24 ms·

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically d

by mgh2 6y ago

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to be led astray than "follow their passions" (at this age, really?). They will more likely be manipulated by vices if not constantly monitored. Note: Even adults struggle to find their "passion", good for the lucky few. 3. Not all parents are good teachers. Usually, responsible families understand the value proposition- they wish their children have a better future- and education is the most assured/common ticket that provides these opportunities. 4. School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Ex: Nazi Germany and Mao's China burned books and persecuted the educated (1984 style). Public schools, with all its flaws, are the best instruments to free the masses. Knowledge is democratized power to avoid the corruption that absolute power entails.

abnry 6y ago
There is a lot of bias towards homeschoolers so the wild success stories often get touted to counteract the prejudice. I was homeschooled but agree that it isn't for everyone, mainly because not everyone has the resources. It decidedly requires a middle class lifestyle. Also, parents need to have something of their life together beyond just financial resources. But people overestimate the competence required of a parent to teach. Probably the biggest thing I learned was learning how to learn, and in particular, doing that on my own. So reading the textbook in college was hardly a shock. If my parents didn't understand a subject, they could learn it with me, or find the resources I needed (including community college, online courses). Unschooling, however, I am not too sympathetic to. You need some structure.
- petertodd 6y ago
  > Unschooling, however, I am not too sympathetic to. You need some structure. For most kids you probably need some structure. For some, unschooling certainly works well; for others it's another term for "school dropout". I personally was both homeschooled and unschooled, for different topics, and a high % of the smartest people I know were unschooled. I really struggled to learn to read and write, even by grade five. So my parents took me out and my mom worked with me one-on-one intensively to learn phonics, which finally fixed that problem. Meanwhile, prior to that the biggest challenge I had in learning programming on my own is that I struggled to actually read the books I had on it. I think that unschooling taught me how to learn on my own, in a way that was very beneficial later in life. Yet again, I'd say based on my experience taking relatively high-level, proof-based, math classes in university many years later, that for me the structured experience of university math worked much better than trying to learn those subjects on my own (which I had also tried!). Yet, for high school math, there hadn't been much difference (I did attend highschool). Learning isn't one-size-fits-all.
eloff 6y ago
I would say public schools are so much better than nothing. But they're not the best option by far. Not everyone can do homeschooling, not everyone who can, will do it well. Many kids are not able to handle it either. But it can lead to much better outcomes. Like most things, general advice doesn't apply to everyone.
vivekd 6y ago
That sounds good in theory but research seems to suggest that homeschoolers overwhelmingly perform better on every single metric. Although I'll grant that there may be data bias in that smarter and more devoted parents are more likely to homeschool. https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:text=The%20home-educated%20typically%20score,on%20standardized%20academic%20achievement%20tests.&text=A%202015%20study%20found%20Black,students%20(Ray%2C%202015) https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:te....
- mgh2 6y ago
  I just quickly checked its references: two journals that compromise a big chunk of the cited sources have very low impact factors. Unless they are using a diff. metric for education journals or they are relatively new, I would not consider this a reliable report 1. https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7414 https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7414 2. https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Peabody-Journal-of-Education#:~:text=The%20Journal%20Impact%202019%2D2020,is%20just%20updated%20in%202020 https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Peabody-Jo.... 3. https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor#:~:text=In%20most%20fields%2C%20the%20impact,effective%20in%20the%20same%20discipline https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor#:~:te.... This is a better study: https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-73072017000200085 https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S010...
  - knaq 6y ago
    To be fair, it seems obvious that the education industry (those journals) would have a bias against homeschooling. Getting published by people who hate your message is just not likely.
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      Do academia (universities) and high/elementary school have such loyalty to each other? I thought that most colleges were quite friendly to homeschooled students.
tmaly 6y ago
>It is there to teach us critical thinking I believe the No Child Left Behind Act changed that.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  Alas, often "no child left behind" also means "no child let ahead".
  - tmaly 6y ago
    A one size fits all approach is something that should change. How we change this, I don't know.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelligentsia. Whatever else you might say about them they weren’t uneducated. The German ban on home schooling is explicitly to prevent the formation of parallel societies. It would be hard to be clearer that the purpose of the “education” system is indoctrination. If you want to teach things the best and most efficient way to do so is explicitly. The enormous majority of people do not generalize learning beyond its context. Whether transfer of learning even exists is a hot topic in psychological research. It is certainly not a strong effect. If school was to teach critical thinking it should be doing so explicitly. It doesn’t and there’s little reason to believe it’s especially good at it. School is excellent at inuring children to boredom, obeying authority and pointless busywork.
