Lyrics...
Music video...
I wasn’t taught how to get a job
but I can remember dissecting a frog
I wasn’t taught how to pay tax
but I know loads about Shakespeare's classics
I was never taught how to vote
they devoted that time to defining isotopes
I wasn’t taught how to look after my health
but mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
Never spent a lesson on current events
instead I studied The Old American West
I was never taught what laws there are.
I was never taught what laws there are!!!
Let me repeat - I was not taught the laws for the country I live in,
but I know how Henry the VIII killed his women.
Divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived
glad that’s in my head instead of financial advice
I was shown the wavelengths of different hues of light
but I was never taught my human rights
Apparently there’s 30, do you know them? I don’t
Why the hell can’t we both recite them by rote?!
I know igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks
Yet I don’t know squat about trading stocks
Or how money works at all - where does it come from?
How does the thing that motivates the world function?
not taught how to budget and disburse my earnings
I was too busy rehearsing cursive.
Didn’t learn how much it costs to raise a kid or what an affidavit is
but I spent days on what the quadratic equation is
negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared
minus 4ac over 2a
That’s insane, that’s absolutely insane.
They made me learn that over basic first aid
How to recognise the most deadly Mental disorders // or
diseases with preventable causes // How to buy a
house with a mortgage // if I could afford it
‘cause abstract maths was deemed more important
than advice that would literally save thousands of lives
but it’s cool, ‘cause now I could tell you
if the number of unnecessary deaths caused by that choice was prime.
Never taught present day practical medicines,
but I was told what the ancient hippocratic method is
“I’ve got a headache, the pain is ceaseless
what should I take?” Umm... maybe try some leeches?
“Could we discuss domestic abuse and get the facts
or how to help my depressed friend with their mental state?”
Ummm... no but learn mental maths
because “you won’t have a calculator with you every day!”
They say it’s not the kids, the parents are the problem
Then if you taught the kids to parent that’s the problem solved then!
All this advice about using a condom
but none for when you actually have a kid when you want one
I’m only fluent in this language, for serious?
The rest of the world speaks two, do you think I’m an idiot?
They chose the solar over the political system
So like a typical citizen now I don’t know what I’m voting on
which policies exist, or how to make them change
mais oui, je parle un peu de Francais
So at 18, I was expected to elect a representative
For a system I had never ever ever ever been presented with
But I won’t take it !
I’ll tell everyone my childhood was wasted
I’ll share it everywhere how I was “educated”
And insist these pointless things don't stay in school !
Thanks for the suggestion Ojan (2017)
Teachers respond...
Teachers respond...
Boyinaband, a man with huge talent especially on music. I am amazed with him since he was collabing with some of gamer youtubers i watched in the past. One of his masterpiece finally recognized and posted in this blog. The lyrics, rich in rhyme with powerful meaning. He always create a song that representing a lot of people’s heart, in this case is people who started to question the school’s system and critized it. Much of school’s ‘knowledges’ seem to be not that useful in real life situation, and all of that learning, head pumping, hard preassured moment at school just leading people into uselessness. We need to change the system, all of people need to be educated with real knowledge: useful information that is not just an abstract concept but more practical. In the end of the day, knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand, it is a waste.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I hear Don’t Stay In School by Boyinaband. I think the song’s lyrics is quite interesting and I can relate with it. Personally, I like this song but I think that the title of the song, Don’t Stay In School, is giving the wrong idea. I believe that this song refers to subjects that Boyinaband thinks is unnecessary, that he believes should not be taught in school. From understanding the lyrics, I think that he is annoyed that many people who have graduated only have a little or even no practical life skills, which he mentions as doing taxes and raising children. He made a point that so many kids graduated from school without knowledge of how to manage their lives but they have the knowledge of mathematical concepts that may not be useful for their lives. I also think that people would believe that Boyinaband is telling kids and teenagers to quit school but I don’t think he is.
