Comment by overgard
8 months ago
I think as a culture we've fetishized formal schooling way past its value. I mean, how much of what you "learned" in school do you actually use or remember? I'm not against education, education is very important, but I'm not sure that schooling is really the optimal route to being educated. They're related, but they're not the same.
The reality is, if someone wants to learn something then there's very little need to cheat, and if they don't want to learn the thing but they're required to, the cheating sort of doesn't matter in the end because they won't retain or use it.
Or to put it simpler, you can lead a horse to water but..
The fetishizing enabled the massive explosion in what's basically a university industrial complex financed off the backs of student loans. To keep growing the industry needed more suckers...I mean students to extract student loans from. This meant watering down the material even in technical degrees like engineering, passing kids who should have failed, and lowering admission standards (masked by grade inflation). Many programs are really really bad now like what should be high school freshman level material. Criticizing the university system gets you called anti-intellectual and a redneck.
A lot of debate around the idea of student loan forgiveness but nobody is trying to address how the student loan problem got so bad in the first place.
All primary schooling is designed to teach people about everything they can learn. If we don’t, many of them will end up in the coal mines because it’s the only thing they know.
>I think as a culture we've fetishized formal schooling way past its value. I mean, how much of what you "learned" in school do you actually use or remember? I'm not against education, education is very important, but I'm not sure that schooling is really the optimal route to being educated. They're related, but they're not the same.
Yeah its absolutely bonkers. I spent 9 months out of school traveling, and the provided homework actually set me ahead of my peers when I had returned.
No ones stopped and considered "What is a school for".
For some people it seems to be mandatory state sponsored childcare. For others its about food? Some people tell me it sucks but its the best way to get kids to socialise?
I feel like if it was an engineering project there would be a formal requirements study, but because its a social program what we get instead is just a big bucket of feelings and no defined scope.
During my time I have come to view schooling as an adversary. I am considering whether it might be prudent to instruct my now toddler that school is designed to break him, and that his role is actually to achieve in spite of it, and that some of his education will come in opposition to the institution.