Is mass education a failed experiment?

Let’s say the answer is “yes.”

Then what?

Yes...and the only thing worse is this virtual school nonsense.

"Mass education" is a way to even the playing field, to give every kid a chance to rise to whatever level their educational opportunities might provide for them.

But, it also is a way to give every adult a chance to rise to whatever level their job opportunities might provide for them. Schools are child care, so adults can go to work, or do whatever is necessary to enable the one parent who goes to work. Unfortunately, we leave funding decisions for local schools up to the local voters, who love to say "no" whenever asked for tax support. So, it becomes a race to the bottom - minimal education funding and maximum numbers of kids in each school. The experiment went wrong when there wasn't a "minimum education quality" funding algorithm built in. The "local control" is great for providing local experimentation, for a chance to come up with new ways to provide education. But, as we find out, it's also great for failed experimentation on a massive scale.

is this really working? wrote:

We've grown accustomed to the idea of sending every single kid to school, but compulsory education for all is really a pretty new idea. Have our experiences really proven mass education to be a good idea? The average person is still dumb as a bag of bricks. Mostly public education has just shown that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Why not just open our schools to those who actually want an education and let people make their own choices about enrollment?

For the US is answer is a clear NO.

Otherwise Trump would have not been elected and now still more than 40% think he is great.

The US education system needs a big overhaul.

I am pretty sure that will never happen.

RyecorDone wrote:

"Mass education" is a way to even the playing field, to give every kid a chance to rise to whatever level their educational opportunities might provide for them.

But to give everyone a chance, you just need to make education available. It doesn't need to be compulsory.

Is it really compulsory? You can take your kid out of school to home school and do nothing.

At what age do you think kids know enough to make life altering decisions like dropping out of school?

The poster above is right, one of the primary roles of school is free childcare. Before this year few would admit it.

What do you think high school aged kids who don’t want an education are going to do all day? Nothing good on balance, that is for sure.

Schools need to do away with homework! Nothing sucks the fun out of learning more than being forced to do class work outside of the classroom. Sorry to my friends who are teachers out there but homework has to go! Seriously.

Learning can take place in the palm of your hand. We have instant access to the entire collective knowledge of humanity in our handheld smartphones. That’s amazing! We can also communicate with total strangers around the world on social media!

How do we fix this problem? Maybe do away with grades? Have daily English, Math, History, Science, Physical Education, Art, Music in class only. When you go home it’s your free time.

We’re all runners here. Imagine if we had to go to practice BUT after practice for cross country homework we had to read a chapter of Daniels Running Formula, memorize the VDOT tables, and then answer comprehension questions on every chapter. THEN we had to memorize all the Track and Field world records, know the former NCAA Champs and training systems used by coaches, etc, etc.

Even Rojo who was an Ivy Leaguer has an occasional typo here. It’s not the end of the world but it makes it more fun and less sterile.

1-800-JERKSTORE wrote:

Schools need to do away with homework! Nothing sucks the fun out of learning more than being forced to do class work outside of the classroom. Sorry to my friends who are teachers out there but homework has to go! Seriously.

The thing that always drove me crazy about high school was that we would use our class time really inefficiently, then we'd have homework because we wasted so much time in class. For example, we'd spend a whole period in math class going over some stupidly simple concept at a ridiculously slow pace, then we'd have to go do problems at home, but it always felt like the lecture could have been about 10 minutes and then we could have just knocked out the practice problems in class. My perception is that things are only getting worse in this regard.

I don't think we need to do away with homework entirely, but it could be drastically reduced if they used class time more efficiently.

This is how online learning should be. 10 min instruction and the rest of the time working. Repeat.

Agree on the no HW for general ed. If you’re in AP it’s varsity school... it’s what you sign up for.

Great post.

I was having a conversation with my next door neighbor about this very topic. Check out this video.

PS. Maybe I shouldn't post that. When I got to Princeton, I realized I was very good at homework. HS was easier as you get a good grade for doing the work. In college, they don't give a shit about the work - the only care about the end result.

Well that's not totally true. I used to print up every paper and make sure it had zero typos. Then you are basically guaranteed to get a B. But I eventually realized you need real talent to excel at anything in life - running, school, etc. So I stopped worrying about the typos.

The problem is that school is way too slow. You need to teach the kids a lot when they are younger and keep them challenged (which is not happening). The kids acquire lazy behavior because then they expect education to always come easy.

Make school harder. Especially in the early years. Hold back the slower kids but keep them interacting with those of their age in non-core classes and sports.

