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How's that pottery class that's getting cut going to help people tell the difference between fantasy and reality? Is it possible in your philosophy for two "ed

by Jach 9y ago

How's that pottery class that's getting cut going to help people tell the difference between fantasy and reality? Is it possible in your philosophy for two "educated" people to disagree? On more than just personal preference like whether blue is better than green, but indeed on seemingly foundational issues like what is real and what is imaginary?

dfxm12 9y ago
What's a theoretical pottery class got to do with this? Feel free to look up why teachers are currently on strike in parts of the US, or why the current US secretary of education is so controversial. This has been a problem for a good long while. I'm not talking about educated people agreeing or disagreeing, I'm not sure where you're going with that. I'm talking about leaving people with the skills to tell the difference between something reported as fact and an opinion. It's about knowing how to verify, or debunk, claims presented without evidence. It's about being able to detect complete fabrication. After all, what "educated" people thought Pizzagate was real?
- Jach 9y ago
  The theoretical pottery class is the practical result of what happens when education budgets are reduced. Something has to go, so it's typically the optional electives with higher-than-normal base costs and average-or-less college prep relevance like pottery, shop, dance, etc. Still, is this a great loss in terms of preparing people to distinguish reality? If not, why is cutting education spending such a big problem? Basically I'm asking you to define "education" and why the solution to so many problems is simply more of it. After all, what "educated" people thought Christ was crucified and then resurrected?
  - dfxm12 9y ago
    The theoretical pottery class is the practical result of what happens when education budgets are reduced. Ok, you're arguing on a false premise then. When education budgets are reduced, kids don't have up to date textbooks. Classrooms don't have proper supplies and too many kids get crammed into too few classrooms, which is not a situation conducive to teaching or learning.
    - Jach 9y ago
      I don't see how it's an argument from a false premise given that I'm just asking questions and hoping for some conversation, not making a formal argument yet. Still, suppose you are inferring an argument I'm making ulteriorly through my questions, and have inferred that I've argued "reducing budgets implies only such classes are cut", then sure, that's technically false. But I'm not making that argument, ulteriorly or otherwise. In my followup I thought I sufficiently clarified that things like pottery and other classes being cut are typical examples of what goes, as something must, but of course not the only things. (And of course necessarily, if such things are already gone, something else must go, like small class sizes.) This is a whole side-show commentary however. My main line of questioning remains: how do you define education and in what way does lacking it matter for the purposes you claim to care about (being able to distinguish reality and fantasy)? Do you want to even venture at broaching the religious question? I'm ok with leaving that to the side. Maybe we can start with the downsides you've extracted out. What subjects are the important ones for which kids must have up to date textbooks in-class, the lack of which will hurt them in distinguishing reality and fantasy? What supplies are proper? What are some objective impacts to learning something when there are student-teacher ratios of 10:1 vs 20:1 vs 50:1? Does the extent of the impact matter by subject? (For the last I'd bet yes given many well funded universities have ratios in the hundreds for certain courses with apparently few if any seriously ill effects.) (To head off another possible point of miscommunication, I don't dispute that nebulous unfactored "education" can have more benefits than just distinguishing reality and fantasy and that various positive aspects might not impact that particular aspect at all, I just want to target that particular one for what you'd like to focus on when "more education" is pumped in, either by the schools that are having their budgets reduced or by the politicians themselves. Maybe that's another form of the question to ask instead? How specifically do you expect the ideal politician to education their constituents (and what's the ideal educator:educatee ratio?))
  - s2g 9y ago
    > After all, what "educated" people thought Christ was crucified and then resurrected? How many come to believe that having never heard it prior to completing their education?
    - Jach 9y ago
      An interesting question. When is education completed, anyway? But a potential way to answer the question is to look at conversion rates. Some digging would probably bring up some data for one religion in particular but at the very least we could establish an upper bound of ~87k in South Korea for that religion, granting the wrong assumption of all current members being converts post-education https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/south-korea https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/... Still, I'd bet it's > 0. Ben Casnocha wrote: "Rule of thumb: Be skeptical of things you learned before you could read. E.g., religion."
      - s2g 9y ago
        You can convince a non-zero number of people of pretty much anything.

