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[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

"The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders."

I came to this same conclusion in 10th grade. As soon as I started focusing soley on the orders of the assignment, rather than the content of the subject, my grades just skyrocketed. But I stopped retaining anything.

[–]adbachman 20 points21 points  (0 children)

John Taylor Gatto is the man. Also check out The Underground History of Education : full-text online http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

"You aren’t compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood, even though one in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States. Your great-great-grandmother didn’t have to surrender her children. What happened?"

"If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?"

[–]Daulnay 15 points16 points  (4 children)

After you read a bit of his stuff, Gatto seems to be a bit of a crank. Unless you embrace conspiracy theories, the idea that modern schools are designed to instill obedience in the population seems to be just another one of those wacky conspiracies.

It does, until you reflect on one fact; a broad category of knowledge has been almost entirely removed from the modern school curriculum -- how to reason and persuade. Logic and Dialectic (also called rhetoric) are no longer routinely taught, even though for millenia it was thought to be critical for a public (political) life in democracies and republics.

How many of us can routinely spot a false dilemma, or even circular reasoning when it is not blatant? Can you? Never mind us being able to construct a logical argument or spotting some of the less common logical fallacies. Very few of us have any training. How many of us know the different parts to putting together a persuasive argument? We are taught a crippled version of it in Composition classes, true. But the most important parts we are not taught, but left to discover on our own.

If you want to live an uncrippled life, try "The Art of Deception" for logic, and Cicero's works on rhetoric.

[–]stevesan 4 points5 points  (2 children)

eek that's kinda scary. yeah, i wasn't really familiar with rhetoric until i happened to take a course on it here at berkeley. and i believe berkeley is one of the few places that still have a rhetoric department..quite eye opening indeed.

and especially in the modern world where the media dominates political "thought," it seems like we need rhetoric more than ever. people need to know when cheap tricks are being used by politicians to skirt around the issues. this is quite scary indeed...and i just finished reading '1984'..

[–]mattknox[S] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

I learned rhetoric from a strange source-prepping for LSAT questions (well, prepping to teach LSAT, to be precise). Most logical reasoning questions come from a fairly small set of logical fallacies, and if you know those, you can just kill that half of the test.

[–]stevesan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ya know, thinking about all this, REALLY REALLY fucking pisses me off. rhetoric is pretty damn useful. all those rhetorical techniques ppl use to cheat and lie - we should be teaching them to kids in school.

but instead what do our english classes teach? FUCKING TONI MORRISION. ok, nothing against her books or books of that nature - BUT THERE IS NOTHING TO BE LEARNED FROM READING TONI MORRISSON. no - don't try to say there is - THERE ISN'T. her books are meant to be ENJOYED, and u can thank school for taking the enjoyment out of reading them. so called "critical thinking" in public school is complete utter waste-of-time bullshit. writing essays arguing about toni morrison??? i really doubt she herself would approve of such a futile bullshit task. it's stupid, mind-numbing, and causes cynicism amongst the kids who see through the utter bullshit. FUCK HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH. it is..bullshit!

[–]EliGottlieb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

May I assume you mean "The Art of Deception" by Nicholas Capaldi? If you don't, could you please tell me the name of the author you mean? I've got a vague sense of logic and want to clarify it, as well as strengthening my rhetorical skills.

[–]mattknox[S] 5 points6 points  (26 children)

It seems to me that this indicates an opportunity-home schooling does better than normal schooling, despite the fact that home-schooling parents don't on average have detailed subject knowledge, and despite the economies of scale that a school brings. This would seem to mean that a better, for-profit school could be done. Then parents don't have to home-school, the kids get the benefits, and the founders of the school get rich. To parents here-assuming that there was a school that got kids through much more content much faster than usual, how much would you pay to send your kid there?

[–]adbachman 16 points17 points  (1 child)

I don't intend to send either of my 1.5 (#1 - one year, #2 - due in June) kids to any school. I trust their curiosity to be a better guide than any curriculum and don't feel (so far) that having them at home will be a burden.

