How can we create a workforce full of lifelong learners? | Hacker News Reader

How can we create a workforce full of lifelong learners?

qz.com

48 pointssarapeyton28 comments

Clearly the best way to create lifelong learners is to cram them elbow-to-elbow in noisy open offices so that they have to listen to one another’s conference calls all day long or try in vain to drown them out with loud music so that they can only dedicate a fraction of their concentration on a task at one time. You should also demand that people with advanced degrees from research institutions who’ve spent years perfecting their research skills clear a set number of Jira tickets every week and penalize them financially for missing their targets. And, of course, it goes without saying, don’t encourage reading or experimentation or learning or any sort of self-improvement.

If this was reddit, I'd award gold for that comment. Only thing I can add is that one should only value paid experience, i.e. the person working a day job doing a banking app and a personal job of adding high quality code to a complex OSS project, well hell, they only know a banking app

And his banking app was written in Java, so he's clearly unable to learn Scala or Groovy.

"If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary.

The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it. "

J.J. Thompson, about 1915

This is very astute, thanks for sharing. It really illuminates the value of leisurely tinkering and playful discovery, free from the pressure of well-defined objectives.

> year by year tangible results

Wow, he didn’t foresee the 21st century - the “agile consultants” who are running these circuses demand day-by-day tangible results (and then can’t fathom why nothing significant is getting done).

This article asks the question, then seemingly goes on three different tangents unrelated to lifelong learning.

Further, implicit in this discussion is that the worker will continue to learn in the employer's interest without being paid. I can be a lifelong learner of music composition, but I don't think my employer cares about that. They're looking for my lifelong pursuit to increased productivity for their benefit.

(Ironically, that increased productivity makes a lot more sense if I am not selling my labor but rather am building capital for myself.)

That said, employers can encourage lifelong learning by paying for it in wages and time allotted during the workday.

There are plenty of lifelong learners out there.

The workforce isn't 'full' of them because the workforce isn't 'full' of people who have something that can be called a career.

Being able to self-actualize to some degree is a fantastically powerful ability, everything else stems from there.

You don't need to, and shouldn't, wait for a manager to tell you that. Plenty of companies rely on the fact that their employees have weak hands; it's not in their interests to help you.

Distinguish yourself from the competition by adopting a four-day workweek.

one thing is required above all for continuous learning; leisure time

Very simple: eliminate exclusionary zoning bylaws in the most overpriced real estate markets.

"The rent is too damn high."

3-day work weeks will quickly follow.

3 day work weeks will arrive only when mandated by law. We’re long overdue in that regard [1].

Fixing housing through mandating remote work also would go a long way, so you’re not held hostage to a job through geographic requirements. Kudos to remote first/remote only Orgs contributing in this regard. We can always use more flexible/remote roles ("mostly" remote, flexible enough to still have reasonable amounts of face to face time with colleagues or others in the industry).

[1] https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/15558/producti...

On a practical level how would you prevent people from seeking a second job in order to pay their inflated rent?

Fixing the housing supply problem appears to be critical here. Without increasing supply, folks might find ways to work around the "mandate" out of sheer necessity.

Also I think the OP should broaden the question to read "lifelong contributors." The learning is a very important component of this, but broadly construed, that learning should include the practical experience gained from contributing to all sorts endeavors that produce social value. One of the critical problems with today's workforce is that so much of the work revolves around what social anthropologist David Graeber calls "Bullshit Jobs."

There's often very little to learn in these environments except how to play office politics more astutely ... the next time around.

The aggressive support and prioritization of remote work (using economic incentives and public policy) and the deflation of housing must go hand in hand. It's okay if some people want to work more than the regulated work week. We allow this today, but I don't notice many people working six or seven days a week voluntarily, only if they're economically forced to. This bodes well for a reduction in the definition of a work week.

To your point about bullshit jobs, they must be destroyed using policy as part of these efforts, while still providing a stable safety net for life long learners to have the opportunity to generate value society can't yet predict. Everyone who wants a job should be able to have one they want; those who don't want a job are cheap to provide for (automated ag, cheap/clean energy, etc) with properly architected public good systems. Some of these issues are societal ("puritanical work ethic", "suffering is good for the soul", etc) and will take time to recalibrate (I have seen this first hand in conversations with people, and I'm sure others have as well).

