What could cause our school systems to teach us square dancing and rote memorization of thousands of spellings of words for the sake of polish, but leave out basic pieces required for rational thought?
My thesis is that to a good first approximation the purpose of schools, like that of the TSA, is to instill and ensure compliance in the populace, not to educate. I should probably go and read this Gatto, he’s come up before in discussions like this one.
I really question whether a “world full of leaders” would necessarily fail. These discussions about the original purpose of schooling seem to come down to that question. Is it that the leaders at the time didn’t want to give up leadership to have a strong populace, or is it that they had no clue how to organize a strong populace in a way that makes them as effective as stifling them does?
I mean, it’s pretty counter-intuitive that stifling a populace will make it more effective, even if it gives you the ability to organize them better.
And it’s really questionable that a populace full of leaders wouldn’t figure out how to organize itself.
On the one hand, we could argue that the information overload of a species that is rapidly gaining knowledge will worsen if their minds aren’t standardized somehow. We could also ask “Are there different ways to standardize, some stifling, some not?” and “Would standardizing them by stifling them cause more or less information overload compared with standardizing them around a theme of rational thought?”
The standardizing by stifling option reduces the number of new ideas being created, but prevents bad ideas from being culled, which allows them to build up.
The standardizing by rationality option doesn’t necessarily mean you need to stifle creativity (and I think creativity is necessary for rational thought—lest every decision you make be subject to the flaws inherent in an option set too small, like with false dichotomy) but it would cause people to cull a large number of ideas that they waste time on right now AND it would give them a way to agree on things. Right now, we have a bunch of people who believe in opinion. They say “Everyone has their opinion. Let’s respect each other’s opinion.” as if they cannot be proven true or false, more or less effective. I think the problem is they don’t know enough about how to test ideas.
Assuming that a populace made of soldiers makes a country safer may be incorrect, too. Why did people in Nazi Germany adopt the morals of the Nazis or fail to oppose them effectively? According to Dabrowski’s theory, there are 5 levels of of moral development, and the one that 75% of the population is at (level two) is characterized by it’s adoption of authority’s morals—they do not think for themselves about morality or realize their own hypocrisy or question their authority’s morality (that happens at level 3). They just follow it blindly.
I’ve heard people argue that we need schools like these to keep people organized and to have soldiers… but if the “organized” thinkers are going to result in a proliferation of useless ideas and the “soldiers” are liable to kill their own citizens as well as actual enemies, then we may be both more disorganized and less secure than if we were to choose some other school system.
Perhaps this is the key to the problem you pose—if the desired outcomes are organization and national security (as opposed to, say, wielding tyrannical power), then perhaps posing a better educational solution to the problems of organization and national security is the key that would change this.
I am very, very heartened to see that someone (Eliezer) has finally made progress in gathering people around a theme of refining rationality. That needed to happen. I’ve been thinking that needed to happen for years now—because the general population needs thinking skills, because gifted people are socially fractured, a million reasons.
I wonder if the people here have what it takes to invent an education system that is better at security and organization.
You seem to be reading these comments out of context. Cliff notes: That is John Taylor Gatto’s claim—that the American school system is based on the Prussian school system which was designed to create soldiers and the Prussian belief was that this required them to do things that stunted intellectual growth. Shminux said JTG seemed like a conspiracy theorist and my comment was in response to that.
You should definitely read JTG. At least read “The Seven Lesson School Teacher” (linked in my previous comment) if nothing else.
True: I had only read a small part of the thread at that time. My intent was to point out that there are plenty of others here on LW who have considered questions like the one above, and who have (in my case independently) come to conclusions that align with those you attribute to JTG. (That’s not hugely surprising, given Eliezer’s educational background.)
I wasn’t aware of the Prussian connection specifically, Wikipedia seems to confirm that the Prussian system has inspired other countries (including mine). (Not that I trust WP overmuch, but other sources concur.)