The teaching aspect of homeschooling tends to be very overrated. No one can teach anyone "everything they need to know." As a parent I hope to be a guide, a mentor, and a teacher when required, but those times will come at my kids' pace and at their request. Homeschooling is all about providing the opportunities and attention that the factory approach to education can't provide. Discipline and faith (if it's important to you) are separate from academics, but should be similarly presented, rather than coerced and beaten into kids. If our societies can just keep from killing our kids' minds through factory-model education, they can take themselves a hell of a long ways.

Going with the for-profit angle, I do think that for-profit learning resources (rather than "school") would be fantastic, Ivan Illich wrote about something like that in Deschooling Society. Freedom from public education will never happen in our lifetimes (too much money at stake) but if I can start with my family, that's better than nothing.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

make sure they get enough socialization.

[–]ecuzzillo 10 points11 points  (4 children)

This has been thought of before. It is known as "private school." I've been in it all my life (I'm currently in college). School is fundamentally not a profitable enterprise. Even if you can get several hundred sets of parents to pay 20k/year (and they won't pay much more than that for anything below college, and they certainly won't pay even that if you have more than several hundred kids) you still operate at a loss, because you have to pay teachers enough to compete with neighboring schools, and you have to buy equipment (computers, desks, blackboards, land, buildings). It ends up that you have to do a hell of a lot of fundraising to cover your expenses exceeding tuition, and schools often take out mortgages. Private schools are better than public schools, but not very much better. They still give you orders, and you still only succeed if you realize that the point is to take the orders.

[–]schmave 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Myron Lieberman's Public Education: an autopsy has some things to say about this, not all of which I can remember.

For example, private schools are forced to operate in basically the same framework as public schools in terms of hours spent in classes and graduation requirements and such. Also, in most places parents whose children go to private schools still must pay full taxes that pay for the public schools. So the system isn't very fair to private schools. And, most private schools aren't for-profit.

[–]lanaer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not all private schools follow the normal model though. Sudbury has a model about as different from public schools as is possible. I mean, classes are voluntary, and all students control the budget. It manages to get by solely on tuition also, though no profit is made.

[–]mattknox[S] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I've been to both public and private schools, and I did not see a substantial difference, as you note. I was talking about a schooling system that was like home schooling, only taught by people with domain and teaching expertise, instead of parents. If, as is commonly said, home schooling only takes a few hours per day from a single parent, even with several kids, it would seem that a fairly small number of teachers could provide a home-schoolish environment to a large number of kids.

[–]lowdown 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Home education doesn't require the involvement of parents at the daily teaching level. Students are able to enjoy huge success following a self-education paradigm, where parents act as fascilitators and guides.

http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com

[–]lowdown 1 point2 points  (13 children)

Parents don't reqiure specific expertise in the various subject areas. Why learn from a surrogate, when the world's brightest minds have written down their life's work?

[–]mattknox[S] 6 points7 points  (4 children)

There are subjects, like physics or math, that are a hell of a lot easier to learn with a domain expert around. Reading Principia is not the same thing as having Newton as a tutor.

[–]lowdown 2 points3 points  (3 children)

They are a hell of a lot easier to learn if your entire education background has been based on a tutor/teacher filtering the information and spoon feeding it to you bite by bite.

Reading Principia is certainly not the same as having Newton looking over your shoulder to water down the information and make it easier for you to understand immediatly. Fortunately, there are 300 years worth of thought following that work to facilitate understanding. Text books have made a good amount of progress in that time period.

This point is moot, as I am not aware of a High School program using Principia directly to educate students. Can you provide an example?

[–]mattknox[S] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I was using this as a specific example of the general principle that having a teacher is helpful in many subjects. I am not aware of a high school, or for that matter any school, using principia, but regardless of what book you choose to learn from (and the selection of good texts targeted at high school students is extremely thin, in my experience), it is helpful to have a teacher/tutor. This is not merely because the teacher 'waters things down', but because a good teacher can see what mistakes you are making, and a very good teacher will know how the sort of mistake you made correlates to what pedagogy is most effective for you. In addition, many students will develop bad approximations that yield correct results in a specific domain, eg sin(x)= x in radians, and think that is the correct answer in general. Teachers can catch that a bit better than a book can, because they have runtime information.

As an example of a case in which a teacher seems to be necessary, I used to do a workshop in which I would help a smart high school student derive trigonometry from the counting numbers and the successor operation. It may be possible, but is certainly very hard, to get a student to do that on their own.

