trouble for it surprisingly rarely.
Maybe we should put the X-is-not-about-X stuff on the wiki so we can accumulate datapoints. I mean, for schooling I have 2 (lack of use of the proven superior spaced presentation/spaced repetition over the prevalent massed presentation; lack of sensible school hours for high schools), but most people interested in the topic will never come across these.