[pclowes]

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate.

Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness.

90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest to actually go deep or learn anything. Socratic style seminars are silent. Deep critique or wrestling with a topic only if pandering or grade related. Humanities watered down to irrelevance compared to STEM which has to keep some rigor or the bridges collapse and lights dont turn on. Academia is inflated by, wasted on, and ruined by them. They would be much better served by a high school diploma that wasn’t meaningless

[abaymado]

I can attest to this. I grew up outside of the US, where starting in middle school, there are national exams that determine what field of study you are going to end up in. A higher score is needed for STEM majors; the rest who pass end up in Arts and Business. If you fail, your only option is manual labor.

For students who don't come from "privilege" it was sink or swim, and those who survived the waves actually deserved their badge of honor. But for students whose parents were "fortunate" enough to send them to private school, they became a part of a corrupt system, whose only incentive is to have its students pass the national exams. Most private schools had high graduate rate, due to them bribing testing officials to allow cheating.

I was one of those privileged students who went a private school, who passed the national test without even reading a single question. I paid the price for it once I started college in the US. But unlike my origin, I had a chance to take a break from college and recalibrate my brain in a sense and find joy in learning.

If failing were normalized and did not have so much social stigma or financial implications (to an extent), we would produce more educated people instead of once just chasing credentials.

[godelski]

I think this is a more important comment than people might take it for.

We all want meritocracy. Really. But the problem is that meritocracies are never really meritocratic. The problem is that it's actually really hard to measure these things. It looks simple at first glance, but once you dive into things it starts to change.

Let's change your example above and ignore cheating. Let's say there's no cheating. The rich and well off still tend to have the advantage. Let's even pretend that a rich person and poor person goes to the same school, in the same class. It's more likely that rich person will get extra tutoring for those exams. The more important those exams are, the more valuable those tutors become (allowing them to charge more and more).

Are there not test taking strategies? The mere existence of this should tell you that the test is measuring something more than knowledge.

I'm just using this as a simple example but I'd encourage others to think more deeply about it because these things do matter if we're going to try to make a meritocracy. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but I'm saying one of the most critical parts to creating a meritocracy is recognizing the limitations in the metrics. It's an alignment problem and Goodhart always comes back to bite you. As soon as you become complacent you drift further from meritocracy.

Meritocracy will always be a dream. We should chase our dreams, but we need to recognize the difference between dreams and reality. You'll never make those dreams come true if you can't

[pclowes]

Standardized testing so far is the worst solution, except for all the others.

Sure, wealthy people can pay for standardized testing prep. However, test prep is a much lower barrier than having to pay for exotic experiences abroad to pad admissions essays or connections to gain political exposure so you know the appropriate shibboleths to utter or racial features to highlight.

[godelski]

My point implies that you have to be dynamic. If your evaluation methods are static for too long they get hacked. You have to balance that though. Change too often and your system is overly expensive and cumbersome. Change too infrequently and the cheaters end up at the top.

You're right that it can always be worse but you're wrong to say that we can't do better now

[stackbutterflow]

Is meritocracy a dream for a society?

The danger of a meritocracy is in the word. What do you merit? Your job? Fair enough. More rights? Certainly not. I'm afraid it's easy for some to start viewing others as lesser because they don't merit one's position, consequently one's status and thus should not have a seat at the important tables because after all they don't "merit" it.

What I want ultimately is that we strive to give a better life to everyone. And I don't think that's what meritocracy achieves.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, meritocracy isn't just who gets the jobs. It's who gets the jobs that run society. And that's important for everyone, because it matters to everyone that society be competently run, rather than run by incompetents who have important parents.

[godelski]

  > I'm afraid it's easy for some to start viewing others as lesser

We already do this and we've done it throughout history too. There's always some excuse people will make to feel better than others. Wealth, religion, race, intelligence, education, all sorts of things.

But we do want high social mobility. If you work hard it is easy to climb the ladders. If you squander your wealth it is easy to slip. I'm not saying there should be no friction, the correct balance is always hard to find.