ReplyDeleteI actually knew about this video a long time ago, I watched it back when it was trending. There’s even a video of the person who made this video, reacting to people reacting to his video. This video brings to light the harsh reality of our educational system. I recall to a movie I once watched called “The Gods Must be Crazy”, and in the opening scene it shows the difference in the lives of indigenous tribes and modern men. Children of indigenous tribes only have to live with their community to learn how to hunt and forage by themselves; however the children of modern society spends up to 15 years in schools just to learn how to survive in the modern world, add to that the extra years of college that they most likely would attend to be what many regard as ‘successful’. This video made me realize how unprepared we are to face adulthood. Many comments regarding this video, and reaction videos of it, mention parents as the source of supplementary knowledge when it comes to things like this; but that does not help kids who don’t have parents, or parents who are mostly absent in their children’s lives. One widely misinterpreted message is that the title of this video, “Don’t stay in school”, refers to the subjects that are taught there, and not necessarily children because even the creator of this video, Boyinaband, thinks that the presence of schools and our education system is important for everyone.
ReplyDeleteA study proved that modern day classrooms have little to no differences with classrooms in the 19th century, that is students sitting in rows of tables and chairs, listening to the teacher, and things as such. There is also a statement saying that school is utterly useless ; speaking from the pragmatic standpoint, it is useless. Education in Indonesia, and probably some other countries has been keeping on missing the most fundamental subject in its curriculum ; applied techniques in social and natural sciences. This notion of modern educational systems do not improve significantly from archaic education is true because most of the time, students get nothing that they can actually apply to their daily life. Imagine if schools taught students with basic applied sciences since pre-school, let discussions going on instead of long hours of lectures that make students get sleepy. These students will have a sense of purpose in their life instead of just a pursuit of grades and recognition from others.This video signifies that the formal education that is deemed the fittest education for the population to be somewhat redundant without any effort to educate students with basic practical knowledges.
ReplyDeleteWith whatever redundancy that the modern educational system has, it is still the duty of every students to rid themselves of ignorancy. If schools do not provide any practical education, every students have every right to seek for it outside of school.
I absolutely agree with the content about the song. It’s kind of ironic when most student studies things that only useful for exam but they don’t actually learn things that can help them to be a good citizen. I myself don’t know how to pay my taxes or how to sue someone. In all school in Indonesia we mostly taught by our teacher about studies that most of the time theoretical and can’t be use directly in the society. But I can’t say that things we learn at school like math, science, and language aren’t important, it’s extremely important for us so we can understand many things that can help us. I think we need to restructure our education system to allocate time in school to study necessary skill to be a good citizen like knowledge to pay taxes, politics, etc. even though we can’t learn everything that we need to be a good citizen, at least we will aware what we need to learn as a student.
ReplyDeleteThis song was a little popular back when it was released. I saw it almost in every social medias I have, especially in Instagram. Just now I fully listen to the song, where before I just knew the first verse. I think Don't Stay in School should have made a big impact in our lives as students if we listen to it very carefully and critically. The lyrics are true, and I felt it before then even if I was educated in Indonesia instead of America. Some studies are needed yet little did they do are actually helpful to solve problems in our lives. We have to learn how to face these problems by ourselves without any instructions or guidances. It would help us to grow, yes it will. But, some of us can't figure these problems out by themselves and sometimes they too don't have someone to help them. School should teach us about these things, even if not so detailed yet it would be helpful for us to learn things we should know about systems in life.
ReplyDeleteHearing this song for the first time, of course I agree with the lyrics but I don't necessarily means we don't need to go to school and get a proper education. School doesn't only taught us science, history, literature, and so on. But in school, we also learn how to socialize with friends, with teachers, seniors, of course our behaviour with our friends an teacher shouldn't be the same. School also helps us learn about time management, organizational experience and friendship. By not going to school we wouldn't know how to work under pressure or knowing what to say to a certain person in a certain type of situation. And of course by not staying at school we wouldn't have been able to experience the beautiful and strong bond of friendship that would last a lifetime. So of course staying in school doesn't necessarily look like a good idea now, especially academic wise, but it does taught you a lot of other things outside the classroom that would be useful for us in the future.
