Does the UK School System work?

I've had to focus on my sixth form work so much these past few days, that checking on this completely escaped my mind! The irony is strong with this one!

But definitely school teaches a very low level of thinking. I think that at first, learning the basics of a subject is important, they can learn about the Law of Gravity, or Colour Theory; knowing what it actually is means that students can go on to talk about it. Then, by having debates and getting them to come up with their own ideas, students are naturally drawn to want to find out more about the subject, so then they can discuss it and experiment further. It's like saying, this isn't set in stone. You can have your own ideas on it, but this is what so-and-so person said. Now go and do your thing!

This is essentially the rule I follow for debate.org. What I do is, I get myself to think about the topic I'm debating and come up with my own ideas, then if I don't know something, I look online for more information, so I can keep talking about it.
School is very different. A strict set of guidelines you have to follow. Memorising things that don't even make sense. Even a subject centred around debates, such as psychology, will literally involve memorising the point of view of Freud, who with no evidence to suggest this, believes that the reason a small boy has a phobia of horses, is because of some hidden desire to have sex with his mother. And then you have to memorise the opposing view, that there is no evidence. Like thanks, I almost thought that made total sense until you informed me otherwise. Phew.

Being able to discuss and have views on something is so important if you want to understand it. You need a balance between information and opinion.

The origin of the word "school" is the ancient Greek "schole" which means leisure, philosophy, and a place where lectures are given. It disappoints me to see that only one of the three is being utilized in our schooling systems today. You are right. American schools parallel this, and neither are truly educating their students because of it. I read an article once where there was one boarding school in the UK that let the children attend/skip class whenever they wanted without penalty. Now, this is a very risky move for any school out there, but the results told a different story. For the first few weeks, the children did not attend class. Instead, they ran around, played, essentially did what they wanted. After that time had passed, children began to attend class, since they had nothing else to do but the same games and same routine over and over. Humans have a natural curiosity and want for knowledge that has been with us since we first walked the earth. What this school did was break the children out of their hatred of a cookie-cutter school system, and relied on their baser instincts to teach themselves to want to learn. Now, I"m not saying that school systems should follow in their footsteps and toss caution to the wind, but if they loosen the reins on the tightly scheduled system, requiring thoughtful discussions, debates, and ideas, instead of tests, quizzes, and things of that sort that teach students that you don"t have to learn you just have to memorize. Though memorizing is a part of learning, no doubt, it shouldn"t have such an overwhelmingly majority use. There needs to be a change if we are to intellectually heighten ourselves as a society and to begin that change, it needs to happen with the school systems.

I agree with Ski

I kinda wanted to go to the con side too, but I got confused so I actually got on the pro side.