(I assume from the tags that that's why it was submitted, too)

My K-12 education was pretty shoddy. Mostly my fault, but I do remember very real problems with the system. With all of its past and present flaws, I still think the shift towards privatization is going to be a disaster over the long-term.

I probably would have tipped my Kangol to this dipshit when I was 14 or 15, because I was an idiot. A lot of teachers do an awful job at justifying the importance of learning for the sake of learning.

Most of the charter schools are a huge scam.

They claim amazing results that are total bullshit because they only take the best kids that apply and leave all the kids with family, emotional or mental problems to the public system.

Also some industries still do some 'training on the job' things.

Some retail car dealers will hire people as general labor but will pay good workers that show interest to attend automotive training programs.

Doing those programs on your own can be a shortcut though and a not insignificant bump in pay.

I have some friends that do trade work and make a good living. Some received on the job training, others went to a technical school. Anyone I've talked to that hires for those sort of positions seem to favor experience.

The college racket is a whole other thing. It's a shame it's so expensive in the USA, because most only consider it for the financial return and many will be disappointed.

Dear 15th,

Nobody ever wasted any money spending it on learning things. College in the US today is a total racket, and I should know, as it's my business. But it ain't no worse than any other hustle going on right now. The problem is that too many folks got told 'go to college and you'll get rich!' and that just ain't the case. They were told they could hustle the hustlers, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Raise your taxes so that college and vocational school is free for everybody like it used to be in the UK. I'll be right there with you.

love,
The Mothership

Listen to The Mothership.

Warp 9 is 1516c.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Next-Generation-Technical/dp/0 671704273

The Memory Alpha warp factors are wrong and do not reference the manual, but only the show scripts.

Worth every penny.

they definitely prefer experience, but a lot of the skill trades are filled with, to put it kindly, not the swiftest people. Good workers, can do simple jobs so fast you think they're magicians, and will work all day without complaining. But everything is becoming more complex and interconnected electronically, and there's a define absence of technically adept people entering those fields as anyone with half decent grade in high school is corralled into the college track and the people with bad grades are corralled into business schools.

Message, schmessage- this is the most loathsome internet person I've seen in a while.

Mother ship,

Yes, I am already with you.

Most jobs still provide 90% of the training on-the-job, primarily because most businesses systems are unique or proprietary.

K-12 serves to get you into college. College serves to distinguish yourself to a potential employer and get you in the front door.

After that, everything tends to be on-the-job, unless you are in a specific technical field.

Anyone who argues otherwise probably is just butt-hurt about not getting everything handed to them.

The problem is, schools DON'T teach students how to think. They teach students what to think, and that's a very important distinction. Unless you are lucky enough to attend a costly private school and/or have well-educated parents willing to homeschool you properly, then the public school system you're likely subjected to is simply training you to be a competent worker and a compliant citizen. Worse, contemporary schools don't even do a very good job with that task - because, as Mr Glam-Hair points out, most of the rote formulas and factoids students are told to memorize have no actual bearing on the rest of the students' lives! Given that you can also "discover with a simple Google search" the order in which Henry VIII's wives kicked off, then what do you believe class-time should be spent on studying? Henry VIII's wives, or your own human rights and the true nature of money?

The point of teaching children about Henry VII's wives isn't so that they know about Henry VIII's wives. It's to get them thinking about the different forces of the situation and what, exactly, is dangerous or helpful about them. In doing that, students begin to learn about how the world around them functions. The failing comes from the disconnect in a lot of public schools where this has been forgotten, and the situation has devolved into cramming the information into students heads without context, reflection, or enthusiasm.

If we just give up on learning and turn schools into training facilities for the bureaucratic hoop-jumping of modern life, we doom future generations to ineptitude.

The whole entire purpose of public school is to raise up our society, not amplify the things about it that are less than ideal.

It's also worth mentioning, EH, that this is a perfect example of what I find distasteful about Libertarian ideology. I like freedom. I think a lot of government is bloated and inefficient... even broken...

But the answer to every problem isn't "oh well, just fuck it I guess."

Hey,*I'm* not saying turn the schools into well-oiled training facilities! I would much rather see schools adopt rigorous academic programs which focus on building independent, critical thinkers from an early age - through stern discipline and adherence to the classical trivium, for example. Barring that, I'd prefer schools to take the Montessori/Waldorf approach, where students are encouraged to be self-motivated and autodidactic (with the caveat that some kids are just gonna want to slack off and do nothing), or even to discard formalized pre-university schooling entirely, making all knowledge free online (for children who are curious about the world and parents who wish to homeschool) while encouraging job-seekers to get on-the-job training instead of degrees. ONLY AFTER those three ideas are rejected would I get behind Mr Glam-Hair's idea of turning schools into well-oiled training facilities; but that approach is at least better than the current one we've got, where we evidently both agree that schools are (by design!) very-poorly-oiled training facilities, and have been churning out ineptitude for generations.

Besides, even if you accept that there can be some deeper meaning teased out from telling children about Henry VIII's wives, surely, similar meaning could be teased out from telling children about debt-based money and the history of the Federal Reserve?