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I'll counter with a different unpopular opinion. Specialized vocational training should be viewed separately from continued cultural education and continued cu

by munk-a 4y ago

I'll counter with a different unpopular opinion. Specialized vocational training should be viewed separately from continued cultural education and continued cultural education should be much more accessible. After you get out of high school you should choose a vocationally oriented educational institution to learn about whatever specialized field you've chosen, whether that's decades of medicine training, a year or so of CS training or a few years of trades training - then, for the rest of your life, cultural education programs discussing higher abstract mathematics, philosophy, advanced literacy, political science and other liberal arts, should be available as ongoing pursuits that are ingested ala carte. This is drastically different from our current educational system and the cynics among us will happily point out that implementing something like that overnight would probably just defund education in the current system but I think that'd be a much nicer way to approach life and I think it's reflected in how much continuing education content exists both modern stuff like youtube and more traditional tv shows (including nature shows and things like Cosmos). Modern web based learning (everything from SkillShare which is more vocational to Khan Academy and Harvard's online lectures) are making continuing education more accessible, but we need more! Learning is an activity that should be actively engaged for your entire life! People like to point at folks working at Mickey D's and opine on how their bachelor's degree is wasted, but if that bachelor's degree came with philosophy courses that taught you self-worth and empathy that helps you raise to a management position that creates a nice working environment for a half a dozen people then I think that is a fine use of education. Learning for learning sake is valuable enough and it doesn't need to be itemized about how much "value" (always framed in terms of vocational training) that it creates for society.

willcipriano 4y ago
> continued cultural education Mao Zedong did something similar to this during the great leap forward. He hoped it would have a similar effect on the peasant rice farmers as you hope for the McDonald's workers.
- xapata 4y ago
  Don't conflate the two.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Education is one of the very few things in life that can’t be taken away from you. By anyone.
- jhanschoo 4y ago
  > then, for the rest of your life, cultural education programs discussing higher abstract mathematics, philosophy, advanced literacy, political science and other liberal arts, should be available as ongoing pursuits that are ingested ala carte. Did you read this part? I personally see more value in lifelong liberal-arts education at a slower pace than the mismatched system we have.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
thrown_22 4y ago
That you throw in higher math as cultural instead of vocational just shows your own biases. I routinely use things I learned doing a PhD in physics in my code because mathematical abstractions really speed things up. Lumping something as useful as group theory with something as trivial as Shakespeare does a disservice to both.
- jhanschoo 4y ago
  I'm confused about what you are suggesting. Standard university math would still be taught to people in professions that use it as part of their vocational education, and basic university math like group theory will be eventually taught to people in professions that don't use it. Wouldn't that be an advantage over the status quo?
- voisin 4y ago
  > something as trivial as Shakespeare Please tell me you are being ironic? I’m no particular fan of Shakespeare, but to call his work trivial and to ignore the impact he had on western culture is… short sighted at best.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    At the time Shakespeare wrote there were maybe half a million literate people who spoke English. Today there are more literate people who speak English in Fort Worth, Texas. The only reason to think Shakespeare is anything but a middling writer of the winning English dialect is cultural snobbery.
irrational 4y ago
> After you get out of high school you should choose a vocationally oriented educational institution to learn about whatever specialized field you've chosen I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career until I was almost done with graduate school (I have a bachelors in history, a bachelors in linguistics, and a masters in educational psychology - I’ve worked as a professional programmer for nearly 25 years). My kids have gone to college, but they didn’t know what they wanted to do either. My oldest daughter is a semester from graduating and has finally decided what she actually wants to do - in a field wholly divorced from her undergraduate degree. So now she is applying to graduate programs. Frankly, none of my kids college bound friends knew what they wanted to do until they were almost graduated. It seems to me that many of us learn what we want to do by being exposed to many different things in the college environment. But it takes years and sort of floundering to figure that out.
- voisin 4y ago
  > I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career until I was almost done with graduate school (I have a bachelors in history, a bachelors in linguistics, and a masters in educational psychology - I’ve worked as a professional programmer for nearly 25 years). My kids have gone to college, but they didn’t know what they wanted to do either. My oldest daughter is a semester from graduating and has finally decided what she actually wants to do - in a field wholly divorced from her undergraduate degree. This is why I strongly advocate for taking a gap year - or 2 or 5. Kids need experience - broad real world experience being exposed to lots of different things - in order to determine what turns their crank and rises to the level that they (a) know what they are getting into and (b) actually want to do it for (possibly) the rest of their lives. This focus on moving from birth to career in one unbroken path increases the odds that people commit the sunk cost fallacy - with their life! - continuing to pursue something only because they started doing so without really knowing themselves. What a silly waste of this one and only magical life.
  - irrational 4y ago
    I actually did take a 2 year gap before starting college (I was a few months shy of 28 years old when I graduated with my masters). It didn’t help.
piva00 4y ago
Not a perfect system but the Folkuniversitet in some parts of Sweden provides similar education to what you envision here. They have both vocational courses (business, economics, IT, healthcare, etc.) as well as courses in humanities, arts (including performing arts, and writing) and so on. You can take courses whenever you want, or apply for a longer vocational education.
tomjen3 4y ago
That is giving way too much credit to liberal arts. In theory they might be good, but in practice there is nothing to connect it to reality (if you are a shitty philosopher, you can make your self sound effective; if you are a shitty mathematician, others will point out that your proofs do not work). If you want me to take the liberal arts seriously, you're going to have to show how they can be held to the same kind of standard that we hold, say, physics to. Worse, you also simultaneously managed to insult half your audience. I attended a CS only university. I did not have one hour of history class. Not one hour was spent on anthropology, physics or language study except as necessary for our compiler classes. If you cut out the lesser useful classes, such as anything having to do with user interface design, then maybe you could've gotten a year out of it. That will still have taken me four years, to get that CS degree.
- yusefnapora 4y ago
  I'm so confused at how you managed to be insulted by the parent comment. Someone else finding value in liberal arts education is not an attack on those that don't.
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  physics has its own class of problems in that theoretical physics can spout any nonsense it wants as long as the testing to verify if it is correct or not is suitably expensive as to ensure it doesn't happen and the math is reasonably complex. it's not on the same scale of rampant bullshitism that is going on in the arts programs, where thousands of people have made entire careers out of generalizing marxism from the domain of labor to all the other domains of social interaction, physicists would have gotten that done in a flurry of papers over two weeks and moved on to something else more abstract and difficult to verify level of truth.