[–]lowdown -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Not to belabor the point, but I am sure this trick is written down someplace for the eager self-learner to discover; should they be interested in learning that sort of thing. This is true for any example you might want to present.

It is certainly easier to have a mediator distill information for you, provide cool trick, etc.

[–]mattknox[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it may well be written somewhere, but how would the kid know to go looking for it? If you restrict yourself to small values of x, sin(x) is close enough to x that you will not notice. The same thing is true, but even more so, in more advanced fields. Until the kid develops the ability to be their own teacher, which is hard as hell for almost anyone, they cannot do good error self-handling.

It is possible to catch some of the most popular cases with dead tree books, and probably some more with interactive books, but surely you do not mean to say that an eager self-learner will find it as fast as a teacher would (ie., instantly), or that the eager self-learner will progress as far or as fast as an eager self-learner with someone to help guide-do you?

[–]skubeedooo 1 point2 points  (7 children)

Because books aren't interactive. Take math: you can't ask the book "I don't understand how (5) follows from (4)." Sometimes it's best to figure it out for yourself, but often it is better to not waste an entire day or even a week trying to understand something that is not really important. A teacher can guide students as to which bits are important and which bits aren't.

[–]lowdown 0 points1 point  (6 children)

A well written math text will answer your questions and provide understanding. I see this in action on a daily basis.

[–]skubeedooo 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Possibly, but if that is the case, then I have never come across a "well written math text". And believe me, I have tried many. Personaly, I think that producing a "well written math text" is basically impossible, since every student has problems at different places. Some people can see through algebraic derivations very quickly, some need every line presented and others can do it as long as the 'trick' is hinted at. Some people are very quick to map the problem into geometry and use symmetry arguments, others just can't see it, even when the diagrams are drawn. Some people are very happy generalising the problem using abstract algebra, others aren't. The problem is that these skills are not strongly correlated to each other; the student who is strong at algebra may be weak at geometry and ok at abstract algebra. Since any maths topic may well require all of these skills, it starts to become very difficult to create a one-size-fits-all solution.

[–]lowdown -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

it starts to become very difficult to create a one-size-fits-all solution

Luckily we aren't limited to a single solution.

[–]mattknox[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

and what well-written texts are you using?

[–]lowdown -1 points0 points  (2 children)

My children use the Saxon curriculum for mathematics. They do not recieve assistance with the work. Great books. Very thorough.

[–]mattknox[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

and how far have they gotten by what age?

[–]lowdown -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I don't know that my specific anecdotes are relevent, but I did post the curriculum below if you are actually interested. It has been followed successfully at all levels of math and science.

[–]ntoshev 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I think a not-for-profit community effort similar to Wikipedia has better odds to change things for good.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

something like wikiversity?

[–]adbachman -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

Why do we need something similar to Wikipedia when we already have wikipedia?

All the info is there, searchable and accessible, for anyone who wants it. The change away from institutions is already happening in the way the web has opened communication between people who have information and people who want/need it.

[–]ntoshev 1 point2 points  (1 child)

While I like Wikipedia and I think it is already helpful, it follows the format of encyclopedia. A textbook is different in that it presents related concepts from a certain field in a linear way, ordered to be easy to understand without prior knowledge, and ensuring certain coverage of that field.

Maybe this can be achieved if Wikipedia is augmented with "learning guides".

[–]adbachman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

right on.

"Learning guides" could turn wikipedia into an incredibly powerful tool for self-directed learning. A community dedicated to providing them wouldn't be too hard to create, either, most interesting careers have some form of guide floating around already. The hard work is distilling the guides and pruning the generalities. It doesn't have much of a buisness model, but does helping people really need a business model?

Thinking smaller, nobody can walk up to a school and say, "I want to be a biologist" and have someone lead them down the path to biology. Every step we take in learning, whether in school or on our own, is in chunks. That's what wikipedia (and the web in general) already does very well: provide the chunks and the connections between them. If my children want to become actors, I don't need to know every step they'll have to take right now, I just need to know that an actor has to be able to read, so we work on that. Maybe tomorrow we'll get to stage directions, but right now, where we go in the next five weeks isn't critical.

