American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist(wired.com)
wired.com
American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing
9 comments
I think there's a feedback mechanism in effect. The people who benefit the most from the way schools work become the leaders who decide how schools should work. To their perception, the education provided is perfectly adequate for preparing students. So if you don't succeed in a career after going through the school system, it must be something you did wrong.
In UTeach this was mentioned by several of my professors on the first day, as a kind of anthem we should keep in mind: that we were at that university because we succeeded in a broken system and that we should be mindful not to lean too heavily on what we were familiar with lest we simply perpetuate the system's failures to another generation.
Schools are tasked with the impossible challenge of preparing thousands of unique children, each with their own unique situation and aspirations, for their adult life. There's no way such a system can tailor to all of these possibilities, therefore it basically caters the lowest common denominator. It teaches you skills that anyone—no matter how dumb you are—can learn. The least intelligent people are brought to a point where they can functionally work the lowest class jobs.
Everyone else is basically disserviced. Students just need to forge their own path. You know what you want to do in life, and highschool isn't going to teach it.
All of college should be “one and done” like the NBA.
https://medium.com/@timrpeterson/all-college-should-be-one-a...
https://medium.com/@timrpeterson/all-college-should-be-one-a...
I agree, most students don't need a full 4-7 years of college... but I'm a little confused why the author thinks everyone needs at least one year so they can learn the fundamentals. Shouldn't that basic education be provided in high school?
It's about living on your own, and setting your own day's structure. I agree with him about having students do one year of college before going straight into the real world.
Are we supposed to be surprised or outraged? Or just think, "well, dadgum, they're correct!"? Because as near as I can tell, it's always been this way. US public schools have always trained kids (train - not educate, that's for the upper classes) for a world that no longer exists.
Once change became the norm (probably the 1970s) this was probably the case all over the world. Given that it's pretty difficult to change school curricula and retrain all your teachers, what does anyone expect? In any event, it's not the purpose of education to be great vocational training. The problem in the US isn't that schools are training kids for a world that doesn't exist, it's that they are training kids to pass idiotic multiple-choice tests.
Oh, that's far from being a US-only problem. Japan is all about passing stupid tests as well (and studying really hard to be the best at it, because, you know, it's important to be the first at nonsensical things), with little regard to actual professional prospects.
A college representative for Durham University in the UK told me the entire British system is more focused on test scores than the US is, which is why for an American applying to UK schools much more weight is placed on SAT scores and AP tests than extracurriculars, essays, recommendations, and qualitative achievements compared to US schools.
Test scores and grades are far better criteria than that socioeconomic nonsense. It would be better if American colleges admitted purely on academic factors. They'd also get better students, even if they'd lose their elitist "mystique".
I think that the extracurricular "holistic" component is deeply harmful. If the top universities admitted on academic criteria, then Americans would accept that not everyone good-- because there clearly are good students who aren't great at standardized tests; "not a good test-taker" is a real thing-- goes to Harvard (which is true anyway) and get over it. I certainly know smart people who were mediocre students in high school.
The extracurricular bullshit (which is, in fact, heavily socioeconomic and racial and always has been) is a bit of branding that works wonders on 17-year-old kids, and their parents, by creating the appearance that college admissions are a "holistic" judge of the applicant as a person. It's brilliant insofar as it drives up tuitions (even at less prestigious schools) but it's really bad for society.
I think that the extracurricular "holistic" component is deeply harmful. If the top universities admitted on academic criteria, then Americans would accept that not everyone good-- because there clearly are good students who aren't great at standardized tests; "not a good test-taker" is a real thing-- goes to Harvard (which is true anyway) and get over it. I certainly know smart people who were mediocre students in high school.
The extracurricular bullshit (which is, in fact, heavily socioeconomic and racial and always has been) is a bit of branding that works wonders on 17-year-old kids, and their parents, by creating the appearance that college admissions are a "holistic" judge of the applicant as a person. It's brilliant insofar as it drives up tuitions (even at less prestigious schools) but it's really bad for society.
Change became the norm around 1800 in the US. 1800-1900 saw absolutely spectacular changes in the US, in the way people work and live, at all levels of society, and that continued on unabated after 1900.
Sure but the modern school system was designed to produce workers for the industrial age. The information age accelerated change to the point where the stuff that was current while you were in college was already obsolete by the time you graduated (and since you were being trained on the previous generation of tech you were two steps behind).
Before 1970 a typesetter learned to work with the flaws in his/her typefaces. After 1980 a typesetter complained and the got fixed. After 1990 the typesetter fixed them him/her self.
Before 1970 a typesetter learned to work with the flaws in his/her typefaces. After 1980 a typesetter complained and the got fixed. After 1990 the typesetter fixed them him/her self.
