Bit of a charged headline. It's not exactly "diversity" -- it's that they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, thus they don't want to sort by aptitude.
Anyway. Could be worse. It's mostly just signaling anyway -- Bahrick and Hall [1] found that adults who took advanced math in school, calculus and beyond, rarely even use algebra on the job.
Smart kids will find ways to learn, and smart and resourceful adults can learn on the job if need be. Forced cramming with useless stuff isn't wise, and K-12 is really just daycare/prison anyway.
Not when society and peer pressure is against that, plus the culture of anti-intellectualism going rampant in the US/West that values appearance and aesthetics more than learning and education.
I knew some kids in school who were crazy brilliant, however they never pursued performance due to fear of bullying from peers about it who saw learning as uncool. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered". When you're young, fitting in with the tribe is more important that pursuing individualism so if you want to pursue performance you need to move to the right social environment that encourages that instead of vilifying it.
Sure, a few kids can fight and wither this presure and trend, especially if they're from a family/culture that values education like Asians, but that's not to say it's still swimming against the societal stream.
Most of what schools teach has no value in the labor market. Children spend years studying subjects of literally zero relevance to their adult lives.
Besides, most of what students "learn" they forget within weeks or months. Adults are, as a rule, amazingly ignorant of subjects they studied over the >10 years of K-12. What fraction remembers how to perform basic calculus? Hell, what fraction can calculate the volume of a sphere? The answer is well under 1%!
Whatever school is for, it's not for "education." It is (1) a daycare/prison hybrid that's designed to keep children out of the way, and (2) a mechanism that students can use to signal conscientiousness, socialization, and average or above-average IQ, as other mechanisms are highly disfavored.
So if somebody, somewhere, is depreciating school's signaling value, that's okay. It literally doesn't matter one iota.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] threadAnyway. Could be worse. It's mostly just signaling anyway -- Bahrick and Hall [1] found that adults who took advanced math in school, calculus and beyond, rarely even use algebra on the job.
Smart kids will find ways to learn, and smart and resourceful adults can learn on the job if need be. Forced cramming with useless stuff isn't wise, and K-12 is really just daycare/prison anyway.
[1] - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-17502-001
Not when society and peer pressure is against that, plus the culture of anti-intellectualism going rampant in the US/West that values appearance and aesthetics more than learning and education.
I knew some kids in school who were crazy brilliant, however they never pursued performance due to fear of bullying from peers about it who saw learning as uncool. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered". When you're young, fitting in with the tribe is more important that pursuing individualism so if you want to pursue performance you need to move to the right social environment that encourages that instead of vilifying it.
Sure, a few kids can fight and wither this presure and trend, especially if they're from a family/culture that values education like Asians, but that's not to say it's still swimming against the societal stream.
So, all education is training for a job? What world are we in?
Besides, most of what students "learn" they forget within weeks or months. Adults are, as a rule, amazingly ignorant of subjects they studied over the >10 years of K-12. What fraction remembers how to perform basic calculus? Hell, what fraction can calculate the volume of a sphere? The answer is well under 1%!
Whatever school is for, it's not for "education." It is (1) a daycare/prison hybrid that's designed to keep children out of the way, and (2) a mechanism that students can use to signal conscientiousness, socialization, and average or above-average IQ, as other mechanisms are highly disfavored.
So if somebody, somewhere, is depreciating school's signaling value, that's okay. It literally doesn't matter one iota.