But whatever that merit is is something we need to decide as a society. It can be anything we want. It can be your work that contributes to monetary growth. It could be work that contributes to scientific growth. It could be how great of an artist you are. How popular you are. Our anything. We decide and we decide how much one means more than the other. Or we could even decide that there are no "lessers" and we could decide that the person traveling the world on their parent's dime has the same value to our society as a scientist, businessman, or artist. Mind you, I'm not talking about their value as a human, that's different

[BLKNSLVR]

This is just a thought bubble, but it makes a certain amount of sense as to why the current administration is so dead-against DEI initiatives. Whilst they say it's about merit (and we all know it's not - just look at almost all of the appointees), it's actually about the added barriers in the way of assigning the individual (not the 'type of person') that they would choose for the role, based on their personal network of contacts and / or those who have made "charitable contributions" (which probably brings them into the fold of personal network contacts anyway).

DEI quotas make it hard to bring along a whole team of boot lickers.

Or in the case of this administration, window lickers.

[charlie90]

I think people say they want a meritocracy, but they actually mean "everyone can succeed", which are different. In a meritocracy where everyone is trying hard (like in asian cultures), then hard work is not enough, not everyone can succeed. In America, there is some slack so hard workers can succeed with below average genetics (which is why, practically, meritocracy="everyone can succeed") but I think things are changing as competition is increasing.

[chadgpt3]

"Anyone can, but everyone can't" probably

[joquarky]

How can we claim to have a meritocracy if we allow inheritance?

[eudamoniac]

By not conflating wealth with merit

[cmxch]

So basically you want to tier bin people’s lives and careers because of one or two numbers?

Fuck No.

[mos_basik]

Friend, you've misunderstood. @abaymado's point was that tier binning people's lives and careers on one or two numbers is an awful approach, and doing it probably produces more poorly educated people.

(Much irony, given the topic of TFA.)

[cjbgkagh]

The problem is that as the education system degrades the products of that system gain power over it and accelerate the decline.

[GuB-42]

The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be?

You need to give these people something to do. You say they just want to get the job, another way to say it is that if they don't graduate, they won't get the job, so what are they going to do instead? Some low skill jobs don't require much study, but there are only so many in modern society, and we don't really want more of these.

So, more apprenticeship? That's actually a really good solution, but an entire system needs to change as it shifts the burden of training to employers rather than schools. Whatever the solution is, it would have an impact on every aspect of society, maybe positive, maybe negative, my guess is on an overall negative as even if lowest common denominator education is not ideal, it is still better than no education at all for the masses. But it is debatable, and it is often debated.

Also there is a correlation between countries tertiary education rate and GDP and life expectancy. It does not imply causation, but it supports the idea that it may be a good thing.

[jkubicek]

> The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be?

Doing the exact same thing they’re doing now, just without wasting 4 years in college and being $100k in debt

[GuB-42]

I wouldn't call the 4 years in college a waste, you still learn something even if it is not what will make you money later in life. General knowledge spread out over the entire population is a good thing I think.

The debt however is an other problem, a US specific one it seems. Many other countries have a lot of students and no student debt problem. But one way to think about that debt is that it is someone else's asset. Money is debt (maybe that's the kind of useless thing you learn in college ;)) and getting rid of a $100k debt is like removing $100k from the economy, and it will be felt in one way or another. I still think that student debt situation is terrible, but "solving" the student debt problem by removing students is not the way to go IMHO.

[pclowes]

They are already doing it. They just have a useless degree and if they went onto college, another worthless degree and likely a bunch of debt in order to do it.

Whether or not our programs are rigorous, does not change the reality on the ground or make the actual capabilities of the population different. It’s not like a person with a worthless degree is more capable than a person who dropped out of a worthwhile rigorous program. We just perceive them to be. A rigorous high school program corrects that perception, saving time and money.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You need to give these people something to do

Yes. But not as a first-order priority. Fixing the incentives in the schooling system can take priority over figuring out what to do with every single person passing through it. (Also, a market where a third of students fail to graduate high school will find use for that labor.)

