> Have you ever met someone who can do 0(ish) delay translation between languages? With no accent? A non-university program to teach that would end up looking like a university. To do it properly the translator needs deep cultural understanding of the target language, professional training in pronunciation, and a lot of practice.
Yes. My friend from Croatia was born in Germany and worked as a Barista in the kitchen I took over when I lived in Istria, but he majored in Tourism in a tech school and learned to speak 5 languages seamlessly to get an advantage on his peers for work: German, Croatian (which is really 5 languages as it spans all the dialects of former Yugoslavia and with enough effort Czech can be understood, too), Italian, English and French. The first 4 he learned by the time he was 15, and French he learned online using things like chat-roulette, MSN chat and watching French TV.
He wasn't alone, either his roommates also spoke Swedish and Finnish as they often had seasonal work in Scandinavia for the skiing season. Its not as rare as you think, I personally speak 4 (5 if you include my broken mundart/Berndeutsch) but after returning to the US for several years now I can only speak English/Castilian/Italian (each with an accent) as I've gotten really rusty with no one to speak with.
My Japanese has gotten to the point where I'm having to force myself to at least listen to a few podcasts and watch anime to refresh as my vocabulary is completely abysmal now. I'd never say I was 100% fluent in any of them, as a language is an ever changing system of communication, but I could get by enough to work and communicate without ever taking a class and just immersing myself in the Culture/Country.
> And why are arts programs useless? Sure art collectives can form and group buy resources, hire models, pay for trips to destinations, and bring in more experienced artists to help teach technique, but at some point again you've recreated a university.
They aren't as an Intellectual pursuit, as a study in the University format where you're coaxed to have limit your scope and Interests is where I take issue with it. Especially when you consider its immense cost to do so, and for something that is so widely available online for free or at a library if you have the desire to search for it.
You can spend a lifetime on just the Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece, and some do, but you're often rushed and only get a superficial view of what was said or how they were viewed that gives you the illusion of an understanding of its role in Greek Society and are graded on how effectively you can repeat what was said to you.
The Arts as a means to better ones own edification is incredibly rewarding, and I too am a benefactor of it.
As I said earlier, I received honors in Philosophy for my work in a General Education class by my post-doc Professor and I was invited to start upper division courses under his guidance while I was awarded an opportunity to travel the country to debate Moral Ethics in a collegiate division--all while we were facing budget shortages in the Health Sciences which forced me to transfer to yet another University for the 3rd time. This, I'm told was another way to avoid going to Law School and just take the BAR exam and enter a career in Law, where they felt I'd be am effective litigator.
It may have been a missed opportunity to refine my oratory and rhetoric skills, but the truth is I needed to graduate for financial reasons in order to start paying off the debt I accrued mainly owed to my family and friends who helped me offset my ever growing expenses. Also, I had enough opportunities to do public speaking outside of University due to my personal interests.
> None of this even goes into the value of the core classes. Having people educated about their own country's history, and about world history, having an understanding of economic systems, geopolitics, and mathematics, these are all worthwhile endeavors.
Agreed, but these can be achieved rather well in compulsory K-12 Education if we reformed it. I used to speak with my Senior year English Lit. teacher in HS in my free time about various topics and he wished he could engage other students in class in the same way but he was limited and forced to follow the curriculum for testing standards and public funding.
His job depended on being able to maintain the status quo, and being so close to retirement he had given up trying. Things weren't that much different in University either, the only ones that challenged the system were those who already had tenure, had published journals/books and were close to retiring and didn't need to play the game any more, in my experience.
That's one of the biggest issues with Education in the US: teaching toward the exam is the constraint, not lack of funds, resources, knowledgeable teachers or material to share. The US has outspent most of the West in Education for very little in return for most of my existence--and after my personal experiences in school and those shared by Gatto I think that's by design and not a flaw.
> with pedological methods that have, presumably, been tested over time (some over centuries!) to be effective.
Pedagogy is a very loaded word with many implications about how Education is formatted, specifically in a regimented conditioned format; the most prevalent one being the Prussian model which I will refer you to read books by John Taylor Gatto [1] who was awarded the best teacher award in NY who's views on formal education in the US (and I'd argue in Europe and Australia as well) are far more valid than my own anecdotal ones and reflect the discord and division the US based class system relies on.
> allowed for the past 2 centuries of dramatic growth of civilization, seems a bit hasty.
You do realize that the Hellenic era in Athens, with institutions like the Lyceum and other public forums in the Agora for philosophizing proved to have the most literate and Educationally engaged society/Polis for most of Western History? One that has withstood not just centuries but millennia. The fact that we still reference much of what was taught back then in Law and in certain Sciences (not Aristotle's stuff on Biology of course, but on topics like Math, the Nature of Matter and to a certain degree Astronomy) and still holds up today should be enough of refutation for what is and isn't capable of withstanding the test of Time.
I think we've deviated so far from what an Education was in the West and what you're describing (Prussian Pedagogy) is exactly what has many feeling so resentful for being sent to a sort of mind prison where young minds are forced to do repetitive tasks, in a designated manner that was optimized for a system that simply will not exist in their lifetime--expendable workers for tedious manual labor in factories.
I'll agree it has certain benefits, the US space program may have been a byproduct of Ex-Nazi Scientists in things like Rocket Propulsion, but the Engineers and Techs that followed at NASA for the Apollo Shuttle program were mainly US educated and despite the Soviet Union probably had having more People in STEM per capita, the US had a less State based oppressive system that favored and ultimately allowed them to win the Space Race. And this ultimately would pave the way for Private Space Companies like SpaceX that quite honestly would not be possible anywhere else on Earth. And as ITAR requirements demand, most outside of the first hires when it was created, are products of the US Education system as you must be a US citizen to obtain clearance.
But this is a rare exception, one I do admit it exists.
I think the best thing to do is we admit that formal education has limited purposes for much of the populace, and the sooner we can free them from the drudgery of said tasks and help them dedicate their time and efforts to more fruitful endeavors that benefit society as a whole the sooner we can stop feeling the World is going to end every second because we have people engaged in sectors that help curtail those imminent dangers.
It's already been happening, you need only look at things like Extinction Rebellion, which was already going strong in a pre-COVID world, because young people are mortified of the state of the planet that the previous generations will have left them with, and they'd rather boycott school and protest than ignore that the World they're inheriting is terrifying. I bet if you found better outlets for their energy that street demos and used the funds they use for public schooling they'd be way better off planting trees and focusing on renewable energy, and recapturing wasted materials in certain Industries under the the proper supervision they'd be way better off in every possible respect. And probably create more sustainable forms of employment in the process they can dedicate themselves too.
When I was a farm manager in Hawaii I'd get applications from all over the World of all ages for an unpaid internship, unfortunately because of budget constraints I could only select 2-3 outside of Hawaii because of the program/grants we had with the Department of Ag.
Personally speaking after seeing the impact Gretta Thurenburg's work has had amongst th eyouth, especially in a post-COVID World where these very institutions have broken down, it has probably shifted an entire Generation's attitude of the entire Establishment and it will force them to collectively seek answers and look for change that simply is incompatible with modern Formal Education. Many felt their Future depended on it, now they were forced to accept and see how these institutions have failed them.
1: https://www.amazon.com/John-Taylor-Gatto/e/B001K7S0AE/ref=dp...