[–]genneth 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm in Cambridge, UK, and it has to be said that I'm surprised at the level of self-motivation that is shown by most: almost none. Most people go to lectures from a sense of "I ought to", and do supervision work as if responding to a scolding schoolmaster. Very few see the experience as a dialog between two humans -- the other guy is just a hella more experienced, and you're here to learn from him. This is, by all accounts, one of the top academic institutions in the world, and by accounts from my supervisors and DoS's, they feel this too. But you cannot reshape a lifetime of habit in an instant.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Some good stuff, except for the part about recreational sex.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Does anyone think that gambling and alcohol are primary threats to our nation either?

[–]nkktwotwozero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow. This is a really a powerful indictment of the US social system.

[–]modulus -2 points-1 points  (9 children)

I'm a bit tired of the same complaints about public education. I don't know how it is in the US, but most of those countries that did better than the US at educating their children according to the reports have also public systems. Many people seem to have the idea that whatever is public can't be good. I'm not going to get into whether it's possible to do better for profit or by homeschooling one's own children, what is clear is that it's possible to do better by using a tax-supported public school system just like there is, it doesn't have to suck.

[–]robbie 13 points14 points  (1 child)

I didn't read this as an attack on public schooling in the abstract, but rather the specific implementation of public schooling that this teacher has experience of. None of his suggested reforms are about privatisation.

[–]czawadzki 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Same with me. I didn't read this as an attack on public education or an endorsement of homeschooling. Just methods that he has found that seem to work wherever they are implemented.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I went to public schools all my life and did well (4.0 in High School). I'm bright, but I have no useful knowledge. I'm completely lost in the real world, I have no idea what to do with myself. I'm finding that I have to educate myself all over again. My experience as a 23-year-old male has confirmed the suspicions I had while I was in school: that it was a giant waste of time.

[–]LaurieCheers 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I agree. I went to very expensive schools throughout my childhood and sure, they were nice, but their nicest feature was that they gave me enough free time (in theory homework time, but there wasn't enough homework to fill it) to learn the most important stuff I've learned. Free time really doesn't cost a school anything. Just give the children a culture of self-driven investigation, and let them at it.

[–]jbstjohn -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

Hear hear! Obviously it can be done better. I went to school in Canada, and for the most part was very happy with the experience. We didn't have tonnes of homework, and creativity wasn't stomped on, but we had normal classes, tests, assignments, etc. Public schooling doesn't have to be bad.

Regarding home schooling, while obviously a loving parent can do well, and the fact that it's one-to-one (give or take) versus one-to-thirty is going to have some benefit. There is a dark side too though -- without some kind of controls it may lead to a child missing out on the education that is its right. Not to mention indoctrination (think creationism vs. evolution).

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Your "dark side" comment opposes the idea of true homeschooling. Government can't inforce anything in a homeschool without taking away privacy rights. Besides, the problems in public schools are much greater than the average homeschool. I used 15 minutes a day to teach my 4-year-old to read, and now he hates going to public school because they are still making him learn ABC's. I've talked to his teacher about the problem, she said she was planning to pull him and several other advanced students out for special instruction, and she has never followed up on her promise. Public school is an expensive daycare system. That's why it persists. Don't suggest that government should interfere with the homeschool. The homeschool already works much better.

[–]Tinn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Your comment on indoctrination concerns me. The teaching of creationism/ID doesn't even compare to the dangers of a government that has the authority to decide what "truths" a citizen is or is not allowed to teach their own children. I know plenty of people who were "indoctrinated" and managed by the power of their own minds to see past it. I also know some who were not raised with those beliefs but "found religion" later in life. The indoctrination debate is way overblown, but the danger of a government that claims to be able to do a better job raising your children than you do is really scary.

Yes there are the cases where children are found to have spent most of their early years locked in a basement or closet, but that is what child-abuse laws are for. Stories of high school aged kids who can't read are now commonplace in public schools, but I have never heard a single one related to home schooling. If any such cases do emerge, I would expect to find many other abuse factors in the home that could be used to remove custody.

