5 ms·

That depends how you look at it. One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, tha

by shubb 13y ago

That depends how you look at it. One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward. I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it. If I am bored by a project, I still do it. I am lucky that I generally enjoy and care about my work, but some days like everyone, I am working for this abstract, monthly reward. Exams were like that - you liked some subjects, and read them willingly. Others, you never saw yourself using, but you worked at them to get grades, because grades bought you a salary. You also probably learned to fear the future. I know I do. More than studying at French because I needed that grade, I studied at French because not getting that grade might mean not going to college, might mean not getting a middle class job. And then... what? I didn't know. I didn't know any non-middle class people. It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends). I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy? The left of philosophy (Marx -> Baudrillard) wrote about how we had fetishized symbols over real things. There is some truth in that, but seeing it has... value, only where it informs our actions. In Silicon Valley, young employees trade their 20s for money, one 12 hour day at a time. The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow. Where were they trained to do that?

Nursie 13y ago
All I'm saying (and really all I'm saying) is that I disagree that suppression of individuality and creativity are key goals of education. They may well be outcomes. They probably are, and that's sad and we should certainly not be content with broken educational systems. I just don't think that's anyone's aim, perhaps just a miserable side effect. >> Where were they trained to do that? I'm not sure, I seem to have skipped those lessons. But then I'm one of those people that periodically takes several months off to go travelling.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Johann Fichte, Alfred Whitehead and Ross L. Finney are some thinkers off the top of my mind that were influential in shaping the compulsory schooling system. Intent is something many people are willing to brush off as mere conspiracy theory, but it is present. Hanlon's razor does not necessarily apply to political contexts.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    I'm not sure what bearing an 18th century philosopher has on anything much. I find philosophy as a discipline to be rather self important and contribute little but linguistic sophistry to most debates. That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point. I'm not familiar with Finney. Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot? It's nonsense.
    - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
      Whitehead's opinions on education were somewhat mixed and eclectic, but an individualist he was not. He noted the pivotal importance of getting people to perform arduous tasks and conditioning them through education, as well as the teacher as this godlike authority figure who is the sole guide of a child's education. An anti-autodidact. In many ways, he promoted the master/slave dialectic. you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot? That's the thing. It wasn't really nefarious to them. The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there. Woodrow Wilson himself had this to say in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
ahomescu1 13y ago
That was a very long way of saying "I do work for my employer so I get paid". School doesn't teach you that, hunger does; even without school, you'd still need money to live, and even people who drop out of school have jobs (unless they're rich or run their own businesses).
- randomdata 13y ago
  While the tax code may use a different definition for clarity, having a job is still technically running your own business in every other way. What is interesting is that while there are an infinite number of ways to make money, the vast majority of the population all choose to run their business in the exact same way (single client, set working hours, defined pay schedule, etc.). Is that business model chosen because it is the most efficient way to run a business, or is it because they learned to run their business that way from an external source, such as school? I'm not sure we can garner any meaningful data from dropouts as only 8% of the population (in the US) drop out of the public education system, and I expect you'll find that the majority of them drop out in their later years, after already spending many years exposed to the system.
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    Re "set working hours": I think a lot of it goes back to early Industrial Age, when blue-collar people worked a lot more than now, as much as 14-16 hours/day. Most of their life was work, there wasn't any structure around it, and they worked for a single factory (the same factory, it didn't make sense to move around, or maybe there was only one factory in their town). Set working hours (limited at 8 hours/day) were a limitation imposed by the workers (or unions) against being over-worked (8hrs/day is much better than 14-16hrs/day). In most countries, this is still established by legislation. Re "defined pay schedule": In some fields, you can get paid by a percentage-based commission (real estate, car sales, middle men in general, actors, movie directors etc). That's not always practical, and some employees prefer a fixed monthly salary (versus the insecurity of a percentage).
anigbrowl 13y ago
One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another this is entirely appropriate, and has nothing to do with industrialization. to have a mate, raise children, and prosper, you need to be able to respond to the needs of at least one other adult, one or more demanding children who are incapable of satisfying their own needs, and tohe ability to do these things in an environment over which you have relatively little control. It's all very well to complain about abstraction and what Marx dubbed 'the dull compulsion of economic relations,' but you might as well complain about the fact that your personal creativity is still constrained by the reality of your body's needs for food and sleep, no matter how much you resent stopping what you're doing to make a sandwich. Likewise, I really don't like the fact that my dog tends to wake me up around 6am, but it's not because of any ideology; if I ignore his entreaties by refusing to get out of bed then sooner or later he'll end up peeing on the floor. I mention this very prosaic example because of the lessons of Zen Buddhism (a philosophy dedicated to the identification and avoidance of unnecessary abstractions) is that while meditation can free you from illusions, it's not going to free you from the basic necessities of living in the world.
com2kid 13y ago
> One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward. Really? That is what you got out of schooling? If so, I am sorry for you. Let me tell you what I got out of schooling. - An appreciation for the English language and the many ways in which it can be used. - An understanding of the beauty of mathematics. - A cynical realization that history was written and controlled by Old Dead White Men. - Basic knowledge of the arts. (Not enough, budget cuts are quite unfortunate!) - The ability to think critically about a problem and apply any of a multitude of problem solving or analysis techniques to its resolution. - An appreciation for the beauty of nature. - Knowledge of the human body. - Knowledge of biology and genetics. And that was just my public school education! I went on to college and learned far more! I will readily confess that roughly 50% of schooling is a waste of time, but that is because students are not being pushed hard enough, rather teachers will assign one book to read over the course of 2 months! Of course this all changes once one goes off to college, where all of a sudden 150+ pages of reading per class per week can easily be expected! > I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it. Quite unfortunate. I am in the privileged position of only having to work on things that I love, I have a manager certainly, but he respects that he has hired me as a professional and he trusts in my judgement as to how I go about solving problems. > It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends). I can imagine it. I'd be bored shitless. I happen to love what I do for a living. Is it work? Sure technically, in regards that I get up, get in my car, drive a few miles away, park my car, and step into an office. But honestly? I count everyone I work with as a friend. There is a smile on my face from when I step into the office to when I leave. There is a grand sum total of 0 things in this world that I enjoy more than what I do for work each and every day. > I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy? I feel angry that he is selfish and is thinking only of himself! There is so much that can be done to improve the world. If you told me he left his job that was of little to no societal value, and went off to help others around the world, then I would applaud. But to go off and do nothing but laze around? What good is that, to have the sum of one's life measure up to not but self indulgence. > The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow. The reward is impact! Change! The reward is having millions of people use what one has created! Programmers are artists, and our audience is the world! Every day a million symphonies are played out, and a thousand more sonatas written to be performed in the morrow.

