You made a claim that schools teach their curriculum because the curriculum is useful. (e.g. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it)
Teaching Shakespeare is an example where it’s not clear whether there any use to it. Schools might simply teach it because teaching Shakespeare is high status.
The math curriculum is also not optimized by teaching children the kind of math that’s likely to be useful for them. It instead tries to teach them calculus because calculus is high status while making Fermi estimates isn’t.
I didn’t claim that the only reason schools teach their curriculum is that it is useful. There can be (and are) different parts of the curriculum taught for different reasons, some related to being useful and some not.
How well do they serve each purpose? I’m given to understand Newton’s Laws are highly useful in engineering. How do they compare with alternative means of producing status, like teaching everyone ‘Ubik’ and ‘fnord?’
You made a claim that schools teach their curriculum because the curriculum is useful. (e.g. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it)
Teaching Shakespeare is an example where it’s not clear whether there any use to it. Schools might simply teach it because teaching Shakespeare is high status.
The math curriculum is also not optimized by teaching children the kind of math that’s likely to be useful for them. It instead tries to teach them calculus because calculus is high status while making Fermi estimates isn’t.
I didn’t claim that the only reason schools teach their curriculum is that it is useful. There can be (and are) different parts of the curriculum taught for different reasons, some related to being useful and some not.
How do you know that the reason students teach Newtons laws is them being useful and not for status purposes?
How well do they serve each purpose? I’m given to understand Newton’s Laws are highly useful in engineering. How do they compare with alternative means of producing status, like teaching everyone ‘Ubik’ and ‘fnord?’
But most students will not do jobs as engineers.
Touch typing is a useful skill for nearly all jobs yet most schools don’t teach it.
There are no professors of touch typing that give the subject academic prestige. On the other hand academic physic has prestige.
Calculus has more academic prestige than statistics and thus schools are focusing more on teaching calculus.