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>an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable Ultimately, education is about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives. H

>an atmosphere where failure IS acceptable Ultimately, education is about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives. High school has nothing to do with "learning" - it's a test, a very long one, to find out who belongs in selective colleges and who doesn't. Colleges are, in turn, a test to find out who gets to stay in the middle class. School before HS is about learning the discipline and technique for approaching that test. But the content of both is entirely irrelevant. Its only purpose is to be difficult, so that some people can hack and and others can't, because there isn't room for everyone at the next stage. Some kids have to be weeded out. If you think this is a strange attitude, ask yourself why people complain so much about grade inflation. There cannot be a situation where "failure is acceptable." If you give a rational high school student an assignment that they can fail without consequences, they'll spend their limited budget of energy and attention on one that gatekeepers care about. The only way around this in a world where comfortable livings are a scarce resource is to allocate them on some axis other than intellectual merit. For a long time we did more or less that: as long as you were white, male, and born to a "good family" you didn't have to work too hard in school. Well, those days are ending, and the world is a more just place for it. In a non-grade-inflated environment, "failure" is okay as long as you fail less than your peers. This is perhaps a better environment for the cultivation of resilience - you're used to tests you can only make a 30% on. But then the operative kind of failure is performing worse than your peers. A lot of people on HN complain that kids these days can't deal with being average. But I've never seen someone say "we hire the middle 50% of developers." No. We hire the top 5.

techdragon 11y ago
To be both somewhat insightful I provide a small correction... > Ultimately, the predominant educational system and it's preeminent methodology, have become about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives... One of many reasons I have put off having a child, the financial burden of giving a child a 'good' education, is considerable. From the purely academic component of quality teachers, to the social component of creating an environment where their interaction with other children is beneficial, neither of these comes cheap. I'm not after much, just well paid teachers who stay passionate while they teach, a class size where they can give each student enough attention, curriculum that allows the child to 'surge forward' when driven by curiosity and be rewarded for their work not punished for not doing 'this weeks assignment', and enough other children to interact with so they can develop social skills. The last one is the tough bit, all the others can be provided by home school with or without using private tutors or paying for a 'personal teacher'.

techdragon 11y ago

To be both somewhat insightful I provide a small correction... > Ultimately, the predominant educational system and it's preeminent methodology, have become about competing for progressively smaller numbers of seats in progressively better lives... One of many reasons I have put off having a child, the financial burden of giving a child a 'good' education, is considerable. From the purely academic component of quality teachers, to the social component of creating an environment where their interaction with other children is beneficial, neither of these comes cheap. I'm not after much, just well paid teachers who stay passionate while they teach, a class size where they can give each student enough attention, curriculum that allows the child to 'surge forward' when driven by curiosity and be rewarded for their work not punished for not doing 'this weeks assignment', and enough other children to interact with so they can develop social skills. The last one is the tough bit, all the others can be provided by home school with or without using private tutors or paying for a 'personal teacher'.