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> While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the

> While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty. This is how it's always been, it's not new. Just look at the 1960's in America. I'm also not even sure how much of it's the systems in question and how much is the people in question using extreme confirmation bias to polarize themselves, in some cases. Much of this is the age of the people in question, IMO. Whether they're at college or diver deeper into some social media, youth (late teens and early twenties) is when radicalization happens, whether they're been taught be an institution or not. That leads me to believe that while institutions may be part of the problem, there's something larger that goes on at that age which many different competing interests capitalize on to their own benefit. Edit: That said, while it's not new, it does appear to be cyclical, and I'm not going to argue against it seeming to have a resurgence.

robomartin 3y ago
[flagged]
- fn-mote 3y ago
  > The idea that you have to take courses such as "Young Karl Marx" at a university in the US in order to graduate should be alarming to anyone who understands world history. I am not making this up. It happened to my son at a major US university With a decade on this site, you have to know this kind of inflammatory and difficult-to-believe statement needs a citation. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'm pretty close to university policies and "major" US universities in general have broad requirements that can generally be satisfied by a wide(-ish) selection of courses. I have to assume there were some specific constraints in your particular case that were omitted to make this argument seem stronger.
  - robomartin 3y ago
    [flagged]
- kbenson 3y ago
  > What the fuck does that shit have to do with Computer Science in the first place? Universities are not trade schools. If you expect a trade school, go to a trade school. If you expect education long many topics, with a focus on one, then go to a university. Worried that many places of business prefer university graduates to trade school graduates? Maybe there's a reason they prefer to hire from those pools. Maybe there's a bunch of small reasons that combine in the the status quo. > The idea that you have to take courses such as "Young Karl Marx" at a university in the US in order to graduate should be alarming to anyone who understands world history. To me, that's no more alarming than history courses in high school going into the motivations, both economical and and otherwise, which caused the U.S. civil war. There is a benefit to understanding alternative points of view, even if you don't share them. Some people, of course, will share them. I don't think that's a valid reason not to discuss those topics critically, it might make it an even better reason to discuss them, and where they worked and where they didn't. > where you can spend a year becoming an expert in the Communist Manifesto and other related topics. Which society do you think will generate better outcomes? Hopefully anyone that spent a year becoming an expert in communism would at least have learned that it's mostly failed, multiple times and in multiple places, and that pure communism is not something we can realistically assume would work? Similarly to anyone in college that looks at capitalism closely will see that we don't have a system of pure capitalism, and that what makes our system work is less ideological view and more nuanced approach that uses capitalism and free markets where they work, buttresses that with regulation where there's incentives that are against the public interest, and sprinkles in socialism where it is the better fit. Not letting people discuss this and instead insisting that that no, communism can't be given any mental space when to accurately describe the reality of the system we currently have requires knowing how it affected us throughout history strikes me as somewhat shortsighted.
  - robomartin 3y ago
    > Not letting people discuss this and instead insisting that that no, communism can't be given any mental space when to accurately describe the reality of the system we currently have requires knowing how it affected us throughout history strikes me as somewhat shortsighted. Kindly point out where I said that. You can't. Because I did not. General education is invaluable and good for society. Indoctrination is worthless and detrimental to society. Topics --all possible topics-- should be covered fairly. We should not be ignorant of society. However, there is a time and a place for this. Our secondary schools do a horrible job of graduating well-educated young adults. The average US high school graduate comes out with no marketable skills and deep ignorance across a range of topics. As I mentioned in my other post, I had the experience, as a kid, of living in multiple cultures. As my family travelled back and forth, I would come in and out of the US educational system. The contrast was, well, jarring. I received a classical education outside of the US and what I would call "minimum viable education" in the US public school system. I was reading Plato, Kant and Descartes, while my US counterparts were, well, fucking off. Today, I have to supplement my kids' education by exposing them to such topics. For example, we recently devoted a whole month to discussing and exploring Descartes' Meditations. This is stuff that should be covered in high school. Universities should be devoted to what the person wants to study and the professional field they have chosen. This is particularly true in a system where a year of university schooling costs between $30K and $50K. There are at least two ways to look at this: One, we could graduate people a year earlier --and with far less debt-- if we focused on what matters. The other is to say: If I am going to pay $50K for a year in school, the courses I take outside of those directly related to my major should be my choice. If I do not want to take humanities and focus on another year of specialized engineering coursework, that should be my choice. It's my money. Last I checked, there are no job postings out there (in tech fields) that list specific non-tech coursework as requirements. It is OK for people to study anything they want outside of their major --with an emphasis on "they"-- not forced. We are making people spend tens of thousands of dollars on stuff that, in most cases, has zero career value. One might say: Not so, a general education has career value! Correct. Then, do a good job of delivering as much of that during primary and secondary education. If general education at a university level has value --return on investment-- the MARKET will make that decisions and students will willingly CHOOSE and seek that coursework...because it will be of value to them. And, of course, they could also choose to take those courses any time after graduation as they see fit and as the realities of their career might demand. The market should decide everything outside of core major requirements, it should not be imposed in any way.