[potsandpans]

(I realize this is an ungenerous and blunt take that lacks some amount of empathy)

I have worked in fortune 500 companies for 15 years, and my observation is that there is an alarming amount of people (engineering) who work in these companies are completely inept in their domain of expertise.

What they seem to get by on is a complete adherence to hierarchy: do not ask questions, do not push back on requests, do not engage in capability mindset, just execute on whatever slop is getting jammed down the throat of middle management.

Now, as someone who is on "the leadership team", I see this as generally widespread across many different orgs.

These folks obviously serve some function: which is to churn out whatever the whims are of the executive leadership team based on the Current Business Strategy.

So what do we do with these folks? Let them keep doing it. We could satisfy these roles with the standard factory style highschool education followed by an associates -like degree, e.g. a two year rule following program that introduces the domain and jargon that you're going to be in.

[foolfoolz]

we have a school system that rewards graduation and punishes punishment. our public school especially is geared around progressing the lowest common denominator forward at all costs. private schools can run how they want, public schools are paid to do 2 things: 1. get butts in seats 2. have kids move up when the year is over

[yourapostasy]

> private schools can run how they want...

This cuts both ways. Very well-known, competitive private schools conservatively financed have a waiting list a line around the block long and can enforce high standards. Private schools that are struggling for funding can find the compromises more tempting than they can bear. Finding that difference in the moment instead of as past historical anecdotes is surprisingly hard, though if someone has come up with a formula I’m all ears.

[jkestner]

Something something about metrics ceasing to be a good measure. Texas has draconian measures for districts containing a failing school, even as they redistribute the majority of funding from cities to rural districts. No surprise the schools want to pass by any means.

[toomuchtodo]

There are no resources for those who don’t progress, as there already aren’t enough teachers for the existing K-12 workload, and existing teachers are overloaded in the aggregate.

This is the failure mode of a system exceeding its capacity with no ability to apply back pressure. Slowly failing as gracefully as possible, eventually passing everyone.

Nguyen, T. D., Lam, C. B., & Bruno, P. (2024). What Do We Know About the Extent of Teacher Shortages Nationwide? A Systematic Examination of Reports of U.S. Teacher Shortages. AERA Open, 10.

https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584241276512

[chadgpt3]

There is something about devoting effort to maintaining the form of a thing while ignoring its essence.

[jmspring]

My step daughter graduated this last week (high school). Watching the curriculum over the last 4 years, they had 5-8 validictorian (all a's) and 6-8 salutarians (sp?) (all a's one b). They would have been at the 3.x level in my high school 25 years ago. The rigor in high school is no longer there, community college is adopting to the lesser expectation as well.

[tasuki]

This has been going on for thousands of years...

[KPGv2]

> 90%+ of all people in undergrad

I'm not sure if you realize you're basically saying most people with an IQ two standard deviations above the mean should not be pursuing higher education. Currently 40% of young adults are in higher education in the US. (based on a quick google, percent could be wrong, i also saw 60% pursue it at some point)

As a heuristic, let's assume they're the 40% with the highest IQ.

If 90% of them shouldn't be there, then you're effectively saying only the highest 4% IQ individuals should be there.

Two standard deviations cuts out 95% of people. What a very high standard. And I'm not even getting into the mountains of research that higher education makes workers better at their jobs, ceteris paribus.

So you're saying genius-level people don't belong at uni.

[whimblepop]

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14293%2FS...

The average university attendee's IQ is virtually indistinguishable from the average person's IQ.

People don't go to college because they're smart. They predominantly go so they can earn more money and/or work more enjoyable jobs when they graduate. Being smart isn't the main reason that adults encourage teenagers to pursue college either. It's mostly a matter of class reproduction; it's the "default" for anyone whose parents are college graduates.

