Many people are dissatisfied with current educational system. But different people are dissatisfied for different reasons, and their visions how to fix the system are not necessarily compatible. There may be no solution that would make all of them happy. Seems to me that we could divide the attempts to fix education roughly like this:
A) The best version of the current system. That means, there is still school, the attendance is mandatory, etc. But there is no bullying; all teachers are competent and motivated; it is a pleasant experience for all kids. Kids are allowed to choose advanced classes; many classes are optional. Textbooks are much better than they are now; they are more logically organized, the explanations are easy to follow, there are nice pictures and interesting examples. Shortly, it is a steelman of the system we have now.
B) The state defines the curriculum, and it is more or less what we have now. But there is absolute freedom in how to achieve that knowledge. Some kids go to school. Other kids are homeschooled. Plus there are all kinds of spontaneously organized schools. The only condition is that kids take state-approved exams approximately once in a year; if they pass, they are allowed to continue doing whatever they were doing; if they fail repeatedly, there are some consequences (maybe in that case only, the school becomes mandatory). Alternatively, the state provides certificates for kids who pass the exams; and you get enough clear feedback whether your kid’s current trajectory is likely to lead to the certificate. In addition to being a signal to employers, you need to get e.g. the high-school certificate in order to receive financial support from the state for your university study.
C) Let the market decide what is true or false. If I make a school that only teaches three subjects: “Why Holocaust is a hoax”, “Why COVID-19 is a hoax”, and “Software development in Haskell”, and it is widely known that most of my students get well-paying Haskell jobs, the government has no business interfering with my business. Also, if my school consists of letting kids play computer games all day long, and the parents are happy paying for this (essentially for babysitting), again it is no one else’s business.
(There is probably also something between B and C.)
I suppose most of us would agree that B is an improvement over A. There are still some reasonable objections, for example that schools provide socialization for kids. Imagine kids growing up in abusive and/or fanatically religious families, whose parents use homeschooling as a way to isolate their kids from the rest of the world. The current school systems provides to every child a contact with the mainstream society.
But it seems to me that the difference betwen B and C is often ignored, as we focus on fighting the current system; and that difference seems worth examining. It is possible that the market would actually correct some of the problems with C. For example, there would be market demand for chemistry instead of alchemy. Probably also for medicine instead of homeopathy, although I am less sure of this. My greatest worries would be about subjects not directly relevant for one’s job; the selection pressure on their correctness would be minimal. (A possible counter-argument could be that perhaps such things should not be taught at all?)
Another worry is that a system too strongly guided by market would be too short-sighted. Like, flexibility is often more expensive than narrow specialization, so the market would demand narrow specialists because they are cheaper… and when the technology changes, well, the market would now demand narrow specialists in the new technology, and the old narrow specialists would get fired. In other words, the problem is that sometimes the feedback on long-term usefulness of your education takes years.
But as you point out, there are several problems with this. That’s the tricky thing about education: it’s supposed to do everything, so any change will always make it worse on some axis. Which makes it very easy for someone who defends the status quo to always kill the discussion (not you).
I don’t know what to do with the fact that society is fractured, and that many people live in destructive subcultures, and that democracy functions better when there is some mutual understanding between subcultures. But I feel this is a problem that has very little to do with knowledge reproduction, and we would do well in separating the two problems. Maybe something school-like, that is, some institution that forces people to rub shoulders, is good for society, though it is not good for learning. If we aim to solve that problem separately, I think we can design a better solution than if we bundle it with education. For one thing, it is not a problem that is limited to children, so a solution to the socialization problem would need to span all age groups.
And on flexibility and specialization: isn’t everything domain-specific? Since we very rarely see people apply knowledge outside of the domain it was acquired, is it really valuable to train generalists? Or is that more what you become if you hop domain a bunch of times? But I do recognize the problem that the feedback on usefulness can be too slow for certain skills, so there needs to be systems and incentives in place that help the spread of those.
it’s supposed to do everything, so any change will always make it worse on some axis.
100% this.
It seems like a possible solution could be to decouple some of those functions. For example, there is in my opinion no good reason why the institution that provides education should be the same as the institution that provides certificates. Even if both institutions are government-organized, if you separate them, you fix the problem with grade inflation (teachers give students better grades, to avoid conflicts with parents).
But the political advantage of “everything under the same hood” is that you do not need to talk these things explicitly; you can just pretend that they are inseparable parts of “education”. If you instead made a separate institution for teaching, separate institution for certification… and a separate institution for socialization (assuming that such thing is even possible), there would probably be a lot of opposition against the “socialization institution”, because the mainstream families would see it (correctly) as a waste of time, and the abusive minorities would see it (correctly) as a tool used against their values. And the government would no longer have the “but education! you really need it to get a job” excuse.
Since we very rarely see people apply knowledge outside of the domain it was acquired, is it really valuable to train generalists?
I think it is good when people can reason outside their profession. Like, consider this COVID-19 situation: how better it would be if people understood how viruses and vaccines work… and how much worse it would be if most people (anyone who is not a doctor or a biologist by profession) believed that even the very concepts of “virus” and “vaccine” are hoaxes.
It’s like there are two reasons why knowledge is good: the knowledge that is good for you, and the knowledge that is good for your neighbors. If you get sick, it is not just your problem, it has an impact on others. (Even outside of pandemics, you generally want people to wash their hands, not go to work sick, etc.) In democracy, you are supposed to vote on all kinds of topics; it is good if your model of the world in general is not completely stupid, otherwise you will vote for stupid politicians who propose stupid ideas.
But of course there is a question of how much general education is actually useful. In my opinion, I would skip culture (it is mostly used as a status symbol anyway), and probably focus on practical topics instead. For example, I believe it could improve health of general population a lot if people knew how to cook healthy meals. -- But of course, everyone has their own opinion, and mine would probably be too low-status.
