"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. This is the goal of a primary education. But society need us to hand down collective knowledge. Economic output is one way to measure that. But more generally, if everyone only consumed education for their personal edification, we'd lose the ability to financially support education in the first place.
"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
I actually had this very same discussion/argument with my mother on Mother’s Day regarding my young child. I want a well rounded, full childhood of experiences of all sorts, exposing them to a vast variety of things in an attempt to establish a broad understanding while allowing their interests to flourish broadly rather than singularly focusing their “Primary” talents with a narrower focus. Her argument is to capita…
Kids go through changes in how they perceive their engagement with activities. At a very young age, they have little self-consciousness and will happily spend lots of time engaging with things they cannot do well. As they get older, frustration sets in sometimes when they cannot do something perfectly the first time they try it. I think some of the music programs, like Suzuki, try to take advantage of this by getting kids up-to-speed on the violin (or whatever) before they enter the phase where frustration dulls their interest. No parent really wants their kid to enter the cycle of repeatedly trying and quitting activities because of frustration. It eventually leads to a sort of apathy and lack of willingness to engage with things they perceive might be frustrating. This is a hard line to walk sometimes. I guess I'm just saying that you sometimes need to "push" them to remain engaged so that they can work past the frustration. It is a skill to learn that you have the ability to overcome the difficult initial learning curve of a lot of activities, sports, etc. If you can help imbue them with that skill, it can lead them to have a love for learning -- or a least not a fear of trying new things, which ultimately is the skill that can enable them to "flourish broadly," in my opinion.
One week ago, the same publication covered the opposite argument from a16z, stating that "The AI job apocalypse is ‘unhelpful marketing, bad economics and worse history" - it's too early to declare which way this is going. https://fortune.com/2026/05/07/ai-job-apocalypse-unhelpful-m...
> A long time ago, a client and a friend were both subjects of some inaccurate speculation in a Gawker story. One of them emailed Mr. Daulerio to deny it and was told by a surprisingly honest Mr. Daulerio that he “could give a fuck” about the actual truth of the story—and that my client and friend were welcome to cover their asses how they liked. And then he dropped a line that now drips with irony considering how things have ended up. “I don’t know, man,“ he said, “It’s all professional wrestling.”
"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. That was the goal maybe in the past when only rich people could afford an education.
"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. That was the goal maybe in the past when only rich people could afford an education.
Why should that not be the goal for everyone, rich and poor?
"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. That was the goal maybe in the past when only rich people could afford an education.
> a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Is there any institution today that teaches you to be a “well-rounded human being?” Do students graduate being able to hunt for food, grow crops, or build a house? There might be great value in whatever type of “education” you’re talking about. But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity i…
Think about it on a micro level. Do you work better when your coworkers are thoughtful, or when they're thoughtless? Now multiply that by a billion, and that's why it's good for the economy.
The expected a priori utility of any social intervention is strictly negative… even if “more thoughtful” does check out in reality for higher ed, $700 billion and 15million man years yearly is rather expensive.
> a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Is there any institution today that teaches you to be a “well-rounded human being?” Do students graduate being able to hunt for food, grow crops, or build a house? There might be great value in whatever type of “education” you’re talking about. But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity i…
The main focus of education as a taxpayer supported activity is about the perpetuation of the state. The fact that a healthy state relies on a healthy economy is a constraint that helps shape the aims of public education. Other constraints are about culture, values, and understanding the government to the degree that the government can count on having a future generation of legislature. One of my favorites on this to…
Whose culture, whose values, and whose understanding of the government? You’re describing the function of public education in a place like China, or the U.S. before the 1960s. Yeah, the Puritans invented public schools to make sure students learned the bible. But it’s not 1635 anymore. In a multicultural society, school only has an economic function.
> a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Is there any institution today that teaches you to be a “well-rounded human being?” Do students graduate being able to hunt for food, grow crops, or build a house? There might be great value in whatever type of “education” you’re talking about. But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity i…
Think about it on a micro level. Do you work better when your coworkers are thoughtful, or when they're thoughtless? Now multiply that by a billion, and that's why it's good for the economy.
What does “thoughtful” mean? If you think that includes telling flattering lies—“everyone is beautiful, everyone is smart”—then I would say that makes things a lot less efficient. It’s much more valuable to have coworkers who are brutally honest and realistic.
"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…
No, it should help a person achieve their purpose and be happy.