4 ms·

What is interesting is that, for many people, it doesn't really become a capitalistic society until they turn 18. That compulsory formal education you mention,

What is interesting is that, for many people, it doesn't really become a capitalistic society until they turn 18. That compulsory formal education you mention, and the social norms surrounding it, often shields the youth from the real world, taking the lessons the real world can provide them away until much later in life, as you experienced. It seems like at this point at lot of the education we feel is necessary exists simply, and perhaps ironically, to make up for the lack of that exposure one has to reality because of the heavy focus on formal education through one's formative years. I would even suggest that we've created a situation where the more formal education one receives, even more formal education is required to make up for what what education was lost in the process.

r_smart 10y ago
Interesting points. I think there's definitely something to be said for education curricula having lost the plot. It seems more and more to me that a lot of the first few years of college is really just teaching things you should have already learned in high school. I also think we've drifted towards thinking that all education takes place in a school. Things like parental mentorship, working a job while in school, extracurricular reading or building things for fun are falling a bit by the wayside. Education is (or should be) a lot more than attending lectures in a classroom, even at the middle school and high school levels. My GF is a school counselor, and one of her constant sources of frustration is how much stuff is getting pushed onto schools to do which really isn't in their provenance.