Many people are dissatisfied with current educational system. But different people are dissatisfied for different reasons, and their visions how to fix the system are not necessarily compatible. There may be no solution that would make all of them happy. Seems to me that we could divide the attempts to fix education roughly like this:
A) The best version of the current system. That means, there is still school, the attendance is mandatory, etc. But there is no bullying; all teachers are competent and motivated; it is a pleasant experience for all kids. Kids are allowed to choose advanced classes; many classes are optional. Textbooks are much better than they are now; they are more logically organized, the explanations are easy to follow, there are nice pictures and interesting examples. Shortly, it is a steelman of the system we have now.
B) The state defines the curriculum, and it is more or less what we have now. But there is absolute freedom in how to achieve that knowledge. Some kids go to school. Other kids are homeschooled. Plus there are all kinds of spontaneously organized schools. The only condition is that kids take state-approved exams approximately once in a year; if they pass, they are allowed to continue doing whatever they were doing; if they fail repeatedly, there are some consequences (maybe in that case only, the school becomes mandatory). Alternatively, the state provides certificates for kids who pass the exams; and you get enough clear feedback whether your kid’s current trajectory is likely to lead to the certificate. In addition to being a signal to employers, you need to get e.g. the high-school certificate in order to receive financial support from the state for your university study.
C) Let the market decide what is true or false. If I make a school that only teaches three subjects: “Why Holocaust is a hoax”, “Why COVID-19 is a hoax”, and “Software development in Haskell”, and it is widely known that most of my students get well-paying Haskell jobs, the government has no business interfering with my business. Also, if my school consists of letting kids play computer games all day long, and the parents are happy paying for this (essentially for babysitting), again it is no one else’s business.
(There is probably also something between B and C.)
I suppose most of us would agree that B is an improvement over A. There are still some reasonable objections, for example that schools provide socialization for kids. Imagine kids growing up in abusive and/or fanatically religious families, whose parents use homeschooling as a way to isolate their kids from the rest of the world. The current school systems provides to every child a contact with the mainstream society.
But it seems to me that the difference betwen B and C is often ignored, as we focus on fighting the current system; and that difference seems worth examining. It is possible that the market would actually correct some of the problems with C. For example, there would be market demand for chemistry instead of alchemy. Probably also for medicine instead of homeopathy, although I am less sure of this. My greatest worries would be about subjects not directly relevant for one’s job; the selection pressure on their correctness would be minimal. (A possible counter-argument could be that perhaps such things should not be taught at all?)
Another worry is that a system too strongly guided by market would be too short-sighted. Like, flexibility is often more expensive than narrow specialization, so the market would demand narrow specialists because they are cheaper… and when the technology changes, well, the market would now demand narrow specialists in the new technology, and the old narrow specialists would get fired. In other words, the problem is that sometimes the feedback on long-term usefulness of your education takes years.
I guess I’m between b and c.
But as you point out, there are several problems with this. That’s the tricky thing about education: it’s supposed to do everything, so any change will always make it worse on some axis. Which makes it very easy for someone who defends the status quo to always kill the discussion (not you).
I don’t know what to do with the fact that society is fractured, and that many people live in destructive subcultures, and that democracy functions better when there is some mutual understanding between subcultures. But I feel this is a problem that has very little to do with knowledge reproduction, and we would do well in separating the two problems. Maybe something school-like, that is, some institution that forces people to rub shoulders, is good for society, though it is not good for learning. If we aim to solve that problem separately, I think we can design a better solution than if we bundle it with education. For one thing, it is not a problem that is limited to children, so a solution to the socialization problem would need to span all age groups.
And on flexibility and specialization: isn’t everything domain-specific? Since we very rarely see people apply knowledge outside of the domain it was acquired, is it really valuable to train generalists? Or is that more what you become if you hop domain a bunch of times? But I do recognize the problem that the feedback on usefulness can be too slow for certain skills, so there needs to be systems and incentives in place that help the spread of those.
100% this.
It seems like a possible solution could be to decouple some of those functions. For example, there is in my opinion no good reason why the institution that provides education should be the same as the institution that provides certificates. Even if both institutions are government-organized, if you separate them, you fix the problem with grade inflation (teachers give students better grades, to avoid conflicts with parents).
But the political advantage of “everything under the same hood” is that you do not need to talk these things explicitly; you can just pretend that they are inseparable parts of “education”. If you instead made a separate institution for teaching, separate institution for certification… and a separate institution for socialization (assuming that such thing is even possible), there would probably be a lot of opposition against the “socialization institution”, because the mainstream families would see it (correctly) as a waste of time, and the abusive minorities would see it (correctly) as a tool used against their values. And the government would no longer have the “but education! you really need it to get a job” excuse.
I think it is good when people can reason outside their profession. Like, consider this COVID-19 situation: how better it would be if people understood how viruses and vaccines work… and how much worse it would be if most people (anyone who is not a doctor or a biologist by profession) believed that even the very concepts of “virus” and “vaccine” are hoaxes.
It’s like there are two reasons why knowledge is good: the knowledge that is good for you, and the knowledge that is good for your neighbors. If you get sick, it is not just your problem, it has an impact on others. (Even outside of pandemics, you generally want people to wash their hands, not go to work sick, etc.) In democracy, you are supposed to vote on all kinds of topics; it is good if your model of the world in general is not completely stupid, otherwise you will vote for stupid politicians who propose stupid ideas.
But of course there is a question of how much general education is actually useful. In my opinion, I would skip culture (it is mostly used as a status symbol anyway), and probably focus on practical topics instead. For example, I believe it could improve health of general population a lot if people knew how to cook healthy meals. -- But of course, everyone has their own opinion, and mine would probably be too low-status.