ReplyDeleteI think this video is very interesting and would possibly rally up controversy amongst the youth and older generations. For the record, I have seen this video before, but I didn’t actually think about it much; now I have an actual reason to. This video displays the basic life skills that schools in the modern day don’t teach to their students. Some of the life skills mentioned are very important like paying taxes, common laws, and current events. These life skills are actually integral in order to build good social relationships with other people. In my opinion, I agree that indeed some of the lessons taught in school were not entirely useful, like knowing which strands of DNA can result in a mutation or the prehistoric artefacts found on the coast of Sumatra. These kinds of knowledge are good to know, yet it is not actually important in the child’s latter life; Due to that, I would agree that the song has a point.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I don’t think that the video as a whole is correct. I agree that some points are correct, like sometimes schools teach lessons that are not entirely beneficial for everyone; yet the lessons that are not beneficial for everyone is sometimes very beneficial for someone or a specific group of students. If we refer to the statement I said before, knowing which strands of DNA can cause a mutation might not be useful in most student’s future, but it is very important for the students that want to pursue a career in science and/or medicine. Besides that, some of the lessons taught by school is actually helpful and has proven to be beneficiary for everyday life. The easiest example of this is math. Most students hate anything and everything that has to do with math, yet math will always be something everyone uses in later life. This video has some good points in it, but its better for us to filter everything the song says and take away the objective facts and positive notes.
ReplyDeleteSchool has been the biggest debate of the century in which people debate over if school is worth living in or not. First and foremost the best debate in which education is important is that we would not know that something is not important until we have learned education. The reason why some perspectives mention the reason on how school is worth living is because they have an educated mindset that have spent some time in school. And nonetheless in my opinion school is important however much we think we need it or not. Sometimes what people forget is that the best lesson is not what is taught but what is experienced. So what this means is that learning to count an area of a square can be unimportant but learning that we can logically think to count a square like area without counting manually with rulers on each side can help us in life in general.
ReplyDeleteI have seen the Don’t stay in school video. It really caught my attention because of the catchy lyrics. I never thought much about school. It was a burden to me once. I was still in the first stages of middle school where it was the hardest. I say so as elementary school and middle comes from a different world. But after repeating the activity of going to school studying, doing homework and assignments,it became nothing less or more of a routine activity which I have to do everyday. I never thought of school as just a formality. I thought that school would give us the knowledge and skill necessary for work . But after listening to this song i realised that in reality school doesn't actually prepare us the set of skills necessary for us to apply for work and get a job. We were not taught how to make the right decisions in our life.
ReplyDeleteWe weren’t taught how to pay tax nor are we taught of the laws that apply in the country. Infact most of these knowledge and skills can be earned through informal education. These things might seem small but actually is very important. I say so as these small things are required to survive and life a good live. These small things can’t be earned through formal edcation but it can be earned through experience and informal education such as socialisation , listening to the news, reading a newspaper, browsing the net and reading books which are not in the school curricullum. Even so, school is still important. It is so as school provides us with basic knowledge required to qork. Unfortunately these knowledge are usually pure knowledge and can’t be applied directly in our daily life or to earn a job. SO i think that both formal education and informal education is important.
DeleteThis may not be the first time i watched and listened to this song, but my view towards this song did not change at all. The main point that I would like to discuss is the thumbnail and the title of the video. At first glance, when browsing Youtube or this blog, the thing that came to my mind is that the music video is about an edgy emo guy probably in his twenties rambling about his past experience in school. But, instead of that, I actually get someone voicing his idea towards the flawed educational system. Other than that, after watching the music video how I interpreted the title also changed. At first, from just reading the title I thought that it would encourage young viewers not to go to school, but now the meaning encourages us to not just stay at school. This is because school doesn’t teach you all the live skill we needed.
ReplyDeleteThis song called don’t stay in school actually a song that I have already heard before, and for me personally it is annoying yet it is the truth about educational institution in regards to what we going to face in the real world in the future when we are already reach our adult age. The skills required to survive in our adult age of our life are not taught in school, those skills actually self taught yet it is better to prepare us for the real world matters as soon as possible. For me personally, educational system might focuses on the interest and talents from each and every individual and also start implementing the skills to help them to cope up with things in real life when they reach adult age. This doesn’t mean that the subject taught at school is not important or irrelevant in the adult life, it is also important to improve the quality of life of the individuals yet the skills to cope up with the things in life such as paying tax, pay the bills and other example also important.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I heard the song, I think what he was saying was true. Soft skills like what he mentioned was never taught in school. Up until now I don’t even know how to pay taxes, or how to buy house in mortgage. Despite that, I don’t regret going through 12 years of compulsory education. Beside all the mathematics and sciences I am learning, in those twelve years I learned how to make friends, how to respect other people, how to present your self in front of other people, and a lot of other things and that are important too. I think as the education system advances, there are curriculums that offer a wide range of subjects and not only mathematics and sciences. For example, the International Baccalaureate program offers subjects like: Psychology, Business and Management, Global Politics, and also studies in Language and Literature. These subjects could be an introduction to the problems mentioned in the song, and could really help students in facing the real adult world.
