4 ms·

Education is the root of the solution for all problems. It should always be one of the top priorities for any populace.

xnx 6y ago
An educated populace is also the most dangerous thing to anyone in power (politicians, business operators, etc.). Even without being a coordinated conspiracy, that is a constant force working against improved education.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  You don't even have to postulate education being dangerous to people in power (something that I personally find to be more conspiracy than not). It's enough to notice that there's near zero economic incentives for providing actual education. The market settled on an equilibrium of baseline operational knowledge + filtering through standardized testing, and then advanced operational knowledge acquired through voluntary higher education and on the job. And it continued to optimize accordingly. The only thing that makes people try to teach beyond this minimum is humanistic values, belief in importance of education. Against it works the entire economy, forcing individual teachers and schools alike to find savings, "cut out fat", make lean. Free market is enough to explain the disaster education is becoming worldwide (because it's not just an US phenomenon; we start to see the same problems over here in Europe).
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Free market is enough to explain the disaster education is becoming worldwide Where in the world is there a free market in education?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      It's not about free market in education itself, but about everywhere else. Teachers are overworked and underpaid, they can't afford to go far beyond what curriculum says they should. Parents demand schools prepare kids well for their adult life - which for almost all families means primarily preparing for a decent job. Thus the labor market is indirectly but strongly influencing the curriculum. Labor market demands a way to sort people, so standardized testing and pressure to choose your career at even earlier ages appears. On the other side, governments are embedded in the market reality, they need to manage their budgets and seek savings, so their prioritize, tightening the school system to provide what the market demands. I could go on and draw some other feedback loops. But the point is that you can't disentangle schooling - or anything government - from the economic reality, and that this economic reality is sufficient in explaining the shape of education system. No conspiracy, or ill will by any rich and powerful agents needed.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > Teachers are overworked and underpaid, they can't afford to go far beyond what curriculum says they should. Parents demand schools prepare kids well for their adult life - which for almost all families means primarily preparing for a decent job. Thus the labor market is indirectly but strongly influencing the curriculum. Labor market demands a way to sort people, so standardized testing and pressure to choose your career at even earlier ages appears. On the other side, governments are embedded in the market reality, they need to manage their budgets and seek savings, so their prioritize, tightening the school system to provide what the market demands. If there's no slack in the system then how do you propose to expand the scope of function provided by a system running at its limitations? > I could go on and draw some other feedback loops. But the point is that you can't disentangle schooling - or anything government - from the economic reality, and that this economic reality is sufficient in explaining the shape of education system. No conspiracy, or ill will by any rich and powerful agents needed. I agree with this, which is why I questioned you. A free market in education would do a lot to empower educators to offer real, functioning education because they'd be able to charge what they needed and compensate their teachers appropriately.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > If there's no slack in the system then how do you propose to expand the scope of function provided by a system running at its limitations? I don't. I do think that adding slack into the system is an important step in fixing educaction. But my comment was trying to point towards the question of how come there's no slack in the system? What ate it? Answer: market pressures. Not some elites thinking a dumber populace is easier to control and wishing a weaker educational system into existence. > A free market in education would do a lot to empower educators to offer real, functioning education because they'd be able to charge what they needed and compensate their teachers appropriately. I'm not disagreeing completely, but I have many concerns about this view. Free market is good at optimizing for behaviors that yield immediate, short-term profit. Good education is very hard to price, with profits following the actions by many decades. I fully expect that making education governed by the market directly would make it settle on even stranger proxies in lieu of delivering proper education. On top of that, free market for commodity labor doesn't equal happy labor, but rather unhappy labor living on minimum wage.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Putting it even more directly - the inevitable outcome of free markets without any competing benign feedback loops is fascism. So you (hypothetically, as a developer) make six figures? Superb. How valuable is that when your country goes down in flames because it's easy to make money out of people who believe Bill Gates is seeding Covid via 5G towers?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > How valuable is that when your country goes down in flames because it's easy to make money out of people who believe Bill Gates is seeding Covid via 5G towers? That's what I keep telling people around me. They're still bewildered that I don't go out of my way to "optimize" my way out of taxes, or that I'm in favor for raising the taxes for my income bracket. And it doesn't even take a civil war - as the income inequality progresses, how long will it take before your close family will start asking you (the hypothetical rich developer) for help? Will you turn them away, to enjoy your six figures in peace?
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > as the income inequality progresses, how long will it take before your close family will start asking you (the hypothetical rich developer) for help? and how much help will you be able to offer, given your prior lack of optimization for this very scenario? > Will you turn them away, to enjoy your six figures in peace? "I gave already, it was taken out of my income before I had a chance to spend it, go away now"
    - xnx 6y ago
      Agreed. Everything seems hunky-dory until the guillotines come out, and then all the elites are like "Who? Me?".
    - 8note 6y ago
      Pretty darned valuable, especially when you move it into other assets Isis may have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria, but that did not mean that the oil stopped flowing
Fricken 6y ago
You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can't make him think.

