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> Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the detrimental effects of its implementation I have long believed that education and

> Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the detrimental effects of its implementation I have long believed that education and schooling are not as linked as society pretends. Children aren't served by locking them in a room with barred windows for hours on end and telling them to pay attention and not fidget and do your work and go home and do several more hours of work and then repeat. Distraction is a part of being a child. There are productive distractions and unproductive ones, but the solution is not to pump children full of drugs. You're robbing them off their natural connection-making process, and of the chance to learn how to handle distractions as they grow up in a society of smartphones and advertisements. And all that is assuming that we're even trying to educate the kids while they're in school. https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....

thomastjeffery 9y ago
Thank you very much for the link. I've just gotten around to reading it, and it's wonderful. Those who do "education" to students are organized and powerful, and that is a serious problem. We as a society are being cheated out of learning by a mindless system. Maybe those of us who have been enlightened to that fact ought to organize ourselves.
dbatten 9y ago
For anybody scrolling through... the Lockharts Lament link is worth the read!
VLM 9y ago
Its interesting that if you have legacy baggage and technical debt, you can't NOT lock kids in cages for a whole day and all that industrial era foolishness, which would actually be pretty valuable if we ever get sent back thru a one or two century time warp. We have the best 1850 education system money can buy; of course its useless in 2010s but whatever. At least for boys, if you grassroots up from first principles and implement what works pragmatically, rather than what we've always done or whats in the union contract, you end up with something like cub scouts or boy scouts. Given the wildly divergent goals of school and scouts, where school exists to perpetuate and expand the bureaucracy and scouts exists because organized screwing around provides more learning opportunities than disorganized screwing around, they will continue to diverge until they're unrecognizable. But at least in theory boys learn at both organizations. Much more at boy scouts than at school of course, but they are kinda similar. There exist merit badges in boy scouting for semi-academic topics like electricity or programming. The time investment has to be limited but its intellectually interesting to imagine that someday the only way to teach a boy geometry would be a boy scout geometry merit badge. Unimaginable amounts of time and money will be spent in schools on a line item named "geometry" but the legacy school system does not have any goal of teaching boys geometry so ironically thats the one thing boys will definitely not learn in geometry class, they'll have to go to scouts to learn. I have no personal experience with girl scouts because of their "no male leadership" rule, which is about as appropriate as the now removed "no gay leadership" rule in boy scouts; My lack of praising girl scouts is due to a lack of girl scout experience not implying its bad or wrong. Its possible, even likely, girl scouts is just as good for girls. I do find the ratio bizarre where per capita girl scouting is around ten times less popular than boy scouts, that might indicate a problem in girl scouting.
- watwut 9y ago
  Originally, scouts exists, because founder thought that young UK boys are not raised to be ready enough to be soldiers. More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish activities and girls doing proper girly activities. E.g. boy version is more about camping and tracking, girl version developed from traditionally female crafts. They are not equivalent in terms of child raising goals.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish activities and girls doing proper girly activities. Some of the more modern versions don't even make gender distinctions.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    The BSA is much less about gender distinction now. They are even letting girls join the program now, which is great progress considering their history. Young women have also been working at scout camps for decades.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

Thank you very much for the link. I've just gotten around to reading it, and it's wonderful. Those who do "education" to students are organized and powerful, and that is a serious problem. We as a society are being cheated out of learning by a mindless system. Maybe those of us who have been enlightened to that fact ought to organize ourselves.

dbatten 9y ago

For anybody scrolling through... the Lockharts Lament link is worth the read!

VLM 9y ago

Its interesting that if you have legacy baggage and technical debt, you can't NOT lock kids in cages for a whole day and all that industrial era foolishness, which would actually be pretty valuable if we ever get sent back thru a one or two century time warp. We have the best 1850 education system money can buy; of course its useless in 2010s but whatever. At least for boys, if you grassroots up from first principles and implement what works pragmatically, rather than what we've always done or whats in the union contract, you end up with something like cub scouts or boy scouts. Given the wildly divergent goals of school and scouts, where school exists to perpetuate and expand the bureaucracy and scouts exists because organized screwing around provides more learning opportunities than disorganized screwing around, they will continue to diverge until they're unrecognizable. But at least in theory boys learn at both organizations. Much more at boy scouts than at school of course, but they are kinda similar. There exist merit badges in boy scouting for semi-academic topics like electricity or programming. The time investment has to be limited but its intellectually interesting to imagine that someday the only way to teach a boy geometry would be a boy scout geometry merit badge. Unimaginable amounts of time and money will be spent in schools on a line item named "geometry" but the legacy school system does not have any goal of teaching boys geometry so ironically thats the one thing boys will definitely not learn in geometry class, they'll have to go to scouts to learn. I have no personal experience with girl scouts because of their "no male leadership" rule, which is about as appropriate as the now removed "no gay leadership" rule in boy scouts; My lack of praising girl scouts is due to a lack of girl scout experience not implying its bad or wrong. Its possible, even likely, girl scouts is just as good for girls. I do find the ratio bizarre where per capita girl scouting is around ten times less popular than boy scouts, that might indicate a problem in girl scouting.

watwut 9y ago
Originally, scouts exists, because founder thought that young UK boys are not raised to be ready enough to be soldiers. More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish activities and girls doing proper girly activities. E.g. boy version is more about camping and tracking, girl version developed from traditionally female crafts. They are not equivalent in terms of child raising goals.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish activities and girls doing proper girly activities. Some of the more modern versions don't even make gender distinctions.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  The BSA is much less about gender distinction now. They are even letting girls join the program now, which is great progress considering their history. Young women have also been working at scout camps for decades.