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The state is the last institution I trust to design a "life school" curriculum. Remember, these are the people who require your drivers ed instructor to tell y

The state is the last institution I trust to design a "life school" curriculum. Remember, these are the people who require your drivers ed instructor to tell you to go 55 on I95 where the traffic goes 85. They're optimizing for covering their own butts while nominally educating people. They don't really care about truly education people so those people can go do to what will result in the best outcome for them. They'll do something self serving and asinine like tell students you should make minimum payments on high interest debt rather than ask for a financial hardship extension/reduction for government services/fees/fines (which in many cases are legally required to take that into account).

smhost 5y ago
That's funny, because public school is where I learned the difference between letter of the law and spirit of the law. We even did a "compare and contrast" worksheet with speed limits as one of the examples. Besides, the alternatives to public education are all worse.
- iammisc 5y ago
  The indoctrination is so obvious when statements are made with no justification or even any attempt.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    I don't disagree. There are millions of people who went to charter schools, private schools or were home schooled who would take issue with his last sentence. They got fine educations. I'm a big believer in good parents making up for bad schools but you can't just hand wave away the productivity of all the professionals involved in schooling by saying "their parents cared they would have turned out fine wherever they went" (which is the typical retort).
  - DubiousPusher 5y ago
    You can hold this opinion without indoctrination. If you believe that inequality in education is wrong you will likely feel this way as creating a private system without inequality seems very unlikely. Not to say that public systems are necessarily equal. Obviously they can fail here too.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      Public schooling was created because the government was threatened by catholic parochial education being widely available. Catholicism has fewer cultural proscriptions than what the predominant waspy culture wanted. For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture. This state of affairs was not acceptable and there was a chance said children would become catholic. Thus, the WASPs, unable to organize schooling in their own churches for their children at an affordable price (a problem which still exists today.. catholic schools are empirically cheaper than other christian schools), turned to the government as the only way to combat the papists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_public_education_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_public_education_in... I am not anti public school, but I just take issues with the idea that public schools original purpose was for equality. As Thomas Sowell points out in "education in america", catholic schools do better than public ones for minorities even when accounting for socieconomic factors. This is probably why minorities disproportionately favor vouchers. Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data and any attempt at refutation is met with all kinds of accusations.
      - DubiousPusher 5y ago
        > I just take issues with the idea that public schools original purpose was for equality. I didn't say it was. > For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture. Are you sure about that? > Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data I know of no person who asserts that fact.
        iammisc 5y ago
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    Schools/universities are institutions for mass indoctrination -Noam Chomsky
greggman3 5y ago
know someone paying > $4k a year in car insurance because of speeding tickets from areas like that. Going the speed everyone else is going but over the speed limit. Life lesson I got from that was obey the speed limit even if everyone else is speeding.
- godelski 5y ago
  Honestly the issue is bad law. Laws are social contracts. So if everyone is breaking the contract then obviously the contract needs to be revisited.
  - username90 5y ago
    Or the law was reasonable and people actually hurt society by not following it, so we have to enforce it better. In the case of speeding it is well known that higher speeds leads to more traffic deaths so we can easily calculate the death toll of people going 85 instead of 55 and implement appropriate measures to reduce that.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Just like prohibition and its sequel, the "War on Drugs," this idea is a dud. When people show you they won't follow your laws, believe them. I mean ostensibly government is "by the consent of the governed," right? Why is your response to "consent denied" to force yourself upon them with renewed vigor?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - AussieWog93 5y ago
        Just as a counterpoint, drink driving laws were widely disregarded in Australia in the 80's, and only now is it starting to become socially unacceptable. Just because everyone ignores or despises a law, it doesn't necessarily make it unjust or wrong.
hogFeast 5y ago
This includes financial literacy. Tbf, I have no idea what the average level of financial literacy is. But I worked in financial services and I can confirm that: having a lot of cash from a job in which you are supposed to have financial literacy (corporate lawyer, accountant, etc.) and/or working in financial services in which you have completed exams on financial literacy...does not mean you have financial literacy/will make reasonable decisions. It shifts your view of reality significantly when you are in your early 20s, just out of college having to explain basic elements of finance to: a financial adviser managing $100mm of other people's money, a corporate lawyer worth ~$10mm, [insert other horrific situations]. ...there is no other way to gain knowledge apart from learning, it is not some innate skill. But that supposes that people designing the course know what they are doing, this is a fairly ambitious assumption given that anyone who has financial competence is, generally, not designing courses for the state govt. And, ofc, lack of information isn't why people make poor financial choices. One of the flaws of financial regulation (and economics) is assuming that if everyone had perfect information, they would make the same decision. This is equivalent to the guy who has a view on the death penalty and thinks anyone who disagrees with them does so because they don't have the "correct information". The issue isn't information, people know they shouldn't take out the high-interest loan when they have to speak to some sleazy guy in an ill-fitting suit at a strip mall (these heuristics work well). People take out these loans because of poverty and a lack of options (particularly in the US, massive unbanked population, large banks won't deal with poor people, unconscionable level of arbitrary fees that fine poverty). Unless the course teaches people how not to be poor, it is flushing money down the drain. (A side-note for the target reader: the reason why rich people make bad decisions also isn't bad information...it is usually a combination of greed and studying to get stupid i.e. subjects like economics. Wealthy people only see upside, they will believe utterly ludicrous shit that makes no sense because...hey, they are wealthy, and they got wealthy through those smarts (as an example, every wealthy investor I have ever met has gone through the "goldbug" phase...it is amazing how consistent this is). Again, you can't teach it. Ironically, if you combined the paranoia of a poor person with the risk tolerance of a risk person, you would actually have someone who makes decent decisions...but those two attributes tend not to be found within one individual.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
slibhb 5y ago
I'm normally on the "damn gubmint" side of things but in public school we had multiple math teachers who explained why you shouldn't pay minimum payments. Pretty sure learning about interest was part of the curriculum.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Financial literacy was also taught in school. In fact a lot of "why didn't they teach this school?!?" stuff was taught in school, people just forgot or opted out of that class. I went to a shitty public school in the middle of nowhere and they taught us to budget, handle bank accounts, etc. We even had fake jobs with fake bills and had to make a household budget. They even offered a class with fake babies that girls had to carry around to teach them parenting skills. The problem with teaching life skills is that they are not retained if they are not relevant to a person's situation. Kids don't have bills or jobs; money is an abstract concept to them. With this in mind, financial literacy should not be taught in schools, it should be taught to 20-30 year olds who long since left school.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    In my (not special) public school in the middle of nowhere, everyone (boys and girls) had to take multiple years of home ec: sewing, paying bills, understanding sexually transmitted diseases, and caring for a (fake) baby you take home. They were extremely easy classes taught by not-the-best teachers (often gym teachers) but still pretty informative and I did learn how to sew pretty well. My wife attended well-known private schools in the US and Korea and never learned these skills.
    - ultrarunner 5y ago
      Perhaps that is because those skills are stereotypical or political and not actually all that valuable for success in life. I highly doubt that your wife (or humanity in general) would fail to care for babies were it not for home ec classes. However, some groups may, for better or for worse, have opinions predicting what happens to teen pregnancy rates in the face of such experience.
malandrew 5y ago
These are also the same people that gave us the food pyramid.
edgyquant 5y ago
How is the school teaching kids to go the speed limit (instead of 30 miles over it) proof that the government is “bad.” School is supposed to teach kids what they need to know and once they have a basic intuition they can further look into things (like hardship extensions, etc.)