My thesis is that to a good first approximation the purpose of schools, like that of the TSA, is to instill and ensure compliance in the populace, not to educate. I should probably go and read this Gatto, he’s come up before in discussions like this one.
I really question whether a “world full of leaders” would necessarily fail. These discussions about the original purpose of schooling seem to come down to that question. Is it that the leaders at the time didn’t want to give up leadership to have a strong populace, or is it that they had no clue how to organize a strong populace in a way that makes them as effective as stifling them does?
I mean, it’s pretty counter-intuitive that stifling a populace will make it more effective, even if it gives you the ability to organize them better.
And it’s really questionable that a populace full of leaders wouldn’t figure out how to organize itself.
On the one hand, we could argue that the information overload of a species that is rapidly gaining knowledge will worsen if their minds aren’t standardized somehow. We could also ask “Are there different ways to standardize, some stifling, some not?” and “Would standardizing them by stifling them cause more or less information overload compared with standardizing them around a theme of rational thought?”
The standardizing by stifling option reduces the number of new ideas being created, but prevents bad ideas from being culled, which allows them to build up.
The standardizing by rationality option doesn’t necessarily mean you need to stifle creativity (and I think creativity is necessary for rational thought—lest every decision you make be subject to the flaws inherent in an option set too small, like with false dichotomy) but it would cause people to cull a large number of ideas that they waste time on right now AND it would give them a way to agree on things. Right now, we have a bunch of people who believe in opinion. They say “Everyone has their opinion. Let’s respect each other’s opinion.” as if they cannot be proven true or false, more or less effective. I think the problem is they don’t know enough about how to test ideas.
Assuming that a populace made of soldiers makes a country safer may be incorrect, too. Why did people in Nazi Germany adopt the morals of the Nazis or fail to oppose them effectively? According to Dabrowski’s theory, there are 5 levels of of moral development, and the one that 75% of the population is at (level two) is characterized by it’s adoption of authority’s morals—they do not think for themselves about morality or realize their own hypocrisy or question their authority’s morality (that happens at level 3). They just follow it blindly.
I’ve heard people argue that we need schools like these to keep people organized and to have soldiers… but if the “organized” thinkers are going to result in a proliferation of useless ideas and the “soldiers” are liable to kill their own citizens as well as actual enemies, then we may be both more disorganized and less secure than if we were to choose some other school system.
Perhaps this is the key to the problem you pose—if the desired outcomes are organization and national security (as opposed to, say, wielding tyrannical power), then perhaps posing a better educational solution to the problems of organization and national security is the key that would change this.
I am very, very heartened to see that someone (Eliezer) has finally made progress in gathering people around a theme of refining rationality. That needed to happen. I’ve been thinking that needed to happen for years now—because the general population needs thinking skills, because gifted people are socially fractured, a million reasons.
I wonder if the people here have what it takes to invent an education system that is better at security and organization.
Another big thing that’s missing from school is the idea of applying one’s thinking to a significant decision, and then acting on it.
I call this problem “spending crucial developmental years in simulation land”.
You seem to be reading these comments out of context. Cliff notes: That is John Taylor Gatto’s claim—that the American school system is based on the Prussian school system which was designed to create soldiers and the Prussian belief was that this required them to do things that stunted intellectual growth. Shminux said JTG seemed like a conspiracy theorist and my comment was in response to that.
You should definitely read JTG. At least read “The Seven Lesson School Teacher” (linked in my previous comment) if nothing else.
True: I had only read a small part of the thread at that time. My intent was to point out that there are plenty of others here on LW who have considered questions like the one above, and who have (in my case independently) come to conclusions that align with those you attribute to JTG. (That’s not hugely surprising, given Eliezer’s educational background.)
I wasn’t aware of the Prussian connection specifically, Wikipedia seems to confirm that the Prussian system has inspired other countries (including mine). (Not that I trust WP overmuch, but other sources concur.)