[arca_vorago]

Because too many people these days are the "school is overrated, vocational schools are all we need" types who don't understand the basic value of going through the old philosophers... the title is case in point. To me it seems so obvious that there are numerous reasons that it just seems click-baity.

You know what they teach at the elite schools (like Eton for example) that most others don't? The trivium and quadrivium. Together, they form the seven liberal arts, and are a vital parts of the preperation for reading the old philosophers. More than that though, they are vital parts of having a well rounded education where knowledge at a base level in areas almost always elevates your ability to think well in others.

It is also extremely important to be able to go back and see how the old philosophers were right and how they were wrong, but also just to see the amount of wisdom they had. I'm a constitutionalist myself, so reading Montesquieu for example is a great way to dig into the meat of the underpinnings of the checks and balances system, for example. I hardly see a modern textbook get half as deep as him on the subject...

There is still vast amounts of wisdom to be gleaned from the old philosophers, and I highly disagree with the assertion of the author about it being more like poetry than knowledge.

[Matticus_Rex]

It's not a contradiction to love the old philosophers and also think that our society has a schooling problem that teaches too much, too badly, and often on the wrong topics.

Of the many people who have studied those philosophers over the years in schools, how many got anything out of it? I'd wager that a 1% guess would be a bit high. The time spent on that for the other 99% is pure waste. But how will we know which are the 1%? Well, we can't get a more blunt selection mechanism than teaching it to everyone, so any other selection mechanism is likely an improvement.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Could you define "got anything out of it" for me? And what is a universal item that literally everyone will use in their life? We could probably stop general education after grade 3 if that was the goal of education.

[Matticus_Rex]

>Could you define "got anything out of it" for me?

Retained any information that gave them skills or enrichment. Skills we can measure as an increase in human capital. Enrichment is tougher, but for enrichment to take place the information has to be retained, and we have plenty of data on the abysmal state of retention.

> And what is a universal item that literally everyone will use in their life? We could probably stop general education after grade 3 if that was the goal of education.

That was not a requirement I implied needing to set. Literacy and basic mathematics are useful far beyond grade 3 (though their pedagogy and targeting could be drastically improved), but as a rule, most knowledge doesn't need to be taught to everyone. We can come up with selection mechanisms that are better than the crudest imaginable: teaching everyone and hoping that a minuscule fraction get something out of it. Extending/adding recess would be far better than that.

[always_good]

I procrastinated my core courses and took Philosophy my last semester of uni at 22.

I'm so glad I took it that late. It was easily one of the best courses I ever took, of course with the professors to thank for that.

What did I get out of it? It got me thinking about all sorts of concepts, especially concepts I never would've thought about on my own. How do you quantify that? Who knows? I still think about Callicles from the Gorgias and how he'd observe some modern social phenomena and such.

But I think your posts are the sort of overfixation on "getting anything out if it" that the OP is talking about. It's a tempting question because it's usually unanswerable except in the obvious cases. But, for example, learning long division isn't helpful because you do it in the field (I haven't done it since school), rather it's helpful because you're exercising problem solving. Just like philosophy can exercise rationalism.

[Matticus_Rex]

Congratulations, you're the 1% who got things out of it.

As a former teacher, I can assure you that (optimistically) 90% of what happens in school does not teach any problem-solving skills (and that's backed up by the literature). The 10% that does is in literacy and mathematics up to Algebra (not including Geometry, which almost no one remembers, nearly zero people use, has been demonstrated to make little or no difference in problem-solving skills, and yet is still somehow a required course almost everywhere).

[runesoerensen]

This remind me a bit of my elementary school math teacher who’d usually answer any question or curiosity with a dismissive “you don’t have to understand it you just have to do it”.

That didn’t help spark any particular interest in the field. It’s very difficult to learn something that doesn’t interest me.

I later ended up failing high school math, which made it difficult to get accepted for my college education. I was accepted on the condition that I’d take the math course again, and pass the exam within 6 months.

Incidentally (and fortunately) I studied philosophy and business administration. Philosophy (and particularly the ancient Greeks) got me much more excited about math, and I got an A in my exam shortly after.

Just a personal anecdote, but thought you might find it interesting.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Is there not value in a basic understanding of, say, history, geography, or political science? Those ideally teach new modes of thought, but at worse they give you a fact or two. Even if they retain 1% of what they learn, they now know that the world isn't as small as it seems, and the world isn't limited to their own experiences.

[pyrale]

Maybe you should read on the excesses and failures of Taylorism ?

It seems you're trying to apply these failures to education.

[Matticus_Rex]

I'm not suggesting anything excessive; I'm suggesting (based on a fairly large academic literature) that we know for a fact that a large amount of what is done in our education system does not provide any benefits that we can measure in any way (and not for lack of trying), and that for most of the knowledge that is taught for which we can't find tangible benefits, nearly none of it is retained (which invalidates arguments that it is providing intangible benefits). Most arguments for the educational status quo are based on hand-waving and appeals to magic. Suggesting that this is not an adequate way to justify the apparent waste of billions of hours of children's time is not reactionary Taylorism -- it's pointing out a glaring error that society is making due to the social desirability bias of a fantasy "education" that demonstrably makes people better with no opportunity costs or downsides.

