Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

My god, when I read stuff like this (and some comments here), I think -- only someone who grew up in a society which benefitted from all the supposed ills of education and useful institutions could even have the luxury to write or seriously believe something like this.

This is like saying that because of a small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes, one should dismantle the entire system that has gotten us to the state we are in today -- which is, to remind many people, a stable, more materially prosperous, more-free-of-conflict time than any in our past. I hesitate to point out some parallels to our current social movements, for fear of being branded a counter-revolutionary.

More people are educated and out of poverty right now than any time previously in history. You would seek to destroy the system that has gotten you here, because some of its imperfections are showing by the very nature of the progress it has produced? Many people around the world would love to have the curse of educational systems that grind down your spirit by providing you textbooks, materials, teachers, computers, and corporate faceless healthcare systems that cruelly save you from life-threatening diseases.

How quickly we let the great become normal and disappointing.

We should fix things that are going wrong, and that expose and remedy the flaws in how the system was designed. It's true that in any system, unintended side effects and people seeking to gain from it start to emerge. And that should be fixed.

But, often the people who lack proper perspective on all that a system has produced (at hard toil and accomplishment of their predecessors) -- usually those who are young and those who have nothing to lose -- are too willing to destroy something that has given them the luxury of thinking it should be destroyed.

A lot of it is that we focus on a single outcome from the education system and that is the workforce outcome.

The problem is that the workforce outcome is based on competition as only so many are needed, so the best are chosen and the rest... We only need so many doctors and you can have all the schools you want for it and pre-med, but the number of people getting sick is not increasing. Education does not increase demand for highly paid occupations.

We blame the education system for those who don't get into med school ending up in debt when that is just a mathematical reality. We aren't considering all the other benefits of just having a well educated populace.

Deschooling has a lot of material to consume, and the term is pretty strong sounding, so I don't think it's surprising, but your conclusion that Illich wants to "dismantle the entire system" is far from most readings of his work.

Wikipedia [0] has a good summary of the idea IRT schooling in general - it's basically a philosophical position that people are better at learning when they actually have interest in a given subject, and that humans are also instinctive learners. Forcing people to consume curriculum without interest actually contributes to phobia of a subject.

There are many successful people who have been educated using the principles of deschooling. It's not about rejecting education at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling#Unschooling/Descho...

I'll have to read more about that, thanks.

I will say the idea of "teaching to the test" which this sounds like, is of course not a good approach. But not everyone can have a Socrates as teacher. All the more so when we refuse to fund schools as they should be. And not everyone is a Plato and can handle an inspirational deschooled approach.

Either way, we should fund it correctly. As others have said, we pay now, or we pay later. I prefer to pay now. It's cheaper.

> small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes

I think you are drastically underestimating the prevalence of non-ideal outcomes. I guess it depends on your definition of non-ideal, but if you think something like “reinforce class and racial boundaries” is non-ideal then surely you would agree the non-ideal outcomes are extremely prevalent?

Sorry, I don't agree. In fact, I think I'm quite objectively estimating the effects of our institutions. I think you're the one stating drastic estimations.

I would say that our education system is helping to free people to move across class and wealth lines far more than keeping people where they are. The amount of social mobility in the US ranks with the best of many countries.

Of course, tons of studies show this (mobility) has been slowly decreasing over time since the 1950s, etc. But you make it sound like the system is rigged in the exact opposite way, which is the problem with the many popular positions on the topic. But popular does not mean objectively correct.

The problem with what you want (I don't know you, I'm using your stated words as example of a certain position right now) is that you want a small number of bad overall outcome cases (or increasing number of cases) to justify any steps towards any institution even tangentially related to the perceived problem.

Even if the institution contributes only a small part of the outcome's determinants. Even if by dismantling the institution, you wouldn't be sure whether the outcome would be different. But you want to try, right? Just to see if it does something? Without proof.

I don't want you to have that nuclear option. I'm willing to work towards solutions to make things better, but I don't believe in the extent of systemwide conspiratorial reinforcement of class/racial boundaries that you believe causes these outcomes.

If I did, I'd be out protesting right along side you. But I'm willing to have my mind changed by better information.

Study after study has shown that the US actually has some of the lowest social mobility in the developed world, and its poor educational systems and strictly rationed access to high quality learning environments are a direct contributor to that.

Part of the reason is because education is a political football. From school boards up to the presidency, everyone has an axe to grind.

Ironically - because there's so little awareness among the public of how empirical research works, and in some quarters there's a strong bias against facts and evidence - almost no one knows how to make it sharp and effective again.

It's only relatively lower if you look at relative rank, and of course if all of Scandinavia is at the top of the list, we appear low. But on actual score, the difference is not as large as it seems.

And aside from that, are we willing to go the route of Scandinavia to achieve what they have? I doubt even a simple majority of us want that.

The countries higher up the list did not rejected schools nor institutions. In fact, they have less homeschooling then us have (not that it has relation to anything).

> Even if the institution contributes only a small part of the outcome's determinants. Even if by dismantling the institution, you wouldn't be sure whether the outcome would be different. But you want to try, right? Just to see if it does something? Without proof.

> I don't want you to have that nuclear option. I'm willing to work towards solutions to make things better, but I don't believe in the extent of systemwide conspiratorial reinforcement of class/racial boundaries that you believe causes these outcomes.

You don't need to give someone the nuclear option, but it's important to recognize that there are clear race/class biases (not conspiracies), in the educational system in order to, as you say, work toward solutions to make things better:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/02/14/no-room-a...

In this vein, I try to teach my kids how to appreciate how amazing a light switch and water faucet really are.

We have so many incredible things in our lives every day to be thankful for that we take for granted, because they are “normal”.

Perspective is one of the greatest things we can have.

Yes. I found that drawing a basic structure of the way that the water cycle works, and then how the water gets to our house, and where it goes afterward made a big difference for my 7yo to understand. Especially if you start to attach ballpark numbers for how many people are involved in the process just to get you water.

The rich will continue to educate their children, as they have done from the beginning, for the obvious reason that "knowledge is power". So yes, let's deschool. O-K.

And why throw in the fear towel so quickly in context of today's shitshow? Have the conviction of your beliefs. To paraphrase the previous actor turned president, "One person's counter-revolutionary is another person's Revolutionary". Got that, comrade?

I think there is a large collection of evidence showing that education does not bring prosperity. It's prosperity that brings education. The importance of education is exaggerated.

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