School spends a long time “wasting” our time but learning things is a great way to learn how to interpret information and make actual informed decisions
Yep. We don’t teach kids math so they can learn to do math. We do it so they can develop an intuition for abstract reasoning.
Also sometimes it actually just is good to know maths. Engineers, researchers, actuaries, accountants…there’s a huge range of practical applications for maths that’s more complicated than basic arithmetic in a very direct fashion, before you even get into jobs that more indirectly use abstract reasoning learnt through high school maths.
Sure. And for the 90% of kids who correctly say they won’t use math, it doesn’t matter. We are doing math so they can learn to navigate formal systems of reasoning. We could honestly teach deductive logic instead, or set theory, or group theory, or finite field topology. It doesn’t have to be algebra or anything remotely practical.
deductive logic instead, or set theory, or group theory, or finite field topology
All of these are maths, though?
Abstract versus applied math. It looks different. More like studying numberless patterns and proof methods.
yeah i dont know how i couldve survived without eigen vectors
How could I forget about eigenvalues?
First of all no, school fails miserably at actually teaching anyone to learn effectively, so that’s not why they do that. Second, they could just as effectively teach kids how to learn by teaching them things that are actually useful. I would’ve loved to have classes for note taking and studying, critical thinking, maintenance and repair… instead I’ve had to teach myself all of those things, meanwhile my school was too busy making me read about Victorian era dress styles to teach me any of that. Even math beyond algebra 1 is fairly niche and is probably better taught specifically to the people who need it. I’m in comp sci, I use that math all the time, but my friend getting his master’s in plant breeding probably doesn’t need to be intimately familiar with calculus.
It feels better to tell ourselves that all of the years wasted by school are actually for something but the reality is that school just does kind of a bad job at equipping people with the skills they need, and it needs to be improved dramatically.
Abstract reasoning is the most “useful” intellectual ability you can have. However, the most important would be the normative insights we usually call “wisdom” (which isn’t taught but learned — for instance by reading literature and living life with curiosity). Critical thinking and other philosophy goes without saying.
Also to not fall for pitifully obvious scams.
I just bought neuron enhancement patches on Temu, so I never have to worry about pitifully obvious scams again.
Teachers hate this one simple trick!
Writing essays, for instance, helps one structure their thoughts and form with them a narrative. It’s actually really concerning that even that is being delegated to ChatGPT, as if people weren’t ignorant and mentally incompetent enough already. 😭
The real learning was the learning we did along the way.
If there’s one thing my school has never even tried to teach me it’s how to learn effectively.
I also think undergraduate degrees are mostly to teach good working habits and learning habits. Though not everyone succeeds at learning those things.
Yeah. A lot of people get degrees that don’t end up being super-applicable to their eventual career.
What a degree tells me about a candidate is that they can complete a long-term project that requires balancing multiple milestones (semesters), multitasking (multiple courses per semester), while being self-directed, working with others, and navigating bureaucracy.
For lots of jobs, the specific degree may not matter that much. They’re usually educated enough they know how to learn and adapt to new tasks relatively quickly. For things like engineering, medicine, and science the specifics of the coursework are essential, but for most jobs the specific degree basically tells me what they may be more prepared for fresh out of college and maybe something about how they look at the world (a geography major’s holistic big-picture view of the world versus a psychology major’s more focused, individualized view).
Yes and No. School really lacks a sort of “general knowledge” class, to get a general overview of lots of varied things.
It’s always been incredibly strange to me how you’re supposed to pick your career after high school (more or less) when you usually know about less than 10% of the jobs that exist.
PICK YOUR CAREER RIGHT NOW, GO TO COLLEGE IT’S OK TAKE OUT A LOAN YOU’RE GOOD FOR IT WHEN YOU GET THAT JOB YOU JUST PICKED
if you don’t do that you’ll FLIP BURGERS! Do you wanna be a greasy shithead for the rest of your life?! NO GO TO COLLEGE RIGHT NOW.
tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and a degree I will never use later, I went back to trade school and am in fact a greasy shithead. Fuckin best thing I ever did. Fuck you college salesman guy. You gave me a bad advice
SO TRUE!!
I didnt kniw what to do with myself.
So I got into another (i believe that’s whats it called) vocational school for 2 years.
But then I knew what not to be doing as a job. But I knew it should be anything with IT.
Now I am at an MSP doing IT :) (not thanks to our school system, lol)
DING!
One point to Aussiemandeus
I “learned” a lot of falsehoods in history and civics classes that was just american exceptionalism.
Additionally, we don’t encourage kids to read books so they can become better at communicating. We push them to read so that they can have something worth communicating.
Unless your educational system inhibits creativity and encourages memorization without understanding.
And everything memorized must be available for a timed 0.5-3 hour session with no access to any kind of notes, which risks destroying any chance of those memories “sticking” long term.
The only times in my adult life where
- Time was crucial
AND
- I had no access to any helpful information
was never
All it did was exacerbate my underlying mental health issues while my brain was developing.
My experience in school made me oppose authoritarianism… fucking shitty teachers and school admin, always biased againt me because I’m “foreign” and therefore always presumed to be the troublemaker.
That’s literally what they told us back when I still studied Latin
