American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist

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 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.

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.