And failing out once you get to the university isn't generally an IQ issue, either. Mediocre and slightly stupid people graduate from universities with degrees they've earned fair and square every year. You don't have to be smart to finish a degree. You do have to be reasonably prepared, and that's the primary issue.

[cjbgkagh]

It used to be 130, which is two standard deviations above the mean. I think this is the appropriate amount.

[whimblepop]

IQ is about aptitude and credentials on specific topics are about knowledge and skills. It's the wrong thing to optimize for.

Besides, high-IQ students can still underperform for many of the same reasons that average-IQ students often do (e.g., under-preparation, lack of discipline, disorganization, mental illness, financial distress, unstable living situation). We should be better addressing those things before students get to a university no matter what their IQ is.

Beyond that, if you have good competency tests on both ends (i.e., the credentials before a four-year degree are accurate signals, and university degrees effectively prove a high degree of competency), who cares if someone manages to get those credentials by working harder while being dumber? I like working with clever people. I also like working with people who know their shit because they take their time to study and consider things. (When I'm lucky, I get to work with people who are both!)

[godelski]

  > IQ is about aptitude and credentials on specific topics are about knowledge and skills.

Meaning it can be learned. Trained.

I'm not defending the metric. People use it like it is some innate thing that doesn't change over one's lifetime. In fact, a college education is a great way to increase your IQ.

It's also important to note that IQ is normalized. An IQ of 100 today is different than an IQ of 100 20 years ago. Notable, it's been increasing, so someone taking an IQ test in the year 2000 getting an IQ of 100 would have had an IQ of 130 had they taken it in 1950. That's an incredibly important piece of information needed to even do basic comparisons of IQs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

[bmn__]

> > IQ is about aptitude

> Meaning it can be learned. Trained. […] In fact, a college education is a great way to increase your IQ.

You make this argument on the assumption that the effect is causal. But in reality one cannot distinguish whether education raises IQ or whether people with higher IQs stay longer in college.

[pclowes]

In short yes. Top 10% is not genius level. You see the outcome of this all the time at the PhD level. Even top 2% often just does not cut it when trying to do novel research. So many PhD’s get stuck in the post-doc adjunct cycle with never a real shot at tenure.

That is fine. Nothing to feel bad about. But also we don’t want our top 10% but not 2% to waste eight plus years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Again, this is all dedicated on the high school diploma being actually hard and valuable. Associates degree replace undergrads, undergrad replace masters, etc.

[KPGv2]

> we don’t want our top 10% but not 2% to waste eight plus years and hundreds of thousands of dollars

Is it really your assertion that university is a waste of time for the most intelligent decile? Do you think four bucks in late fees at the public library remotely resembles a quality university education? I find people who didn't go to university often say things like this, because they've drunk some kind of far-right kool aid.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the populace would not accept that

What is your evidence for this? It seems like there is growing frustration with the realization that we may have an economically useless cohort about to hit the real world.

[keeda]

I'd say grade inflation is the clearest evidence. It has been a widespread, long-simmering issue; I've heard teachers bemoan the phenomenon in at least 3 different countries in as many decades, and each of them cited the ire of the public as the underlying reason.

I think the growing frustration is real, but it's coming more from employers than the populace in general.

[pclowes]

High Schools don’t support teachers who are confronted by angry parents who are mad that you are ruining their kids chance at an Ivy by giving them a B- in HS algebra (meanwhile the ivies remedial math classes are packed more than ever)

[JumpCrisscross]

> High Schools don’t support teachers who are confronted by angry parents

When I took the California high school exit exam, it was already a joke. Still, the news was filled with people treating every failure as a failure of the test.

[XorNot]

What do you plan to do with the people who don't pass though?

Everyone's very excited to have failure rates or whatever and then mute on the real problem: those people don't just go away.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What do you plan to do with the people who don't pass though?

Remedial classes. Or, realistically, unskilled labor.

Like, what do we do with these kids now? The same thing, except after we’ve saddled them with a meaningless diploma and a pile of debt.