[pyrale]

> we know for a fact that a large amount of what is done in our education system does not provide any benefits that we can measure in any way

I strongly disagree here. Unless you can provide conclusive studies separating useful and useless knowledge, my facts tend to show that education is profitable, and my opinion is that the value of any knowledge is largely up to the learner's personal preference.

> Most arguments for the educational status quo [...]

You're starting a debate that is not the one we're having here. I suggest you keep it for someone interested in pursuing it.

> most knowledge doesn't need to be taught to everyone.

Applying vertical and horizontal separation to teaching and the acquisition of knowledge is definitely an extremist view in my opinion.

[ianai]

You know what would be great? A society where people can knowingly disagree on fundamental concepts with one another and remain mutually respectful and cooperative. And studying philosophy is a gateway to that. Students have very few things in common with most philosophers because most philosophers lived hundreds and thousands of years ago. But reading philosophers will show them their points in common, to various extents. I mean the contrast and comparison is against classes where students memorize the exact order of the US presidents and force read books to the point of hating them.

[Matticus_Rex]

> You know what would be great? A society where people can knowingly disagree on fundamental concepts with one another and remain mutually respectful and cooperative.

I agree.

> And studying philosophy is a gateway to that.

For a very, very small number of students. Forcing every student to go through philosophy education because we can't figure out a better way to select out the students that will care about it is at best waste, and at worst torture. The fact that you and I both actually enjoyed philosophy (and at least for me, school in general) doesn't change that; it means that we have a privilege that needs to be checked.

[ianai]

Or maybe experiment with non cruddy ways of teaching people. Weighting a lot of a grade on a test is an excellent way to freak someone out and build resentment. Maximize teacher/student ratios, fund schools better, etc.

[Matticus_Rex]

There's a lot of experimentation with pedagogy, and the gains are marginal. Student/teacher ratios have a mild effect on academic outcomes, but academic outcomes have very little effect on anything measurable in terms of building human capital or long-term retention.

School funding is similar to the ratio question. Most increases in school funding over the last 50 years get captured by the state and local administrations, which provides even less for outcomes than teacher pay, ratios, or increased resources. Pouring more money into them doesn't usually chance that allocation -- it's like giving money to a homeless family and having one of the parents take the money to buy non-essentials.

In the mean time, kids are wasting away, bored out of their minds. The opportunity costs are massive, and the social returns are negative. We can talk all we want about how we can make the system better, but until it actually gets better, the waste continue and victimizes more kids.

[criddell]

The liberal arts aren't going anywhere.

When I was in university, I think the opportunity cost of spending time on the humanities (what my school called their liberal arts program) was too high. There was a lot I needed to learn and not much time to do it.

Then I graduated and started working and over time I've been able to carve out more time to work on the gaps in my education. A couple times a year when Powerball gets huge, I'll buy a ticket and fantasize about being able to retire and immerse myself completely in that pursuit.

[gniv]

The title is a bit click-baity, indeed, but the article is interesting and worth pondering. It made me think about how we learn to think, about learning "by osmosis", about the "meta" in metaphysics, about the fundamental differences between "hard" sciences and "soft" disciplines like philosophy.

In fact I would argue that a version of this should be presented in the first lecture of a philosophy class.

Also, the author specifically mentions and rejects the poetry comparison explanation.

[DanAndersen]

As someone who has finished classes (and was firmly in the STEM camp while taking them), I do wish I had had something of the formal liberal arts that was taught historically. Does anyone have any recommendations for ways of self-teaching the trivium and quadrivium?

I've heard good things about "The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric" [0] but I haven't gone through it yet.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Trivium-Liberal-Logic-Grammar-Rhetori...

[watwut]

If you start to teach "the trivium and quadrivium" somewhere in poor rural part with no jobs and high social problems, the kids there wont become like elite students from elite families with great prospects and ideal environment.

For that matter, not all kids from great environment ends up in elite school or are even able to follow education with super higher speed and expectations.

[Confusion]

You basically repeat that ‘reading the old philosophers is important’ about three times, but give no reason for why that would be important and what exactly you would learn from that.

That they teach it at Eton is not a reason. At most a suggestion there could be a good reason for it.

To realize that ‘they were wise’ is not a reason. Why is that important to realize?

That there are ‘vast amounts of wisdom to be gleaned’ is a restatement, not an argument.

So whatever reading the old philosophers taught you, certainly not argumentation skills.

[whataretensors]

> More than that though, they are vital parts of having a well rounded education where knowledge at a base level in areas almost always elevates your ability to think well in others.

Is there any evidence of this? Liberal arts majors claim it but I haven't really seen any proof. The philosophy courses I took in college had professors with an air of smug self-righteousness and faux-enlightenment. It seems more likely that the people who study this stuff then backwards rationalize why it was important.

I also think "well rounded education" is a tactic to keep people under the misinformed idea that intelligence can be earned. Wisdom, maybe, but not intelligence. That's pretty well established to be locked in around 7.