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14:23 So Michael, that African American history curriculum you joined in middle school ... would you say it operated with a "Socratic model, in which the teacher was open to learning from YOU?" ( 11:21 )
As an Aussie that had a free education i feel scared to ask, how much do you owe even after a teaching career Micheal? and i imagine around 20yrs paying.
Keep in mind, DeathSantis sees nothing wrong with saying slaves were taught things to better their lives..I really wish this stupidity wasnt real, but they keep proving its very real
This is a cultural issue as well. Not just a systemic one. Loads of parents aren't interested in the work of raising a smart child. They just want an obedient one
The LEFTIST ideology of mandatory education blowing up in your faces, when well-roundedness turns out to include don't say gay. Simply because deomcratic voters WILL express their will through the CORRECT channel, and that is what state is there to do, and choose which ideology voters would push. School is not for that, and for kidults to miserably scream "we're making a home here", whether you gain cash on that investment or won't. The business practice of de facto making education mandatory gets its ideological backing from the left, even if you try to blame markets for forcing companies to only hire people with useless degrees. Try to figure out if indoctrinating children is a threat you pose or one you're victimized by, before blaming one side that this is a non-issue when they have something to say.
I went to a predatory college which has since closed (Westwood College of Technology.) I owed about $80,000 after graduation for an entry-level bachelor degree in computers that I technically didn't need and couldn't use. Thankfully, I kept all my paperwork from school. After learning that Westwood was sued and later closed and recalling suspicious policies they enforced, I went looking for solutions. I waited for the Trump administration to pass (because Betsy DeVos was an obstacle in getting anything done regarding predatory colleges) and once the Biden administration got into swing, I applied for loan forgiveness through the Borrower Defense program. It was a long and confusing application process, but I was approved and my loans were forgiven. My credit has shot up and life has gotten significantly less stressful.
@@Glue_Stick98 the wording of this is funny because it implies you think they should still be able to prey on students just a little bit, which I hope and believe you don't think, but gave me a little giggle
My EE degree was an incredible privilege. I loved pushing so much knowledge into my brain with the set deadlines and structure. My masters in EE is ongoing and I am always excited to learn more. I am not excited about the cost.
well, if u gotta get students loans, u most likely got it for college. and if student loans need to climb and be comparable to the price of college, i would argue college is inherently a scam too. like, if i sold a used camera for full msrp, u would probably argue the price is a scam. then u later find out its broken, it doesn't make one or the other not a scam. it's all a scam, a charade, as a whole.
I’m an old time fan of the channel, and I’m happy how well the scripts are developing for a more materialistic critic of our days, keep the great work!
Yes, I was put off of Wisecrack for a while because of the shallow clickbaity direction I felt it had been moving, but checked in recently and was pleasantly surprised
@@MrLugubrious Thanks for checking us out! And know that any "click bait" in the titles and thumbnails is truly just to make the RUclips algorithm like us, we're never going to dumb down the quality of our actual videos.
I've been a viewer since the channel started and I've felt the videos in the last year or so have seemed really clickbaity. Recent videos are much improved!
Paulo Freire is one of the brightest minds to come out of Brasil. His take on critical pedagogy is incredibly lucid, it's like a materialist approach to education - he focused on the concrete realities and experiences of learners, emphasizing the transformative potential of education to address societal issues and empower marginalized individuals. Thank you so much for bringing him into the spotlight!
Imagine a world where college wasn't 100k, where you can actually learn about things that spark your interests. The biggest problem w college today is the price.
It's called public universities - been around for decades. You can go to an R1 tier State school for a few grand/yr, and in-state financial aid can bring that down to $0 in most cases. The major State systems (NY, CA, WI, MA, TX, PA, MI, CO, few others for some majors) have more academic resources & better career-prep than most private schools. Many families unfortunately have no real idea what they actually need in a college, and so tend to go for whatever "brand name" they happen to know. Happens with int'l students as well - they'll go for Harvard every time, even if they're not going into a field Harvard's good at (like engineering).
There was one not so long ago. I started my BA in Communication Studies in 94 in the UK and didn't pay anything for it. My MA costed me a bit over 2300 quid. That's all gone now but it was there
@@mandisaw This, and add to trade schools being a thing. A lot of people don't know that trade schools are even an option if they don't feel like they're doing well in a traditional academic setting. My cousin went to a trade school and is now certified in electrical engineering and works as one of the top maintenance guys at the RV company he works for. He, along with his wife, now earn a 6 figure salary between the both of them. I'm personally going to my local state university to eventually become a social studies and/or history teacher for middle and high schoolers, it's much cheaper than if I went to a big out-of-state university like a lot of people do.