Funny, because even if they would prepare for the future, it would still be for a world that doesn't exist.
As someone with a professional degree from the Ivy League, and therefore as someone with a vested interest in maintaining the mystique and prestige of higher education: Educational institutions are parasites on American youth and we should not subsidize them.
If you want an education in the modern world, it's free and RIDICULOUSLY convenient -- just log on to Coursera, Udacity, or edX and learn any subject to your heart's content in your local coffee shop, from the finest instructors in the world. You're free to pursue any field of study at whatever pace you choose at no cost.
Kids should NOT be encouraged to take out no-default loans upwards of $200k to get a certificate in art history. (I say this as someone who borrowed a ton of money for a worthless humanities undergraduate degree and a slightly less useless professional degree.) If you want to read poetry, join a book club. There's no reason why society should subsidize the pursuit of degrees that don't qualify the holder for any particular job and don't provide any particular return on investment.
But because an undergraduate degree has become the new high school diploma, any kid who doesn't get one has almost no chance of landing a professional job. So all students with potential are locked up with academic busywork until at least age 21. This isn't too bad for the future doctors and engineers, whom we want certified in biology or physics... but there's no point for most people to get degrees in business or the humanities. Why do we care if our poets or salesmen have Irish Studies certificates?
By now, entire generations have given up their youths in exchange for significant debt and pointless certificates, rather than starting new businesses, writing new books, or creating new industries. And this debt impacts lower socio-economic classes the hardest, despite idiotic rhetoric that the only thing holding us poors back from billionaire status is a Cornell class in gender studies. We have the least capacity to absorb such a heavy cost. And since we're often ill-prepared for STEM courses (and through affirmative action we're placed in competition against students with higher aptitudes and more academic cultures), many of us pursue pointless-but-easy degrees that give us no professional skills to pay back such huge debts.
We should subsidize higher education for fields with high ROI, and immediately cease subsidies and loans for all other academic pursuits. In practice, this means doctors and scientists can and should go to college for free; poets can join a book club or pay out of pocket. (No, rich people won't have an inherent advantage now that they alone can afford Irish Studies certificates.) This frees up the youngest, most innovative segment of our population to join the work force; ends the debt slavery that most Millenials will suffer through our old age; and disentangles profit-seeking institutions from actual education.
Let young adults discover, innovate, and contribute to the world. Higher education is little more than a long party interrupted by pointless busywork and a long debt hangover. I have no intention of sending my kids to college (if I can eventually afford to have kids) unless it's absolutely required for their professional careers. And by then, I hope society at large will recognize most undergraduate and masters degrees as the participation medals they are.
If you want an education in the modern world, it's free and RIDICULOUSLY convenient -- just log on to Coursera, Udacity, or edX and learn any subject to your heart's content in your local coffee shop, from the finest instructors in the world. You're free to pursue any field of study at whatever pace you choose at no cost.
Kids should NOT be encouraged to take out no-default loans upwards of $200k to get a certificate in art history. (I say this as someone who borrowed a ton of money for a worthless humanities undergraduate degree and a slightly less useless professional degree.) If you want to read poetry, join a book club. There's no reason why society should subsidize the pursuit of degrees that don't qualify the holder for any particular job and don't provide any particular return on investment.
But because an undergraduate degree has become the new high school diploma, any kid who doesn't get one has almost no chance of landing a professional job. So all students with potential are locked up with academic busywork until at least age 21. This isn't too bad for the future doctors and engineers, whom we want certified in biology or physics... but there's no point for most people to get degrees in business or the humanities. Why do we care if our poets or salesmen have Irish Studies certificates?
By now, entire generations have given up their youths in exchange for significant debt and pointless certificates, rather than starting new businesses, writing new books, or creating new industries. And this debt impacts lower socio-economic classes the hardest, despite idiotic rhetoric that the only thing holding us poors back from billionaire status is a Cornell class in gender studies. We have the least capacity to absorb such a heavy cost. And since we're often ill-prepared for STEM courses (and through affirmative action we're placed in competition against students with higher aptitudes and more academic cultures), many of us pursue pointless-but-easy degrees that give us no professional skills to pay back such huge debts.
We should subsidize higher education for fields with high ROI, and immediately cease subsidies and loans for all other academic pursuits. In practice, this means doctors and scientists can and should go to college for free; poets can join a book club or pay out of pocket. (No, rich people won't have an inherent advantage now that they alone can afford Irish Studies certificates.) This frees up the youngest, most innovative segment of our population to join the work force; ends the debt slavery that most Millenials will suffer through our old age; and disentangles profit-seeking institutions from actual education.
