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> From kindergarten on, students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market. Why do English classes focus on literature an

> From kindergarten on, students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market. Why do English classes focus on literature and poetry instead of business and technical writing? uggggh this, this market-driven bullshit that assumes "business" should be the end goal of all human behavior English classes focus on literature and poetry because maybe you should have some sense of beauty, because you should have some vague idea of what a good fucking sentence looks like instead of just learning to write the abominable circumlocutions of this year's dialect of Business English. Because maybe reading stories about people in interesting moral dilemmas can help us think about how we'd react in a similar situation and be able to say "hey wait I am starting to act like that asshole in that one book, it sure didn't end well for her, okay what else can I try then". Because part of the job of education is to pass on a culture to the next generation along with raw knowledge. > Why do advanced-math classes bother with proofs almost no student can follow? When will the typical student use history? What's the old saw about people who don't learn history? They're doomed to repeat it? Do you really want kids making the same mistakes your parents made, because they didn't see any of the results? "Oh hey let's vote for this obvious confidence man for the lulz, what's the worst that could happen", one year later we have literal fucking Nazi groups rallying in the streets? uuuggggghhh yes let's all just learn exactly what we need to learn to be useful to some big corporate entity, let's learn nothing that will make us ever question its inhuman, amoral, profit-first motives, I am sure this will have absolutely no problems whatsoever.

potatoyogurt 8y ago
I don't get it, I don't understand how the author of the article has a PhD if this is what he thinks. Like, > Why do advanced-math classes bother with proofs almost no student can follow? Because that literally _is_ mathematics, and the point of working through them is because students can actually understand them and learn to do the same thing with new problems. How does he expect anyone to create or discover anything new with just arithmetic 101? There's a kernel of a good argument in that signaling probably is one of the main values that students get from a college degree, but it's overstated to such a degree that it crosses over into idiocy.
- mrep 8y ago
  Economic signaling is a thing in economics [0] and it isn't talked about much as while they are jobs that do "require" college degrees while not really using the education taught and thus just essentially use it as a signal, most economists think lots of useful concepts taught in school are used in higher skilled jobs requiring degrees and thus aren't just used as a signal. This guy likely just picked an economic topic that isn't talked about much and wrote a book about it to sell his brand/make money by focusing on the minority cases and using clickbait articles like this where he equates all college degrees as useless signalling and thus not worth the cost of education to promote it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
- watwut 8y ago
  Also, it is not actually true that almost no students can follow math class. Math classes too difficult to be followed by literally most get easier over time. The article author exaggerate on those points to the point of lying, so that it is easier to make points. Also I did not spend all that much time by history or poetry in school. It is possible to select overly too many such courses I guess, but it is in no way necessary or expected.
mrob 8y ago
Forcing students to read classic literature is as harmful to their sense of beauty as gym class is to their desire to exercise. All you accomplish is teaching them that reading is something unpleasant, to be dropped as soon as possible. A possible better route to teaching appreciation of classic literature would be focusing on debate about which popular media is best. Natural competitiveness will make people take this seriously, and at some point people will figure out that comparisons to classic literature, discussion of formal rhetorical technique, etc. are highly effective tools for debate. Pretty much no kid will read Shakespeare for fun, but if it means proving that their favorite media is better than somebody else's favorite, it might be worth the effort.
egypturnash 8y ago
awrite I couldn't stop thinking about this, have some more ranting: From a purely business standpoint, if we stop exposing kids to classes that say "hey this creative thing is something you could do" we lose a bunch of people deciding to try and make that their career, which means we lose a significant portion of the entertainment industry - have fun with a significantly reduced selection of books/movies/games/music/etc to entertain you when you're taking a break from creating shareholder value, I guess there's always masturbating to the thought of how much shareholder value you're creating? Some quick searching suggests that Hollywood alone is from 3-6% of America's GDP, plus whatever value you may put on its use as global propaganda for American social values. Also liberal arts majors end up in advertising, which I'm seeing values of anywhere from 1-19% of the US GDP. Plus whatever amount of value an ad campaign ads by getting people to buy whatever it's selling, how much junk have you bought that you never ended up using, or was way overpriced for what it did, because of ads? Arguably the world might be better off if every single one of those people quit using their skills to help sell cheap disposable junk made halfway across the world by people paid pennies a day but that's another matter. But nah. Let's all just look for work that's gonna pay us the most cold hard cash, which judging by the top sector of the GDP is real estate and finance. Let's just learn that shit. Nothing else. I'm sure that'll be a fun way to live. The US education system is fucked up. I can agree with this guy on that. But I don't think eliminating everything but "what will get you a job" is gonna help. Education funding has been cut, and cut, and cut some more, wealth's been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Tax those ultra-rich assholes, spread that money around into education, maybe reverse decades of cuts to stuff like the NEA as well (and give a huge grant to my project to dig up Jesse Helms' rotting corpse and fuck it in the face with a jackhammer in revenge for his role in that), give teachers more power to actually engage their students instead of focusing entirely on being able to regurgitate the answers to the standardized tests that determine which schools get their funding cut the least next year. Oh and also raise the goddamn minimum wage so that someone trying to turn their passion for art into a full-time career has time to do that instead of having to work three shitty part-time jobs just to keep a roof over their head. In summary, this guy is next in line for my proposal for a performance art project in which I dig up dead jerkwads who think the arts are useless, and fuck them in the face with a jackhammer. He's not dead yet? I'll wait. I got time.

