education is primarily a barrier to entry: true or false

i definitely think that education as a value in itself is being pushed out in favour of consumerism and the needs of employers, but ironically in the UK at least we still seem pretty bad at creating an education system that's meeting the actual needs of employers

ha otm the UK's speciality really is in pitching for a compromise and ending up with the worst of both worlds

hey, look! matt responded to one of my posts without directly calling me a racist. red letter day...

'learning for learning's sake'

i mean, i dunno, does nobody else even find this a troublesome concept to begin with? learning what? decided by whom? to what end? there's more baggage there than is assumed, and i think the attitude of 'learning what someone else finds interesting for someone else's sake' probably turns a lot more off the idea of education than many other factors discussed itt

has anyone mentioned yet that the current US educational system is a frankenstein's monster hodgepodge of remnants from the transition between agrarian + industrialization?

"like we're in charge of making good tacos or something."

frankly, i would have liked to have gone to taco-U... i guess that does speak to an apprenticeship-envy.

gonna say it's more a test of yr ability/willingness to jump through hoops, useful skill for modern life imo

dude, what could possibly be wrong with a system that asks you to take the most important exams of your life just as you're discovering alcohol and sex?

otms

so is society mayyyne xp

learning for learnings sake implies not grading

^^

i guess by learning for learning's sake we're talking about the idea that a broad base of general knowledge and skills might be important for kids developmentally. i wdn't argue that it can be done in a very ham-fisted and counterproductive fashion, but as a general idea i'm good with it. sometimes kids have to do things against their natural inclinations which are mostly eating jelly babies, watching tv and beating on weaker kids?

the quality of one's education is much more a function of one's attitude toward it than it having taken place in any particular scenario. there are limits to this, of course, (yes, engineers and scientists) but no, ppl do not need a college degree to be social media specialists and seo rock stars.

a degree is much more a symbol of having undergone a process than that process actually involving learning.

eating jelly babies, watching tv and beating on weaker kids?

see, p sure two out of these three things are valuable life experience and can lead to future success

also in the UK at least there is way too much emphasis on grading in situations where it doesn't matter.

obviously if you want to do brain surgery or airline piloting as an adult then some sort of certificate of competence wd be in order.

also one of the problems with this education system (and a lot of our discussion) is that it takes ability as a given rather than subject to growth - it confuses snapshots w/ maps

CA/PA

^ also where most of my college nights went tbf

noodle vague how can watching tv be a natural inclination when tv is made by man

so are jelly babies

we naturally engage with our environment, inc jelly babies

nah i don't really buy the "kids are savages" mentality but "kids are not the best judges of their own long-term self-interest" is pretty uncontroversial. i mean, people are not the best judges of etc. on the whole

ya that's a good route to what tho, elitism at best in the educational system, inc classics as a part of a vocational education

shit that's a rubbish post, i'll tear it apart myselg if u gimme a minute

i wd tend to argue that if at 15 you've decided you're really not interested in Chemistry that might be as much about how you've been taught and other extraneous factors as anything - the problem is still intrinsic to the educational system rather than "education" as a concept itself

nobody arguing against 'education' as a concept tho!

I don't know if education is a barrier for entry but taking all the state and national-level BS tests are...

the education system exists within a wider social context true, so you have a point there darragh but we shd be offering opportunities and experiences to kids throughout their time in school, even if they don't take them - if they're not interested, find something interesting to pull them in! rather than just being like "okay you want to be a spot-welder well we'll just learn spot-welding and some basic literacy and numeracy from here on"

totally agree!

just not- well you've tried this and hate it and aren't any good at it but it's curricular and you've to do it, even at a less-than-useless level, for another four years

whether that's spot-welding or maths

i come across a lot of poor practice that i won't elaborate on in a public forum but teachers and students are only human i guess

what you guys think of montessori-style?

teachers are only human, students are the most digusting savages tho tbf

xp

when i had a training session on it from some practitioners i thought it seemed very anal re. the orderliness of the classroom but i liked a lot of the philosophy

another real value of high-school education that sometimes gets overlooked in discussions like this is that education creates an environment and then measures people's ability to adapt to and succeed within it. to that extent, it both (passively) teaches students how to suss out and satisfy the environment's demands, and screens for those who can or will not do this. the environment is both curricular and social, and though it's not a perfect match, i think it does a reasonably good job of approximating and preparing for both university-level study and for some generic vision of "the modern workplace".