- mgh2 6y ago
  Yeah, I won't deny that even the educated can be manipulated- look at our generation affected by corporate and political agendas. Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. Given this prerequisite, is an educated population easier to be manipulated than an illiterate one?
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    > Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. None of the German Empire, Weimar Republic or Russian Empire were totalitarian states. If education is protective against indoctrination the effect is at best weak. A lively marketplace of ideas is no guard against organized thugs if the liberals are not willing to defend liberalism. Critical thinking is a red herring.
1123581321 6y ago
What is the basis for thinking public education is the best option for education or for political freedom? Must that always be the case if it once was true? Who would be letting a child go astray in a home education environment? Why would a reasonable parent in #3 not conclude that education can be provided via multiple potentially sources, including themselves and a good curriculum? Why would you not say homeschooling disseminates knowledge, teaches critical thinking and aids democracy? Your aims are excellent here.
- mgh2 6y ago
  Compare the education system in 3rd world countries. Try telling their parents to do homeschooling and you will see how privileged we are.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    This whole conversation is about living in a western democracy. However, in various third world countries some alternatives to central ally-applied education are practiced, especially where geography makes it difficult and where it is politically acceptable. This is changing in some interesting ways, positively and negatively, as cellular connections proliferate. Also, the idea of telling someone to homeschool, in a conversation about liberal arts and attitudes that’s mostly questions so far, is a good reminder that a coercive mindset isn’t easily set aside. Would ask you to consider how your education laid the ground for that.
- klyrs 6y ago
  > Who would be letting a child go astray in a home education environment? Several of my cousins' families.
absolutelyrad 6y ago
> 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. NO ITS NOT! This is a lie. There were reports in 1960's when the congress asked for an experiment to different ways of teaching. The children taught in a 1 to 1 way performed enormously better compared to the rest. And one of the worst ways was to teach is in mass. When the results came, they buried the report after it wasn't in their favor. Schools are only good for above average intelligence people. If you want no one to be left behind then you should teach those who're slightly disadvantaged in a dedicated manner in 1 to 1 classes.
- mgh2 6y ago
  Do you happen to have that report somewhere? If it was buried, can you try to find it online? Where did you see it? Would love to examine it. Education is of great importance to me, if this shift is a great alternative, I would not ignore the paradigm. Note: I won't deny the effectiveness of 1-1 teaching (ex: private tutoring).
- craftinator 6y ago
  Cite your source. Provide some sort of corroborating information, such as a link to the article, or a link to a an article about the article. If it's a Congressional Report, it is available on the web.
  - absolutelyrad 6y ago
    Look up replies to my comment. You'll find them. https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/di-vs-di.html https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/di-vs-di.html https://www.nifdi.org/research/history-of-di-research/projectfollowthrough.html https://www.nifdi.org/research/history-of-di-research/projec...
- jinjin2 6y ago
  Are you referring to Blooms 2 sigma problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem)? While it did show that, that research was not done until the 80’s.
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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freshhawk 6y ago
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. That's an interesting use of "purpose". That isn't what our system was specifically designed for (Prussian system adopted by the US) by the people who designed it. They wrote heavily about how well their new education system instilled obedience and created good soldiers and workers. They were very proud of these good outcomes. It's also not the actual measured outcomes of our current system. Hell, "critical thinking" is explicitly excluded from the curriculum by a chunk of the US. The use of "purpose" to mean "thing we want it to be" isn't a critical type of thinking.
briandear 6y ago
> An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Citation needed. Plenty of “educated elites” advocate and advocated for far left ideologies that are at their core, totalitarian.
fierarul 6y ago
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. I'd say the plague of fake news shows that the current crop of educated population is not capable of critical thinking.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Not sure why you were downvoted: the traction fake news, anti 5G, and anti vaccine movements get clearly show that there is an issue where critical thinking is concerned.
  - srg0 6y ago
    I'm afraid that unschooling correlates to parents being antivac, anti 5G, etc.
    - JeanMarcS 6y ago
      Well, for example in France, the category where you can find the most antimask persons is high educated women in their 50s.
      - watwut 6y ago
        Source? In all statistics I have seen up to now, men were more likely to be antimask then women. So French women seems to be outliers.
