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[Grakelin]

I'm glad a couple people brought up socializing, even though it took three pages, because it's what I was going to say.

Our childhoods weren't wasted. On the surface, it certainly seems like all the Mario was pointless, but was it?

Our ability to build social relationships is vitally important to our success in our system. It would have been wasting our time to play Mario if we were cavemen. But we aren't cavemen. We don't live in isolated pockets of society with just our family. We don't fight each other to see who gets to mate. We don't have to fight off predators.

But, the rub is, we do. We just don't use spears anymore. We use politics. We're always backstabbing each other and using deception, and gaining the right allies, so we can fight off people who want our things, beat out everybody else for the best mate, and make sure our family survives the winter. Barring the collapse of our civilization (See: The Maya thread), having our kids play the same way animals play would be useless. They'll just grow up to be dumb ogres with no place in society except for 'pawn'.

Instead, we learned how to interact with other people. We learned how to deal with hostility as well as kindness from others. Everything we do is helping us. To use an example in this thread, when a person watches Jersey Shore, they are probably either watching it with somebody else or discussing it with somebody later. You're learning to use your own personal experiences to relate to others and make them like you more. It's equally educational to watch Jersey Shore as it is to watch House (actually, it might be more educational. If you start thinking everything in House is scientific fact, you will actually go backwards in knowledgeability).

We aren't hunter and gatherers anymore. We're bureaucrats and scientists. You might think that means studying from a textbook through all of your childhood would have been a good idea, but it really wouldn't have. You needed to play, even if it was 'mindless'.

[Zrk2]

I see nothing wtrong with trying to get children to have a greater appreciation of what they have. What I do not agree with is forcing children to learn that. It is a violation of their (and their parent's) right to do with their own person as they wish. Of course that right has already been smashed by governments everywhere, so who cares? What's a little more totalitarianism?

[Sir Pseudonymous]

But, the rub is, we do. We just don't use spears anymore. We use politics. We're always backstabbing each other and using deception, and gaining the right allies, so we can fight off people who want our things, beat out everybody else for the best mate, and make sure our family survives the winter. Barring the collapse of our civilization (See: The Maya thread), having our kids play the same way animals play would be useless. They'll just grow up to be dumb ogres with no place in society except for 'pawn'.

Not that I disagree on the politics part, but isn't that kind of hindered by all the bullshit moral lessons that are given to kids that are directly in opposition to dealing with politics? You don't teach them "honesty is a valuable weapon because if you aren't trusted you cannot exist in society, and so shouldn't risk your reputation on frivolous things" or the like, you try to drill into their heads that "lying is bad because it's bad, mmkay?"

I do however disagree with the idea that pointless recreation is necessary for socialization. It would be just as easy for social behavior to be learned in a setting that also teaches useful skills, rather than through watching Just For Dumbfucks TV!'s reality show marathon.

[Grakelin]

If you aren't trusted, you cannot exist in society, and so you shouldn't risk your reputation on frivolous things. That's pretty helpful advice. Making people trust you. Step One.

Lying is bad because it's bad is, from a Conflict Theorist perspective, probably slipped in there to keep us from deceiving the educator or the parent. From a Functionalist perspective, it's more that we don't want our world leaders (including scientists and innovators) making things up. Also, just because something is necessary to thrive, it doesn't indicate that it's not a dick thing to do.

As for your second point, I would say that it is not as easy for social behaviour to be learned while studying some textbooks. If you're developing social skills while diligently studying, you're not really studying very hard.

Not that I think that spending all day reading a textbook is actually helpful in gaining knowledge. It makes sense in high schools and universities because we are picking up on collected knowledge about our subject. Reading a whole bunch of textbooks as a child won't help. It just means we're interested in History or Science instead of Pokemon or Lego. The other kids will probably stray away from us because our interests differ so much, and then they will still go on to be just as successful as we are, provided they are able to maintain some study skills when it's actually necessary. I don't think being heavily invested in History or Science as a hobby gives you a leg up on being able to decide what you want to do with your life over somebody who likes toys, either. When I was a kid, I liked reading books, watching movies, and playing roleplaying games. Now I study theatre.

Also, I have always had a hobby where I database massive amounts of things, but I have no interest in doing any sort of career which will involve me actually making a database. There goes my one 'useful' skill.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Lying is bad because it's bad is, from a Conflict Theorist perspective, probably slipped in there to keep us from deceiving the educator or the parent.

Yeah, there's definitely an issue there. If you raise your kid to be a self serving, manipulative fuckwad, specifically one competent enough to get away with it and thrive, they'll just turn on you, like you're basically telling them too. So, while it's in the child's best interest to learn these things, it's not in your interest for them to.

As for your second point, I would say that it is not as easy for social behaviour to be learned while studying some textbooks. If you're developing social skills while diligently studying, you're not really studying very hard.

I'll concede that (and the textbook thing, which would be more likely to just give someone a head full of random trivia than any usable skills), on the grounds that non-engineered childhood, like capitalism, is a tolerable if suboptimal solution to the problem. It kind of works most of the time, while being too random of a clusterfuck to replace with an optimal solution at this point in time. It's essentially a memetic evolutionary algorithm that mostly functions by virtue of non-functional configurations not continuing, and serves as a tolerable solution to a problem (producing viable adults from kids, who are collectively about as intelligent as a coked up goldfish; or in the case of capitalism, producing a viable economy from a bunch of executives who are even more coked up than the aforementioned goldfish) that's too complex (and large scale, in the case of capitalism) to engineer an optimal solution to.


If the above was too garbled and incoherent to make sense of, then it's because I'm far too tired to be attempting to convey my already mostly convoluted philosophy, and wired on caffeine to boot.

[dwarfguy2]

I can safely say it makes even less sense to a child.