Let young adults discover, innovate, and contribute to the world. Higher education is little more than a long party interrupted by pointless busywork and a long debt hangover. I have no intention of sending my kids to college (if I can eventually afford to have kids) unless it's absolutely required for their professional careers. And by then, I hope society at large will recognize most undergraduate and masters degrees as the participation medals they are.
I have a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science in Information Systems...both from Midwestern "State" schools. I've never had a shortage of work/jobs/opportunities.
All your criticisms only apply because you got a "worthless humanities undergraduate degree". My computer science degree sure came in handy, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Well, I did say the following:
>We should subsidize higher education for fields with high ROI, and immediately cease subsidies and loans for all other academic pursuits. In practice, this means doctors and scientists can and should go to college for free; poets can join a book club or pay out of pocket.
But while I support subsidizing STEM degrees, including CS, this is one of the few professional fields where credentialism really isn't that necessary. You can easily take CS classes through MOOCs for free and sit for Microsoft certification or some equivalent if you'd like outside verification of your knowledge. Otherwise, it's more than possible to just enter the work force directly out of high school if you're capable of the work.
Silicon Valley should be considered a role model for nearly every other professional field. There's no reason for lawyers to need juris doctors rather than apprenticeships. Banks benefit from the sorting functions of higher education, but a great deal of the work doesn't require advanced courses. And let's not start on the inflated credentialism that's crept into teaching, nursing, policing, or virtually all middle-class professions.
>We should subsidize higher education for fields with high ROI, and immediately cease subsidies and loans for all other academic pursuits. In practice, this means doctors and scientists can and should go to college for free; poets can join a book club or pay out of pocket.
But while I support subsidizing STEM degrees, including CS, this is one of the few professional fields where credentialism really isn't that necessary. You can easily take CS classes through MOOCs for free and sit for Microsoft certification or some equivalent if you'd like outside verification of your knowledge. Otherwise, it's more than possible to just enter the work force directly out of high school if you're capable of the work.
Silicon Valley should be considered a role model for nearly every other professional field. There's no reason for lawyers to need juris doctors rather than apprenticeships. Banks benefit from the sorting functions of higher education, but a great deal of the work doesn't require advanced courses. And let's not start on the inflated credentialism that's crept into teaching, nursing, policing, or virtually all middle-class professions.
I think the point is that the information you learned isn't exclusive to degree seekers. Every book you read in class could have been read outside of class, and for most people the only difference in their ability to learn on their own is motivation. Paying to be motivated is not the same as paying for education. The cost of the education is $200 per book, anything more than that is free money for people who tell you to read the books.
It's always been that way. Yet all of us who learned in public schools in the US still managed to change the world.
I'm going to take a contrarian view. I think that American public schools are decent. Many are quite good. Only a few are excellent, but that's true of private schools as well. I don't think that it's our schools that are to blame for American ignorance. (And no, putting more money into them probably won't solve the problem.) It's economic inequality (underprivileged kids don't fuck off because they're stupid, but because they know that even if they work their asses off, the deck is still stacked against them) and a culture of ignorance and anti-intellectualism that pervades all social classes, top to bottom. People value ambition but not insight in this country, and deep knowledge makes you a fool who didn't have "the guts" to charge into the working world, beat someone up, and take a place.
For the world that should exist, where humans of average social connectedness and social class are equipped to solve the problems bearing down on us as a species, American students are undertrained. If the shit really hits the fan on energy, ecological concerns, or social unrest... we're all out of our depth. It's not just the schools, with their supposedly "outdated" emphasis on timeliness and conformity. The first 10 years in the corporate world, except for the upper-class kids who get a rope-bridge over the shit pit, kills any creativity that people might have had. The corporate world is much more destructive to creativity and, in the long run, intelligence, than the schools are. (It's also why intelligence tends to decline, in the U.S., after 22. That's not normal, and in other societies, people peak much later.) This society produces one thing: private sector politicians.
For the jobs that most of them will actually get, American students are overtrained. You don't need a college education to be some shitty private sector subordinate, nor an understanding of CS to do business-driven engineering in some VibratorFactoryVisitor-laden Java Shop. Knowing that stuff will just make you angry and make it harder to do your damn job, stay employed, and feed your family.
The claim that American schools are training kids for a 20th-century world that requires conformity is missing the point. The 21st-century world requires just as much conformity from individuals in the short term. Those lessons about not talking back to authority are just as important today. The hard challenges that humanity will face will take more, and our generation may be underprepared to take them on when they arrive, but we won't get a verdict on that one until we're tested.
For the world that should exist, where humans of average social connectedness and social class are equipped to solve the problems bearing down on us as a species, American students are undertrained. If the shit really hits the fan on energy, ecological concerns, or social unrest... we're all out of our depth. It's not just the schools, with their supposedly "outdated" emphasis on timeliness and conformity. The first 10 years in the corporate world, except for the upper-class kids who get a rope-bridge over the shit pit, kills any creativity that people might have had. The corporate world is much more destructive to creativity and, in the long run, intelligence, than the schools are. (It's also why intelligence tends to decline, in the U.S., after 22. That's not normal, and in other societies, people peak much later.) This society produces one thing: private sector politicians.
