Hacker News Reader

Comment by forkandwait | Hacker News Reader

>The only thing that doesn't appear to function well now is education, which appears to be stuck in the post-WW2 mentality of a job for life.

I would say education is stuck in a pre 1980s paradigm of prepping 80% of the population to be nothing more than warm, wet, expensive robots - - in other words, conventional blue collar workers. Humanity can be so much more...

View on HN

I think that they have moved on and are still in the "everybody should go to college and get a bachelor's degree" mode. Which leads to a lot of people without the intellectual tools for knowledge work flunking out with huge piles of debt and no marketable skills. Arguably many people would be better served if the older system of tracking into voc tech/business/college prep levels was more in vogue.

I'd push for mandatory shop, home economics, and financial literacy training.

I agree. The issue, to me, seems like there isn't a particularly good relation between supply and demand for skills. Stuff like financial literacy is maybe something separate but is also obviously necessary (not just in terms of personal finance, but understanding business).

I would be hesitant to frame it in terms of something that already exists however. In terms of function, the outcome should be skills that are applicable to business so vocational. But it needs to be more distinct. For example, more vocational education should have significantly greater links to business than already exists (not research but training).

How about we spend enough time and money to give all citizens the same "intellectual tools" that upper middle class parents provide for their children?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com