News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

What is more likely, as the article points out, is that I'll read a lot of reports that distorts the actual risks of various types of events, and change my behaviour in ways that negatively affect me.

Dropping the critical context of "mandatory" and "public"...hard to take that seriously.

> Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better than the alternative.

What is the alternative again? "Non-mandatory" education, "non-public" education, or simply no education? Since the context was already dropped, the uncareful reader may be lead (like a student) down the wrong track of assuming the original poster (vis-a-vis me) doesn't like education. If you can accept that education can be non-mandatory and/or non-public, then the educated reader can agree that education is still a good.

> Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone.

I firmly believe being educated is important to each individual, which is why leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and self-serving bureaucracy is an uneducated leap of faith. The socialization aspect of mandatory public education is the goal of said education, it isn't to make the individual better, it is to make a person that the rest of society can keep in formation.

That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to predetermined stories.

....it was implied. Add "mandatory" and "public" to the same sentence and my views and overall point do not change. Whenever someone refers to the education system as a whole, they are generally speaking about public schooling, and so was I. My intent was not to mislead, here.

>What is the alternative again?

Non mandatory? Then there's no point. There is a certain section of population that would rather see their kids doing something other than going to school every day, probably the ones that need it most. Inner cities where education is poor and money is tight, farms where there's more impetus to have help doing the work rather than getting educated, single working parents, etc etc.

Non-public? We already have private schools, they're almost completely the domain of the wealthy.

No education? .. don't think anything needs to be said here.

>leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and self-serving bureaucracy

What is the alternative? Schooling is arguably a type of infrastructure, and privatizing infrastructure seldom ever works out in the public's benefit. It's one of those high cost, low margin, delayed return activities that don't look good on a corporation's balance sheet.

>That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to predetermined stories.

I guess I don't see what you mean by this. I don't recall going to an "Everybody panic!!" class in elementary school, nor do I remember any sort of conditioning along those lines. Heck the only thing that felt 'off' about public school were the lockdown drills a couple times a year, and those have a valid purpose.

Your analysis completely smacks of unjustified paranoia, at least to me. I see no connection whatsoever between public education and the utter broken-ness of the mainstream media. Both are broken, but for different reasons, in different ways, in different degrees.

Edit: I don't mean this to be rude. I am just trying to point out that discussion of news items usually IME is nothing more than idle gossip. While possibly beneficial in social bonding, it can also have potential negative effects on the mind.