[Xeoncross]

They are still there either way. They don't suddenly become smarter and/or hard working because we pretend.

If anything, it simply increases the pool of people who realize you don't need to try.

[qball]

We hope the social redistribution that would have to be there to help those that fail, and those employed to teach them, is less expensive than every citizen forced to sacrifice 8 years of prime life time and tens of thousands of dollars.

Because that is how we are redistributing from successful people to not-successful ones right now.

[D-Machine]

Ironic because it is the people who push for just passing everyone that are actually doing it to just "make the problem go away", in reality.

[whimblepop]

You can't make people more knowledgeable by not attempting to measure their knowledge. You can maybe try to improve things for subsequent generations. But issuing a false credential won't solve the problem.

[LocalH]

The US has a really bad problem with parents thinking they should have deity-level say over every single aspect of how their kids are raised. This is very ironic, since the US also has a really bad problem with other parents thinking they can tell people how to raise their kids (witness all the "free-range" children who have innocently gotten their parents in trouble because some other parent saw them alone and called the police).

[chadgpt3]

It should be less stigmatized to fail, study, try again, and pass. This way more people would have the credential because they have the knowledge as more people would have the knowledge. The credential would mean something, even though most people would have it.

[johnobrien1010]

This assertion seems light on sources. What evidence do you have to support your claims?

[thrance]

Notice that how hard a diploma is to get is completely irrelevant to literacy rates.

[insane_dreamer]

> They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money.

The problem is that because you can no longer get a non-minimum wage job without a college degree, universities are now basically just a place to get a piece of paper so you can get a job, any job. They're no longer "halls of higher learning". A bachelor's degree is the new high school degree.

If you could earn a living without a college degree, like you used to be able to, those going to uni would be those who want to educate themselves.

[jimbokun]

Who the hell can go 10s of thousands of dollars in debt to have Socratic discussions without gaining a credential valued by employers at the end of it?

[jeremyjh]

Why would you pay 10s of thousands of dollars to get a credential everyone knows is meaningless? The first ChatGPT grads are just now entering the workforce. I have a son entering his junior year of high school. Who knows if a degree will be worth even the time investment 5 years from now.

[pclowes]

That’s my point. It is only so expensive because it is a gate to earning money. The concept that everybody should go to college and the Federal Pell grants and funding to that effect is what causes college to be expensive.

So now we pay twice. Once with our tax dollars for a high school system that does not appropriately stratify students. And then again with insane amounts of debt that cannot be discharged even in bankruptcy to teach remedial algebra to adults that have no interest in learning it.

[tejtm]

If an employer really valued the credential, they would supply it.

[delfinom]

A student populace not taught financial literacy and memed they have to go to college to succeed. High schools hiring "advisors" whose entire job is to maximize the college application rates to make the school look good.

My high school, quite a few years ago had 10 "advisors" you only met in senior years their entire existence was to milk those college numbers. The one I got assigned to ended up throwing a major fit even including the principal because I refused to let her write a recommendation letter for me. I didn't know her and she knew nothing of me but some bullshit she wanted me to write down to guide her. I told them to fuck the right off.

Boomers turned college into an industrial pipeline.

[beepbooptheory]

Why wouldn't employers value it?

[ifidishshbsba]

It’s often not even about the job but to get visas

[saimiam]

The comment you were replying to was about school kids, not foreign students in post secondary programs looking for work/immigrant visas.

Also, foreign students enrolling in American colleges are (a) here as a result of decades of conscious policy choices (b) provide a not insignificant portion of the operating budget of many institutions (c) would go elsewhere if America wasn’t an option - so you aren’t really gaining much by keeping them out.

Source: former F1 visa masters student here

[cjbgkagh]

And what if the 35% failure rate had a disparate impact, would you still fail them?

[D-Machine]

Requiring years of schooling that is essentially worthless / provides credentials with no information also has disparate impacts, possibly worse than just properly failing people and letting them sort themselves / be sorted into positions that are actually suitable for them and allow real growth. Schooling is a huge percentage of a modern person's life now.