by Jach 9y ago

dfxm12 9y ago

What's a theoretical pottery class got to do with this? Feel free to look up why teachers are currently on strike in parts of the US, or why the current US secretary of education is so controversial. This has been a problem for a good long while. I'm not talking about educated people agreeing or disagreeing, I'm not sure where you're going with that. I'm talking about leaving people with the skills to tell the difference between something reported as fact and an opinion. It's about knowing how to verify, or debunk, claims presented without evidence. It's about being able to detect complete fabrication. After all, what "educated" people thought Pizzagate was real?

Jach 9y ago
The theoretical pottery class is the practical result of what happens when education budgets are reduced. Something has to go, so it's typically the optional electives with higher-than-normal base costs and average-or-less college prep relevance like pottery, shop, dance, etc. Still, is this a great loss in terms of preparing people to distinguish reality? If not, why is cutting education spending such a big problem? Basically I'm asking you to define "education" and why the solution to so many problems is simply more of it. After all, what "educated" people thought Christ was crucified and then resurrected?
- dfxm12 9y ago
  The theoretical pottery class is the practical result of what happens when education budgets are reduced. Ok, you're arguing on a false premise then. When education budgets are reduced, kids don't have up to date textbooks. Classrooms don't have proper supplies and too many kids get crammed into too few classrooms, which is not a situation conducive to teaching or learning.
  - Jach 9y ago
    I don't see how it's an argument from a false premise given that I'm just asking questions and hoping for some conversation, not making a formal argument yet. Still, suppose you are inferring an argument I'm making ulteriorly through my questions, and have inferred that I've argued "reducing budgets implies only such classes are cut", then sure, that's technically false. But I'm not making that argument, ulteriorly or otherwise. In my followup I thought I sufficiently clarified that things like pottery and other classes being cut are typical examples of what goes, as something must, but of course not the only things. (And of course necessarily, if such things are already gone, something else must go, like small class sizes.) This is a whole side-show commentary however. My main line of questioning remains: how do you define education and in what way does lacking it matter for the purposes you claim to care about (being able to distinguish reality and fantasy)? Do you want to even venture at broaching the religious question? I'm ok with leaving that to the side. Maybe we can start with the downsides you've extracted out. What subjects are the important ones for which kids must have up to date textbooks in-class, the lack of which will hurt them in distinguishing reality and fantasy? What supplies are proper? What are some objective impacts to learning something when there are student-teacher ratios of 10:1 vs 20:1 vs 50:1? Does the extent of the impact matter by subject? (For the last I'd bet yes given many well funded universities have ratios in the hundreds for certain courses with apparently few if any seriously ill effects.) (To head off another possible point of miscommunication, I don't dispute that nebulous unfactored "education" can have more benefits than just distinguishing reality and fantasy and that various positive aspects might not impact that particular aspect at all, I just want to target that particular one for what you'd like to focus on when "more education" is pumped in, either by the schools that are having their budgets reduced or by the politicians themselves. Maybe that's another form of the question to ask instead? How specifically do you expect the ideal politician to education their constituents (and what's the ideal educator:educatee ratio?))
- s2g 9y ago
  > After all, what "educated" people thought Christ was crucified and then resurrected? How many come to believe that having never heard it prior to completing their education?
  - Jach 9y ago
    An interesting question. When is education completed, anyway? But a potential way to answer the question is to look at conversion rates. Some digging would probably bring up some data for one religion in particular but at the very least we could establish an upper bound of ~87k in South Korea for that religion, granting the wrong assumption of all current members being converts post-education https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/south-korea https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/... Still, I'd bet it's > 0. Ben Casnocha wrote: "Rule of thumb: Be skeptical of things you learned before you could read. E.g., religion."
    - s2g 9y ago
      You can convince a non-zero number of people of pretty much anything.