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That emphasizes that the purpose of school isn't as much to educate children as it is to provide an economy of scale for babysitting so that more adults can par

That emphasizes that the purpose of school isn't as much to educate children as it is to provide an economy of scale for babysitting so that more adults can participate in the workforce. I wonder how that dynamic will interact with the decreasing need for adults in the workforce.

taneq 9y ago
It doesn't take 12 years to teach a kid calculus and literature and their prerequisites.
- tudelo 9y ago
  A kid. Now put 30 in a classroom.
  - taneq 9y ago
    And now add 'no child left behind' (aka 'no child allowed to get ahead').
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Right, it's more that our society has decided that humans have no value until they're at least 18 (hell, with college degree requirements that age is approaching 22), so we have to store them somewhere until then.
  - tmuir 9y ago
    Does it make your nebulous conspiracy theory more believable or less believable when you consider that the age of 18 is generally when people's bodies have reached full maturity? Personally, if my 22 year old self travelled in time three years backwards to meet 17 year old me, and then travelled 20 years forward to present day to me current me, I have no doubt 18 year old me would the odd man out in this triplet.
    - bryondowd 9y ago
      18 maybe for physical appearance, but mental maturity and brain development completes in the early-mid 20s. I would definitely be the odd one out at my current age if I were stuck with 17 and 22yo me, unless you were just using physical appearance, in which case yeah, I guess 17 would stand out.
      - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
        Mental and social maturity continues developing for most of your life. Different life stages have different common problems, and you need to learn different skills to solve them - or sometimes just to cope with them. In the same way that there isn't much practical (i.e. economic) interest in tailoring schools and college classes to people with different daily cycles, there isn't much interest in teaching people about common problems ahead of time, or running some kind of continuous life challenges training that could potentially do a lot to improve life quality. In my 50s, one of the common problems my friends have is dealing with parents who are either dying, recently dead, or have a terminal illness like Alzheimer's. Of course that happens to younger people too, but there are actuarial peaks where it becomes massively more likely that you'll be dealing with a certain set of challenges in a certain decade of life. There's shockingly little information around about some of these challenges. So it's incorrect to assume that the learning ends after school or college. You won't learn anything about dealing with these challenges there. You won't even be warned they exist.
    - arkades 9y ago
      They have? Because last I checked puberty and physical growth tend to peter out around 13-14 for females and 15-16 for males (male growth plates seal at about 15; in females, about a year after menarche, and menses itself stabilizes about two years after menarche). Does it make his nebulous conspiracy theory more or less believable that you somehow think the age at which we stop warehousing kids actually has nothing at all to do with physical maturation?
      - tmuir 9y ago
        Allow me to contextualize all of your controversial deflection: You specifically selected parts of the body that finish maturing earlier than my statement, because it was the most controversial thing that popped into your head. It didn't pop in to your growth plates, it didn't pop into your elbow. It didn't pop into your left middle toe. It popped into your head. You should allow these very statements to marinate in that same head, and see if you can come to the correct conclusion as to which part of your body I was referring to in my original comment.
  - internetman55 9y ago
    i don't think that's how ppl with means view things https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9294.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9294.html this is on my eventually 2 read list
  - marshray 9y ago
    Kids under 18 used to be valued as factory workers. Our society decided humans become more valuable when they are given the opportunity of a childhood filled with education instead of manual labor.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      That's a better way to put it; we've decided that humans' lifetime productivity is usually maximized by putting off the requirement that they be productive until later in their lives.
    - nulagrithom 9y ago
      That's a nice way of looking at it, and I'm not going to argue against it per se, but a cynical part of me thinks there's simply more money to be made by pushing loans on young adults and then using them in the workforce. US student loan debt is somewhere around $1.4 trillion. For comparison, mortgage debt is somewhere around $8.9 trillion. That's a pretty damn big market. [0][1] If that education was free, I'd wholly agree with you that it's simply our society deciding this is for the betterment of all. But when you combine these two sources of debt (student loans so we can get jobs that afford us home mortgages) then we're looking at a new, weird, first-world form of debt bondage. [2] Again, I realize that's a very pessimistic point of view. Will be interesting to see how the history books view it in years to come. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#/media/File:Student_loan_debt.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#/media/File:Stude... [1]: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/13/economy/divided-decade/fed-uneven-housing-recovery-great-recession https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/13/economy/divided-decad... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage
      - mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
        You’re not alone in thinking this.
      - pavel_lishin 9y ago
        This applies to young adults; not children. You're not wrong, but you are slightly off topic.
Consultant32452 9y ago
It's not just economy of scale for babysitting, though that is a big component. In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. I'm not here advocating putting kids back in the factories, just pointing out the history. In addition to that, I think it's clear that there's two curriculums at school: a spoken one and an unspoken one. The spoken curriculum is math, science, reading, etc. The unspoken curriculum is mass social indoctrination around conformity, complacency, and willingness to do boring work with minimal reward for long periods of time. Essentially, to psychologically prepare children for the realities of work life.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  > denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. This is basically what I'm saying; educational requirements are an easy way to track the workforce. At the end of the wars, the labor market contracted hugely (as those soldiering jobs went away), so our society cut the least valuable workers out of the workforce. That it had humanitarian justifications, in that those workers also had the least personal agency and influence over their working conditions, is almost coincidental.
- scythe 9y ago
  >In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. Compulsory education in the US started in 1852 in Massachusetts and ended in 1918 in Mississippi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#United_St... The first modern compulsory education was enacted in Prussia in 1763.
- machinehermit 9y ago
  I use to think this way but as I got older I realized it was just a projection of how bad I was with girls in school. One boy's mass social indoctrination is another boy's ultimate fuck party.

