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>They should focus on school. Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? The direction we give kids co

>They should focus on school. Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? The direction we give kids coming up always seems to lag behind reality by 10 or 20 years. Perhaps we shouldn't stand in the way of the new generation figuring things out for themselves in this brave new world. The old playbooks to a solid middle class life are increasingly outdated.

array_key_first 5mo ago
> Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? Also so they don't end up stupid and useless like a potted plant. People with too little education are easy to manipulate and dim. They're perfect fodder for the propaganda machines. It would be nice if we could just let kids loose like wild animals and they'd, somehow, figure everything out. But no, we actually have to try. Otherwise they end up illiterate and eating so much candy they throw up. Because they're kids.
- hackinthebochs 5mo ago
  None of your concerns are relevant. We're not talking about 6 year olds here but presumably 12-16 year olds. And the issue isn't whether they drop out of school, but whether school must be their sole focus.
  - array_key_first 5mo ago
    12-16 year olds still do not have the restraint to be essentially self educating. I'm sorry, but this is a bad bad idea. The primary focus of children should be education. They have their whole entire lives to be a cog in the capitalist machine. We don't need to speedrun children getting a soul crushing office job. They can spend time learning how to critically analyze text or how to learn choreography for a musical.
    - hackinthebochs 5mo ago
      > They can spend time learning how to critically analyze text or how to learn choreography for a musical. But to what end? There is zero value to many of these kids in learning to do these things. Again, we're pulling from a playbook on how to live a successful life that is decades out of date. A kid who has a potentially successful side hustle should be encouraged to follow it. And besides, we're only talking about a small number of kids here. Those that have shown aptitude and initiative for some alternate path. In many cases opportunity is fleeting and must be grasped when it appears. On the other hand, school will always be there. How many skilled high school aged programmers in the late 90s were encouraged by their parents to stay in school and missed out on a decade head start on their careers? How many potential founders missed out on the golden era for computer startups? (Imagine if Bill Gates had followed his parents advice!) How many kids wasted years in college only to be saddled with a crushing debt burden and no relevant jobs to show for it? Those who have suffered for following the standard advice never seem to get a mention in these discussions. Not everyone must or should follow the same path. We as a society need to be more tolerant to experimentation and outliers.
      - array_key_first 5mo ago
        There is a lot of value, it's just that children are very bad at estimating value. That's why they'd rather spend all their time eating candy and going to the skate park - they're children. Apparently some adults see it that way, too, which is shocking to me. Again, kids do not need to speedrun being cogs in the machines. Could SOME of them hypothetically become millionaires like 5 years earlier? I mean... I guess? But that's frankly one of the stupidest justifications for anything ever that I have ever heard. The reality is 99.9999% of people are destined for the same thing: a normal career, with a normal salary. Most people are not going to be "entrepreneurs", and most "entrepreneurs" that I have met are not even entrepreneurs, they're scam artists. Which is a different thing, although you could say technically they're both self-made. Look, it's a game of average. Are there SOME people out there who could benefit from less education? Sure. For the majority of people, education leads to higher lifetime income, and it's not even close. We have the statistics on this. We don't know ahead of time which one someone will be. So, we should optimize for the best odds. > hose who have suffered for following the standard advice never seem to get a mention in these discussions. No no, those people get WAY too much mention. What actually doesn't get enough mention are the people who are forced into lifetime poverty because they never graduated high school and are therefore essentially unemployable. Which is about 10,000x more common than the Bill Gates types. So, give me fucking break. I know some people who didn't graduate high school, and I know a lot of people who opted to go straight into the workforce post highschool instead of getting a degree. None of those people are doing good.

array_key_first 5mo ago

> Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? Also so they don't end up stupid and useless like a potted plant. People with too little education are easy to manipulate and dim. They're perfect fodder for the propaganda machines. It would be nice if we could just let kids loose like wild animals and they'd, somehow, figure everything out. But no, we actually have to try. Otherwise they end up illiterate and eating so much candy they throw up. Because they're kids.

hackinthebochs 5mo ago
None of your concerns are relevant. We're not talking about 6 year olds here but presumably 12-16 year olds. And the issue isn't whether they drop out of school, but whether school must be their sole focus.
- array_key_first 5mo ago
  12-16 year olds still do not have the restraint to be essentially self educating. I'm sorry, but this is a bad bad idea. The primary focus of children should be education. They have their whole entire lives to be a cog in the capitalist machine. We don't need to speedrun children getting a soul crushing office job. They can spend time learning how to critically analyze text or how to learn choreography for a musical.
  - hackinthebochs 5mo ago
    > They can spend time learning how to critically analyze text or how to learn choreography for a musical. But to what end? There is zero value to many of these kids in learning to do these things. Again, we're pulling from a playbook on how to live a successful life that is decades out of date. A kid who has a potentially successful side hustle should be encouraged to follow it. And besides, we're only talking about a small number of kids here. Those that have shown aptitude and initiative for some alternate path. In many cases opportunity is fleeting and must be grasped when it appears. On the other hand, school will always be there. How many skilled high school aged programmers in the late 90s were encouraged by their parents to stay in school and missed out on a decade head start on their careers? How many potential founders missed out on the golden era for computer startups? (Imagine if Bill Gates had followed his parents advice!) How many kids wasted years in college only to be saddled with a crushing debt burden and no relevant jobs to show for it? Those who have suffered for following the standard advice never seem to get a mention in these discussions. Not everyone must or should follow the same path. We as a society need to be more tolerant to experimentation and outliers.
    - array_key_first 5mo ago
      There is a lot of value, it's just that children are very bad at estimating value. That's why they'd rather spend all their time eating candy and going to the skate park - they're children. Apparently some adults see it that way, too, which is shocking to me. Again, kids do not need to speedrun being cogs in the machines. Could SOME of them hypothetically become millionaires like 5 years earlier? I mean... I guess? But that's frankly one of the stupidest justifications for anything ever that I have ever heard. The reality is 99.9999% of people are destined for the same thing: a normal career, with a normal salary. Most people are not going to be "entrepreneurs", and most "entrepreneurs" that I have met are not even entrepreneurs, they're scam artists. Which is a different thing, although you could say technically they're both self-made. Look, it's a game of average. Are there SOME people out there who could benefit from less education? Sure. For the majority of people, education leads to higher lifetime income, and it's not even close. We have the statistics on this. We don't know ahead of time which one someone will be. So, we should optimize for the best odds. > hose who have suffered for following the standard advice never seem to get a mention in these discussions. No no, those people get WAY too much mention. What actually doesn't get enough mention are the people who are forced into lifetime poverty because they never graduated high school and are therefore essentially unemployable. Which is about 10,000x more common than the Bill Gates types. So, give me fucking break. I know some people who didn't graduate high school, and I know a lot of people who opted to go straight into the workforce post highschool instead of getting a degree. None of those people are doing good.