[FuzzyZergling]

I would hope that the children eventually outgrow the "lying is bad because it is bad" stage and move onto the "lying is bad because people won't trust you" stage on their own, without having to be told.

[Grakelin]

Why? We learn everything we know somewhere. It isn't divine inspiration.

[nenjin]

Maybe he's saying he prefers lessons from the School of Hard Knocks.

[Soadreqm]

They might observe it. Learning from nature. Children don't really need to be told that fire is hot. They'll figure it out themselves.

Of course, this kind of hinges on "lying is bad because people won't trust you" being true, which might not be something parents would want to gamble on.

[nenjin]

You could be like a lot of people too, who hear something, but still eventually have to find out for themselves WHY it's true. I think that's true of virtually everything you'll do in life.

[Kutta]

My childhood might have been not wasted but my middle and high school years were definitely a waste.

I think the current primary role of schooling in society is to make teenagers busy and occupied and keep them under control, thereby

a) contributing to social stability
b) freeing up adults' time and effort, leaving more to focus on working.

From the teenagers perspective the current system is bad or markedly suboptimal because

a) Schools are poorly incentivized to instill market-relevant knowledge.
b)Teenagers form their own society within which criteria of social success and goals are highly distorted compared to productivity-oriented societies. For example, because there is a lack of "hard" status signals, (like the feat of establishing one's existence and wealth), status games based on factors that are irrelevant in later life are rampant and take up a lot of effort and and also cause great amounts of psychological damage to people who happen to be disinterested or uncapable of participating in the relevant status games (damage through bullying, isolation, etc.), even though some of these people will have superior productivity and affluence in adulthood (geeks, nerds being the archetypical example).
c) At the same time, because teenagers are really NOT integral parts of greater society, there will be an inevitable source of distress and social tension: our evolved psychology "expects" full social integration at teen ages and interprets being shoved away in schools as an attempt to keep them away from power and influence. Various forms of teen rebellion and drama ensues.
d) As I touched on, schooling makes transition to adult ways considerably harder and leave people ill equipped. Also, because people are naturally resistant to change of social order, several societies are formed that attempt to preserve school-like environments. The stereotypical partying college students are an example. Note that this imparts further social costs.

Apprenticeship's benefits:

a) it integrates young people early with greater society, instilling lifelong relevant value sets instead of temporarily relevant distorted values.
b) there is no cost of transition to adulthood and refinement of useless skills. Also, no need to unlearn actively harmful school habits (learning-as-guessing-the-teachers-password-to-good-grades instead of understanding being the archetypical example).

Apprenticeship's costs:

a) for adults it is very costly and time consuming to tutor and cultivate youngsters directly.
b) the general well-being of apprentices has much greater variance than the general well-being of school attendants. In school there are many teachers and the legal rules and operating standards are (in theory) consistent and universal among most schools. In apprenticeship fewer people exercise more power and influence over apprentices. This drawback, of course, could be ameliorated by appropriate legislation and regulation, but it would be somewhat more complicated and much harder to enforce than schooling regulation.
c) Apprenticeship leaves a lot less room for a state to instill specific values or to exert collective influence in any ways.

Question: why do we have schooling instead of apprenticeship?

A naturally occurring answer (which I believe to be largely correct) is that the benefits of apprenticeship are mostly to young people and the costs of it are mostly to adult people, and adult people has most of the influence and power in society. Obviously, the policies are either optimized according to policymakers' criteria or biased towards those criteria to some extent.

Now, I personally think that high school is most skewed towards adult interests and is the most detrimental to teenagers. However, elementary school and possibly middle school is probably still desirable, because there is a great benefit to society if basic literacy and math skills are universally attained. Of course, elementary and middle schools should be reformed so that they do not address the challenges and requirements of high school but instead apprenticeship.

[Grakelin]

Not everybody wants to go into a trade. Getting an apprenticeship instead of high school would have been completely useless to me. Instead, if we want to take an apprenticeship, we do so in the post-secondary level. The vast majority of workers in Western society are in the service industry, because we are running a service-based economy. That is our comparative advantage against other nations. Mandatory apprenticeship would let us down because manufacturing work is being absorbed by other nations, where it is cheaper.

Secondary school, when done properly, is preparation for university education, not just for 'getting a job'. About a third of Canadians do not even have a high school diploma. It's about transitioning into a higher level of education.

I would argue that the political atmosphere of teenagers fighting one another for dominance does not stop in the adult world. I read an interesting article about 'workplace mobbing' a month or two ago, detailing examples of how bullying still continues with adults. I would say that what our teens have in high school now is preferable to one in which they risk being classed based on their profession.

I also don't think a 13-14 year old is quite ready to choose the career for the rest of their life.

[Leafsnail]

Hmmm... apparently Sir Pseudonymous is so intelligent he can look down on everyone else as "coked up goldfishes".  Hmm.

And apprenticeships... well, how the heck would you select it?

I'll give you an example: medicine.  A lot of my friends at high school (well, high school equivalent) want to go on to do medicine.  Competition is ridiculously tight.  So, how do they select it?

Well, they go to your A levels (high school qualification equivalent).  But that isn't really enough to separate people, so they go to the scores on your individual topics for your A levels.  But that still isn't enough, so they go back to your GCSEs (secondary education qualifications).  You don't just need good grades, you need a lot of good grades in a variety of subjects.  But... that still isn't enough, so they also require you to have some work experience in hospitals and the like.  If you've done all that... you may be accepted into a medical course at university.

How the heck would you distinguish to that degree at age 13?

[ChairmanPoo]

you can't. It's absurd. Moreover, what if you change your mind afterwards? It's hard enough to choose your degree after finishing school, let alone when you're 13. You dont know enough to make an informed decision.