by munk-a 4y ago

willcipriano 4y ago

> continued cultural education Mao Zedong did something similar to this during the great leap forward. He hoped it would have a similar effect on the peasant rice farmers as you hope for the McDonald's workers.

xapata 4y ago
Don't conflate the two.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Education is one of the very few things in life that can’t be taken away from you. By anyone.

jhanschoo 4y ago
> then, for the rest of your life, cultural education programs discussing higher abstract mathematics, philosophy, advanced literacy, political science and other liberal arts, should be available as ongoing pursuits that are ingested ala carte. Did you read this part? I personally see more value in lifelong liberal-arts education at a slower pace than the mismatched system we have.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

thrown_22 4y ago

That you throw in higher math as cultural instead of vocational just shows your own biases. I routinely use things I learned doing a PhD in physics in my code because mathematical abstractions really speed things up. Lumping something as useful as group theory with something as trivial as Shakespeare does a disservice to both.

jhanschoo 4y ago
I'm confused about what you are suggesting. Standard university math would still be taught to people in professions that use it as part of their vocational education, and basic university math like group theory will be eventually taught to people in professions that don't use it. Wouldn't that be an advantage over the status quo?
voisin 4y ago
> something as trivial as Shakespeare Please tell me you are being ironic? I’m no particular fan of Shakespeare, but to call his work trivial and to ignore the impact he had on western culture is… short sighted at best.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  At the time Shakespeare wrote there were maybe half a million literate people who spoke English. Today there are more literate people who speak English in Fort Worth, Texas. The only reason to think Shakespeare is anything but a middling writer of the winning English dialect is cultural snobbery.

irrational 4y ago

> After you get out of high school you should choose a vocationally oriented educational institution to learn about whatever specialized field you've chosen I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career until I was almost done with graduate school (I have a bachelors in history, a bachelors in linguistics, and a masters in educational psychology - I’ve worked as a professional programmer for nearly 25 years). My kids have gone to college, but they didn’t know what they wanted to do either. My oldest daughter is a semester from graduating and has finally decided what she actually wants to do - in a field wholly divorced from her undergraduate degree. So now she is applying to graduate programs. Frankly, none of my kids college bound friends knew what they wanted to do until they were almost graduated. It seems to me that many of us learn what we want to do by being exposed to many different things in the college environment. But it takes years and sort of floundering to figure that out.

voisin 4y ago
> I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career until I was almost done with graduate school (I have a bachelors in history, a bachelors in linguistics, and a masters in educational psychology - I’ve worked as a professional programmer for nearly 25 years). My kids have gone to college, but they didn’t know what they wanted to do either. My oldest daughter is a semester from graduating and has finally decided what she actually wants to do - in a field wholly divorced from her undergraduate degree. This is why I strongly advocate for taking a gap year - or 2 or 5. Kids need experience - broad real world experience being exposed to lots of different things - in order to determine what turns their crank and rises to the level that they (a) know what they are getting into and (b) actually want to do it for (possibly) the rest of their lives. This focus on moving from birth to career in one unbroken path increases the odds that people commit the sunk cost fallacy - with their life! - continuing to pursue something only because they started doing so without really knowing themselves. What a silly waste of this one and only magical life.
- irrational 4y ago
  I actually did take a 2 year gap before starting college (I was a few months shy of 28 years old when I graduated with my masters). It didn’t help.

piva00 4y ago

Not a perfect system but the Folkuniversitet in some parts of Sweden provides similar education to what you envision here. They have both vocational courses (business, economics, IT, healthcare, etc.) as well as courses in humanities, arts (including performing arts, and writing) and so on. You can take courses whenever you want, or apply for a longer vocational education.

tomjen3 4y ago

That is giving way too much credit to liberal arts. In theory they might be good, but in practice there is nothing to connect it to reality (if you are a shitty philosopher, you can make your self sound effective; if you are a shitty mathematician, others will point out that your proofs do not work). If you want me to take the liberal arts seriously, you're going to have to show how they can be held to the same kind of standard that we hold, say, physics to. Worse, you also simultaneously managed to insult half your audience. I attended a CS only university. I did not have one hour of history class. Not one hour was spent on anthropology, physics or language study except as necessary for our compiler classes. If you cut out the lesser useful classes, such as anything having to do with user interface design, then maybe you could've gotten a year out of it. That will still have taken me four years, to get that CS degree.

yusefnapora 4y ago
I'm so confused at how you managed to be insulted by the parent comment. Someone else finding value in liberal arts education is not an attack on those that don't.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
physics has its own class of problems in that theoretical physics can spout any nonsense it wants as long as the testing to verify if it is correct or not is suitably expensive as to ensure it doesn't happen and the math is reasonably complex. it's not on the same scale of rampant bullshitism that is going on in the arts programs, where thousands of people have made entire careers out of generalizing marxism from the domain of labor to all the other domains of social interaction, physicists would have gotten that done in a flurry of papers over two weeks and moved on to something else more abstract and difficult to verify level of truth.