I Only Question Things That Bother Me - That's a Problem

I never questioned the usefulness of the German education system until my son ran into some difficulties in school. I never questioned teachers, lesson plans, grading practice, didactic approaches, sorting kids into different schools according to their grades, school times, or anything else.

Not until there was a problem.

Once I started asking questions, a lot of my beliefs about school just didn't hold up to the scrutiny. For example, did you know that starting school an hour later has the biggest impact on secondary school student outcomes across the board? The improvement does not correlate with class or income - all teeneagers seem to benefit equally from this small hack. The reason for this is that when school starts later, teens get to sleep more which in turn hugely impacts their performance.

The science on this has been there for decades and yet classes at our secondary schools still start before eight AM.

The more I looked into my son's specific issues, the more I noticed that current practice does not match current science. Often, current practice does not even match the stated objective.

Take grades for tidy and organized note-taking, for example. Grading student's notes for completeness and orderliness is a common thing to do in many subjects at my son's school. It is not a mandatory thing to do so some teachers don't, but it is still there.

Tidy notes have very little to do with how well a student has absorbed the material. The only thing being graded is the student's ability to write things down as they hear them. That, and their handwriting.

All of this is glaring at me now and yet, as long as I did not have a problem, I did not question anything.

When I noticed this, I started thinking about what else I have questioned recently. And, sure enough, the same pattern emerged. I mostly question things when I have an issue with them. I rarely question things that do not rub me the wrong way or cause me trouble.

From what I can observe, I am not the only person with this tendency. In fact, I'd wager we all question things that bother us much more often than things that do not cause us any issues.

It makes me wonder how many things we just bought into or signed up for simply due to our upbringing, our environment, our culture, and our socialization. How many systems do we regularly comply with without question just because they never harmed us personally?

I am not saying we all need to start a revolution and question everything.

But I think we do need to keep in mind that "unquestioned thus far" does not mean "unproblematic".