        tarsinge 6y ago
        https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/bas-les-masques-sociologie-des-militants-anti-masques https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/bas-les-masques-soci...
        dmerks 6y ago
        A thousand or so vocal Facebook users found on anti-mask groups were surveyed... Not exactly the epitome of representativity... 94% of them say they will refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19... Both educated and anti-science. Maybe their educational system failed them, or there are other important factors at play. 57% believe in a global Zionist conspiracy theory... 52% think the Illuminati are attempting to control the population...
smsm42 6y ago
> School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge But is it? There are many schools that fail spectacularly at the task, to the point of graduating people who are functionally illiterate. Maybe school alone is not enough for that. > Not all parents are good teachers. True. Unfortunately, even more teachers aren't good teachers. Out of all teachers I had, I have maybe one really great teacher I could name and two or three decent ones. The rest were nearly useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. And there were much more of those than good ones. Fortunately, school is not the only place one can find good teachers... > School's purpose is not to teach obedience Are you sure? Because everything I've heard about schools suggests it is. At least if we're talking about standard government-issue school, not special fancy educational project or independent private establishment. > It is there to teach us critical thinking Maybe in theory. In practice maybe 1% of teachers could deal with actual critical thinking from the students, and even less would like to. And most "critical thinking" education I've encountered was "question those other authorities in a way we prescribe to you as your only and true authority which you don't dare to question". > An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism Given the absolutely disastrous state of the American academia, I don't think this argument holds any water. Yes, Cultural Revolution despised educated people. But turns out there's more than one way to indoctrination and totalitarian thought control. And being educated in never letting a dissenting opinion to be heard is no better than being not educated at all, at least when we talk about preventing totalitarianism.
OrderlyTiamat 6y ago
> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Ex: Nazi Germany and Mao's China burned books and persecuted the educated (1984 style). Frankly, this sounds absurd. Having just been through this educational enlightenment I can tell you that's definitely not what schools do. Higher education like a bachelor's or master, sure. Definitely, even. But high school? Not at all. It's a lesson in rote memorisation of the _true truth_ which we know is true because _the teacher said it_. It is the opposite of critical thinking. And if I were a totalitarian vying for my own state I'd leave the high school system exactly as is, perhaps change the history books a bit.
deleted 6y ago
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pibechorro 6y ago
Schools teaching critical thinking? Hahahahahahahahah. Ok.
a_imho 6y ago
Disagree. In practice schools are a place where parents can offload their children while they are working. Covid underlined this.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
You seem to be implying that the home alternative of public schooling doesn't also accomplish these goals as well. Home schooling has a curriculum and standards just like public school does. I'm not gonna blindly advocate for home schooling but I think anyone who cares enough about their kids' education to look into options other than public school probably also cares enough to pull it off if it's the option they wind up choosing. >School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. The further your kids are from the mean student the crappier the job the public school situation will do. It's like the difference between registering a new car at the DMV and bringing in a pile of papers to prove chain of custody on some junk that's only able to be street legal through some arcane technicality. The first transaction is painless. The latter is not. When you ask the system to do something it's well practiced at doing you get shit service. >School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. And if you think it's successful at that for any reasonable definition of "success" then you're clearly living in a different 2020 than I am. Look through history, even before widespread government funded schooling everything was just as crap as it is today. You had just as many popuist leaders, pants on head retarded popular culture movements, witch hunts, all the same crap we have today. The only thing that's changed is that as society have become more advanced and richer we've become more able to avoid pain and violence. Also, school is very much about obedience to an arbitrary system. They don't overtly state it but it's pretty damn obvious if you look at how the carrots and sticks are set up. >An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Ex: Nazi Germany and Mao's China burned books and persecuted the educated (1984 style). Sure. But it's pure lunacy to conflate what's good for society with what's good for any specific kid(s). There's definitely a lot of overlap but there's also a lot of non-overlap.
pokoleo 6y ago
Agreed with this! Survival bias fills this thread with people for whom homeschooling worked. Consider that those didn't experience success might be under-represented in the dialogue you consume.
roody15 6y ago
"School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen" Having worked in public education for 15+ years I wish it were true that the goal is to teacher critical thinking. Sadly from my experience it is more about teaching "compliance". Critical Thinking seems to be pushed more for undergrad + schooling these days.

