Yeah I’ve been saying for years that this is a problem, and people just called me elitist. Like, excuse me? If expecting college students to perform at a college-level is elitist, then what the fuck is an education even for? It’s just a degree-mill at that point.
Might as well send kids to the mines right after middle school at that point instead of making them spend years jumping through hoops and gaining no knowledge or understanding of the world just so they can qualify to be exploited for menial labor in an air-conditioned setting…
your mistake is to assume that there’s a point in any activity at all. “the mines” are not more productive than to just sit at home, and they’re not more fun either. same goes for school.
A major issue with at least the American view of education is that it needs to be profitable, and productive, to be valuable.
Having intelligent well read people is a great boon to society on metrics that may not seem immediately tangible (in spite of having proven beneficial monetary metrics for society), because the nation has been brainwashed into believing that the only qualifier for value is material profit, in spite of that being patently false.
First of all, how would a standardized test be racist if everyone takes the same test?
Maybe the racism is in the zoning laws, the redlining, the education department and how funding is allocated disproportionally. Maybe there are other reasons why students from underserved communities do worse on standardized testing, and it’s not because the tests are racist?
That being said, standardized testing is bullshit and comes with a whole slew of problems that make education outcomes worse for everybody. Schools start tailoring the curriculum to teach for the test, rather than teach for knowledge and understanding. Everything becomes about the metrics, which we can see in many domains has led to serious issues. A lot of important things are qualitative rather than quantitative, and standardized testing misses that entirely.
But yes, the average going down is bad. But it’s a natural consequence of the way things are being run, and not surprising at all.
I’m merely watching the consequences unfold of the things I tried to warn about years ago, and was scorned for it as fringy or edgy or whatever because I was too different for the system to tolerate. The system punishes non-conformity.
I wish I could say I feel pleasure at being corroborated but no, I’m simply sad for society and where it’s going…
Yeah I’ve been saying for years that this is a problem, and people just called me elitist. Like, excuse me? If expecting college students to perform at a college-level is elitist, then what the fuck is an education even for? It’s just a degree-mill at that point.
Might as well send kids to the mines right after middle school at that point instead of making them spend years jumping through hoops and gaining no knowledge or understanding of the world just so they can qualify to be exploited for menial labor in an air-conditioned setting…
your mistake is to assume that there’s a point in any activity at all. “the mines” are not more productive than to just sit at home, and they’re not more fun either. same goes for school.
“the mines” were a deliberate hyperbole to demonstrate the absurdity. “Might as well” implies it’s just as pointless either way.
I wasn’t actually advocating for child labor…
A modest proposal. :)
A major issue with at least the American view of education is that it needs to be profitable, and productive, to be valuable.
Having intelligent well read people is a great boon to society on metrics that may not seem immediately tangible (in spite of having proven beneficial monetary metrics for society), because the nation has been brainwashed into believing that the only qualifier for value is material profit, in spite of that being patently false.
Yes, a commodified education system is the bane of society.
A well-educated populace is a boon to society.
“College level” means more than most people know. Standardized tests have a tendency to be racist. The average going down is bad.
First of all, how would a standardized test be racist if everyone takes the same test?
Maybe the racism is in the zoning laws, the redlining, the education department and how funding is allocated disproportionally. Maybe there are other reasons why students from underserved communities do worse on standardized testing, and it’s not because the tests are racist?
That being said, standardized testing is bullshit and comes with a whole slew of problems that make education outcomes worse for everybody. Schools start tailoring the curriculum to teach for the test, rather than teach for knowledge and understanding. Everything becomes about the metrics, which we can see in many domains has led to serious issues. A lot of important things are qualitative rather than quantitative, and standardized testing misses that entirely.
But yes, the average going down is bad. But it’s a natural consequence of the way things are being run, and not surprising at all.
I’m merely watching the consequences unfold of the things I tried to warn about years ago, and was scorned for it as fringy or edgy or whatever because I was too different for the system to tolerate. The system punishes non-conformity.
I wish I could say I feel pleasure at being corroborated but no, I’m simply sad for society and where it’s going…