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We may have to revise our education system so that it’s not connected to our credential system.
There’s a story about Einstein teaching physics and letting the kids who didn’t want to be there leave and do something else with the time. The ones who remained were quite attentive.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they’re ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
In the meantime even when I was in high school in the 1980s, our system was created to sort kids into sports stars that might become college players, STEM kids that might become scientists and engineers, and House Hufflepuff (common laborers).
The education system has only gotten progressively worse since then, as its budget increases have not kept up with inflation. And then there’s the whole effort to insert evangelist Christianity (+ American Exceptionalism + Conservativism–Capitalism) into public school.
And to this day, we still use the lecture / lab / test model that excludes a lot of alternative comprehension and learning models. We’re not looking to teach kids, rather we’re looking to harvest the geniuses, and turn the others into bonded laborers and soldiers for billionaire vanity projects.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they’re ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
Can you link to some more information on this? I’m curious about alternative education models
Unschooling and by extension, the democratically run Free Schools come to mind.
I’m 40 and I can’t remember a time when teachers were OK, I can only imagine how bad it’s gotten in this day and age. I weep for the future
My ninth grade homeroom teacher seemed pretty okay but he kept a fifth of Jack in his desk so maybe that helped
Dare me to drive?
Have they ever been?
Correction: Education is not OK.
AI is just giving poor kids the same opportunities rich kids have had for decades. Opportunities for cheating the system that was made specifically not to give students the best education possible but instead to bring them up to speed on the bare minimum required to become factory workers.
Except we don’t have very many factories any more. And we don’t have jobs for all these graduates that pay a living wage.
The banks are going to have to get involved soon. They’re going to have to figure out a way to load up working-age people with long term debt without college being involved.
Yeah, lots of people don’t realize that the public education system was designed to prepare kids for factories. It goes all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, when parents were working 16 hour days in the factories. They needed some way to keep their kids occupied while dad was stamping steel and mom was weaving fabric. The factory workers lived in corporate-owned towns, and all of their needs were (hopefully) covered by the factory owners. And along this line of thinking, the factory owners started public schools, both to keep the kids occupied during the day, and to prep them to work in the factories once they were old enough to know how.
Basically everything about modern education is run like a factory. Everything is standardized to the median 85% of the population; students who deviate too far from that are punished or segregated via special education. You work (study) when the bell tells you, eat when the bell tells you, shit when the bell tells you. You’re expected to sit quietly and do your work, no socializing except when the bell tells you. Et cetera… The entire idea was to give students a baseline level of education that they would need to work in the factory, and prep children to work in factories under the same grueling conditions.
the banks are going to have to get involved soon…figure out a way to load up working-age people with long-term debt
Why the hell do the banks need to step in? System for an indentured workforce is already in full effect:
- no safety net, unemployment difficult to get and punishing poverty if it’s all you have
- require a car (e.g. initial capital and ongoing cost) to participate in many jobs
- have oligopolies rent out housing that is so expensive even those with full-time work can’t save any money
- have oligopolies own groceries, they maximize profits (consumer cost)
- have oligopolies own medical facilities, they maximize profits (consumer cost)
- stuff people full of consumer desires and give them easy access to credit
Rich and poor cheat the system in different ways.
The rich can afford to put their kids in supportive schools that will teach those willing to learn a hell of a lot, and those that don’t want to learn can benefit from the network effect.
AI helps the poor cheat the system by avoiding the work and learning, depending on a language tool to process language for them.
The poor aren’t cheating any system, ever.
The system is cheating them