by mgh2 6y ago

abnry 6y ago

There is a lot of bias towards homeschoolers so the wild success stories often get touted to counteract the prejudice. I was homeschooled but agree that it isn't for everyone, mainly because not everyone has the resources. It decidedly requires a middle class lifestyle. Also, parents need to have something of their life together beyond just financial resources. But people overestimate the competence required of a parent to teach. Probably the biggest thing I learned was learning how to learn, and in particular, doing that on my own. So reading the textbook in college was hardly a shock. If my parents didn't understand a subject, they could learn it with me, or find the resources I needed (including community college, online courses). Unschooling, however, I am not too sympathetic to. You need some structure.

petertodd 6y ago
> Unschooling, however, I am not too sympathetic to. You need some structure. For most kids you probably need some structure. For some, unschooling certainly works well; for others it's another term for "school dropout". I personally was both homeschooled and unschooled, for different topics, and a high % of the smartest people I know were unschooled. I really struggled to learn to read and write, even by grade five. So my parents took me out and my mom worked with me one-on-one intensively to learn phonics, which finally fixed that problem. Meanwhile, prior to that the biggest challenge I had in learning programming on my own is that I struggled to actually read the books I had on it. I think that unschooling taught me how to learn on my own, in a way that was very beneficial later in life. Yet again, I'd say based on my experience taking relatively high-level, proof-based, math classes in university many years later, that for me the structured experience of university math worked much better than trying to learn those subjects on my own (which I had also tried!). Yet, for high school math, there hadn't been much difference (I did attend highschool). Learning isn't one-size-fits-all.

eloff 6y ago

I would say public schools are so much better than nothing. But they're not the best option by far. Not everyone can do homeschooling, not everyone who can, will do it well. Many kids are not able to handle it either. But it can lead to much better outcomes. Like most things, general advice doesn't apply to everyone.

vivekd 6y ago

That sounds good in theory but research seems to suggest that homeschoolers overwhelmingly perform better on every single metric. Although I'll grant that there may be data bias in that smarter and more devoted parents are more likely to homeschool. https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:text=The%20home-educated%20typically%20score,on%20standardized%20academic%20achievement%20tests.&text=A%202015%20study%20found%20Black,students%20(Ray%2C%202015) https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:te....

mgh2 6y ago
I just quickly checked its references: two journals that compromise a big chunk of the cited sources have very low impact factors. Unless they are using a diff. metric for education journals or they are relatively new, I would not consider this a reliable report 1. https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7414 https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7414 2. https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Peabody-Journal-of-Education#:~:text=The%20Journal%20Impact%202019%2D2020,is%20just%20updated%20in%202020 https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Peabody-Jo.... 3. https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor#:~:text=In%20most%20fields%2C%20the%20impact,effective%20in%20the%20same%20discipline https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor#:~:te.... This is a better study: https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-73072017000200085 https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S010...
- knaq 6y ago
  To be fair, it seems obvious that the education industry (those journals) would have a bias against homeschooling. Getting published by people who hate your message is just not likely.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Do academia (universities) and high/elementary school have such loyalty to each other? I thought that most colleges were quite friendly to homeschooled students.

tmaly 6y ago

>It is there to teach us critical thinking I believe the No Child Left Behind Act changed that.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Alas, often "no child left behind" also means "no child let ahead".
- tmaly 6y ago
  A one size fits all approach is something that should change. How we change this, I don't know.

barry-cotter 6y ago

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelligentsia. Whatever else you might say about them they weren’t uneducated. The German ban on home schooling is explicitly to prevent the formation of parallel societies. It would be hard to be clearer that the purpose of the “education” system is indoctrination. If you want to teach things the best and most efficient way to do so is explicitly. The enormous majority of people do not generalize learning beyond its context. Whether transfer of learning even exists is a hot topic in psychological research. It is certainly not a strong effect. If school was to teach critical thinking it should be doing so explicitly. It doesn’t and there’s little reason to believe it’s especially good at it. School is excellent at inuring children to boredom, obeying authority and pointless busywork.

mgh2 6y ago
Yeah, I won't deny that even the educated can be manipulated- look at our generation affected by corporate and political agendas. Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. Given this prerequisite, is an educated population easier to be manipulated than an illiterate one?
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. None of the German Empire, Weimar Republic or Russian Empire were totalitarian states. If education is protective against indoctrination the effect is at best weak. A lively marketplace of ideas is no guard against organized thugs if the liberals are not willing to defend liberalism. Critical thinking is a red herring.

