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I don't think getting rid of education is a good idea. The current American system is not working but that's mainly because it is a government run monopoly that
by bdw5204 4y ago
I don't think getting rid of education is a good idea. The current American system is not working but that's mainly because it is a government run monopoly that is largely controlled by very powerful teachers unions that place the interests of their members above the interests of kids and because it is directly subject to political interference from activists on both left and right via school boards and state governments. Schools that primarily serve the urban poor tend to be especially problematic because they are notorious for failing to educate at all and for allowing some of the kids to create a dangerous environment for themselves and others. The failure of the current education system to educate the urban poor to even a minimally adequate level is likely the primary root cause of the sky high crime rates in American cities and of racial inequality in America. And you can't just ignore the root causes of crime and throw all the criminals in jail. We tried the "ignore the root causes of crime and just lock them all up" approach in the 90s and 00s and it didn't work. Abolishing education would just spread our pandemic of urban crime to the suburbs and rural America.
There's an additional problem in that schooling inherently doesn't work very well for kids who are higher on the IQ scale who benefit more from being self-directed or from having a tutor who can bring out their full potential. But the schooling model works fairly well for educating kids within +/- 2 standard deviations or so of average IQ. Those who are on the low extreme of the IQ scale have a different set of special needs that revolves more around vocational training and life skills and my understanding is that the system generally handles this much better than it used to.
Hence the best way to fix education is through a universal vouchers program that doesn't discriminate against any type of schooling (i.e. including homeschooling and religious private schools). By depoliticizing curriculum, this eliminates the ability of left wing parents to take God out of schools (where religion is wanted by parents) and the ability of right wing parents to take what they call CRT out of schools (where it is wanted by parents).
I do think that memorizing facts "that you can just look up on Google" is a critical skill even though it is increasingly out of style these days. This is critically important because somebody who knows nothing is incapable of engaging in independent thought and will simply adopt somebody else's thoughts as if they were facts. When adults don't understand our constitutional system, they are unable to objectively evaluate the statements of politicians or competently serve on a jury.
The thing that legitimately needs to be nuked from the educational system is the "group project" where 1 student does all the work and the rest take credit. This is dysfunctional, everybody knows it is dysfunctional and it is likely only present in the education system because corporations that are too big to be functional want it there to train future workers in how to work in that dysfunctional manner. In general, I don't think the education system should care about what the needs of corporations are as it is the job of corporations to train their own employees.
For gifted education, I believe that the best approach is the traditional one of heavy immersion in the Classics including study of Latin, Ancient Greek and maybe Hebrew. This is the way the founders and our greatest presidents were generally educated and the modern style of education has produced the disastrously bad presidents we've had in recent years. I think that alone is enough to make a strong case for classical education.
I think what I believe is best in education would be competitive in the market if there was a genuine choice because alumni of such schools would be so clearly better educated than alumni of blue tribe schools or red tribe schools that such politicized schools would quickly be outcompeted if they couldn't be imposed upon all via the political system. I don't want politicians deciding what is taught in schools, how schools are run or even whether schools can have books in them.