obscurette

This might signal a different story than just "badly". Estonia might flex with their 2% in this article, but as I understand their current situation – too many students fail much earlier in there. About 25% don't reach mininum level in math skills in their basic education level exams (15-year olds).

Being forced to interact with people you haven't chosen to socialize is good for your mental health and for society. People interacting with different people are less afraid of the world, more trusting etc. Clustering into echochambers is bad for society as a whole.

Years ago a small telco I worked for bought an equipment from rather reputable manufacturer at some point. A year or so later we discovered a grave bug in the software. There was a month or so silence from manufacturer and they just bought all equipment back. We found out later that entire team working on this equipment was fired during restructuring by accident (!) and there wasn't any knowledge about this equipment left in the company.

Education system has already lost and it happened before AI. The problem is that reasoning requires a very good literacy skills and these require a lot of practice to develop, but we stopped forcing students to practice this quite some time ago. A mass of illiterate students have been reality for several years all over the world.

You probably don't. Although I'm not from Netherland and can't say for sure, but it probably means that regulation and expenses are also ludicrous.

Sounds too familiar. But I survived at school and I think that it helped a ton that I went to school at sixties (Soviet Union) – explicit teaching, homework and grades since age six, order in classrooms etc allowed me to practice handling my brain with babysteps since early age. If I look at classes my grandkids are put in – no way I'd survived in such chaotic and noisy environment with so few rules.

As someone who have been teacher for some time - students being forced to "figure it out" is the worst way to learn. For every subject you teach explicitly there is always a ton of knowledge to discover if students choose to do it, but being forced to do it very clearly damages students.

https://scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/no-explicit-instruc...

It's normal that such teachers exist. But management level should notice this kind of problems and react. I switched classes in age 8 exactly because of that – for some reason a teacher disliked me and/or my behavior and I was moved to another class. No big drama. It was in 1970, Soviet Union.

Probably these too, but if I compare mu childhood (sixties) and society today, the experience kids got/have are in especially sharp contrast. When I was young I was often dumped into large family gatherings which lasted days (birthdays of (grand)grandparents, funerals, weddings etc). I had to practice handling cousins etc who might had very different family backgrounds than me since very early age. We had to find things we had in common and accept our differences. We learned that differences are manageable.

It's not common nowadays. Many people don't have relationships with relatives at all and kids don't meet another kids with different background until school. And even then distance is kept often because of overprotective parenting. If I look at my students (highschool and college level), most of them are absolutely terrified to interact with people very different than they themselves. A single difference is enough to keep distance, dump relationship at all. They are not used to it at all.

I think that at least partly it's the consequence of the very same safetyism. If I look at my generation (in my sixties), we still start conversations with strangers, especially if they are our neighbours and things happen between us. But it doesn happen't between people in their thirties any more. And if I look at my students (highschool and college level), then for them it's very alien and even afraid of situation where they have to. Why? I guess they were not allowed to practice and explore this.

I'm father of three daughters and they grew up almost like this in nineties. My grandchildren don't have this chance any more. It's a little bit about changing times, but mostly because of public – it's just not acceptable for others to do all these things and parents would get into real trouble. When I was 10, I drove tractor, had already several scars from knife and axe and visited my grandmother more than hundred km away alone. My daughters would be arrested if they would let their kids to do any of it.

I'm in my sixties and my experience is same. But now we live in the world, where my granddaughter (12) got into real trouble because a birthday present I gave her – a real Leatherman (pink of course). Of course she brought it to the school, it was confiscated, she, her parents and I was questioned by police etc.

Sorry, but this is just horse shit. I grew up in Soviet Union and we "didn't understand" open source, IP etc either. It wasn't because of some cultural or whatever reasons, it was purely by economical and political reasons. We didn't have money to buy any software. When I got my first ZX Spectrum clone in 1990, any game would cost me my monthly salary, university I worked for ran stolen SCO because it was illegal even to have in Soviet Union etc etc. And of course everyone was used to steal anyway and it was even more acceptable to steal from them. But it took only a decade and all this stuff was left behind.

And Chinese government and companies clearly understand Open Source. They support open licenses, standardsm, software and hardware wherever it benefits them – mostly by making western competitors relying on IP and licensing weaker.

As a European, I don’t know what a Public school means. But if it refers to the kind of school environment you can find on YouTube by searching for “gen alpha teachers,” then I’m surprised those schools still exist at all.

The purpose of education has never been to teach specific skills. The purpose of education has always been to provide literacy — the ability to understand the world, process information, and learn. Yes, this is done through activities that are relevant in the world at that particular moment, but that is simply an inevitability. And the reason is very simple — we don’t know what skills the people currently in school will need. A child stepping through the school doors for the first time today will enter the workforce in about 20 years and will likely work there for 40+ years. Anyone who thinks they know what the world will be like in 20 years, let alone 60 years, is simply a charlatan.

I think the age of social media has made the problem much worse. People are much more focused on how to gain fame and glory, but they can easily distance themselves from taking responsibility for the consequences.

Youtube is one of the best platforms in this regard - it is possible that they react. Good luck with FB, Instagram or TikTok.

The gaps in views are certainly widening in societies in general, but my point wasn't exactly that. It was more about differences which always existed. When I was young I was often dumped into large family gatherings which lasted days (birthdays of (grand)grandparents, funerals, weddings etc). I had to practice handling cousins etc who might had very different family backgrounds than me since very early age. We had to find things we had in common and accept our differences. We learned that differences are manageable. It's not common nowadays. Many people don't have relationships with relatives at all and kids don't meet another kids with different background until school. And even then distance is kept often because of overprotective parenting.

Yes, managing relationships needs time, but there is another problem I see nowadays. When I was young (I'm in my sixties), it was normal to have friends who could be very different from you. They might have had qualities you didn't like at all, but you could still be very good friends. If I look my students (highschool and college level) now, they are extremely intolerant for differences compared to what I remember from my youth. One "I don't like it" problem is enough to dump any relationship. Why? I guess it's because of a lack of practice – you don't really need to interact with so many different people nowadays and interacting with people who are very different from you is just plain terrifying for many.