4 ms·

This is a marvelous piece of analysis of the "current" traditional educational landscape. Seems like things only got worse over 40 years ... Treating the probl

This is a marvelous piece of analysis of the "current" traditional educational landscape. Seems like things only got worse over 40 years ... Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. And such a deep change in perspective and "economics" is just not conceivable within the realms of the modern society as it is now. It requires a deep change in method and people. And the latter circles back to education, which makes it a hopeless loop ... The only way to break it is to do "education" outside the realms of school, to target a "minority" (to be practical not to segregate), and to fight and work for a change that will make education central and at the top of society. P.S: By Education, I don't merely mean instruction. It's a holistic and profound change in a human being ... that it aims to create

eru 3y ago
> Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. Isn't the problem that we are mixing education and politics in the first place? We should probably separate education and the state just as much as we separate church and state. (The touch of politics seldom enhances the quality of anything. The further your chosen activity is from politics, the easier it is to improve quietly improve it. Eg even just to stick to learning: Wikipedia and StackOverflow are great. And so are lots of great how-to books and freely available videos. They are as far removed from politics as it gets.)
- abdellah123 3y ago
  I meant the needs of the education should guide "political" decisions. A simple example is that the education budget (percentage) should be in two digits!!
  - eru 3y ago
    And I am saying that there shouldn't be an education item in the government's budget in the first place. (Just to be clear, I'm all for giving poor people money, so they can spend it as they see fit. Be that education or food or entertainment etc. By contrast, rich people don't need government hand-outs.)
    - gausswho 3y ago
      Disassembling public education would have substantial societal externalities. If education is anything you want it to be, why not graduate from DraftKings Precocious Kids HIgh School?
      - eru 3y ago
        Sorry, I don't understand the second sentence. Yes, I agree that public education has substantial costs. Both direct costs to the victims and societal externalities. Disassembling the monster would hopefully stop some of them.
        gausswho 3y ago
        So if up to an individual, what do you think they would choose for their education if there were no mandates agreed upon by their government. DraftKings is a gambling titan that could offer a very profitable option.
        gyulai 3y ago
        I do not at all think that, if government wasn't in the business of setting those standards, the standards would turn out lower. Reputation would follow the institutions, and graduating from an institution that set lows standards wouldn't have any signalling power to prospective employers, so students wouldn't want to enroll there. What you actually see in countries that have both a private and public education system is that the private institutions compete on the grounds of who sets the highest standards, not on who offers the most riskless opportunity to students to get the degree, irrespective of how low an effort they put in or how incapable they are. If you're talking of a huge number of small institutions in combination with high mobility, then maybe reputation at the level of the individual institution wouldn't do the trick, but you would probably see certification and quality assurance agencies pop up to establish brands and enforce standards around them.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    Iirc , the stats show the more school budget the worse education. If you put "free" money into something the parasites will gather. Systems exist to extend themselves, not yo provide the service for which they were created (systemantics).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mnemonicsloth 3y ago
