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I just don't think I can agree with Gatto's main premise that schools aren't educating students or that a formal education serves no purpose in the modern world

I just don't think I can agree with Gatto's main premise that schools aren't educating students or that a formal education serves no purpose in the modern world. We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. We also see that the countries with the best schools are dominating the world economy. There are also plenty of counter examples we can find: entire countries without well organized compulsory education systems that have incredibly high rates of illiteracy and poverty. Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our society has not "disintegrated" yet, Well-schooled people are far from irrelevant, in fact they have given us nearly every single modern comfort and technological breakthrough in modern history and they have continued to do so over the last 25 years. What Gatto is proposing would just create even more inequality and social injustice, where only parents with the means to see their children get a good education can do so, either by having the background and time to homeschool or the money to provide private schooling or tutors for their own children.

hitpointdrew 4y ago
> We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. This is false. Schooling has had nothing to do with it, capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of poverty, not schooling.
- bjornsing 4y ago
  Isn’t basic schooling a prerequisite for successful capitalism though? (May sound snarky but a genuine question.)
  - hitpointdrew 4y ago
    This is a fair question. I would argue no. As the article alludes, schooling in general hinders/squishes the entrepreneurial (independent) spirits and instills a risk aversion behavior not conducive to starting a business. There an impressive list of billionaires that either dropped out of college, or didn't even attend (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Walt Disney, Debbi Fields, Mary Kay Ash, and Wayne Huizenga, just to name a few).
- vkou 4y ago
  > capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of poverty This is false. Access to cheap energy, in the form of fossil fuels is what has lifted the most people out of poverty, not capitalism. Without burning through millions of years of oil and coal in the span of a few centuries, we'd all still be farming and eating mud, regardless of which economic system were in play. Remove capitalism, and industrialized society will still limp along, in a relatively prosperous manner compared to centuries past. Remove access to cheap energy, and it will collapse overnight, with misery and death on a scale the world has never seen.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    What's your proposed mechanism for incentivizing me to efficiently provide energy to customers without capitalism? To invest in the capital intensive industries necessary to refine and extract this energy? Are you thinking a form of anarchism without property rights kind of situation, or more of a command economy?
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Any of the systems used before the idea of capitalism was conceived would probably have done OK at reducing poverty, given incredibly cheap energy. Meanwhile, capitalism would have done very little to reduce poverty, without all that dirt-cheap energy. I think the poster's point was that, even if capitalism helped, the cheap energy from fossil fuels was the absolutely necessary part. Personally, I'd not be surprised if modern capitalism doesn't even work so well without cheap, abundant energy. Is it so effective when almost all your energy is human and animal, with a little water power on the side? I dunno. Maybe not much more effective than other approaches. Maybe even less effective.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    Feudal and socialist systems had access to cheap energy, and they weren't nearly as successful at raising people out of poverty. In the case of classic centrally planned socialist states, they were likely worse for the environment during development than comparable capitalist states (cf USA vs USSR).
- thrown_22 4y ago
  [flagged]
- jcz_nz 4y ago
  That’s just laughable. About a billion Chinese might disagree with this.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Didn't Chinese spend more time in school after more elements of capitalism were introduced and the command economy of "get in the fields for the public good" gave way to "participate in the world capitalist economy." I agree schooling seems an important link to increased wealth, but it seems bettering education is as much linked to better capitalizing on stock of tax-cattle and realizing the capital investment in the children allows them to better compete on the capitalists market so their tax money can be taken to fatten the government hogs.
- npteljes 4y ago
  This is false. Capitalism made children work from age 5. I do like it, all things considered, but it seems to work best (for all) with strong social programs and a load of protections and regulations.
Test0129 4y ago
> Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our society has not "disintegrated" yet It really depends on how you define disintegrated. What he mentioned has manifested over the last 30 years. Slowly, and quietly. Now, it has come to a head. The lunatics actively arguing parents should have no place in schooling, the obsession of children with transient media figures, the state of school bells determining the bounds of one's life, and the general lack of society to embrace the creativity and novelty of a kid's wild imagination. It was present when I was a kid but much more muted. These days, watching the children in my family grow up, they are far more interested in becoming someone they aren't, rather than the something they want to be. I would consider this disintegration.
- thebooktocome 4y ago
  This is a laundry list of vices every generation has faulted the youth of the next generation for falling prey to.
  - calculatte 4y ago
    When has the government in previous generations officially called concerned parents "domestic terrorists" for voicing their opinions at public meetings? You don't get to wave off everything at whim when there are real concerns out there. A large percentage of the population would disagree with you that "disintegration" is not happening.
    - thebooktocome 4y ago
      Well, that particular incident was not mentioned in the parent comment. But since you’ve brought it up, what else do you call an organized campaign to assault, threaten to assault, vandalize the private property of, threaten the family of, defame, and/or falsely level criminal charges against public officials? https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-board-association-domestic-terrorism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-b... “At an Illinois school board meeting, a man was arrested after allegedly striking an education official. A school board member in Loudoun County, Va., fielded abusive, profane and threatening emails, Facebook messages and phone calls for months. In Florida, protesters camped out in front of a school board member’s house and burned an “FU” into her lawn with weed killer. They called her a Nazi and a pedophile. Someone falsely reported her as abusing her child to the Florida Department of Children and Families. “Be careful, your mommy hurts little kids!” an activist yelled at her daughter.” (links to incident reports in original source) That’s not merely “voicing their opinions at public meetings.”
zozbot234 4y ago
Gatto is specifically discussing public K-12 education in the U.S. And it's absolutely correct to describe that as a dismal failure, compared to other developed countries. Especially so when you look at outcomes for the most vulnerable sub-groups, which should arguably be the highest priority given that their family and social milieus cannot pick up the slack to anything near the same extent.
- fiftyfifty 4y ago
  Education varies significantly from state to state in the US, even district to district in many areas. Some states compare very well internationally, like Massachusetts, which would be ranked as high as 4th by some international measurements, if it was its own country. We consistently see in the US where regions with better public schools have much better economic outcomes, and lower rates of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and suicide. There are plenty of alternative outcomes to look at in the US as well: high school drop outs for example which on average have a much lower lifetime earning potential, and higher rates of drug abuse, suicide and incarceration.
thrown_22 4y ago
>We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. We also see that the countries with the best schools are dominating the world economy. What does this even mean? The US spends more an education than anyone else and it dominated the world's economy because it's blown up everyone else who tried. This is a tautology. The countries with the schools people who rank schools like best are ranked best. That doesn't mean they are actually best. Schooling absolutely helps people get out of poverty. But that doesn't mean it's the type of school that dominant in the West. We have a school and university system that's extended day care and teaches both incredibly slowly and way too fast. With smaller classes we could reduce the 12 years of schooling the average child gets today to 4. We never will because the parents don't know what to do with them and there aren't any jobs for 12 year olds.
- Test0129 4y ago
  I would like to see the numbers. I want to believe schooling really "changes lives" like the universities selling student loans want you to believe (I myself being a victim of this). However, I have a sneaking suspicion that if we took a cohort of high school students who weren't particularly interested in so-called hard learning and taught them valuable trade work it would have a similar effect. Sure, you can wrap trades in education to make your point, but I think GPs point was that formal beyond high school education is what lifts people out of poverty.