smhost 5y ago

That's funny, because public school is where I learned the difference between letter of the law and spirit of the law. We even did a "compare and contrast" worksheet with speed limits as one of the examples. Besides, the alternatives to public education are all worse.

iammisc 5y ago
The indoctrination is so obvious when statements are made with no justification or even any attempt.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I don't disagree. There are millions of people who went to charter schools, private schools or were home schooled who would take issue with his last sentence. They got fine educations. I'm a big believer in good parents making up for bad schools but you can't just hand wave away the productivity of all the professionals involved in schooling by saying "their parents cared they would have turned out fine wherever they went" (which is the typical retort).
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  You can hold this opinion without indoctrination. If you believe that inequality in education is wrong you will likely feel this way as creating a private system without inequality seems very unlikely. Not to say that public systems are necessarily equal. Obviously they can fail here too.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Public schooling was created because the government was threatened by catholic parochial education being widely available. Catholicism has fewer cultural proscriptions than what the predominant waspy culture wanted. For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture. This state of affairs was not acceptable and there was a chance said children would become catholic. Thus, the WASPs, unable to organize schooling in their own churches for their children at an affordable price (a problem which still exists today.. catholic schools are empirically cheaper than other christian schools), turned to the government as the only way to combat the papists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_public_education_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_public_education_in... I am not anti public school, but I just take issues with the idea that public schools original purpose was for equality. As Thomas Sowell points out in "education in america", catholic schools do better than public ones for minorities even when accounting for socieconomic factors. This is probably why minorities disproportionately favor vouchers. Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data and any attempt at refutation is met with all kinds of accusations.
    - DubiousPusher 5y ago
      > I just take issues with the idea that public schools original purpose was for equality. I didn't say it was. > For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture. Are you sure about that? > Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data I know of no person who asserts that fact.
      - iammisc 5y ago
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  Schools/universities are institutions for mass indoctrination -Noam Chomsky

greggman3 5y ago

know someone paying > $4k a year in car insurance because of speeding tickets from areas like that. Going the speed everyone else is going but over the speed limit. Life lesson I got from that was obey the speed limit even if everyone else is speeding.

