UTMC

I put this here, rather than politics, in the hopes that more of you would check it out.
Please watch this.

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I've watched it.
I think he's pretty much on the money.

It shouldn't matter how children (or adults for that matter) learn, all that matters is learning.
Of course, the trend these days is extending factory education from the schools on to the universities, since obviously people used to assembly line learning will have trouble in the largely self-structured environment of university (it's the big argument over here).
And to make it all an expensive and, if possible, profit-generating enterprise.

Well, what are you gonna do. The world is heading towards 19th century Britain. The rich have their disposable workers in the third world and at home their servants, who are deluded into thinking the situation is somehow to their benefit while the scramble for the scraps that fall of the table.
A 19th century education system fits very nicely into that.

I think that that is remarkably well-done, and I agree with most of it. I know many mechanics who couldn't pass a standardized test to save their lives but could fix a car with far more proficiency than the book-smart guy who was talented in passing ASE tests but had problems once the car was broken and needed effective diagnosis and repairs. Yet shops continue to use ASE testing as a hiring metric. They are imperfect but better than the alternatives they have at this point.

How can we ask our kids to dig themselves into the kind of huge debt that will often postpone major life points like marriage, kids and buying houses when many of the degrees financed by that debt won't get them a good paying job necessary to pay back that debt? When even the good jobs viewed as safe are now being outsourced (IT, law, engineering etc)?

If I were an average college administrator at an average school planning for the future I would be shitting bricks right now for fear that students will wake up to this en masse and refuse this exchange of decades of tangible hard-cash, very real debt up front for a wifty possibility of possibly better employment once you've signed your life away.

Hell, if I go back to school a primary driver of my choice of MBA programs will be depth and breadth of the job-placement network of that school and the median salary generated by the last graduating class. If I'm going to drop $40,000+ on grad school I damn well want to be certain it will pay off to my bank account right out of the gate.

He's totally right, I can't think of a single use for a paperclip, except perhaps to tell the asker where to stick it.

Seriously though, he's dead right. Unfortunately, the ones who need to be convinced are the ones least likely to find fault with the system. It worked so well for them, after all.

Of course, I would think so, I am a multi high school and art school dropout.

PS: Love RSA Animate. They're like TED talks but reasonably sized, and illustrated! If you haven't seen them before, you'd do well to watch some of the others.

Liked it so much I forwarded it to my principal...let's see if I continue to remain employed.

-insert 3 page response here-

TL:DR: I agree completely, although I think that he's just scratching the surface of how and why our education system is broken. I'd love to read a lengthy lecture series on this.

In my opinion, public education is like a troubled foster child that gets shipped off to new parents every 2-4 years and then everyone seems surprised that things aren't going as planned.

Thank you for posting this. I find no small amount of comfort in finding out that at least some point in my life, most likely before I was five, that I was a genius. And that my subsequent plummeting on test scores was, indeed, expected. My folks will be proud of me.

We watched a couple of those, actually (RSA has several presentations) and they're fuckin' brilliant.

--Jaeger

Sisyphus wrote:Thank you for posting this. I find no small amount of comfort in finding out that at least some point in my life, most likely before I was five, that I was a genius. And that my subsequent plummeting on test scores was, indeed, expected.

I feel the same way. To try and fix it I've chosen skepticism as my religion and have taken to reading philosophy like it's water in the desert. I think it's helping.