robomartin 3y ago

[flagged]

fn-mote 3y ago
> The idea that you have to take courses such as "Young Karl Marx" at a university in the US in order to graduate should be alarming to anyone who understands world history. I am not making this up. It happened to my son at a major US university With a decade on this site, you have to know this kind of inflammatory and difficult-to-believe statement needs a citation. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'm pretty close to university policies and "major" US universities in general have broad requirements that can generally be satisfied by a wide(-ish) selection of courses. I have to assume there were some specific constraints in your particular case that were omitted to make this argument seem stronger.
- robomartin 3y ago
  [flagged]
kbenson 3y ago
> What the fuck does that shit have to do with Computer Science in the first place? Universities are not trade schools. If you expect a trade school, go to a trade school. If you expect education long many topics, with a focus on one, then go to a university. Worried that many places of business prefer university graduates to trade school graduates? Maybe there's a reason they prefer to hire from those pools. Maybe there's a bunch of small reasons that combine in the the status quo. > The idea that you have to take courses such as "Young Karl Marx" at a university in the US in order to graduate should be alarming to anyone who understands world history. To me, that's no more alarming than history courses in high school going into the motivations, both economical and and otherwise, which caused the U.S. civil war. There is a benefit to understanding alternative points of view, even if you don't share them. Some people, of course, will share them. I don't think that's a valid reason not to discuss those topics critically, it might make it an even better reason to discuss them, and where they worked and where they didn't. > where you can spend a year becoming an expert in the Communist Manifesto and other related topics. Which society do you think will generate better outcomes? Hopefully anyone that spent a year becoming an expert in communism would at least have learned that it's mostly failed, multiple times and in multiple places, and that pure communism is not something we can realistically assume would work? Similarly to anyone in college that looks at capitalism closely will see that we don't have a system of pure capitalism, and that what makes our system work is less ideological view and more nuanced approach that uses capitalism and free markets where they work, buttresses that with regulation where there's incentives that are against the public interest, and sprinkles in socialism where it is the better fit. Not letting people discuss this and instead insisting that that no, communism can't be given any mental space when to accurately describe the reality of the system we currently have requires knowing how it affected us throughout history strikes me as somewhat shortsighted.
- robomartin 3y ago
  > Not letting people discuss this and instead insisting that that no, communism can't be given any mental space when to accurately describe the reality of the system we currently have requires knowing how it affected us throughout history strikes me as somewhat shortsighted. Kindly point out where I said that. You can't. Because I did not. General education is invaluable and good for society. Indoctrination is worthless and detrimental to society. Topics --all possible topics-- should be covered fairly. We should not be ignorant of society. However, there is a time and a place for this. Our secondary schools do a horrible job of graduating well-educated young adults. The average US high school graduate comes out with no marketable skills and deep ignorance across a range of topics. As I mentioned in my other post, I had the experience, as a kid, of living in multiple cultures. As my family travelled back and forth, I would come in and out of the US educational system. The contrast was, well, jarring. I received a classical education outside of the US and what I would call "minimum viable education" in the US public school system. I was reading Plato, Kant and Descartes, while my US counterparts were, well, fucking off. Today, I have to supplement my kids' education by exposing them to such topics. For example, we recently devoted a whole month to discussing and exploring Descartes' Meditations. This is stuff that should be covered in high school. Universities should be devoted to what the person wants to study and the professional field they have chosen. This is particularly true in a system where a year of university schooling costs between $30K and $50K. There are at least two ways to look at this: One, we could graduate people a year earlier --and with far less debt-- if we focused on what matters. The other is to say: If I am going to pay $50K for a year in school, the courses I take outside of those directly related to my major should be my choice. If I do not want to take humanities and focus on another year of specialized engineering coursework, that should be my choice. It's my money. Last I checked, there are no job postings out there (in tech fields) that list specific non-tech coursework as requirements. It is OK for people to study anything they want outside of their major --with an emphasis on "they"-- not forced. We are making people spend tens of thousands of dollars on stuff that, in most cases, has zero career value. One might say: Not so, a general education has career value! Correct. Then, do a good job of delivering as much of that during primary and secondary education. If general education at a university level has value --return on investment-- the MARKET will make that decisions and students will willingly CHOOSE and seek that coursework...because it will be of value to them. And, of course, they could also choose to take those courses any time after graduation as they see fit and as the realities of their career might demand. The market should decide everything outside of core major requirements, it should not be imposed in any way.