education is primarily a barrier to entry: true or false

Panglossian!

it might do, yes, but from their POV it might suck to have to hear about these things and be graded on your interest in them when you know your career plans don't include them

oh yeah! We're finally seeing the results of "democratizing" the educational system. It's neither bad nor good imo. If "society" requires a college degree for most anything then we must become degree mills.

It sucks to teach math, chemistry, history, and I dunno Virgil to students who regard college as the means by which to acquire a piece of paper that signifies "You're okay to start your own business."

it's pretty sad that the idea of learning for learning's sake has such little purchase right now, because that's pretty much the only "utility" of many courses, at high school and above.

then again that doesn't apply across the board, making a 15-yr-old who dislikes chemistry and knows at that point that their adult life will not involve any of it sit through lessons is just going to alienate them from the system and reinforce the idea that they're just doing it for a piece of paper.

It sucks to teach math, chemistry, history, and I dunno Virgil to students who regard college as the means by which to acquire a piece of paper that signifies "You're okay to start your own business."

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 14 March 2012 23:45 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it might do, yes, but from their POV it might suck to have to hear about these things and be graded on your interest in them when you know your career plans don't include them

― truth fromgbs (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 4:48 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but if you know that your career plans do not require such things, in any way shape or form, and you are in a school that does require them, then the only real problem is that you've chosen the wrong school. i mean, basically the only thing you really need to start a business is a line of credit.

but when the school in question is high school ... ?

it's pretty sad that the idea of learning for learning's sake has such little purchase right now,

did it ever? Seriously! ILE is one of the few communities in which I've encountered people like me who used to read and write because they gave him pleasure.

i agree with noodle vague upthread (v. beautifully put). some rough thoughts: there is this idea that logic, reasoning, critical thinking and other side effects of learning math and science will serve someone just for being those skills, directly applied to life, but i think it's more about learning how to perform these skills in a setting, i.e., what takes precedence for success is how able someone is to meet and perform the requirements necessary to gain membership in a group. sometimes those requirements are "hard" rather than "soft" or whatever but i still think this is a big reason why secondary education and "the field" (knowledge/production/market work) exhibit so many disconnects, those two cultures require two different performance profiles, with different amounts of element overlap.

i think education culture, in the u.s. at least, has many tangled and contradictory aims and claims. the impulse contenderizer is spouting above for one. the idea that pure education is about a kind of personal liberation, which needs to be majorly questioned and sorted out because it ends up being a cover for a lot of hypocrisy.

lots of x-posts of course

yeah, but if you know that your career plans do not require such things, in any way shape or form, and you are in a school that does require them, then the only real problem is that you've chosen the wrong school. i mean, basically the only thing you really need to start a business is a line of cred

The subjects I mentioned are part of most colleges' core curriculum.

but when the school in question is high school ... ?

fair point, but i'm good with everybody having to learn to crawl, even if they're pretty damn sure that they have no intention of ever walking

it's pretty sad that the idea of learning for learning's sake has such little purchase right now

this ties in with what Alfred's saying and what i said about the different values in education systems. 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

do u guys ever feel like with something like education that so many words have already been written about the topic that anything you had to say about it would just be a drop in the ocean?

so the UK still produces business students who can write actual compound sentences? Wow.

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