xnx 6y ago

An educated populace is also the most dangerous thing to anyone in power (politicians, business operators, etc.). Even without being a coordinated conspiracy, that is a constant force working against improved education.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
You don't even have to postulate education being dangerous to people in power (something that I personally find to be more conspiracy than not). It's enough to notice that there's near zero economic incentives for providing actual education. The market settled on an equilibrium of baseline operational knowledge + filtering through standardized testing, and then advanced operational knowledge acquired through voluntary higher education and on the job. And it continued to optimize accordingly. The only thing that makes people try to teach beyond this minimum is humanistic values, belief in importance of education. Against it works the entire economy, forcing individual teachers and schools alike to find savings, "cut out fat", make lean. Free market is enough to explain the disaster education is becoming worldwide (because it's not just an US phenomenon; we start to see the same problems over here in Europe).
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Free market is enough to explain the disaster education is becoming worldwide Where in the world is there a free market in education?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It's not about free market in education itself, but about everywhere else. Teachers are overworked and underpaid, they can't afford to go far beyond what curriculum says they should. Parents demand schools prepare kids well for their adult life - which for almost all families means primarily preparing for a decent job. Thus the labor market is indirectly but strongly influencing the curriculum. Labor market demands a way to sort people, so standardized testing and pressure to choose your career at even earlier ages appears. On the other side, governments are embedded in the market reality, they need to manage their budgets and seek savings, so their prioritize, tightening the school system to provide what the market demands. I could go on and draw some other feedback loops. But the point is that you can't disentangle schooling - or anything government - from the economic reality, and that this economic reality is sufficient in explaining the shape of education system. No conspiracy, or ill will by any rich and powerful agents needed.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > Teachers are overworked and underpaid, they can't afford to go far beyond what curriculum says they should. Parents demand schools prepare kids well for their adult life - which for almost all families means primarily preparing for a decent job. Thus the labor market is indirectly but strongly influencing the curriculum. Labor market demands a way to sort people, so standardized testing and pressure to choose your career at even earlier ages appears. On the other side, governments are embedded in the market reality, they need to manage their budgets and seek savings, so their prioritize, tightening the school system to provide what the market demands. If there's no slack in the system then how do you propose to expand the scope of function provided by a system running at its limitations? > I could go on and draw some other feedback loops. But the point is that you can't disentangle schooling - or anything government - from the economic reality, and that this economic reality is sufficient in explaining the shape of education system. No conspiracy, or ill will by any rich and powerful agents needed. I agree with this, which is why I questioned you. A free market in education would do a lot to empower educators to offer real, functioning education because they'd be able to charge what they needed and compensate their teachers appropriately.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > If there's no slack in the system then how do you propose to expand the scope of function provided by a system running at its limitations? I don't. I do think that adding slack into the system is an important step in fixing educaction. But my comment was trying to point towards the question of how come there's no slack in the system? What ate it? Answer: market pressures. Not some elites thinking a dumber populace is easier to control and wishing a weaker educational system into existence. > A free market in education would do a lot to empower educators to offer real, functioning education because they'd be able to charge what they needed and compensate their teachers appropriately. I'm not disagreeing completely, but I have many concerns about this view. Free market is good at optimizing for behaviors that yield immediate, short-term profit. Good education is very hard to price, with profits following the actions by many decades. I fully expect that making education governed by the market directly would make it settle on even stranger proxies in lieu of delivering proper education. On top of that, free market for commodity labor doesn't equal happy labor, but rather unhappy labor living on minimum wage.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Putting it even more directly - the inevitable outcome of free markets without any competing benign feedback loops is fascism. So you (hypothetically, as a developer) make six figures? Superb. How valuable is that when your country goes down in flames because it's easy to make money out of people who believe Bill Gates is seeding Covid via 5G towers?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > How valuable is that when your country goes down in flames because it's easy to make money out of people who believe Bill Gates is seeding Covid via 5G towers? That's what I keep telling people around me. They're still bewildered that I don't go out of my way to "optimize" my way out of taxes, or that I'm in favor for raising the taxes for my income bracket. And it doesn't even take a civil war - as the income inequality progresses, how long will it take before your close family will start asking you (the hypothetical rich developer) for help? Will you turn them away, to enjoy your six figures in peace?
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > as the income inequality progresses, how long will it take before your close family will start asking you (the hypothetical rich developer) for help? and how much help will you be able to offer, given your prior lack of optimization for this very scenario? > Will you turn them away, to enjoy your six figures in peace? "I gave already, it was taken out of my income before I had a chance to spend it, go away now"
  - xnx 6y ago
    Agreed. Everything seems hunky-dory until the guillotines come out, and then all the elites are like "Who? Me?".
  - 8note 6y ago
    Pretty darned valuable, especially when you move it into other assets Isis may have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria, but that did not mean that the oil stopped flowing

Fricken 6y ago

You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can't make him think.