[cjbgkagh]

Are you willing to risk a lawsuit to stand on your principles? Could you prove the disparate impact is random and your pass criteria isn’t racist?

[D-Machine]

> Could you prove the disparate impact is random and your pass criteria isn’t racist?

Can those in favor of grade inflation and meaningless credentials prove their decisions also don't have disparate impact and aren't racist? Based on some recent US Supreme Court decisions re: affirmative action, it would seem unlikely this case would be any different. The hard questions about long-term harms to students and society are simply not being asked seriously enough.

[cjbgkagh]

In this hypothetical you’re a teacher, not world emperor, so you’re limited to pass/fail decisions of a particular class at a particular school.

I personally have grave concerns regarding the poor education of the youth and think education should be far more stringent, but unfortunately I don’t get to make those decisions. If I was a teacher I’m not sure I would be willing to fall on that sword. I avoid the issue by not being a teacher.

[pclowes]

This is a big component of why we have objective grade level standards. They are a strong but imperfect defense against racism at the teacher level.

If I am the teacher and I fail your kid but your kid crushes the blind rigorous and as objective as we can make it standardized test then your lawsuit just got stronger.

The issue is people decided to weaken the standard or call standards themself racist (which IMO is actually racist).

[D-Machine]

There's no hypothetical here IMO, this is a real-world problem, and also you aren't limited to pass/fail decisions as a teacher, except in exceptional cases of borderline grades. Otherwise, there is a passing grade / requirements, and grades can be determined by objective tests (all students get the same difficulty tests). Also you have something like an average of many courses over many years to make the pass/fail decisions, ultimately, if we are talking about getting a diploma and/or graduating high-school here.

Also, it depends what you see the discussion as. If laws are supposed to do the right thing, then "pass everyone always" is really starting to look like the wrong thing, even where the intentions are seemingly "good" because they avoid "disparate impact" (in the short term on very narrowly-chosen metrics). Then if your argument is "yeah well we can't do the right thing because lawsuits", well, yes, I agree, practically, but then these lawsuits are basically also evil and/or misguided.

[dundunUp]

This is a big component of why we have objective grade level standards.

[pclowes]

Yes. You can’t put equity before excellence or you erode both. Passing students to avoid “disparate impact” to me is highly ignorant and often deeply racist.

[cjbgkagh]

It is easier to make that call when you’re not at risk of being sued.

[JumpCrisscross]

Legislative step number one then, remove the legal basis for such suits.

[BLKNSLVR]

If the choice is between eroding the recognition of excellence and risk being sued, then the foundation upon which the society has been built is the problem. The solution to which is, as @JumpCrisscross says, correcting legislation in such a way as to direct the society towards better outcomes.

[cjbgkagh]

Disparate impact laws are a spin off from civil rights act 1964 so you’d have to repeal at least a part of that act. Much of modern society is shaped by these laws so you’d be completely changing the structure of society. Many people benefit from the status quo and those people, who have substantial means, will fight any attempts to repeal these laws.

I want these laws changed, it is the whole reason I brought up the issue, but I also understand how monumentally difficult it would be to do that. I suspect the US would have to degrade far further to even consider this.

[jimbob45]

Is the problem participation? Or is it that entire years are devoted to reading ancient books with bad English and unrelatable themes simply because of tradition? Shakespeare wrote some neat plays but they’re not helping the reading epidemic.

Math teachers had the balls to radically revamp their curriculums with Common Core and now their teachings are no longer formulaic but instead stimulate original thought and creativity. It’s high time for English teachers to do the same.

[lmm]

> Is the problem participation? Or is it that entire years are devoted to reading ancient books with bad English and unrelatable themes simply because of tradition? Shakespeare wrote some neat plays but they’re not helping the reading epidemic.

Were Shakespeare's plays "relatable" 370 years after being published and then suddenly became unrelatable in the last 30? I think not. If students' participation in classes about them has changed, it's not because of the plays aging.

