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Comment by notabee | Hacker News Reader

The more educated the populace in general, the more they can recognize being hoodwinked into supporting things that are detrimental to their interests instead of being lead around by emotional pandering. Education is not a monolith, though. Such insight requires a specific form of education that challenges, inspires original thought, and isn't just a fancy vocational school or daycare with busy work.

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Even education has its dangers. It can be co-opted into the process of hoodwinking: something that actually works better when it's not focused on job training. (A true vocational education wouldn't help people become more sophisticated, but it wouldn't twist them around either.)

I don't think you're arguing against education, but it kind of sounds like you are, which explains the downvotes.

I think your general point is correct though. We should be careful who we let set our curriculums and try to ride a reasonable line between ideology and hard data.

I don't see how anybody could argue for or against education, at least when you zoom out far enough that you're also considering "education" in oppressive countries. Education isn't a commodity like baked beans or pipe, and you can't just order up more or less.

That's why I mentioned a specific form that is needed. Education is treated like a commodity currently (speaking about the U.S.) even if that doesn't make a lot of sense. Teachers are paid to pour facts into kids' heads, which they promptly regurgitate for tests. Perhaps some of the accelerated classes will approach exercises in independent thought, but it's really not the focus of primary education. College has traditionally been a place where broader "learning how to learn" and critical, methodical inquiry was taught, but that has become less so because of the focus on preparing for careers, overemphasis on STEM but not the philosophies that created it, and of course the massive financial burden. People complain a lot about useless degrees, but one of the original purposes of a liberal Western education was to provide a lot of context, examine the "shoulders of giants" that current knowledge rests upon, and learn about all of the big questions that have already been asked instead of re-asking them and inventing the same new fads and tragedies each generation. Basically, we emphasize the "what" and "how" and neglect the "why". The "why" is dangerous to existing power structures. So, even college educated people often neglect to ask "why" at their own assumptions (after all, they went to college and know better!), or they're too busy drowning in debt to care . Public education has been largely based on an industrial model, like a factory. An assembly line stamping correct facts and behavior into minds. It's become dysfunctional even in doing that due to a number of factors.

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