hitpointdrew 4y ago

> We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. This is false. Schooling has had nothing to do with it, capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of poverty, not schooling.

bjornsing 4y ago
Isn’t basic schooling a prerequisite for successful capitalism though? (May sound snarky but a genuine question.)
- hitpointdrew 4y ago
  This is a fair question. I would argue no. As the article alludes, schooling in general hinders/squishes the entrepreneurial (independent) spirits and instills a risk aversion behavior not conducive to starting a business. There an impressive list of billionaires that either dropped out of college, or didn't even attend (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Walt Disney, Debbi Fields, Mary Kay Ash, and Wayne Huizenga, just to name a few).
vkou 4y ago
> capitalism is what has lifted the most people out of poverty This is false. Access to cheap energy, in the form of fossil fuels is what has lifted the most people out of poverty, not capitalism. Without burning through millions of years of oil and coal in the span of a few centuries, we'd all still be farming and eating mud, regardless of which economic system were in play. Remove capitalism, and industrialized society will still limp along, in a relatively prosperous manner compared to centuries past. Remove access to cheap energy, and it will collapse overnight, with misery and death on a scale the world has never seen.
- notch656a 4y ago
  What's your proposed mechanism for incentivizing me to efficiently provide energy to customers without capitalism? To invest in the capital intensive industries necessary to refine and extract this energy? Are you thinking a form of anarchism without property rights kind of situation, or more of a command economy?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Any of the systems used before the idea of capitalism was conceived would probably have done OK at reducing poverty, given incredibly cheap energy. Meanwhile, capitalism would have done very little to reduce poverty, without all that dirt-cheap energy. I think the poster's point was that, even if capitalism helped, the cheap energy from fossil fuels was the absolutely necessary part. Personally, I'd not be surprised if modern capitalism doesn't even work so well without cheap, abundant energy. Is it so effective when almost all your energy is human and animal, with a little water power on the side? I dunno. Maybe not much more effective than other approaches. Maybe even less effective.
- scarmig 4y ago
  Feudal and socialist systems had access to cheap energy, and they weren't nearly as successful at raising people out of poverty. In the case of classic centrally planned socialist states, they were likely worse for the environment during development than comparable capitalist states (cf USA vs USSR).
thrown_22 4y ago
[flagged]
jcz_nz 4y ago
That’s just laughable. About a billion Chinese might disagree with this.
- notch656a 4y ago
  Didn't Chinese spend more time in school after more elements of capitalism were introduced and the command economy of "get in the fields for the public good" gave way to "participate in the world capitalist economy." I agree schooling seems an important link to increased wealth, but it seems bettering education is as much linked to better capitalizing on stock of tax-cattle and realizing the capital investment in the children allows them to better compete on the capitalists market so their tax money can be taken to fatten the government hogs.
npteljes 4y ago
This is false. Capitalism made children work from age 5. I do like it, all things considered, but it seems to work best (for all) with strong social programs and a load of protections and regulations.