by shubb 13y ago

Nursie 13y ago

All I'm saying (and really all I'm saying) is that I disagree that suppression of individuality and creativity are key goals of education. They may well be outcomes. They probably are, and that's sad and we should certainly not be content with broken educational systems. I just don't think that's anyone's aim, perhaps just a miserable side effect. >> Where were they trained to do that? I'm not sure, I seem to have skipped those lessons. But then I'm one of those people that periodically takes several months off to go travelling.

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Johann Fichte, Alfred Whitehead and Ross L. Finney are some thinkers off the top of my mind that were influential in shaping the compulsory schooling system. Intent is something many people are willing to brush off as mere conspiracy theory, but it is present. Hanlon's razor does not necessarily apply to political contexts.
- Nursie 13y ago
  I'm not sure what bearing an 18th century philosopher has on anything much. I find philosophy as a discipline to be rather self important and contribute little but linguistic sophistry to most debates. That said I have heard of Alfred Whitehead, and his opinions on education (if he did indeed influence the forming of early compulsory/state education systems) seem so far removed from any idea of suppressing creativity and individualism that I'm not sure why you'd drag him out to support your point. I'm not familiar with Finney. Hanlons razor would apply to the wider situation regardless - you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot? It's nonsense.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    Whitehead's opinions on education were somewhat mixed and eclectic, but an individualist he was not. He noted the pivotal importance of getting people to perform arduous tasks and conditioning them through education, as well as the teacher as this godlike authority figure who is the sole guide of a child's education. An anti-autodidact. In many ways, he promoted the master/slave dialectic. you don't think that any of the army of educators would have caught wind of this nefarious plot? That's the thing. It wasn't really nefarious to them. The upper class pretty much had a consensus that this was necessary. It started off as industrialization rapidly kicked off nearing the end of the 19th century (especially in the USA), and a way to breed a trustworthy yet disposable workforce was in order. It then went downhill from there. Woodrow Wilson himself had this to say in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

ahomescu1 13y ago

That was a very long way of saying "I do work for my employer so I get paid". School doesn't teach you that, hunger does; even without school, you'd still need money to live, and even people who drop out of school have jobs (unless they're rich or run their own businesses).