potatoyogurt 8y ago

I don't get it, I don't understand how the author of the article has a PhD if this is what he thinks. Like, > Why do advanced-math classes bother with proofs almost no student can follow? Because that literally _is_ mathematics, and the point of working through them is because students can actually understand them and learn to do the same thing with new problems. How does he expect anyone to create or discover anything new with just arithmetic 101? There's a kernel of a good argument in that signaling probably is one of the main values that students get from a college degree, but it's overstated to such a degree that it crosses over into idiocy.

mrep 8y ago
Economic signaling is a thing in economics [0] and it isn't talked about much as while they are jobs that do "require" college degrees while not really using the education taught and thus just essentially use it as a signal, most economists think lots of useful concepts taught in school are used in higher skilled jobs requiring degrees and thus aren't just used as a signal. This guy likely just picked an economic topic that isn't talked about much and wrote a book about it to sell his brand/make money by focusing on the minority cases and using clickbait articles like this where he equates all college degrees as useless signalling and thus not worth the cost of education to promote it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
watwut 8y ago
Also, it is not actually true that almost no students can follow math class. Math classes too difficult to be followed by literally most get easier over time. The article author exaggerate on those points to the point of lying, so that it is easier to make points. Also I did not spend all that much time by history or poetry in school. It is possible to select overly too many such courses I guess, but it is in no way necessary or expected.

mrob 8y ago

Forcing students to read classic literature is as harmful to their sense of beauty as gym class is to their desire to exercise. All you accomplish is teaching them that reading is something unpleasant, to be dropped as soon as possible. A possible better route to teaching appreciation of classic literature would be focusing on debate about which popular media is best. Natural competitiveness will make people take this seriously, and at some point people will figure out that comparisons to classic literature, discussion of formal rhetorical technique, etc. are highly effective tools for debate. Pretty much no kid will read Shakespeare for fun, but if it means proving that their favorite media is better than somebody else's favorite, it might be worth the effort.

egypturnash 8y ago

awrite I couldn't stop thinking about this, have some more ranting: From a purely business standpoint, if we stop exposing kids to classes that say "hey this creative thing is something you could do" we lose a bunch of people deciding to try and make that their career, which means we lose a significant portion of the entertainment industry - have fun with a significantly reduced selection of books/movies/games/music/etc to entertain you when you're taking a break from creating shareholder value, I guess there's always masturbating to the thought of how much shareholder value you're creating? Some quick searching suggests that Hollywood alone is from 3-6% of America's GDP, plus whatever value you may put on its use as global propaganda for American social values. Also liberal arts majors end up in advertising, which I'm seeing values of anywhere from 1-19% of the US GDP. Plus whatever amount of value an ad campaign ads by getting people to buy whatever it's selling, how much junk have you bought that you never ended up using, or was way overpriced for what it did, because of ads? Arguably the world might be better off if every single one of those people quit using their skills to help sell cheap disposable junk made halfway across the world by people paid pennies a day but that's another matter. But nah. Let's all just look for work that's gonna pay us the most cold hard cash, which judging by the top sector of the GDP is real estate and finance. Let's just learn that shit. Nothing else. I'm sure that'll be a fun way to live. The US education system is fucked up. I can agree with this guy on that. But I don't think eliminating everything but "what will get you a job" is gonna help. Education funding has been cut, and cut, and cut some more, wealth's been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Tax those ultra-rich assholes, spread that money around into education, maybe reverse decades of cuts to stuff like the NEA as well (and give a huge grant to my project to dig up Jesse Helms' rotting corpse and fuck it in the face with a jackhammer in revenge for his role in that), give teachers more power to actually engage their students instead of focusing entirely on being able to regurgitate the answers to the standardized tests that determine which schools get their funding cut the least next year. Oh and also raise the goddamn minimum wage so that someone trying to turn their passion for art into a full-time career has time to do that instead of having to work three shitty part-time jobs just to keep a roof over their head. In summary, this guy is next in line for my proposal for a performance art project in which I dig up dead jerkwads who think the arts are useless, and fuck them in the face with a jackhammer. He's not dead yet? I'll wait. I got time.