It’s hard not to, when you don’t know what people are going to end up doing. If you know that the son of the blacksmith is going to be a blacksmith, the problem gets much simpler.
Why? It’s not obvious that that is better than teaching a bit of everything. For instance, if 10% of jobs need a little bit of geography, then having only candidates who know nothing about geography is going to be a disadvantage to those employers.
Because people not knowing geography could be a disadvantage to employERs as well as employees. A minimal education system could be below the economic optimum.
This is like saying we need the government to mandate apple production, because without apples we might become malnourished which is bad. Why can’t the market solve the problem more efficiently? Where’s the coordination failure?
It’s hard not to, when you don’t know what people are going to end up doing. If you know that the son of the blacksmith is going to be a blacksmith, the problem gets much simpler.
It’s easy to prepare kids to become anything. Just teach what’s universally useful.
It’s impossible to prepare kids to become everything. Polymaths stopped being viable two centuries ago.
There is a huge difference between union and intersection of sets.
Why? It’s not obvious that that is better than teaching a bit of everything. For instance, if 10% of jobs need a little bit of geography, then having only candidates who know nothing about geography is going to be a disadvantage to those employers.
And thus, knowing geography becomes a comparative advantage to those who choose to study it. Why should the rest of us care?
Because people not knowing geography could be a disadvantage to employERs as well as employees. A minimal education system could be below the economic optimum.
This is like saying we need the government to mandate apple production, because without apples we might become malnourished which is bad. Why can’t the market solve the problem more efficiently? Where’s the coordination failure?
The market can’t solve (high school) education because education is mostly public.