Cantrip

galangalalgol's assertion, as I read it, was that China was domestically consuming only 81% of its production because the populace was insufficiently educated because not enough money was being spent on education, and maybe that the cause of this was economic inequality.

Are you supporting that assertion, or are you making an unrelated point about educational models? Because the connection isn't clear to me.

To the question of vocational training vs. liberal arts education, I think you're exaggerating subtle differences in cultural attitudes toward education that really do exist. Schools in China have compulsory classes in physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and history, among other things — vocational training for a few percent of the population, but liberal arts for the rest. The most respected form of education is still calligraphy.

And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Steve Jobs wasn't the product of the Western education system; he was the product of LSD, his machinist father, a neighborhood full of engineers, working at Hewlett Packard at 13, Hare Krishna prasad, Zen Buddhism, a pilgrimage to India, Transcendental Meditation, and Primal Scream Therapy, but especially LSD. Elon Musk isn't the product of the Western education system; he's the product of his emerald-tycoon engineer father, his supermodel…

I believe this, too, was linked from Hacker News at some point recently:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

"The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of…

I think this is a horrible article. His central argument is that the kids who demonstrate exceptional intelligence have too much attention heaped upon them, and discards the argument that in fact out school system fails these kids. While I agree in part that it is easy to put too much pressure on these kids by talking about their "potential" too much and pressuring them in directions they may not actually want to go, the answer is not to simply treat them as average.

He was part of the Vanderbilt University study of kids who score at least 700 on the verbal part of the SAT, or 630 in math, by age 13. I was part of the Johns Hopkins program, which is now the Center for Talented Youth which has similar requirements. he scored 800 on the math portion, 680 on verbal at age 12. I scored 800 on the verbal and 530 on the math at 12. He's a tenured math professor and published author. I'm an IT consultant of 20 years and a published author. I think I'm just as qualified to speak on behalf of this group as he is.

Those kids are under-served by the school system to the point of failure or near failure.He's completely right, talent isn't a number, but that number is indicative on an innate skill for knowledge assimilation and synthesis that is greater than average. Given the proper scholastic environment, these kids ARE capable of more than most, and should be allowed to find their niche just as much as the majority.

The problem, in my opinion, isn't that the school system is too…

I read the fine article kindly submitted here and a great many of the comments here before commenting. First of all, the headline of this submission (which is the original article headline, and thus expected by Hacker News rules) is a misstatement of fact. The author of the submitted article is a Virginian who has been teacher of the year at his little-known high school, but NOT the "Virginia Teacher of the Year."[1] The exaggerations go on from there.

The author writes, "But public education is painted as a career where you make a difference in the lives of students. When a system becomes so deeply flawed that students suffer and good teachers leave (or become jaded), we must examine how and why we do things." Well, yes, but he could have asked different questions, and come up with the different answers earlier reached by John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year decades ago.[2] Teachers should never kid themselves about how much the school-system-as-such is designed to enable learners to learn well. That has hardly ever been its main purpose.

Meanwhile, I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Virginia needs to catch up with all those reforms. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota…

This kind of stuff is the backbone of the public education system. John Taylor Gatto outlines very well the six lessons every student is taught. I think this fits well with lesson 5:

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Hi Mz,

I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two:

a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought.

b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts.

The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda?

http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html