ReplyDeleteThe reason of concern is the fact that we should remember that we are replacing ourselves in our own world. We are creating things to do the jobs that we invented. For example, we invented carpet, and now we invent something to clean the carpet because we can’t be bothered to do so. The laziness in this can be called creative but in some extent we are sacrificing our fellow friends in their existence in this world. In the end if this still happens then there will only be inventors and inventions with nothing else coexisting. We would need people to make something for us but that’s it. Imagine a factory, no one creating just supervising as the robots do the hard work. The hard work that the robot is doing is saving costs but is killing people by default. People lose their jobs and end up dying of confusion. I think scientist should start thinking not what can be made but, what should be made to help the living of the humans, not to destroy the communities of humans around us.
ReplyDeleteI know this youtuber, boyinaband. I found him a couple years ago, though I never really followed his content thoroughly, I do know this song and I was still impressed today, just as I did a couple years ago. I really liked his message on this song. What his points made, to me, is saying the conventional school systems taught us all this broad knowledge such as biology and geography (not that there is anything wrong with it being taught) but never focuses on how to live our daily lives. We know all these tit-bits about how cloud forms etcetera but don’t even teach about taxes. I think this is very prevalent especially in Indonesia where most of our student still graduate from high-school clueless about how to deal with the struggles of the daily lives. In my opinion, the subsequent effect of these leads to the efficiency of the population. A cause that actually to great to ignore.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, just whoa. This really is an interesting video. The first thing I do is research people responses about this video, because as a student this video is all my thought about subjects in school. I am not American, therefore I’m really curious for American opinion about this video.
ReplyDeleteSo I found this catchy response from quora.com by an American man called Aaron Parco :
I'll go through some of the points with an American perspective:
Why you weren’t taught how to pay tax:
It changes every year. Also you can’t expect teachers to keep up with all the new taxes. People who do keep up with this are CPAs. CPAs make more money than your school district cares to pay to hire one to teach about taxes.
Why you weren’t taught how to vote/policies:
Because this is unethical. Kids are impressionable and adults are biased. It is nearly impossible as an instructor to present both sides of an issue in a way that is that portray both the complexity and rationality of each side in a fair manner. I’m not saying it can’t be done; there are certainly people out there who can do it. But it is more likely the teacher you are assigned can’t and if we want to maintain Democracy, we simply can’t allow a teacher to have that sort of influence on teaching kids who to vote for. Because there are at least two problems: the teacher’s own bias, and those with the means to influence teachers on what they should teach in these matters. As you should have learned in History class people are corruptible. (Not all of course, but many) The moment you allow teachers to teach kids these things, is the moment you corrupt Democracy (which of course, has already been poisoned in several other ways… but let’s not add another dimension). Once kids are adults, it’s OK to start teaching these things.
Why you weren’t taught about how to look after your health:
In America, it is taught. In Texas it’s 7th grade: Health Science. And also Physical Education, which you should have had 8 years of by the time you graduate.
Why you never spent a lesson on current events:
DeleteYou missed out again. The good history teachers relate historical events to current events as a way to point out how mankind failed or triumphed in these circumstances. Unfortunately, there are several teachers who are too lazy to connect these gaps.
Why you weren’t taught the laws of your country:
See taxes. These are changing all the time. And new politicians are elected to throw the old ones out put new ones in. Once again, you can’t expect teachers to reasonably keep up with this crap. People who do keep up with this crap are called lawyers. And if your schools can’t pay an accountant to teach about taxes, they sure as hell can’t afford a lawyer to teach about laws.
Why you weren’t taught how money works:
Actually, this is changing all the time too. At one point it was backed by precious metals, such as gold and silver, which in fact was taught in schools. But then money got complex, for example, you don't just have the money that the government prints, there is also money that is being virtually created by banks. Then there is money being created in financial markets, which I'd like to point out, we haven't figured out exactly how these work. One time they thought they had it figured out, it was called “Efficient Market Hypothesis.” For about two decades economists were patting themselves on the back. They literally were like, “Efficient Market Hypothesis B****.” *drops mic* Then two decades ago they realized they were wrong. If someone supposedly figured out how the markets works (by extension that includes money), well they’d be rich. Also, this rational person (human rationality being the fundamental assumption of economists) wouldn’t tell a soul about how markets work because, if they did, they would lose all their opportunities for arbitrage (the fancy term for making money out of thin air), and the market would change and adapt into something entirely new. And (I conjecture) this is actually something that has happened several times. Once again, if you could afford to pay a person enough to keep up with this crap… well you know where I’m going with this.
