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Let's face it. Most of what we learned in school is utterly useless for the majority of us. In ordinate amounts of time are being given to esoteric ideas and concepts which could be given to more useful and practical things. Why is this. Why is finding the area under a curve more important than being able to understand how mortgages work. Why are long dead English play writes more useful than how to write a proper business letter. How come it is completely acceptable that we not know how our political system works but unacceptable that we don't know what the integral of 89x - 32j as x tends to 8.
Learning political system is pretty much a waste of time. Like voting really matters or anything but local elections/politics effects a person's day to day life.
"Most of what we learn in school" is important: math, science, English, Physical Education, health.
Substitute Excel for history or art or literature. Everyone should know how to work a spreadsheet - seriously.
Substitute personal finance for history or art or literature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blacktothefuture
finding the area under a curve more important
but unacceptable that we don't know what the integral of 89x - 32j as x tends to 8.
These two math skills are basically the same thing.
Let's face it. Most of what we learned in school is utterly useless for the majority of us. In ordinate amounts of time are being given to esoteric ideas and concepts which could be given to more useful and practical things. Why is this. Why is finding the area under a curve more important than being able to understand how mortgages work. Why are long dead English play writes more useful than how to write a proper business letter. How come it is completely acceptable that we not know how our political system works but unacceptable that we don't know what the integral of 89x - 32j as x tends to 8.
"All warfare is based on deception." Sun Tzu
The economic wargame is a continuation of the military wargame by other means.
That is why we should have a National Recommended Reading List. A good list would create a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. We give lip service to the concept but who really wants it? Children who have no idea what is going on must deal with a system managed by adults playing games against each other.
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
That is the best book I have ever seen that really explains what is going on. But it does not make a big deal of planned obsolescence. 20 years before the Moon landing engineers could design planes capable of 400+ mph. So why do we keep redesigning cars 40 years after the Moon landing? What is so great about them? Are we going into debt for useless variations in junk to play status games with each other?
So why isn't accounting mandatory in the schools and economists computing and reporting the depreciation of all of the junk?
So is school really, mostly a waste of time so the majority can be kept ignorant of knowledge that could empower them?
Maybe the only solution is to spread information ourselves because the educators will not. Are all of the English Lit teachers going to admit that they are useless?
Let's face it. Most of what we learned in school is utterly useless for the majority of us. In ordinate amounts of time are being given to esoteric ideas and concepts which could be given to more useful and practical things. Why is this. Why is finding the area under a curve more important than being able to understand how mortgages work. Why are long dead English play writes more useful than how to write a proper business letter. How come it is completely acceptable that we not know how our political system works but unacceptable that we don't know what the integral of 89x - 32j as x tends to 8.
Why you ask? Because it's dangerous to have an educated voting populace.
Quote:
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. ― Napoleon Bonaparte
A fine liberal arts education taught me how to learn, reason, evaluate, and seek out knowledge. Data, on the other hand, can generally be acquired if you know how and where to look for what is needed.
People change jobs, careers, and interests as time goes on. I would rather have the ability to learn efficiently and effectively than to have been taught a bunch of "facts" or "skills" which will change rapidly and need to be be frequently "updated."
A fine liberal arts education taught me how to learn, reason, evaluate, and seek out knowledge. Data, on the other hand, can generally be acquired if you know how and where to look for what is needed.
Yeah, a science education cannot possibly do that.
The idea that school is about maximizing intellectual growth is one of the most damaging lies circulating in society today.
So what according to you does?
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