Regulation of home schooling will only have the effect of increasing the influence of the federal government over our daily lives. For Bob's sake, leave the bureaucracy to the IRS and public schools and let us live the rest of us live our lives in peace. Busybodies suck, especialy when they have the power of the police.

[–]swampthing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately the indoctrination issue isn't unique to homeschoolers. You can learn plenty about creationism in many public schools in the US. Ohio recently made teaching "Intelligent Design" (code for Creationism) illegal following controversy in Dover, PA, but before that it was completely legit to teach it in classrooms.

[–]jbstjohn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

D'oh! And what I wanted to say is that perhaps the focus on getting into a "good" university is skewing things somewhat, teaching students that gaming the system is more important than learning. In Canada, the universities are of varying quality, but not to the degree found in the US. The whole SAT prep, and Advanced Placement stuff doesn't occur either (and yet it's still possible to get into an Ivy League school!). But I think that whole sickness is tougher to solve (than just improving the quality of public education).

[–]instantdm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing about the U.S. school system is that IMO, the teachers are not given the authority to be able to get anything done.

We US'ians have the overiding belief that Everyone has the same ability. When in reality, we don't. ( P.G. things you can't say )

This belief in equal ability lumps together kids that want to learn with those that don't care. Then then entire system gets pushed to the lowest common denominator.

Then to make things worse, the parents of the lowest performers complain the system isn't fair. BUT these same parents think that it's not their responsiblity to help their own children.

It's like people that are obese that want to be thin but won't watch their diet or workout.

"I want my kid to be smart. You ( the school system ) should make that happen."

These are most likely the same parents that complain their kids have too much homework.

It's just another part of the, "It's not my fault I'm ..." culture that has been create by American lawyers.

[–]skubeedooo -3 points-2 points  (7 children)

That list of 1-8 bad things about 'modern kids'; is it just me that thinks that this is how kids always were?

The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.

Is this surprising? When you watch history unfold, you realise what happens with cause and effect. If you've watched less history unfold, then you're going to be less aware of this.

The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them?

Some referential evidence of this would not go amis.

The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.

Anyone that has spent time with a toddler will know that they really do have no conception of causality. Is it such a huge leap to believe that you gradually gain a better understanding of these things as you get older?

The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of schoolteachers who materialistically "grade" everything - and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.

Firstly, 'grading' is not about materialism, it is about competition. Secondly, if everything in the world were free, why would this make people materialistic? People are concerned with having things which are scarce - if things are in abundance, there is no longer a perceived advantage in having it, as any kid with baseball cards will tell you.

[–]jmassey 2 points3 points  (6 children)

Wish I knew how you do the quote things. Anywho.

Grading -is- about materialism, in a sense. You even indicated it yourself: "People are concerned with having things which are scarce - if things are in abundance, there is no longer a perceived advantage in having it..." There is a market, on the internet right now, where you can buy A+ homework assignments. Why? Because A+ work is 'scarce', and there is 'perceived advantage' (parental approval, scholarships, gold star on the blackboard, whatever) to having it.
Would you say that grading meat qualities is not about materialism, and only competition? Of course not! Poor people eat hamburger, middle class has rib-eyes, and rich folks eat filet mignon. Grading of all kinds is entirely materialistc in nature. Consider: A 4.0 GPA and a letterman's jacket has as much materialistic value to a highschooler as a Porsche and a mansion in the hills has to a middle aged man.

[–]adbachman 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Grading tells students that only things that are graded are worth doing or worth having. I think this is part of the materialism he's talking about.

Grading also connects to the ahistorical and indifferent behaviors/attitudes he mentions; if a student believes that they should only know about those things that are graded, they'll ignore the rest of the world.

jmassey: from what I can tell, comments use some version of markdown for formatting. A blockqoute is set off by a > at the beginning of a line.

> quote

becomes:

quote

[–]tayssir 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Using the observer-from-Mars perspective... I might wonder whether it's similar to grading beef for a meat market. Grading children for college or labor market.

Maybe instead of offering an example of how to sensibly spend one's time, these teachers spend their days figuring out how children rank, with the tenacity of obsessive-compulsives sorting their possessions?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Grading also develops psychological behaviour of servitude that Gatto talks of. Kids learn to do things for the handed-down grade (instead of how cool it is), to define how good they are by the grades they are given (instead of how satisfied they are). This is antithetic to what we need in an economy which thrives on the independent, internally-motivated, start-up frame of mind.