You don't have to imagine it, it's happening right now, just not in America. What you want, we cannot give you, and might take generations for you to get back, but, we thank you for your sacrifice, because in those parts of the world, there is no better argument than "we don't want to end up like them". Sadly, my country, and many others, have not yet chosen a side. They still look upon the American model of education, or highway system, or justice system, or healthcare, with greed, not knowing that adopting such systems would ruin them. America only holds because it's the bank of the world, and can print money to hide problems. Should that change, God help you guys!
As a Brazilian, I feel very proud to see Freire being brought up to such an important discussion, of the nature of knowledge itself, and it saddens me as well to know his work is being targeted by the right wing here in Brazil to try and "stop indoctrination", when in reality what they want is to monopolize indoctrination to their side of the political spectrum
I'm geography teacher in Paraná, Brazil. I want to die a slow and paifull death everytime i hear influent people around here advocating the US educational model as a "golden standard" for us to follow. Ps. Escrevi em inglês para os gringos acompanharem.
I had an English teacher in grade 11 with a more Socratic teaching method. I'm 40 years old and not only do I remember the lessons from his class but have been able to apply them in different circumstances. Thanks Mr. Nash!
@@BeerPatio Goodhart's Law. When a measure like good grades become the target of a school's evaluation, it ceases to be anything more than a meaningless metric.
I am an English Teacher in Florida. I am doing my best to create a classroom that promotes curiosity and dialogue. One thing I’m going to try and do is promote the idea that no one is stupid if they don’t have the answer, they just don’t know something that someone else does know. And that learning comes when we give new information to each other.
If it's of any help, we, my team and I (2nd Grade), are working to rephrase the "stupid question" narrative so that it shifts the onus onto the person answering. "Every question is an opportunity for everyone to learn."
Coming from a fine arts background, it took me a long to figure out that it is totally respectable, and sometimes smart, to just say "I don't know". There is a needless amount of pressure to have an answer for every single question someone might ask. Sometimes, I just don't freaking know!
have you explained to the kids yet that the S.E.S. they're born into is the one they'll die in? It's important that kids know that economic mobility in America is more restricted than it is in "socialist hellholes" like Europe. The only good American is an America that's willing to burn this country to the ground with every politician & their family still inside!
Our schools only teach how to take tests. Here's how I got a 98% on a final exam that I barely studied for in a class that I barely attended WITHOUT cheating. Half the class was online, and our teacher foolishly told us that the final was just a combination of the 10 practice quizzes available online. I quickly realized that since they didn't count against our grade, I could turn in a blank exam and get all the correct answers. I spent the next hour before the exam just reading through the questions, and only the correct answers for them. I didn't even read the wrong answers. When it came time for the test, I read the question, and just picked the answer I recognized having read before. There was ZERO comprehension going on. I got 98%. The only 2 I missed were the 2 from the first practice exam that I actually tried on and had gotten wrong. I passed with a C in the class and I didn't learn a thing, except how to give the answers they wanted me to give.
wait what Your final exam in school was just picking answers? Is this like your final exam in One subject (if yes which subject?) or THE final exam when you leave school?
I would say you learned critical thinking AND how to think outside the box, AND a more efficient form of test taking given known obstacles. If that's not partially what college is for then what are we doing?
I was in college for about 15 years before finally getting my PhD, then I taught at a public middle school, did some private tutoring, and then...worked at a farm. The PhD only helped me get the job because the boss said "I think you might be a little overqualified" to which I replied "Well that's why you should hire me." Now I have my own farm that's still focused around teaching customers about ecology. It is my blessing. It is my curse. It is my destiny.😜
i missed out on college due to high cost and no time having to work. i choose to teach myself coding... it was rough and i wish college was accessible to people like me. I am now a software developer and life's good. I love the concept of college i just wish our society was more open to all forms of learning and respecting that no everyone needs to follow the same path. your videos are the best at showing the rational side of how we structure our society keep up the great work.
@@eatmanyzoos that's exactly why i wish other fields were open to accepting uneducated people or people who don't have a degree to do it. We need all jobs to be acceptable to all people while allowing education to be free as well. This turning college into a way to make money has turned it into a force of gate keepers. It might be crazy but i want all fields to be accessible.
@@eatmanyzoosSo the Arts are pointless? You don’t like paintings? Comics? Animation? CGI and practical effects in your Summer blockbuster? And that’s just ONE aspect of the visual arts. Which is just one aspect of the Arts as a whole.
@@kourtneyr.scruggs0988 no I AM an artist and no one gives a shit. id have to go to school to get the connections to get the jobs you mentioned. otherwise im a bum who should just die according to the country i live in. im glad YOU give a shit. do you have a job for me? didnt think so.
I'm Florida born and bred. I lived in Sarasota for 7 years and went to high school there, and loved it. I'm mentioning this because, that's where New College is. It's a very artsy area, very unique. As someone who doesn't fit into society's mold, that place felt like home to me, and I always felt accepted for who I was. To see that area targeted, just makes me sad. I love Florida, but honestly I'm ashamed to see the direction it's headed thanks to it's leadership..... DeSantis you Suck.