    You're misinformed here. The biggest per-student spender on education in the developed world is the US: > In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... And everybody knows that US outcomes in primary and secondary education are not great. (Actually they're considerably better than many realize, but not as good as, say, Finland, which spends much less). So budgets aren't everything. And yet, at both the top and in the broad middle, US universities have some of the best outcomes in the world. So big budgets can still be good. Human brains are complicated. Big groups of them are more so. Transferring output of some brains to other brains in big groups is not at all straightforward. It's no wonder people would rather swap platitudes about bigger budgets.
    - eru 3y ago
      In the abstract, many people would agree that education budgets should be finite. But concretely, it always 'sounds good' to ask for bigger education budgets. No matter the size of the existing budget.
  - tolciho 3y ago
    On the assumption that the modern education system teaches "confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that one cannot hide" (John Taylor Gatto) how would increasing the education budget help educate?
- red_admiral 3y ago
  If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical as you suggest? But to engage with your main point - I agree, and we can take Germany as an example here. During the Nazi period, everything was put in service of politics, so in math class you'd answer questions like "calculate how many extra hard-working German families we could support if we the state didn't have to spend so-and-so-many Reichsmarks per Jew". Since 1945, there's been a strong tradition to keep politics out of math and science education in Germany, and this seems to be mostly holding even in face of "social justice" pressure. Keeping politics out of "is Phonics a good teaching method?" would also have been a great idea in the English-speaking world.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I teach at a German University and I have never in a decade perceived even the slightest scintilla of any student creating "social justice pressure" in any of my or the classes of my collegues. Whenever there was a social justice topic that made the waves, it was typically about some prof who legitimately acted like full blown asshole and thought everybody else has to put up with their ego — if anything disrupted education in that case, it was them, and the student's demands were basically a totally understandable demand to not have that guys ego get into the way of their education. As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't. Concerns about "social justice"-people putting pressure on us always come from people who got no idea and are out of the educational field for a while. As of now I am nearly convinced that this is probably a collective mind virus that is 99% fiction (and the 1% where it is true has so little impact it doesn't even matter).
    - adolph 3y ago
      > As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
- hooverd 3y ago
  Could you define politics here? I don't see how you could separate "politics" from education other than by just not teaching history or anything that touches on social issues.
  - eru 3y ago
    I am talking about separating school and state (just like many countries separate church and state). If the school (or church) wants to be political, that's fine. As long as they don't force anyone to attend their lectures (or sermons), nor ask the taxpayer to keep them afloat.
throwaway71271 3y ago
> 40 years Sadly its almost 60 years :) Education tendencies seem to be incredibly latent and they have huge inertia. For example in The Netherlands the amount of languages you speak used to be a measure for intelligence, so most schools teach 4 languages from the age of 12 (out of 9 subject 4 are languages). In the same time, languages are the easiest to test, and also the easiest to progress a mass of people. The easiest thing to test (and show improvement and etc) in the bloom pyramid is memory. You surely have people trying their hardest, like Julius Miller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s9psf01ldo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s9psf01ldo (1964) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3szmCF8-L8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3szmCF8-L8 but the system does not seem to respond to them/ But it seems the education institution is not trying to teach people anything.