Smart phones are ruining this generation of education. Me and my friends cheat on half our tests and quizzes because we can find the answers online with phones under our legs. People will also take pictures of assignments with the right answers and send them around.

It's been a decades (century?) old joke now. Complete failure. Trillions spent trying to educate people with no interest or aptitude to learn more than basic skills. And as one person pointed out, it's no more than government funded child care for most parents of under-performing children. The country could save $$$$$$ and end all kinds of social problems by ending mandatory schools. But that won't happen.

#defundtheschools

1-800-JERKSTORE wrote:

How do we fix this problem? Maybe do away with grades? Have daily English, Math, History, Science, Physical Education, Art, Music in class only. When you go home it’s your free time.

English, art, and music are total waste classes.

Grammar should be taught in elementary school, but that's as far as it needs to go. I do not like the unnecessary bs of reading a useless book and overanalyzing it, like all of my English classes have been. That is such a waste of time and makes most students (and especially me) take a bullet in the head.

Art and music are cool. They should be optional classes though. Not mandatory. Get rid of "English". Make that an optional class for quiet people.

Btw, completely agree with you about homework.

F#21ck of with this anti utilitarian bs. That's it. I'm sick of people saying we shouldn't maximize education, which is the primary tool needed to survive in a modern world. You either get to be amazing good at one thing so you make enough money automatically and can pay someone to handle your finances, or you have to work and find success working in the apparatus of society. People should be allowed to know how the world works. Cognitive skills, including knowledge of the task that run our world, is crucial to life today. But no should just keep people dumb. Wow some people dumb. So let's take away the poor Education. Let's destin them to stay poor. They don't deserve to have the same luxuries I do!

What???

Children are definitely learning more than 50 years ago. See here:

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

Although scores at 17 are not any different, it's not like they're going DOWN.

If you would not have said the same thing in 1970 then you don't have any ground to stand on here.

Clearly there is plenty of room for improvement, but mass education has likely been one of the largest drivers of economic growth in the last century. Especially for women.

Mass education worked pretty well until it started including lies made up by the new SJW academic caste. Now students are expected to "learn" utter nonsense and browbeaten into pretending not to realize it. The system is drowning itself in absurd orthodoxies.

rojo wrote:

I used to print up every paper and make sure it had zero typos. Then you are basically guaranteed to get a B. But I eventually realized you need real talent to excel at anything in life - running, school, etc. So I stopped worrying about the typos.

In reality you need both. Society celebrates the visionary type of talent such as the Beatles but no small part of their success was due to the diligence of George Martin. Or Peter Jackson for the Lord of the Rings movies , yet much of the success was due to the diligence of the CG crew etc. People who are attentive to detail are highly valued.

I used to work in aerospace and put together several teams. The last thing you would want is a team of visionaries. What I would want is one or two visionaries, half a dozen diligents and a couple of grunts. Usually the biggest battles in getting the staff I wanted was over getting the diligents. Every manager wanted them.

Maybe, if a certain airframe manufacturer had more diligents and less visionaries working on their software they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now.

Facts and Logic wrote:

F#21ck of with this anti utilitarian bs. That's it. I'm sick of people saying we shouldn't maximize education, which is the primary tool needed to survive in a modern world. You either get to be amazing good at one thing so you make enough money automatically and can pay someone to handle your finances, or you have to work and find success working in the apparatus of society. People should be allowed to know how the world works. Cognitive skills, including knowledge of the task that run our world, is crucial to life today. But no should just keep people dumb. Wow some people dumb. So let's take away the poor Education. Let's destin them to stay poor. They don't deserve to have the same luxuries I do!

To be clear, I am not saying that anyone who wants an education should be denied one.

You believe that education is crucial. I happen to agree with you. But there is clearly a large chunk of our population that does not hold the same view and does not value education. Who am I to substitute my judgement for their own?

Bottom line is that we don't actually educate the people who don't want to be educated anyway. We just warehouse them for 12 years or until they drop out, and they come out the other side just as stupid and uneducated as they would have been without using all those public resources. Schools would do a better job for the students who actually want an education if they weren't tasked with babysitting the masses of unwilling "students."

Has there ever really been mass education? Or just mass indoctrination and inculcation?

An educated citizenry would prove exceedingly difficult to govern. As long as government is involved, education will not be the order of the day. Same thing as long as any religion is involved.

Think about yourself—are you truly educated? For sure we all have those moments when we feel inadequate, but at base, are you really satisfied? Would you pursue real education right now if it was easily available to you?

And what is your version of real education?