1123581321 6y ago

What is the basis for thinking public education is the best option for education or for political freedom? Must that always be the case if it once was true? Who would be letting a child go astray in a home education environment? Why would a reasonable parent in #3 not conclude that education can be provided via multiple potentially sources, including themselves and a good curriculum? Why would you not say homeschooling disseminates knowledge, teaches critical thinking and aids democracy? Your aims are excellent here.

mgh2 6y ago
Compare the education system in 3rd world countries. Try telling their parents to do homeschooling and you will see how privileged we are.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  This whole conversation is about living in a western democracy. However, in various third world countries some alternatives to central ally-applied education are practiced, especially where geography makes it difficult and where it is politically acceptable. This is changing in some interesting ways, positively and negatively, as cellular connections proliferate. Also, the idea of telling someone to homeschool, in a conversation about liberal arts and attitudes that’s mostly questions so far, is a good reminder that a coercive mindset isn’t easily set aside. Would ask you to consider how your education laid the ground for that.
klyrs 6y ago
> Who would be letting a child go astray in a home education environment? Several of my cousins' families.

absolutelyrad 6y ago

> 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. NO ITS NOT! This is a lie. There were reports in 1960's when the congress asked for an experiment to different ways of teaching. The children taught in a 1 to 1 way performed enormously better compared to the rest. And one of the worst ways was to teach is in mass. When the results came, they buried the report after it wasn't in their favor. Schools are only good for above average intelligence people. If you want no one to be left behind then you should teach those who're slightly disadvantaged in a dedicated manner in 1 to 1 classes.

mgh2 6y ago
Do you happen to have that report somewhere? If it was buried, can you try to find it online? Where did you see it? Would love to examine it. Education is of great importance to me, if this shift is a great alternative, I would not ignore the paradigm. Note: I won't deny the effectiveness of 1-1 teaching (ex: private tutoring).
craftinator 6y ago
Cite your source. Provide some sort of corroborating information, such as a link to the article, or a link to a an article about the article. If it's a Congressional Report, it is available on the web.
- absolutelyrad 6y ago
  Look up replies to my comment. You'll find them. https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/di-vs-di.html https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/di-vs-di.html https://www.nifdi.org/research/history-of-di-research/projectfollowthrough.html https://www.nifdi.org/research/history-of-di-research/projec...
jinjin2 6y ago
Are you referring to Blooms 2 sigma problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem)? While it did show that, that research was not done until the 80’s.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

freshhawk 6y ago

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. That's an interesting use of "purpose". That isn't what our system was specifically designed for (Prussian system adopted by the US) by the people who designed it. They wrote heavily about how well their new education system instilled obedience and created good soldiers and workers. They were very proud of these good outcomes. It's also not the actual measured outcomes of our current system. Hell, "critical thinking" is explicitly excluded from the curriculum by a chunk of the US. The use of "purpose" to mean "thing we want it to be" isn't a critical type of thinking.

briandear 6y ago

> An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Citation needed. Plenty of “educated elites” advocate and advocated for far left ideologies that are at their core, totalitarian.

fierarul 6y ago

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. I'd say the plague of fake news shows that the current crop of educated population is not capable of critical thinking.

ornornor 6y ago
Not sure why you were downvoted: the traction fake news, anti 5G, and anti vaccine movements get clearly show that there is an issue where critical thinking is concerned.
- srg0 6y ago
  I'm afraid that unschooling correlates to parents being antivac, anti 5G, etc.
  - JeanMarcS 6y ago
    Well, for example in France, the category where you can find the most antimask persons is high educated women in their 50s.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Source? In all statistics I have seen up to now, men were more likely to be antimask then women. So French women seems to be outliers.
      - tarsinge 6y ago
        https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/bas-les-masques-sociologie-des-militants-anti-masques https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/bas-les-masques-soci...
        dmerks 6y ago
        A thousand or so vocal Facebook users found on anti-mask groups were surveyed... Not exactly the epitome of representativity... 94% of them say they will refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19... Both educated and anti-science. Maybe their educational system failed them, or there are other important factors at play. 57% believe in a global Zionist conspiracy theory... 52% think the Illuminati are attempting to control the population...