among the most basic lessons taught and screened for in high school are "get along" and "do what's required". these are basic workplace survival skills for almost any kind of career, imo. in order to succeed at most jobs, you have to subordinate your own desires the expectations of a rather narrow role. regardless of what field you eventually choose, you will probably have to spend years doing mundane shit that doesn't intrinsically fascinate you in order to acquire the advanced skills that will allow you to succeed in the long run. you will have to dress appropriately, treat your supposed superiors with deference, do boring work whose utility you don't fully comprehend, and avoid conflict with your peers. high school teaches just these things.

also, i think it's kind of a good thing that high school education isn't based on what kids think they're going to want to do with the rest of their lives. as others have pointed out, our teenage years probably aren't the best time to be making long-term life decisions. therefore, i think it's good that high school education aims in general for broad-based "college preparedness" of the sort that suits just about any eventual career path.

education creates an environment and then measures people's ability to adapt to and succeed within it

so does, well, anything that would replace it nobody is advocating teen anarchy here

thought this thread was going to be about sex

i think that one of the best things that educational institutions teach students is (pace Howard Stern) when to shut up and to sit down.

i was about to literally say the same thing, but not in approbation

I don't mind the general college-prep drift of US high school education, but the whole 'learning a manual trade' aspect of high school (e.g. welding or auto repair) has completely gone to hell locally and I suspect nationally, too. It needs to be revivied and strengthened, imo. There are a substantial number of students who respond well to this sort of trade-school emphasis, but who find the whole college-prep side of school unbearable. A lot of them drop out or tune out.

that these are purely artificial barriers, designed more or less to suss out your socioeconomic background or parent's educational level

this is wildly otm

he once told me that they have a unofficial policy of just throwing out any resumes from recent ivy league grads, MIT grads, caltech grads, etc and skipping down to the resumes from state school / community college transfers

dude obviously doesn't work for a large law firm or a hedge fund ... where such people are hunted after like foxes on an english moor (and by people with the same type of mindset, too).

among the most basic lessons taught and screened for in high school are "get along" and "do what's required

yeah i mean if we want to teach this to kids we could just send them coal mines

the problem w/ 'barrier to entry' is that it sorta suggests that it's a system that was designed from above. in some cases that's true, but not that many. a md is definitely a 'barrier to entry' to the medical field - legally, you cannot be a doctor without an md. it's a profession that requires tons of technical skills and a small mistake can kill somebody, having a strict barrier to entry is probably a good thing, though people might argue that there are better ways to go about it than the system we have set up today.

for the most part education doesn't provide highly technical skills and doesn't get you past *legal* barriers to entry. it's better understood as a collection of ~signals~ and the job market / society responds to those signals, sometimes creating what effectively adds up to a barrier to entry in the collective response.

if mark zuckerberg wanted to work for a tech company, despite not having a college degree, I imagine he could get a job. if he wanted to be a lawyer, he'd still have to go to school and pass the bar. if he wanted to be a mechanic, he'd still have to learn technical skills.

I've linked this before, but this is my favorite writer on the subject:
http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

that's a great article

i think the argument in the OP is that school these days is 90% #1, 2 and 3, which (like most ivy league grads i know) are of dubious value to anybody

Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire? Beginning with this startling fact, this program systematically explores many of the assumptions that we hold about learning to show that education is based on a series of myths

http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html

^^ this is from the annenberg foundation, btw, so steer clear if you hate liberal bullshit

yeah i mean if we want to teach this to kids we could just send them coal mines

yeah, but i didn't say that's all we're teaching. the college/white collar workplace prep environment part is just as crucial.

uh

college and the white-collar workplace have little in common

speaking of which, which white-collar workplace are you referring to?

the only interchangeable white-collar workplace i can think of is admin

white-collar workplace rules taught in high school:

1) do what the boss says
2) don't get in fights on school (work) property
3) timeliness and neatness count
4) dress appropriately and speak with deference to your supposed "superiors"
5) etc, etc, etc.

college and the white-collar workplace have little in common

i'd say that they have a huge amount in common, having spent a good deal of my life in both.

xp to my own post

I missed mordy's post upthread but I'm generally in agreement w/ robin hanson on this / said more or less the same thing / as does kevin carey