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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

Education should be society's #1 priority. I find it truly baffling that we have yet to agree on this -- or, if by some reason you think we have agreed, that we haven't acted on it.

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Really? The #1 priority? Over keeping people fed and housed?

Yes. People can feed themselves and afford housing if they're educated.

Education is often used as a proxy for other things that actually benefit our lives. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. Certainly the kind of education being discussed matters.

It can certainly be argued that children that sit in a classroom for 16 years may lose much of the spontaneity and natural desire to explore that they were born with.

They might be a lot more passive, accept what is handed to them with less skepticism and fewer questions, be hesitant to try things without social proof, and may be ignorant of how the world actually works. They may be more likely to live in their heads and be less in touch with their own very real needs.

> It can certainly be argued that children that sit in a classroom for 16 years may lose much of the spontaneity and natural desire to explore that they were born with.

A lot of things can be argued, but not all can be substantiated. Even if I agreed that studying somehow harms children, that would only encourage society to rethink _how_ but not _whether_ to train children.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing for no training of children.

Take transcripts of what happens with young children in classrooms and other settings, and code them for instances of curiosity, whether spontaneous or encouraged. You find a dramatic change in the classroom -- even greater than I expected; I seem to have lucked out in my own schooling. https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Mind-Origins-Curiosity-Childho...

(Where "lucked out" doesn't mean it was worth it. It's relative.)

It's hard to educate yourself if you're homeless and hungry though.

That's why parents are the one who pay for housing and food.

Do you think menial jobs will just magically disappear when people are educated? Will we just pay everyone equally for their time?

Menial jobs get outsourced or automated, with very few exceptions.

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html argues that we have way too much education. That matches my experience. It's a giant problem that too many people are ignorant, but I don't agree that more school is the answer.

I think the authors misses the target as his arguments seem to be mostly against the current educational system as it stands, not against an educated workforce.

This notion of an educated workforce seems very ambiguous and abstract. How about a concrete example -- what education is the guy driving a cement truck lacking?

The one that would afford him a better job.

I'd say let's talk about giving that system more of our lives, rather than less, when they show they can use what they're getting a lot more effectively.

You can't half-ass something and just your lack of interest in its perceived "inefectiveness".

You just need to look at the upside enjoyed by other countries which have seriously invested in education. The easiest example is South Korea. I'm not saying it's perfect, but they went from the Korean War to Samsung and LG in half a century.

The book we're talking about discusses this. I went to the trouble of summarizing the claims, including one that addresses your point, in another comment. I don't think "half-ass" is a reasonable response to me here.

I meant society half-asses it, not you.

Does education = learning, and does education result in knowledge, does education = benefit to society?

The reason I ask is: we did an exercise recently where we had to go through the various assumptions for a product. The assumptions we made were

1: education = better outcomes

2: more education = better

3: formal higher education is necessary for getting a job

4: people actually need to get jobs

I am not convinced these are true.

Then you have to ask yourself where that belief comes from for each item try hard to disprove it. It is only based on opinion to a certain point.

The book I linked to in another comment collects relevant studies. To try to summarize, a degree does seem to matter to getting a better job (especially a bachelor's or a high school diploma); but an incremental year of schooling matters disproportionately less, and the bulk of the benefit was in the degree (the sheepskin effect); a more-educated populace does not make a country richer, among current nations; and intangible benefits are dubious when you measure the outcomes on adults, whether it's knowledge of facts, skills, preferences for more-elevated art, or even political indoctrination. The idea that the economic benefit of education is mostly signaling makes sense of the fact that people consume more and more schooling in the face of its ineffectiveness.

Agreed. When I have traveled to Nepal, a very poor country some children speak very good English, so that implies a certain level of education, yet there are very few opportunities for them there.

Someone who has a lot less education in the UK would likely have far more opportunities.

How many years of education is the right amount?

It's not just about quantity. And even if the central issue was figuring out how many years of education people need, that wouldn't negate my claim that the subject is of the utmost importance.

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