smsm42 6y ago

> School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge But is it? There are many schools that fail spectacularly at the task, to the point of graduating people who are functionally illiterate. Maybe school alone is not enough for that. > Not all parents are good teachers. True. Unfortunately, even more teachers aren't good teachers. Out of all teachers I had, I have maybe one really great teacher I could name and two or three decent ones. The rest were nearly useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. And there were much more of those than good ones. Fortunately, school is not the only place one can find good teachers... > School's purpose is not to teach obedience Are you sure? Because everything I've heard about schools suggests it is. At least if we're talking about standard government-issue school, not special fancy educational project or independent private establishment. > It is there to teach us critical thinking Maybe in theory. In practice maybe 1% of teachers could deal with actual critical thinking from the students, and even less would like to. And most "critical thinking" education I've encountered was "question those other authorities in a way we prescribe to you as your only and true authority which you don't dare to question". > An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism Given the absolutely disastrous state of the American academia, I don't think this argument holds any water. Yes, Cultural Revolution despised educated people. But turns out there's more than one way to indoctrination and totalitarian thought control. And being educated in never letting a dissenting opinion to be heard is no better than being not educated at all, at least when we talk about preventing totalitarianism.

OrderlyTiamat 6y ago

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Ex: Nazi Germany and Mao's China burned books and persecuted the educated (1984 style). Frankly, this sounds absurd. Having just been through this educational enlightenment I can tell you that's definitely not what schools do. Higher education like a bachelor's or master, sure. Definitely, even. But high school? Not at all. It's a lesson in rote memorisation of the _true truth_ which we know is true because _the teacher said it_. It is the opposite of critical thinking. And if I were a totalitarian vying for my own state I'd leave the high school system exactly as is, perhaps change the history books a bit.

deleted 6y ago

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pibechorro 6y ago

Schools teaching critical thinking? Hahahahahahahahah. Ok.

a_imho 6y ago

Disagree. In practice schools are a place where parents can offload their children while they are working. Covid underlined this.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

You seem to be implying that the home alternative of public schooling doesn't also accomplish these goals as well. Home schooling has a curriculum and standards just like public school does. I'm not gonna blindly advocate for home schooling but I think anyone who cares enough about their kids' education to look into options other than public school probably also cares enough to pull it off if it's the option they wind up choosing. >School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. The further your kids are from the mean student the crappier the job the public school situation will do. It's like the difference between registering a new car at the DMV and bringing in a pile of papers to prove chain of custody on some junk that's only able to be street legal through some arcane technicality. The first transaction is painless. The latter is not. When you ask the system to do something it's well practiced at doing you get shit service. >School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. And if you think it's successful at that for any reasonable definition of "success" then you're clearly living in a different 2020 than I am. Look through history, even before widespread government funded schooling everything was just as crap as it is today. You had just as many popuist leaders, pants on head retarded popular culture movements, witch hunts, all the same crap we have today. The only thing that's changed is that as society have become more advanced and richer we've become more able to avoid pain and violence. Also, school is very much about obedience to an arbitrary system. They don't overtly state it but it's pretty damn obvious if you look at how the carrots and sticks are set up. >An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Ex: Nazi Germany and Mao's China burned books and persecuted the educated (1984 style). Sure. But it's pure lunacy to conflate what's good for society with what's good for any specific kid(s). There's definitely a lot of overlap but there's also a lot of non-overlap.

pokoleo 6y ago

Agreed with this! Survival bias fills this thread with people for whom homeschooling worked. Consider that those didn't experience success might be under-represented in the dialogue you consume.

roody15 6y ago

"School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen" Having worked in public education for 15+ years I wish it were true that the goal is to teacher critical thinking. Sadly from my experience it is more about teaching "compliance". Critical Thinking seems to be pushed more for undergrad + schooling these days.