Apply force in the desired direction of progress and don't let up.

In order to change policy (in the US for instance), you'll need the cooperation of politicians. What candidate running for president right now is truly prepared to challenge the status quo? Those of us who have been around for more than a few elections know the answer to this question all too well; hence the low voter turnout.

We need to shift more in the direction of a direct democracy, using the blockchain perhaps as a next generation digital ballot box. Not holding my breath though that this will happen within the lifetime of any one reading hacker news right now. There's just too much at stake for our corporate overlords.

I intend to run for office. It is a thankless, unpleasant, but necessary schlep. I’d encourage you to consider the same.

No blockchain!

Add Adderoll to drinking water

Abolish public schools.

Nothing crushes the desire to learn faster and more effectively than public schools.

That’s a really bold statement. Are you advocating that people only learn if they desire to? That sounds like a huge step back for society in my opinion

> That’s a really bold statement. Are you advocating that people only learn if they desire to? That sounds like a huge step back for society in my opinion

Are you suggesting people have never learned anything without going to public schools?

I'm not talking about something distant from my personal experience: I spent 13 years in public schools and it was a hugely counterproductive experience.

I’m not suggesting that people never learned without public school, but I firmly believe that the majority of people learned very little.

I didn’t like school much myself but I think you’d have to be pretty jaded to say you or anyone else would have been better off without it.

> people only learn if they desire to

Not OP, but I think the answer to your question is yes (but I also don't think banning public schools is a good idea either). I remember hating school when I was in it, but in spite of my best efforts to resist knowledge, some of it stuck around in my brain anyway. Later, when I found myself motivated and wanting to learn, the techniques I got from my education about _how to learn_ were still there, waiting to be unlocked. You can’t make a man learn any more than you can make a horse drink, but you can leave the tools laying around for when he needs them.

But you’re imagining an ideal society in which most people would choose to learn. If history is any indicator most would choose not to or even worse be unable to. For a long time education was a privilege only enjoyed by the wealthy.

History teaches us that a Prussian general invented public school to create obedient soldiers. The purpose of school is not to teach people to learn, but to teach them to obey.

Okay buddy. A cursory search for what you're saying only turns up conspiracy theories but I'll ignore that.

If you were to have it your way, and abolish public schools, what would you propose as the alternative if anything?

> Okay buddy. A cursory search for what you're saying only turns up conspiracy theories but I'll ignore that.

> If you were to have it your way, and abolish public schools, what would you propose as the alternative if anything?

Yes, only listen to the history that the obedience centers have provided you to memorize. It is well known that such centers do not teach critical thinking, because for certain you will place John Taylor Gatto into the category of "conspiracy theorist" as evaluating anything you have not been provided for memorization will require critical thinking (even, you know, looking at those funny numbers placed in the text).

I'm not a central planner but I know that parents work to make certain their children are educated. I cannot tell you how USSR best converted its empty grocery stores and rotting field crops into stocked grocery stores and harvested crops other than to say remove the interference of the government and let people choose.

Developing nations commonly have privately funded schools operating on shoe-string budgets that outperform pretty much all of the "indispensable and irreplaceable" inner-city (and ignored rural) public schools.

Public schools are thick bureaucracies that reward employees for seniority and people who know how to follow orders and fill out forms. They have no accountability when they have a failing product (human beings!) and all employees get pensions and are nearly impossible to fire. The service is provided free of charge while taxing nearly as much money as desired.

They attempt to measure school results through standardized testing, which operates under the assumption that there is a standard person we are all supposed to be become. Then they teach to the test only, so despite where a child may have interests, the test is all that matters so the school can get better funding.

Teachers receive special training so that they understand how to have more influence over a child than the child's parent. They go to conferences in Florida to learn this wonderful skill.

Abolish private schools.

You can be sure that the people in power will make sure public schools are properly funded.

We're already spending more per student on public school than private school, on average. When you factor in low-cost high-benefit options like homeschooling, the amount we're already spending on shit outcomes for public school looks even more ridiculous.

Costs: https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/education/privat...

Homeschooling performance: https://www.topmastersineducation.com/homeschooled/

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