[ExI] Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

Dave Sill sparge at gmail.com
Tue Jan 14 12:55:50 UTC 2020


On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 8:32 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> In my opinion, school should:
>
> 1) Track students into what they are interested in.  Yes, learn to spell,
> basic arithmetic, etc.  Not everyone needs calculus, or needs to read
> Dickens.  And I went to a big "core education" school (University of
> Chicago) but I think that the core can be kind of elitist.
>
> 2) Integrate work into school far more.  IMO, every student should be in
> an apprenticeship by the time they are 16.
>
> Imagine little Timmy is interested in gardening.  So teach him to garden
> from age 10 to age 20.  With an education like that, who needs college?
> College doesn't mean shit these days because bachelor's degrees are so
> oversaturated that you need a higher degree anyway for everything but basic
> stuff.  Much better to teach kids work skills and other stuff like
> financial/social/emotional skills than to force non-mathy kids to take calc.
>

Yes to all of that. Once upon a time, when kids reached high school they
gravitated toward one of two tracks: college prep or trade school (prep).
That's kind of degraded since every parent seems to want their kids to get
a degree, and trades are looked down upon. Today, skilled tradespeople are
out-earning a lot of college grads.

IMO, higher education has become something of a scam, piling huge debt on
students who are ill-prepared to pay it back. A more trade-like approach to
some careers like accounting, marketing, programming, web development,
etc., that's based on work experience, certifications, and portfolios would
allow young people to acquire earning potential much faster and cheaper.

Where high school really needs to improve, though, is in the teaching of
life skills like: managing finances, decision making/problem
solving/critical thinking, parenting, negotiating, studying, communication,
finding and keeping a job, etc. Those are areas where a little education
could yield significant improvement in quality of life.

-Dave
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