[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.

[pyrale]

So, by pointing out this book, are you saying that your only metric for education is economic value and wage marketability?

[Matticus_Rex]

No, and neither is this book -- it also deals heavily with less tangible factors.