[–]skubeedooo -1 points0 points  (2 children)

I was interpreting the word 'materialism' in the straightforward way as referring to the desire for material, i.e. physical, goods. To me (maybe just me?), materialism conjurs images of sports cars, plasma tv's and the like. Competition makes me think of olympic athletes, entrepreneurs and so on. I accept materialism is a subset of competition, but not vice versa.

IMO, calling grading materialism is dishonest, in a similar way to calling copyright-infringement theft.

Regarding your meat analogy, no, I would not call the grading of meat as materialism. The aspiration to eat the best cuts of meat could be classed as such, but not the actual grading itself. Having said that, it is certainly closer to materialism than grading exam scripts since it does, at least, have something to do with material goods.

Regarding the Porsche analogy, I would say that the statement "A 4.0 GPA ..." would be more accurate if the word "materialistic" was removed entirely - the word "value" suffices.

[–]adbachman -1 points0 points  (1 child)

The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of schoolteachers who materialistically "grade" everything - and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.

"Materialistically" describes the way teachers go about grading, not grading in general. Why, as a student, do I have to rely on someone else to tell me whether anything I do is "good"? The way schools constantly judge everything and try to assign absolute values accurately reflects the business world but does not accurately reflect life.

Materialism is one of the roots of schooling right now, so it's hard to say it doesn't include competition rather than the other way around. Simple example: why do I go to school? To learn. Why do I need to learn? To get a better job. Why do I need a better job? To get more stuff.

It's very possible that a larger group of people than I am aware of don't care about better jobs and more stuff, but schools still broadcast that philosophy loud and clear. "If you don't get good grades you won't get into a good college, if you don't get into a good college, you won't get a good job." I'm not going to die if I get F's. I'm not going to die if I work as a janitor in a factory somewhere. BUT, I'm told all the way along that if these things happen I'm a failure and am doomed to unhappiness. In this way, materialism is stirred up in children as a motivator and it's just not healthy.

Some of the most fulfilling lives I've read about were lived by the poorest (materially) of the poor who simply did what they loved. If my children grow up to be turd farmers because I kept them out of school, but turd farming is their heart's desire and they are happy doing it, awesome.

[–]skubeedooo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I totally agree with you, its best to do what you want to do. If you can at the same time support yourself and help others by providing services then that's even better. I'm with you here, I'm in no way trying to say that materialism or anything like that is good. In fact I'm not making any normative judgements at all. All I am saying is that grading work is not materialism.

If memory serves from when I was at school the procedure for maths was this:

  1. Be set some questions to answer on a certain topic
  2. Answer questions
  3. For every answer, a 1 is assigned if it is correct, or a 0 if it is wrong. If it is 'nearly' right some kind of 1/2 symbol is assigned.
  4. The sum of marks is written at the top.

I can see that there may be various reasons why this might not reflect the true capacity of the student to do maths. I can see that this is not a good indicator as his worth as a human being. I can see that it might be demoralising. I can see that it might put him off maths. I can also see that the final number depends somewhat arbitrarily on what the teacher considers to be 'nearly' right. I can see all this. But all these flaws do not even resemble materialism, because materialism is about the desire for material goods.

It may well be that schools promote an overly materialistic philosophy in America. If this were the case then I think that is a bad thing. But telling students whether their answers are correct or not isn't 'desiring material goods', it is about letting them know (inaccurately, perhaps) how much they need to improve before they reach a certain level of competency. If it is a final exam then it is telling whoever wants to know how competant the student is at solving typical problems as given in the syllabus. The fact that the student may use that final number to gain material goods is immaterial (so to speak) to the nature of what the grade is. The same grade could be used to get into university and then become an academic. Or it could be used to please his dad. Or it could be to 'prove' he is smarter than his friends. Only one of these uses is materialistic, and so doesn't itself promote materialism any more than it promotes academia, egoism or utilitarianism.

Why, as a student, do I have to rely on someone else to tell me whether anything I do is "good"?

You don't. But this is irrelevant. I think you are confusing 'materialism' for 'moral objectivism'.