How to spot diseases with preventable causes:
DeleteEat healthy, get sleep, exercise. That prevents most of the diseases that will you’ll ever have to worry about. Also you’re British, so you have public health care. Go see your doctor. They’ll spot disease for you and know much more about your unique physical/mental/social conditions. Don’t know how to eat healthy, exercise or how much is adequate sleep? Ask your doctor.
I’m only fluent in this language [while t]he rest of the world speaks two:
Yeah, that’s because the two languages the rest of the world speaks consist of their native tongues and English! They speak two because they have to learn your language. Trust me, had a different set of victors come out of the World Wars, you'd be speaking two languages too buddy.
I will agree, however, we should discuss domestic abuse and mental illness. This is important stuff that is omitted from our curriculum.
Finally, why you are taught the square root equations:
DeleteIt’s abstraction. It’s showing that a really difficult problem, that is, finding the roots of a polynomial, can be reduced to a simple equation. The quadratic equation demonstrates this really well. Showing this idea of abstracting the difficult into a simple, elegant solution is the essence of mathematics. It's also part of being human. Take death for example. It’s this abstract, difficult concept for our primitive monkey brains to wrap our minds around. So we turn it into an equation. Live these ten commandments and when this weird death thing happens, it will be OK because you did, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Or maybe just do one, like the Golden rule. Or maybe follow these steps for Nirvana. That’s the quadratic, follow the rules get an answer, abstract this crazy thing into some simple rules. But then, how do you know that the rules are right? How do you know the answer is right? So we came up with ideas like faith, science and logic. That’s why you learn about the quadratic equation and not things like how to pay your taxes in high school. We only started worrying about taxes recently. But tackling our mortality? Abstracting difficult ideas into simpler rules? This is being human. And it is this quality that will persist with us through time and our journey across the universe.
The solution: find teachers who can inspire these ideas into students. And then pay them more. Also kids, stay in school.
That response gave a me new insight about school subjects, especially high school subjects. I realized school was really important, thanks to Aaron. Every subject taught in school is teaching us something. Like example, math, it teach us to think critically and also problem solving, because you know, every question in math is really tricky and complex, it need to be done gradually, so we need to think hard to solve the problem math gave. Another example, History. Indonesian History teaches me to respect Indonesia Independence fighters. It teaches me to love my country and have a nationalist nature. It also introduces me to many of Indonesian heroes so they will not forgotten by their people. Even though I also think that I do not need the subject materials in school, but I know that the subjects learned taught me something, therefore, I am not regretting the fact that I was learning many subjects in school that I do not use the materials in my future life.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I see this video on Instagram was back in 2015 and as a 10th grader, I really felt this song on a personal level. This song was also really popular back then and it was all over the internet because many people could relate to it. This song has a powerful message; criticizing the current academic curriculum where many of the subjects in school are considered ‘useless’ whereas the useful things such as laws and taxes are not taught to the students. On one hand, I would say that this song has a point. For example, one of the verses in the lyric goes like “I wasn’t taught how to pay tax, but I know loads about Shakespeare’s classics”. One could argue that those who studies business in high school are taught about tax. Yes, we were taught about taxes but we were not taught about how to pay tax yet I know a lot about Shakespeare’s classics from my English class but these won’t be very useful in my life.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the song has a powerful message, I would not say that the lyrics are completely true and that most of the subjects taught in school were useless. For example, dissecting a frog could be a very valuable lesson for those students who wants to study more about biology or medicine and they want to pursue their career in that field. Furthermore, quadratic equation is actually important and useful for many students although it is hated most. Quadratic equation is used in many fields such as business and economics, engineering, and chemistry. The subjects that we say are useless could be very beneficial to others. On the previous comment I said that Shakespeare’s classics won’t be very useful to me. However, this could be very valuable for my friends who wish to be a writer someday. Therefore, I would say that the current subjects provided in school are worthy and important but there needs to be another subject related to basic things in life.
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