randomdata 13y ago
While the tax code may use a different definition for clarity, having a job is still technically running your own business in every other way. What is interesting is that while there are an infinite number of ways to make money, the vast majority of the population all choose to run their business in the exact same way (single client, set working hours, defined pay schedule, etc.). Is that business model chosen because it is the most efficient way to run a business, or is it because they learned to run their business that way from an external source, such as school? I'm not sure we can garner any meaningful data from dropouts as only 8% of the population (in the US) drop out of the public education system, and I expect you'll find that the majority of them drop out in their later years, after already spending many years exposed to the system.
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  Re "set working hours": I think a lot of it goes back to early Industrial Age, when blue-collar people worked a lot more than now, as much as 14-16 hours/day. Most of their life was work, there wasn't any structure around it, and they worked for a single factory (the same factory, it didn't make sense to move around, or maybe there was only one factory in their town). Set working hours (limited at 8 hours/day) were a limitation imposed by the workers (or unions) against being over-worked (8hrs/day is much better than 14-16hrs/day). In most countries, this is still established by legislation. Re "defined pay schedule": In some fields, you can get paid by a percentage-based commission (real estate, car sales, middle men in general, actors, movie directors etc). That's not always practical, and some employees prefer a fixed monthly salary (versus the insecurity of a percentage).

anigbrowl 13y ago

One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another this is entirely appropriate, and has nothing to do with industrialization. to have a mate, raise children, and prosper, you need to be able to respond to the needs of at least one other adult, one or more demanding children who are incapable of satisfying their own needs, and tohe ability to do these things in an environment over which you have relatively little control. It's all very well to complain about abstraction and what Marx dubbed 'the dull compulsion of economic relations,' but you might as well complain about the fact that your personal creativity is still constrained by the reality of your body's needs for food and sleep, no matter how much you resent stopping what you're doing to make a sandwich. Likewise, I really don't like the fact that my dog tends to wake me up around 6am, but it's not because of any ideology; if I ignore his entreaties by refusing to get out of bed then sooner or later he'll end up peeing on the floor. I mention this very prosaic example because of the lessons of Zen Buddhism (a philosophy dedicated to the identification and avoidance of unnecessary abstractions) is that while meditation can free you from illusions, it's not going to free you from the basic necessities of living in the world.

com2kid 13y ago

> One important thing I and you gained from our education was the learned ability to apply ourselves to tasks set by another, that had little relevance to our lives and dreams, for abstract reward. Really? That is what you got out of schooling? If so, I am sorry for you. Let me tell you what I got out of schooling. - An appreciation for the English language and the many ways in which it can be used. - An understanding of the beauty of mathematics. - A cynical realization that history was written and controlled by Old Dead White Men. - Basic knowledge of the arts. (Not enough, budget cuts are quite unfortunate!) - The ability to think critically about a problem and apply any of a multitude of problem solving or analysis techniques to its resolution. - An appreciation for the beauty of nature. - Knowledge of the human body. - Knowledge of biology and genetics. And that was just my public school education! I went on to college and learned far more! I will readily confess that roughly 50% of schooling is a waste of time, but that is because students are not being pushed hard enough, rather teachers will assign one book to read over the course of 2 months! Of course this all changes once one goes off to college, where all of a sudden 150+ pages of reading per class per week can easily be expected! > I use that skill every day - I am an employee, and I create what my employer tells me to, the benefit to me being a salary. If I disagree with my employer about the value of making that thing, I still do it. Quite unfortunate. I am in the privileged position of only having to work on things that I love, I have a manager certainly, but he respects that he has hired me as a professional and he trusts in my judgement as to how I go about solving problems. > It is very hard for me, maybe for you too, to imagine a world where life was not geared (8 hours a day) towards working for an abstract salary, paid in abstract money, that will become food, and rent on a small flat in digital bytes without ever becoming cash that you can hold (after all, the bank doesn't actually hold the amount of money it lends). I can imagine it. I'd be bored shitless. I happen to love what I do for a living. Is it work? Sure technically, in regards that I get up, get in my car, drive a few miles away, park my car, and step into an office. But honestly? I count everyone I work with as a friend. There is a smile on my face from when I step into the office to when I leave. There is a grand sum total of 0 things in this world that I enjoy more than what I do for work each and every day. > I hear about a man quitting a good job (one with lots of abstract reward), to spend a couple of years doing the things he wants (Concrete things. Travelling, creating according to his own will, actually seeing his family). I feel he is irresponsible, even though his savings mean his family will never go on foodstamps. I feel a pang of anger driven by... envy? I feel angry that he is selfish and is thinking only of himself! There is so much that can be done to improve the world. If you told me he left his job that was of little to no societal value, and went off to help others around the world, then I would applaud. But to go off and do nothing but laze around? What good is that, to have the sum of one's life measure up to not but self indulgence. > The reward is abstract, future, retirement, and always tomorrow. The reward is impact! Change! The reward is having millions of people use what one has created! Programmers are artists, and our audience is the world! Every day a million symphonies are played out, and a thousand more sonatas written to be performed in the morrow.