[indigochill]

>The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.

I would say "the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable." Automation is just tools. Reasonably able people can learn to use tools. But they need the means to do so affordably and effectively. Our system of education, however, is largely stuck two generations back and not up to the task of preparing people for the fast-moving world we're now in.

And this isn't even the fact that textbooks are out-of-date before they see print, or that greedy publishers keep educational materials locked behind arbitrarily high paywalls. The problem is deeper: people are not taught how to learn, and are in fact taught to fear learning because learning means judgement. They are not taught the joy of self-motivated learning which gives them the drive to keep actively learning on their own, which I believe is becoming an increasingly crucial trait to succeed at work.

[chongli]

the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable.

As an aspiring educator, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that society expects teachers to be miracle-workers, to motivate children so they study really hard and get into a good college. Yet we don't expect the same from parents. Parents are spending less and less time with their kids, while the demands for education are growing more and more intensive.

My grandfather got his first job after finishing the eighth grade. He worked for over five decades and raised six kids together with my grandmother, who was a homemaker her entire life. Both he and grandma grew up on farms with two-digit numbers of children in the family. Everyone worked from a young age and learned to provide for the household, boys and girls alike.

Nowadays, we expect kids to spend a quarter of their lives or more in school. We expect them to work extremely hard and compete for a spot in a top rated school. We give them no real responsibilities apart from academics. No, cleaning your bedroom or mowing the lawn are not real responsibilities the way milking the cows or making preserves from the garden produce were for my grandparents. If you don't clean your room, nobody will go hungry.

Life was much harder, physically speaking, for most people from my grandparents' generation and earlier, stretching back into antiquity. It was not harder to find purpose in life, however. Nature and the struggle to survive together with your family and community was enough for most people to feel fulfilled.

Today it's the complete opposite on both accounts. Extremely easy to survive with all of the benefits, cheap food and clean water, electricity and heating available. Finding meaning amid so much plenty, on the other hand, is a monumental task.

[dlp211]

> Parents are spending less and less time with their kids

This is not true, in fact, parents are spending 2x more time with their kids.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-...

[chongli]

The vast majority of that increase looks to be caring for young children (under 6) and for physical needs [1]. Look at how little time is spent reading to kids or helping them with school. A lot of parents don't even know how to help their teens with math and science homework, unless they're highly educated in those subjects themselves.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-par...

[belorn]

A bit more reasonable expectation of teachers is that they should be able to motivate both boys and girls equally.

A lot of things were different when your grandfather were in school. Most teachers were male, and boys had better grades than girls. The teaching profession was high status profession, highly respected in communities, and well paid. The post world war 1 and 2 era put a lot of focus on practical skills with practical applications in both home and work. In addition the life path of men had very little free choice, in large part to male only military drafts.

From my own reading of education research and reports, making the teacher profession more gender equal and higher status would likely improve the situation for boys without putting higher expectations on the teachers themselves. Beyond that, the lack of male only military drafts means that both boys and girls have now equal freedom to choose what they want to do, and just as some women do not want to enter the work market so do now some men.

[epicgiga]

You're right that abdication of responsibility by parents is the root cause of all of this. There's no criminal punishment for destroying your child's life as long as you don't use outright violence.

But if parents took responsibility, the first thing that'd go is 80%+ of college enrollments and all one-size-fits-all schooling beyond elementary school.

[remarkEon]

Education is not a panacea. It never has been, and it's a myth from the 20th century that has, unfortunately, bled over into the 21st. The idea that as automation happens - and barring government intervention and regulation it will - that all we have to do is build a more robust and responsive education system these people would find fulfilling employment as technical managers or researchers themselves ... is just not true. I wish it was, but it isn't.