I'd presumed that that's been the standard "critical" take for educated people since at least Foucault.
Perhaps that's part of the rot in the soul of higher education in the United States. The infection of universities with an ideology of – I'll call – "Vocationalism" and the people who are full-throated believers in such Capital-driven worldview. See: the steady denigration of the liberal arts.
Side-note: I think the capture of universities by Leftist professors [outside of technical disciplines] exposes a profound failure in American letters and American thought – conservative thinkers have lost power of relevancy in the intellectual class. Where is our Leo Strauss?
And I’m not an “evil Leftists” guy. I respect the value of their methods, if not their conclusions.
Pardon the largely off-topic tangent. Mostly writing for myself and to flesh out my own thoughts.
Education mostly exists to prove that a given person has the requisite minimum amount of raw intelligence, conscientiousness, and willingness to conform to be a good fit for the sector one is aiming to go into.
What a lot of people don't realize is that to a certain extent being strong in one of these characteristics can make up for weaknesses in the others. We all knew an effortless genius growing up who got all As no matter how late they stayed up or how often they just shrugged off studying for tests. But we know way more kids who got all As by being pretty smart, and then also putting in the work and mostly following their parent's advice.
On a slightly sadder note, we also all know a lot of genius slackers who slacked off a bit too hard and didn't make much of themselves, at least at the time. But these people generally do much better later in life, though, and IMO they usually don't seem to kick themselves too much about the lost compounding returns to e.g. getting into FAANG at 20 instead of 30 because they were busy playing punk shows with their friends or something.
> One of the most common ways to criticize our current system of education is to suggest that it’s based on a “factory model.” An alternative condemnation: “industrial era.” The implication is the same: schools are woefully outmoded. ...
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadThat education is just to teach us patience and punctuality for our upcoming factory jobs is hardly a new idea either.
Perhaps that's part of the rot in the soul of higher education in the United States. The infection of universities with an ideology of – I'll call – "Vocationalism" and the people who are full-throated believers in such Capital-driven worldview. See: the steady denigration of the liberal arts.
Side-note: I think the capture of universities by Leftist professors [outside of technical disciplines] exposes a profound failure in American letters and American thought – conservative thinkers have lost power of relevancy in the intellectual class. Where is our Leo Strauss?
And I’m not an “evil Leftists” guy. I respect the value of their methods, if not their conclusions.
Pardon the largely off-topic tangent. Mostly writing for myself and to flesh out my own thoughts.
Universities have been taken over by the management class.
Those "Leftist professors" are generally poorly paid adjuncts with less influence over university policy than wealthy donors.
Could perfectly well be inspired by, or even entirely unrelated.
I always wonder if behind the scenes there's an element of planting.
What a lot of people don't realize is that to a certain extent being strong in one of these characteristics can make up for weaknesses in the others. We all knew an effortless genius growing up who got all As no matter how late they stayed up or how often they just shrugged off studying for tests. But we know way more kids who got all As by being pretty smart, and then also putting in the work and mostly following their parent's advice.
On a slightly sadder note, we also all know a lot of genius slackers who slacked off a bit too hard and didn't make much of themselves, at least at the time. But these people generally do much better later in life, though, and IMO they usually don't seem to kick themselves too much about the lost compounding returns to e.g. getting into FAANG at 20 instead of 30 because they were busy playing punk shows with their friends or something.
"The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'"
http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model
> One of the most common ways to criticize our current system of education is to suggest that it’s based on a “factory model.” An alternative condemnation: “industrial era.” The implication is the same: schools are woefully outmoded. ...