3 ms·

What is the point of education? Not the point of learning, but the point of schools and degrees and such? One could argue that it's mostly about learning obedi

by beat 12y ago

What is the point of education? Not the point of learning, but the point of schools and degrees and such? One could argue that it's mostly about learning obedience, how to worship the clock, and how to tolerate doing things that are arbitrary and stupid. School isn't to make us good people. It's to make us good employees.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
You're confusing education with schooling. They are not the same, as much as their equivalence has been deeply ingrained as a public axiom. I do agree, otherwise. Schooling has an orthogonal purpose to education at large, even though individual schooling systems might have higher educational value than others.
- beat 12y ago
  Actually, I was trying to de-confuse them. Formal education and learning are often conflated, which leads to cognitive dissonance when education doesn't equate to effective learning.
rapala 12y ago
But all that math, biology and stuff, that has nothing to do about beeing a "good employee". There's a lot of things that the school system genuinely tries to teach. To me it seems that those life skills are an added bonus. Some of them are also requirements to mass teaching. For example, every needs to be at the same place at the same time. That beeing said, mass teaching like we do it might not be the best thing. We have tools to facilitate teaching that for example does not require everyone to be at the same physical location. Those same tools could also be better utilized in work to enable remote work. Which would then mean one less life skill to teach at school.
vitd 12y ago
Is it learning obedience and worshipping the clock, or is it patience and self-control? I went to lunch with some coworkers the other day. The restaurant we went to told us there would be about a 5 minute wait because some machine or other was just repaired. One of my coworkers had a little freak-out about how long it was taking and stormed out to go to another restaurant. (And this was a "fast food" restaurant we were already at.) I'm pretty sure he hadn't finished walking to the next restaurant by the time we got our food, but waiting an extra few minutes was too much for him. The rest of us had a minimal amount of patience and it was no big deal. He wasn't a slave to some clock and he didn't have to obey anyone telling him to wait. But he also didn't get what he claimed he wanted (to be served faster).
- beat 12y ago
  Why can't it be both?

by beat 12y ago

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

You're confusing education with schooling. They are not the same, as much as their equivalence has been deeply ingrained as a public axiom. I do agree, otherwise. Schooling has an orthogonal purpose to education at large, even though individual schooling systems might have higher educational value than others.

beat 12y ago
Actually, I was trying to de-confuse them. Formal education and learning are often conflated, which leads to cognitive dissonance when education doesn't equate to effective learning.

rapala 12y ago

But all that math, biology and stuff, that has nothing to do about beeing a "good employee". There's a lot of things that the school system genuinely tries to teach. To me it seems that those life skills are an added bonus. Some of them are also requirements to mass teaching. For example, every needs to be at the same place at the same time. That beeing said, mass teaching like we do it might not be the best thing. We have tools to facilitate teaching that for example does not require everyone to be at the same physical location. Those same tools could also be better utilized in work to enable remote work. Which would then mean one less life skill to teach at school.

vitd 12y ago

Is it learning obedience and worshipping the clock, or is it patience and self-control? I went to lunch with some coworkers the other day. The restaurant we went to told us there would be about a 5 minute wait because some machine or other was just repaired. One of my coworkers had a little freak-out about how long it was taking and stormed out to go to another restaurant. (And this was a "fast food" restaurant we were already at.) I'm pretty sure he hadn't finished walking to the next restaurant by the time we got our food, but waiting an extra few minutes was too much for him. The rest of us had a minimal amount of patience and it was no big deal. He wasn't a slave to some clock and he didn't have to obey anyone telling him to wait. But he also didn't get what he claimed he wanted (to be served faster).

beat 12y ago
Why can't it be both?