Good points. I guess why I’m ultimately interested in education is that these individual inclinations begin early, and one can foster them or beat them out, as with curiosity. I could see why outreach for adults would be more difficult. And of course if a child benefits from an EA intervention, then they might become more interested in their own education if they have rationalist role models, and so on and so on until they discover rationality of their own accord.
I guess why I’m ultimately interested in education is that these individual inclinations begin early, and one can foster them or beat them out, as with curiosity.
It’s not easy to provide education for children if neither the government nor their parents want it.
At the moment there aren’t rationality interventions for which a solid evidence base exists that proves that they work in a way that would make it easy to pitch those interventions to the school system.
The first step is to create effective interventions.
There’s nothing to be gained by holding classes where children are taught the names of the logical fallacies. There’s no evidence that it helps. Pushing such classes would be about trying to push an ideology while ignoring the the core of what rationality is actually about.
politicians—can keep “reforming” the system every year and impress voters
I think you have a bad model of politicians if you model them primarily as wanting to impress voters.
On of the reasons for centralized testing is for example that it amkes it easier for employees to evaluate the applicants from different schools. As a result they lobby for standardized testing and get it.
Teachers unions are politically strong.
Politicians are generally concerned about unemployement and want the education system to teach skills that allow students to take jobs.
In the UK the lately also call about some thing they call happiness.
parents—free babysitting until the child is 18 (depends on the country)
Parents also care substantially about their children getting into a good college.
I guess a lot of what I wrote is country-specific, and I was thinking about Slovakia where employers do not care about the specific college, they only care about whether you have one or not. Not sure why, but that’s how it works.
And pretty much anyone can get to some college, so the only obstacles are either being somehow insane, or coming from so poor family that even if the college is free, you simply cannot afford a few more years of not having income. So “having college education” is a proxy for “not being poor or insane”, which of course is a horrible classism. Somehow citizens of the country that regularly has a majority of communists in the parliament don’t mind this at all.
So the current situation here is that the elementary and high schools don’t matter at all—because unless you are very poor or insane, you will get to some college, and for most people it doesn’t matter which one—so the usual complaints about schools are along the lines of “too much homework” or “too difficult lessons”. On the other hand, people notice that young people with university education are somehow much less impressive than they used to be a decade or two ago. But almost no one can connect the dots. So the politicians here do some Brownian-motion “reforms” of education, which for example means that one year they remove some part of math education, the next year they put it back, yet another year they shift some math from one grade to another. Each time saying to media how this reform will fix the problems with education.
Sorry, it’s a stupid country with stupid voters, and I am getting more and more disappointed every year.
Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not Slovaks, it’s humans.
Imagine someone of average intelligence. Now consider that fully one half of the country’s population is below median intelligence, that is, stupider than someone you imagined...
That’s where cultural habits make a big difference. In some places the stupid people follow relatively good heuristics, in some places they follow relatively bad ones.
Culture is important, yes, but that usual argument is that it’s institutions which matter. The most prominent advocate of this approach is probably Daron Acemoglu, see e.g. this or his book.
From your description of Slovakian politics it seems like the actors are little coordinated. Maybe there room for a liquid democracy based political party?
Good points. I guess why I’m ultimately interested in education is that these individual inclinations begin early, and one can foster them or beat them out, as with curiosity. I could see why outreach for adults would be more difficult. And of course if a child benefits from an EA intervention, then they might become more interested in their own education if they have rationalist role models, and so on and so on until they discover rationality of their own accord.
It’s not easy to provide education for children if neither the government nor their parents want it.
At the moment there aren’t rationality interventions for which a solid evidence base exists that proves that they work in a way that would make it easy to pitch those interventions to the school system. The first step is to create effective interventions.
There’s nothing to be gained by holding classes where children are taught the names of the logical fallacies. There’s no evidence that it helps. Pushing such classes would be about trying to push an ideology while ignoring the the core of what rationality is actually about.
When I think about the incentives of most stakeholders in education system, I get this:
techers—job with long-term stability (pretty much keep doing the same thing for decades)
students—most of them do very little and yet they get certificates for smartness
parents—free babysitting until the child is 18 (depends on the country)
politicians—can keep “reforming” the system every year and impress voters
Seems to me that most people are happy with how the system works now.
I think you have a bad model of politicians if you model them primarily as wanting to impress voters.
On of the reasons for centralized testing is for example that it amkes it easier for employees to evaluate the applicants from different schools. As a result they lobby for standardized testing and get it.
Teachers unions are politically strong.
Politicians are generally concerned about unemployement and want the education system to teach skills that allow students to take jobs. In the UK the lately also call about some thing they call happiness.
Parents also care substantially about their children getting into a good college.
I guess a lot of what I wrote is country-specific, and I was thinking about Slovakia where employers do not care about the specific college, they only care about whether you have one or not. Not sure why, but that’s how it works.
And pretty much anyone can get to some college, so the only obstacles are either being somehow insane, or coming from so poor family that even if the college is free, you simply cannot afford a few more years of not having income. So “having college education” is a proxy for “not being poor or insane”, which of course is a horrible classism. Somehow citizens of the country that regularly has a majority of communists in the parliament don’t mind this at all.
So the current situation here is that the elementary and high schools don’t matter at all—because unless you are very poor or insane, you will get to some college, and for most people it doesn’t matter which one—so the usual complaints about schools are along the lines of “too much homework” or “too difficult lessons”. On the other hand, people notice that young people with university education are somehow much less impressive than they used to be a decade or two ago. But almost no one can connect the dots. So the politicians here do some Brownian-motion “reforms” of education, which for example means that one year they remove some part of math education, the next year they put it back, yet another year they shift some math from one grade to another. Each time saying to media how this reform will fix the problems with education.
Sorry, it’s a stupid country with stupid voters, and I am getting more and more disappointed every year.
Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not Slovaks, it’s humans.
Imagine someone of average intelligence. Now consider that fully one half of the country’s population is below median intelligence, that is, stupider than someone you imagined...
That’s where cultural habits make a big difference. In some places the stupid people follow relatively good heuristics, in some places they follow relatively bad ones.
Culture is important, yes, but that usual argument is that it’s institutions which matter. The most prominent advocate of this approach is probably Daron Acemoglu, see e.g. this or his book.
From your description of Slovakian politics it seems like the actors are little coordinated. Maybe there room for a liquid democracy based political party?