[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.

[Matticus_Rex]

Oh, I'd love for kids to understand it -- it's far more important than doing it, and if we were teaching that understanding it would likely all be worthwhile. I'm saying that we know from the data and qualitative studies that we don't teach kids to understand most things we teach them, and they forget how to do them very quickly.

[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.

[Matticus_Rex]

We know from retention data that we don't actually achieve a basic understanding of history, geography, or political science for the vast majority of students. Is there nothing better that could be done with that time? Should we be content with the structure providing that result? I agree that increasing the size of a student's world is a worthy goal, but there's little to no evidence that we're achieving that for the vast majority of students, and there are costs to achieving those dubious benefits.

[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.

[Matticus_Rex]

I highly recommend The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan (https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d...). It's one of the more careful social science books I've ever read, and while it comes to controversial conclusions, even if you disagree with them you'll learn a lot about the issues by reading it. The assumption that education can be assumed to be profitable for society simply isn't supported by the evidence.

[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.