For the jobs that most of them will actually get, American students are overtrained. You don't need a college education to be some shitty private sector subordinate, nor an understanding of CS to do business-driven engineering in some VibratorFactoryVisitor-laden Java Shop. Knowing that stuff will just make you angry and make it harder to do your damn job, stay employed, and feed your family.
The claim that American schools are training kids for a 20th-century world that requires conformity is missing the point. The 21st-century world requires just as much conformity from individuals in the short term. Those lessons about not talking back to authority are just as important today. The hard challenges that humanity will face will take more, and our generation may be underprepared to take them on when they arrive, but we won't get a verdict on that one until we're tested.
> (And no, putting more money into them probably won't solve the problem.)
I don't disagree with this, but I generally advocate for higher funding because more resources provides more manuevering room, which makes it less risky to try new things. Sometimes it feels like Americans only believe that desperation-driven innovation is valuable, so we drive everyone to desperation by taunting them with scarcer and scarcer resources until they collapse and die.
I'd rather see us pour resources into education. It won't fix anything by itself, but you'll stop getting responses of, "We can't afford to try doing that," every time a change is suggested.
> This society produces one thing: private sector politicians.
This is so quotable. I like it. Not sure I agree with it, but I like it aesthetically.
I don't disagree with this, but I generally advocate for higher funding because more resources provides more manuevering room, which makes it less risky to try new things. Sometimes it feels like Americans only believe that desperation-driven innovation is valuable, so we drive everyone to desperation by taunting them with scarcer and scarcer resources until they collapse and die.
I'd rather see us pour resources into education. It won't fix anything by itself, but you'll stop getting responses of, "We can't afford to try doing that," every time a change is suggested.
> This society produces one thing: private sector politicians.
This is so quotable. I like it. Not sure I agree with it, but I like it aesthetically.
I don't disagree with this, but I generally advocate for higher funding because more resources provides more manuevering room
I agree. Also, the good teachers deserve to be paid better. Paying them properly is just the right thing to do. Moreover, funding public schools out of property taxes is also rifuckulously classist.
If the Wired article is right and the challenges of the 21st-century really do require creative thought (and, I think, they will) then we may get a front-row seat, in the US, for a society laid low by its own inequality. Disallowing 95+ percent of people, mostly based on born social class, to have access to creative work has rendered us subordinate, apathetic, and weak... and, because of it, we may not be up to the challenges bearing down on us.
I agree. Also, the good teachers deserve to be paid better. Paying them properly is just the right thing to do. Moreover, funding public schools out of property taxes is also rifuckulously classist.
If the Wired article is right and the challenges of the 21st-century really do require creative thought (and, I think, they will) then we may get a front-row seat, in the US, for a society laid low by its own inequality. Disallowing 95+ percent of people, mostly based on born social class, to have access to creative work has rendered us subordinate, apathetic, and weak... and, because of it, we may not be up to the challenges bearing down on us.
I think your comment is better than the article it references, but it is not evidence again the author's premise. Both you and the article's author could be correct because American education and culture can have a staggering multitude of problems.
> You don't need ... an understanding of CS to do business-driven engineering in some VibratorFactoryVisitor-laden Java Shop.
Try to retrain without CS knowledge once the skill set changes; even Java from ten years ago is quite different from what they are doing now.
Try to retrain without CS knowledge once the skill set changes; even Java from ten years ago is quite different from what they are doing now.
This is one of the better articles I have read regarding the education issues that are far too common. More importantly, it actually addresses the root problem instead of reiterating what the the results should look like. Applicability to a job is nice, but it is a goal, not a cause. Switching to new teaching standards such as New Math or Common Core is also a goal; they are selected with the hope that students will learn important, modern methods instead the techniques we used to use.
The problem is that goals don't matter if most people don't actually reach them, and we shouldn't expect people to reach any of these goals when many[1] of the teachers are just as unprepared.
The article discusses one approach to fixing this, that seems to have had some success in Japan, where teachers have a far lighter workload, and are given paid time to research methods of teaching and opportunity experimentally try them, and far more opportunities to continue their own education and learn the from other teachers. This means a few months every year, not a weekend conference once a year. There are probably a variety of ways to solve this problem, but any proposal needs to address teacher ability first[2].
[1] Note: this is about elementary level teaching, and "many" != "all".
[2] As Chevalier discusses, the availability of massive amounts of educational opportunities on the internet might be changing the entire concept of "getting an education".