taneq 9y ago

It doesn't take 12 years to teach a kid calculus and literature and their prerequisites.

tudelo 9y ago
A kid. Now put 30 in a classroom.
- taneq 9y ago
  And now add 'no child left behind' (aka 'no child allowed to get ahead').
InitialLastName 9y ago
Right, it's more that our society has decided that humans have no value until they're at least 18 (hell, with college degree requirements that age is approaching 22), so we have to store them somewhere until then.
- tmuir 9y ago
  Does it make your nebulous conspiracy theory more believable or less believable when you consider that the age of 18 is generally when people's bodies have reached full maturity? Personally, if my 22 year old self travelled in time three years backwards to meet 17 year old me, and then travelled 20 years forward to present day to me current me, I have no doubt 18 year old me would the odd man out in this triplet.
  - bryondowd 9y ago
    18 maybe for physical appearance, but mental maturity and brain development completes in the early-mid 20s. I would definitely be the odd one out at my current age if I were stuck with 17 and 22yo me, unless you were just using physical appearance, in which case yeah, I guess 17 would stand out.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      Mental and social maturity continues developing for most of your life. Different life stages have different common problems, and you need to learn different skills to solve them - or sometimes just to cope with them. In the same way that there isn't much practical (i.e. economic) interest in tailoring schools and college classes to people with different daily cycles, there isn't much interest in teaching people about common problems ahead of time, or running some kind of continuous life challenges training that could potentially do a lot to improve life quality. In my 50s, one of the common problems my friends have is dealing with parents who are either dying, recently dead, or have a terminal illness like Alzheimer's. Of course that happens to younger people too, but there are actuarial peaks where it becomes massively more likely that you'll be dealing with a certain set of challenges in a certain decade of life. There's shockingly little information around about some of these challenges. So it's incorrect to assume that the learning ends after school or college. You won't learn anything about dealing with these challenges there. You won't even be warned they exist.
  - arkades 9y ago
    They have? Because last I checked puberty and physical growth tend to peter out around 13-14 for females and 15-16 for males (male growth plates seal at about 15; in females, about a year after menarche, and menses itself stabilizes about two years after menarche). Does it make his nebulous conspiracy theory more or less believable that you somehow think the age at which we stop warehousing kids actually has nothing at all to do with physical maturation?
    - tmuir 9y ago
      Allow me to contextualize all of your controversial deflection: You specifically selected parts of the body that finish maturing earlier than my statement, because it was the most controversial thing that popped into your head. It didn't pop in to your growth plates, it didn't pop into your elbow. It didn't pop into your left middle toe. It popped into your head. You should allow these very statements to marinate in that same head, and see if you can come to the correct conclusion as to which part of your body I was referring to in my original comment.
- internetman55 9y ago
  i don't think that's how ppl with means view things https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9294.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9294.html this is on my eventually 2 read list
- marshray 9y ago
  Kids under 18 used to be valued as factory workers. Our society decided humans become more valuable when they are given the opportunity of a childhood filled with education instead of manual labor.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    That's a better way to put it; we've decided that humans' lifetime productivity is usually maximized by putting off the requirement that they be productive until later in their lives.
  - nulagrithom 9y ago
    That's a nice way of looking at it, and I'm not going to argue against it per se, but a cynical part of me thinks there's simply more money to be made by pushing loans on young adults and then using them in the workforce. US student loan debt is somewhere around $1.4 trillion. For comparison, mortgage debt is somewhere around $8.9 trillion. That's a pretty damn big market. [0][1] If that education was free, I'd wholly agree with you that it's simply our society deciding this is for the betterment of all. But when you combine these two sources of debt (student loans so we can get jobs that afford us home mortgages) then we're looking at a new, weird, first-world form of debt bondage. [2] Again, I realize that's a very pessimistic point of view. Will be interesting to see how the history books view it in years to come. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#/media/File:Student_loan_debt.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#/media/File:Stude... [1]: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/13/economy/divided-decade/fed-uneven-housing-recovery-great-recession https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/13/economy/divided-decad... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage
    - mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
      You’re not alone in thinking this.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      This applies to young adults; not children. You're not wrong, but you are slightly off topic.

Consultant32452 9y ago

It's not just economy of scale for babysitting, though that is a big component. In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. I'm not here advocating putting kids back in the factories, just pointing out the history. In addition to that, I think it's clear that there's two curriculums at school: a spoken one and an unspoken one. The spoken curriculum is math, science, reading, etc. The unspoken curriculum is mass social indoctrination around conformity, complacency, and willingness to do boring work with minimal reward for long periods of time. Essentially, to psychologically prepare children for the realities of work life.

InitialLastName 9y ago
> denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. This is basically what I'm saying; educational requirements are an easy way to track the workforce. At the end of the wars, the labor market contracted hugely (as those soldiering jobs went away), so our society cut the least valuable workers out of the workforce. That it had humanitarian justifications, in that those workers also had the least personal agency and influence over their working conditions, is almost coincidental.
scythe 9y ago
>In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. Compulsory education in the US started in 1852 in Massachusetts and ended in 1918 in Mississippi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#United_St... The first modern compulsory education was enacted in Prussia in 1763.
machinehermit 9y ago
I use to think this way but as I got older I realized it was just a projection of how bad I was with girls in school. One boy's mass social indoctrination is another boy's ultimate fuck party.