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Comment by sonink | Hacker News Reader

I wouldnt really go so far to say that schools should be shut down because they do serve one good purpose - making friends (even though you could do that in other means), but its a good meeting point.

The big thing that needs to go from schools is structure and the focus on 'success'..

Essentially the fact that people from similar age groups are considered equal - have to take the same courses - for the same amount of time - subject to the same exams - and imparted an extremely flawed relative ranking system is all horribly wrong.

In the real world the harder part is creating that structure - learning from open markets, finding out what you want to do and from that figuring out the courses you want to take - the people you want to learn from - the peers you want to work with.

And success is not about getting good grades but more about taking your own path which gets you your own happiness and the ones you care about.

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I wouldnt really go so far to say that schools should be shut down because they do serve one good purpose - making friends (even though you could do that in other means), but its a good meeting point.

One of the worst aspects of government institutions is that we become dependent on them. We then no longer remember how life could have existed without them. Before the age of the university, young people would meet interesting other people through fraternal associations, clubs, coffee houses, and pubs. In these societies you could find a rousing chess game, talk politics, start a charitable activity or even purchase group health insurance. The University of Pennsylvania, was originally founded by Ben Franklin as society for his friends to promote their mutual intellectual advancement. The cost was nearly free. The idea that we need government to subsidize "making friends", that finding a group of intellectual peers requires spending $50K a year in tuition, is preposterous.

like many 'order out of chaos' systems, government tends to be a self-reinforcing system, unfortunately, leading to ever increasing ordering of its environment. the only way it can apparently beat the second law of thermodynamics is to consume ever more resources out of its substrate. your body is the same way - it gets bigger and maintains itself, but has to eat.

as kevin kelly argued 10-15 years ago - death is an essential component of healthy, evolving ecosystems.

There is a Noachide law to "Set up courts and bring offenders to justice." This is a biblical law for Jews and Non-Jews alike, and it makes sense: even the most righteous, well-behaved and respected people will have disagreements with each other, and in a society with no government, implanting conflict-resolution, law-giving and judgement institutions would be a very good justification and first step to establishing one.

As long as a legal and judicial system is not abused to the detriment of the society for which it serves, this aspect of government is very useful.

You don't need a court system to resolve conflicts and disagreements. People do it all the bloody time without involving the government

Yeah, be my guest, try running a country without a judicial system. Go back 4000 years or more, or into a hunter-gatherer society...

yep ..makes sense.

I like the latter part of your comment. Reminds of jobs stanford speech. 'You've got to find what you love'

"The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting." That created beautiful typefaces later on PCs :)

"Essentially the fact that people from similar age groups are considered equal - have to take the same courses - for the same amount of time - subject to the same exams - and imparted an extremely flawed relative ranking system is all horribly wrong."

More and more I realize "one size fits all" is never true.

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