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I see what you mean. But what else can we do other than prepare children to be assessed in terms of now-usefulness? When they come into contact with team acti

I see what you mean. But what else can we do other than prepare children to be assessed in terms of now-usefulness? When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. It's always great to have a space or a time in which you can slob-out and be not-useful but Western society considers that exceptional and calls it 'vacation'.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? The question is: Prepare them to be graded, or prepare them to grade? Both of those are a result of their education. > Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. Do you think those "Really Useful" people got where they are now by following what was "now-usefulness" at the time? I would argue they got there precisely because they challenged the status quo, and made a bet on what would be valued down the line, a risky bet at that (you just don't hear about those who made bets that didn't work out). Those quiet cogs are actually precisely the ones who are "useful" in the authoritarian sense: They contribute to what the powers that be want to use them for.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

> When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? The question is: Prepare them to be graded, or prepare them to grade? Both of those are a result of their education. > Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. Do you think those "Really Useful" people got where they are now by following what was "now-usefulness" at the time? I would argue they got there precisely because they challenged the status quo, and made a bet on what would be valued down the line, a risky bet at that (you just don't hear about those who made bets that didn't work out). Those quiet cogs are actually precisely the ones who are "useful" in the authoritarian sense: They contribute to what the powers that be want to use them for.