eru 3y ago

> Treating the problems of education indeed transcends the school and actually requires a great deal of political will and power. "Education" must guide politics and have power over it. Isn't the problem that we are mixing education and politics in the first place? We should probably separate education and the state just as much as we separate church and state. (The touch of politics seldom enhances the quality of anything. The further your chosen activity is from politics, the easier it is to improve quietly improve it. Eg even just to stick to learning: Wikipedia and StackOverflow are great. And so are lots of great how-to books and freely available videos. They are as far removed from politics as it gets.)

abdellah123 3y ago
I meant the needs of the education should guide "political" decisions. A simple example is that the education budget (percentage) should be in two digits!!
- eru 3y ago
  And I am saying that there shouldn't be an education item in the government's budget in the first place. (Just to be clear, I'm all for giving poor people money, so they can spend it as they see fit. Be that education or food or entertainment etc. By contrast, rich people don't need government hand-outs.)
  - gausswho 3y ago
    Disassembling public education would have substantial societal externalities. If education is anything you want it to be, why not graduate from DraftKings Precocious Kids HIgh School?
    - eru 3y ago
      Sorry, I don't understand the second sentence. Yes, I agree that public education has substantial costs. Both direct costs to the victims and societal externalities. Disassembling the monster would hopefully stop some of them.
      - gausswho 3y ago
        So if up to an individual, what do you think they would choose for their education if there were no mandates agreed upon by their government. DraftKings is a gambling titan that could offer a very profitable option.
        gyulai 3y ago
        I do not at all think that, if government wasn't in the business of setting those standards, the standards would turn out lower. Reputation would follow the institutions, and graduating from an institution that set lows standards wouldn't have any signalling power to prospective employers, so students wouldn't want to enroll there. What you actually see in countries that have both a private and public education system is that the private institutions compete on the grounds of who sets the highest standards, not on who offers the most riskless opportunity to students to get the degree, irrespective of how low an effort they put in or how incapable they are. If you're talking of a huge number of small institutions in combination with high mobility, then maybe reputation at the level of the individual institution wouldn't do the trick, but you would probably see certification and quality assurance agencies pop up to establish brands and enforce standards around them.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Iirc , the stats show the more school budget the worse education. If you put "free" money into something the parasites will gather. Systems exist to extend themselves, not yo provide the service for which they were created (systemantics).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mnemonicsloth 3y ago
  You're misinformed here. The biggest per-student spender on education in the developed world is the US: > In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... And everybody knows that US outcomes in primary and secondary education are not great. (Actually they're considerably better than many realize, but not as good as, say, Finland, which spends much less). So budgets aren't everything. And yet, at both the top and in the broad middle, US universities have some of the best outcomes in the world. So big budgets can still be good. Human brains are complicated. Big groups of them are more so. Transferring output of some brains to other brains in big groups is not at all straightforward. It's no wonder people would rather swap platitudes about bigger budgets.
  - eru 3y ago
    In the abstract, many people would agree that education budgets should be finite. But concretely, it always 'sounds good' to ask for bigger education budgets. No matter the size of the existing budget.
- tolciho 3y ago
  On the assumption that the modern education system teaches "confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that one cannot hide" (John Taylor Gatto) how would increasing the education budget help educate?
red_admiral 3y ago
If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical as you suggest? But to engage with your main point - I agree, and we can take Germany as an example here. During the Nazi period, everything was put in service of politics, so in math class you'd answer questions like "calculate how many extra hard-working German families we could support if we the state didn't have to spend so-and-so-many Reichsmarks per Jew". Since 1945, there's been a strong tradition to keep politics out of math and science education in Germany, and this seems to be mostly holding even in face of "social justice" pressure. Keeping politics out of "is Phonics a good teaching method?" would also have been a great idea in the English-speaking world.
- atoav 3y ago
  I teach at a German University and I have never in a decade perceived even the slightest scintilla of any student creating "social justice pressure" in any of my or the classes of my collegues. Whenever there was a social justice topic that made the waves, it was typically about some prof who legitimately acted like full blown asshole and thought everybody else has to put up with their ego — if anything disrupted education in that case, it was them, and the student's demands were basically a totally understandable demand to not have that guys ego get into the way of their education. As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't. Concerns about "social justice"-people putting pressure on us always come from people who got no idea and are out of the educational field for a while. As of now I am nearly convinced that this is probably a collective mind virus that is 99% fiction (and the 1% where it is true has so little impact it doesn't even matter).
  - adolph 3y ago
    > As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
hooverd 3y ago
Could you define politics here? I don't see how you could separate "politics" from education other than by just not teaching history or anything that touches on social issues.
- eru 3y ago
  I am talking about separating school and state (just like many countries separate church and state). If the school (or church) wants to be political, that's fine. As long as they don't force anyone to attend their lectures (or sermons), nor ask the taxpayer to keep them afloat.

throwaway71271 3y ago

> 40 years Sadly its almost 60 years :) Education tendencies seem to be incredibly latent and they have huge inertia. For example in The Netherlands the amount of languages you speak used to be a measure for intelligence, so most schools teach 4 languages from the age of 12 (out of 9 subject 4 are languages). In the same time, languages are the easiest to test, and also the easiest to progress a mass of people. The easiest thing to test (and show improvement and etc) in the bloom pyramid is memory. You surely have people trying their hardest, like Julius Miller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s9psf01ldo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s9psf01ldo (1964) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3szmCF8-L8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3szmCF8-L8 but the system does not seem to respond to them/ But it seems the education institution is not trying to teach people anything.