Apr

10

I remember having read somewhere about the philosophy and objective of the modern education. It originated from the industrial revolution when disciplined, organized, and time-abiding people were needed to work in unity. Farmers were quite opposite and were not suitable for the new era. So then the modern education system was created to serve this very need. The actual knowledge or skills it taught were quite secondary.

I think up to today the education systems worldwide have all inherited the original purpose and still have not deviated much from it. They all stress that students think and behave uniformly. Psychology has long been promoting that we human have all lost large part of the creativity and originality of our childhood due in big part to the education we get. It seems quite true that the more school education one gets, the fewer outlier ideas he could come up with.

I believe that in order to be oneself and to live one's own valuable life, one needs to somehow undo some of the school education, and release the fixation on the mentality. There are more real things to learn for the benefits of ourselves and on ourselves. Fortunately also, trading permits us and requires us to be ourselves.

Charles Pennington adds:

The book Crazy U is very good.

Here's an amusing passage from it on legacies at Harvard, and on the contortions that the school goes through in order to avoid telling anyone anything useful about their admissions.

The setting is an informational meeting for prospective Harvard undergrads with the Director of Admissions:

(Condensed version below is from this site:

A Chinese parent stands up and asks:

“What about legacies?”

“What do you mean?”

“How many of class are legacies?” he said. “Their parents went to Harvard.”

“Oh, I don’t have that information,” she said. “I’m not sure we even keep that information.”

Just a guess, then, the man persisted.

“I wouldn’t want to guess.”

“So you have no way of knowing?” he asked, with exaggerated incredulity. “The numbers don’t exist?” His wife, short and stocky, stood next to him, staring at the dean. Their son bowed his head and closed his eyes.

“Legacy is just one of many factors that Harvard considers,” the dean said. “I like to say, ‘legacy can help the wounded, but it can’t raise the dead!” She laughed uncomfortably but the father and mother still stared.

“Answer the question,” another father called out.

“Maybe I can get that information for you afterward,” she said, twisting one hand with the other. She moved one foot backward.

“Come on,” said another parent, with just a hint of insurrection.

She was quiet a moment before surrendering. “If I had to say,” she said, “thirty, maybe thirty-five percent.”

There was a shock before the murmuring began. The number was hard to square with the egalitarianism of the video we’d just seen. The number suggested the traditional Ivy League primogeniture.

Another takeaway that I had from the book (and this is not original; e.g. Steve Sailer has suggested something like this) is that society has a need for more TESTING. Instead of studying once for an SAT, kids and adults should have the opportunity to study and be tested on subject matter throughout their lives, and they should have the option of posting their scores publicly. There is much testing that's more or less pass/fail, on basic things, like the Series 7 or the bar exams, but there is room for testing for higher levels of accomplishment and creativity. For mathematics, for example, one could have the option of taking an N-hour exam similar to the Putnam. Programmers could take language-neutral tests in which they tackle coding problems. It seems like there could be a market for much more testing. The benefits arise both from "signalling" AND from the fact that people could truly build their skills by preparing for the tests. So it's not just about how to divide the pie, but also about making the pie bigger.

One puzzling thing — the book mentions that it has become more or less illegal to test prospective employees, yet I keep reading about the spontaneous tests of creativity that Google and other elite techie companies give to their applicants. How do they get away with it?

 


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4 Comments so far

  1. Ed on April 10, 2012 4:11 pm

    School is daycare + social conditioning + Fake work scheme.

    In fact, “Work” today is for the majority mostly fake, government mandated paper shuffling or rent seeking.

    Example: Why is the legal system so complicated? Smart people need something to do with their time, just like everyone else. Legal complications amount to a union job for relatively intelligent people. Think about the “jobs” created by the tax code. An entire industry of fake work created by government mandate!

    Lets get real: We have passed the point where in a division of labor, technological economy the majority are able to contribute much real value. Most don’t see it because public school forever confuses people over the difference between “work” and “being busy” and authentic productivity.

    Here is my solution:

    Lets replace 85% of goverment spending (all of the welfare state, including medical, education, old age, etc) with a simple citizen’s royalty payment that kicks in at 21 years of age, like a trust fund.

    Not welfare but rather a formal property right no different than mineral royalties etc. Send the bureaucrats and fake workers (government and spillover private sector) home.

    Treating all citizens equally kills cronyism. Disgenic incentives are gone. It could be funded by a simplified tax, such as an asset tax (eliminating all other taxation including income tax).

  2. Murali on April 10, 2012 10:50 pm

    Leo Jia,

    How can one “undo some of the school education”? Can you suggest different approaches apart from trading?

    thanks

  3. Leo on April 11, 2012 8:53 pm

    I didn't mean that trading is an approach to undo one's education, but rather that, unlike those social occupations, one's trading will be positively affected by one's undoing of the education. Also, this is not to say that one should throw away all learned through it. It is just that those things that formed a bondage on one's mind need to be undone.

    As to how to undo those, the title of the post sounds as if this is a guide. It is actually just a proposition. I have been exploring ways myself and am not qualified to give an authoritative answer here.

    Having said that, I believe it is a gradual and prolonged process - just as how education itself has been doing upon oneself. In order to reverse, one should have at first a full awareness, then a conscious attitude change, a constant pursuit for a wide variety of thoughts and wisdom, a determined habit change, and ultimately a new rewiring in the brain through neuroplasticity. The effort needed is, instead of unconsciously accepting, to always question one's existing attitudes and beliefs, seek to understand where they come from, and strive to find about the alternatives.

    This may sound daunting. In actuality, perhaps all one needs to do is, without losing true wisdom, to try to be somewhat childish with one's mind on many things.

    Hope this clarifies the original post. Look forward to seeing more ideas and comments so that we can explore together.

    [Editor's note: the title of the post has now been changed to include a question mark. 2012-April-12]

  4. murali on April 13, 2012 8:35 am

    Reading books on topics different from one’s own chosen subjects might, I think, yield new ways of looking at things. Another avenue that I intend to explore is learning to play a musical instrument, and, when possible, traveling. The chair has written about the benefits of the first option.

    Btw, excellent suggestions on “questioning our beliefs” and the need to have a beginner’s mind.(Child like curiosity.)

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