Test0129 4y ago

> Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our society has not "disintegrated" yet It really depends on how you define disintegrated. What he mentioned has manifested over the last 30 years. Slowly, and quietly. Now, it has come to a head. The lunatics actively arguing parents should have no place in schooling, the obsession of children with transient media figures, the state of school bells determining the bounds of one's life, and the general lack of society to embrace the creativity and novelty of a kid's wild imagination. It was present when I was a kid but much more muted. These days, watching the children in my family grow up, they are far more interested in becoming someone they aren't, rather than the something they want to be. I would consider this disintegration.

thebooktocome 4y ago
This is a laundry list of vices every generation has faulted the youth of the next generation for falling prey to.
- calculatte 4y ago
  When has the government in previous generations officially called concerned parents "domestic terrorists" for voicing their opinions at public meetings? You don't get to wave off everything at whim when there are real concerns out there. A large percentage of the population would disagree with you that "disintegration" is not happening.
  - thebooktocome 4y ago
    Well, that particular incident was not mentioned in the parent comment. But since you’ve brought it up, what else do you call an organized campaign to assault, threaten to assault, vandalize the private property of, threaten the family of, defame, and/or falsely level criminal charges against public officials? https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-board-association-domestic-terrorism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-b... “At an Illinois school board meeting, a man was arrested after allegedly striking an education official. A school board member in Loudoun County, Va., fielded abusive, profane and threatening emails, Facebook messages and phone calls for months. In Florida, protesters camped out in front of a school board member’s house and burned an “FU” into her lawn with weed killer. They called her a Nazi and a pedophile. Someone falsely reported her as abusing her child to the Florida Department of Children and Families. “Be careful, your mommy hurts little kids!” an activist yelled at her daughter.” (links to incident reports in original source) That’s not merely “voicing their opinions at public meetings.”

zozbot234 4y ago

Gatto is specifically discussing public K-12 education in the U.S. And it's absolutely correct to describe that as a dismal failure, compared to other developed countries. Especially so when you look at outcomes for the most vulnerable sub-groups, which should arguably be the highest priority given that their family and social milieus cannot pick up the slack to anything near the same extent.

fiftyfifty 4y ago
Education varies significantly from state to state in the US, even district to district in many areas. Some states compare very well internationally, like Massachusetts, which would be ranked as high as 4th by some international measurements, if it was its own country. We consistently see in the US where regions with better public schools have much better economic outcomes, and lower rates of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and suicide. There are plenty of alternative outcomes to look at in the US as well: high school drop outs for example which on average have a much lower lifetime earning potential, and higher rates of drug abuse, suicide and incarceration.

thrown_22 4y ago

>We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. We also see that the countries with the best schools are dominating the world economy. What does this even mean? The US spends more an education than anyone else and it dominated the world's economy because it's blown up everyone else who tried. This is a tautology. The countries with the schools people who rank schools like best are ranked best. That doesn't mean they are actually best. Schooling absolutely helps people get out of poverty. But that doesn't mean it's the type of school that dominant in the West. We have a school and university system that's extended day care and teaches both incredibly slowly and way too fast. With smaller classes we could reduce the 12 years of schooling the average child gets today to 4. We never will because the parents don't know what to do with them and there aren't any jobs for 12 year olds.

Test0129 4y ago
I would like to see the numbers. I want to believe schooling really "changes lives" like the universities selling student loans want you to believe (I myself being a victim of this). However, I have a sneaking suspicion that if we took a cohort of high school students who weren't particularly interested in so-called hard learning and taught them valuable trade work it would have a similar effect. Sure, you can wrap trades in education to make your point, but I think GPs point was that formal beyond high school education is what lifts people out of poverty.