[sethammons]

The ancient shadow puppet story tellers were good enough evening entertainment until books, radio, tv, and the internet and porn came out.

I would argue the last 30 years have had more attention-competition than most of the last 370. These kids are actually different by growing up in a very different world.

[eszed]

I'm a lapsed English teacher, and I don't completely disagree with you: some of the Old Standards could be removed without losing anything, and there are contemporary texts that aren't but should be included in high school and college curricula.

However, the value of the Canon° is three-fold:

1) There are stories and ideas that are culturally important. Students need to be made familiar with them, and know where they came from.

2) The themes in the Old Stuff are not unrelateable. Shakespeare wrote about sex and death and jealousy and power, and the tension between individuals and society. Those are all perfectly familiar to anyone. One of my favorite assignments, when I taught a college lit course, was to read Beowulf, and then (during mid-term week, to give them a break) watch Jaws, because they're the exact same story. It's important to recognize common humanity in people who look and dress and talk and believe differently than you do. Using The Old Stuff to expand that skill side-steps many of the reflexive reactions students bring to contemporary literature.

3) Students need to be challenged to read hard texts. You're on HN, so I expect you recognize the value and pleasure of understanding something that was previously beyond you. Yes, there is contemporary writing that also works - I assigned more than some of my colleagues - but reading the classics hits all three of these points, so it's still worth doing.

All that said, there are way too many Humanities teachers who are just awful, and put people off reading rather than the reverse. I suspect that you may have encountered some of them, and that's a damn shame.

°To anyone reading over our shoulders in this conversation: don't @ me over this. I'm well aware of the problems with the notion, but it's still the best layman's term for the idea under discussion. I'm a broad-tent guy, though: whatever you think oughta be included is probably fine with me.

[floxy]

Citation needed for American public high schools that have a Shakespeare-heavy curriculum.

[raddan]

Obviously my experience is a little dated (graduated high school in 1997), but Shakespeare was a recurring theme throughout my high school English classes. We read The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, and a number of poems, some of which we had to memorize and recite. I didn’t mind the poetry; I still remember bits of the Whitman, Coleridge, and Lewis Carroll poems I memorized. In addition, we read The Odyssey (which felt like torture to me), various Dickens novels, Jane Austin (also torture), etc.

Despite being an avid reader, I did not enjoy all of the above. However, now that I am middle aged, I count myself fortunate that my public school teachers forced me to do it.

[yc0042]

class of '23 here. Not exactly a Shakespeare-heavy curriculum, but was made to read Romeo & Juliet and Othello as well as various sonnets in high school.

[pclowes]

Additionally any college grad that:

1. Takes out six figures of loans for a degree in a field with no hope of commensurate income

2. Pays minimum payments below interest

3. Whines on social media that after X years of not even covering the interest payment they now owe more than ever

Should:

1. Lose both their college and HS degrees. They clearly dont understand HS math.

2. Their college’s accreditation should be investigated

3. Same with their HS

[KPGv2]

So your solution for the system failing a person is to punish the person but reward the powerful people engaged in the bad behavior. The ones who brainwashed the kids into thinking that this is what they're supposed to do.

[pclowes]

No, the people giving degrees that say a person can do basic math when the person can’t do math should not be able to give out degrees anymore.

Similarly, the person with the credential that says they can do basic math that cannot do basic math should not have the credential.

[anubistheta]

People have agency. The system didn't fail a person. That framing completely ignores their actions. Especially for paying so little on their loans and complaining about it. 18 year olds can vote. If we trust them with that, surely they can be responsible for their own choices.

Moreover, they said the accreditation of both institutions should be investigated.

[bmn__]

Not so. The consideration should include the fact that when a child has been spawn camped by school, family and society at large to implant the idea that tertiary education is required to participate in society and without a degree one amounts to nothing, as is often the case, then it indeed is a failure of systematic nature and it would be not fair to put the blame on the now young adult's shoulders alone.

[whatever120]

You’re an obnoxious, pretentious prick