godelski 5y ago
Honestly the issue is bad law. Laws are social contracts. So if everyone is breaking the contract then obviously the contract needs to be revisited.
- username90 5y ago
  Or the law was reasonable and people actually hurt society by not following it, so we have to enforce it better. In the case of speeding it is well known that higher speeds leads to more traffic deaths so we can easily calculate the death toll of people going 85 instead of 55 and implement appropriate measures to reduce that.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Just like prohibition and its sequel, the "War on Drugs," this idea is a dud. When people show you they won't follow your laws, believe them. I mean ostensibly government is "by the consent of the governed," right? Why is your response to "consent denied" to force yourself upon them with renewed vigor?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      Just as a counterpoint, drink driving laws were widely disregarded in Australia in the 80's, and only now is it starting to become socially unacceptable. Just because everyone ignores or despises a law, it doesn't necessarily make it unjust or wrong.

hogFeast 5y ago

This includes financial literacy. Tbf, I have no idea what the average level of financial literacy is. But I worked in financial services and I can confirm that: having a lot of cash from a job in which you are supposed to have financial literacy (corporate lawyer, accountant, etc.) and/or working in financial services in which you have completed exams on financial literacy...does not mean you have financial literacy/will make reasonable decisions. It shifts your view of reality significantly when you are in your early 20s, just out of college having to explain basic elements of finance to: a financial adviser managing $100mm of other people's money, a corporate lawyer worth ~$10mm, [insert other horrific situations]. ...there is no other way to gain knowledge apart from learning, it is not some innate skill. But that supposes that people designing the course know what they are doing, this is a fairly ambitious assumption given that anyone who has financial competence is, generally, not designing courses for the state govt. And, ofc, lack of information isn't why people make poor financial choices. One of the flaws of financial regulation (and economics) is assuming that if everyone had perfect information, they would make the same decision. This is equivalent to the guy who has a view on the death penalty and thinks anyone who disagrees with them does so because they don't have the "correct information". The issue isn't information, people know they shouldn't take out the high-interest loan when they have to speak to some sleazy guy in an ill-fitting suit at a strip mall (these heuristics work well). People take out these loans because of poverty and a lack of options (particularly in the US, massive unbanked population, large banks won't deal with poor people, unconscionable level of arbitrary fees that fine poverty). Unless the course teaches people how not to be poor, it is flushing money down the drain. (A side-note for the target reader: the reason why rich people make bad decisions also isn't bad information...it is usually a combination of greed and studying to get stupid i.e. subjects like economics. Wealthy people only see upside, they will believe utterly ludicrous shit that makes no sense because...hey, they are wealthy, and they got wealthy through those smarts (as an example, every wealthy investor I have ever met has gone through the "goldbug" phase...it is amazing how consistent this is). Again, you can't teach it. Ironically, if you combined the paranoia of a poor person with the risk tolerance of a risk person, you would actually have someone who makes decent decisions...but those two attributes tend not to be found within one individual.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

slibhb 5y ago

I'm normally on the "damn gubmint" side of things but in public school we had multiple math teachers who explained why you shouldn't pay minimum payments. Pretty sure learning about interest was part of the curriculum.

mywittyname 5y ago
Financial literacy was also taught in school. In fact a lot of "why didn't they teach this school?!?" stuff was taught in school, people just forgot or opted out of that class. I went to a shitty public school in the middle of nowhere and they taught us to budget, handle bank accounts, etc. We even had fake jobs with fake bills and had to make a household budget. They even offered a class with fake babies that girls had to carry around to teach them parenting skills. The problem with teaching life skills is that they are not retained if they are not relevant to a person's situation. Kids don't have bills or jobs; money is an abstract concept to them. With this in mind, financial literacy should not be taught in schools, it should be taught to 20-30 year olds who long since left school.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  In my (not special) public school in the middle of nowhere, everyone (boys and girls) had to take multiple years of home ec: sewing, paying bills, understanding sexually transmitted diseases, and caring for a (fake) baby you take home. They were extremely easy classes taught by not-the-best teachers (often gym teachers) but still pretty informative and I did learn how to sew pretty well. My wife attended well-known private schools in the US and Korea and never learned these skills.
  - ultrarunner 5y ago
    Perhaps that is because those skills are stereotypical or political and not actually all that valuable for success in life. I highly doubt that your wife (or humanity in general) would fail to care for babies were it not for home ec classes. However, some groups may, for better or for worse, have opinions predicting what happens to teen pregnancy rates in the face of such experience.

malandrew 5y ago

These are also the same people that gave us the food pyramid.

edgyquant 5y ago

How is the school teaching kids to go the speed limit (instead of 30 miles over it) proof that the government is “bad.” School is supposed to teach kids what they need to know and once they have a basic intuition they can further look into things (like hardship extensions, etc.)