"Great educators should be creating the conditions for their own obsolescence." Just like. "A managers job is to build systems to make himself redundant." Both well said.
Not only does liberal education help us be better citizens politically, it also gives us a better toolbox to express our feelings about our lives and about our interpersonal relationships. That’s my individualist take on it and how my English, Psychology, and Philosophy classes informed my life.
High school class of '99. I first majored in Gym, then Philosophy, then as I learned that the great philosophers were mathematicians and vice versa, I switched to physics, then astrophysics, then astrophysics AND math. I am now a pharmaceutical engineer. I don't regret a second of any of it. Education for education's sake is how we should live.
Astrophysics was my first love, but I ended up majoring in geochemistry, while learning programming, media studies, & foreign languages for fun. Now I'm a software developer, and can work well with, and make apps/games for, people from all sorts of cultural & technical backgrounds. All the folks who decry a broad-based education just come off as ignorant. Most career paths are not linear, and it's those soft skills in communication, "social" studies, and the human experience that tend to offer the most lifetime ROI.
that is your opinion. most people do not have the time, money or inclination to spend so much time "learning". some people would rather learn thru experience, rather than classrooms.
At a young age, I realized the US education system was fostered to create obedient and relatively competent worker bees. Living in 6 states and being in public, private, & charter schools makes you realize that. Many of the US public school customs spawned from the Industrial workers of the Victorian age. Made to be competent but only knowledgeable enough to create labor worth exploiting. As someone who challenged authority was openly curious and asked many thought-provoking questions from elementary and on, I quickly realized that the education system wasn’t designed for me. The mold they want for you to become someone ready to be a proud, willing participant in Corporate Capitalism by the time you graduate.
I put off going to college for 8 years after High School and spent that time learning on my own, mostly about myself and the world around me. I wanted to be a CS major and make a lot of money when I was 18. Now, I want to learn as much as I can and just be a better human. I have no pressure to get loans, or to finish my degrees in any amount of time. I'm simply taking a class or 3 a semester, fully paid for by financial aid (no scholarships, just basic FAFSA) and continuing to find a career path that works WITH my life and ambitions versus my career BEING my life. I apply to a new job everyday and hold my employer to the same standards that they hold me, and it's given me control of my life in a way I never thought I'd have. Not everyone needs a higher education to live a content and happy life, but they do need to be able to think critically (about themselves) and question the status quo in order to achieve it for themselves, otherwise you'll feel as if you have no agency IN YOUR OWN LIFE.
I'm an education professor and one of my biggest fears is that as a society we have lost the language and ability to discuss education as a public good, rather than a private good. If a private good is all we can see I think we will struggle to look beyond the workforce preparation lens.
I'm at $0. However, my first degree was a trades degree from Community College. Then went back later as an adult, having grants and military help me pay through. We need to change how we view education funding. Every dime the government gave me to get through school, comes back with my increased income through taxes. Our government invested in me when I was low. Now that I'm high they reap the rewards in taxes. Basic fundamentals of sound investing, and generating wealth and well-being to our country.
This! Public education wasn't about doing right by kids, it was about creating hard-working, highly-taxable adults 😂 Critical thinking is a nice side benefit heh There are plenty of studies that estimate how much money society makes long-term for every additional $100 spent on a kid's education. What changed was that voters decided not to make the investment anymore (and dump it into families/individuals).
@@mandisaw makes me sad, cause that should be the whole culture. To invest in our future, so our kids can be brighter, wealthier, happier than us. Also, if they're wealthier, there's more to help us when we're out of the productive age.
@@focofox37 Add it to the ways Reagan, et al convinced people to act against their own self-intetest. We're on the cusp of the 401k/pension-less generation hitting retirement, unions & labor rights are at an all-time low, and now folks are convinced not only to defund public education, but go back to turn-of-20c. ideals of "only as much education as you need to pull the lever". This can't end well.
Education is literally the best ROI spend a government can make. Iirc, it's like a 7x return on every $ on average. Other things, like public transport, sanitation and healthcare also provide really good ROI, but they're also things the US gov is tentative to spend on (despite spending a higher proportion of GDP on healthcare than all other wealthy countries, countries which also provide taxpayer-funded healthcare free at point of use). The US gov is allergic to spending public money on the public good that will make a visible return - the good old "small government" myth strikes again
@@TAP7a It's not an allergy, it's a virus, and this one really was man-made. Same folks who wanted to rollback FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society are out here trying to get rid of food, shelter, education, healthcare, and retirement for all but the rich & powerful. We used to all believe in the public good - tarnished by racism & sexism, xenophobia, etc, but still "public". Then folks bought into the idea that everyone was just a rich person who hasn't hit the number yet, and it went to shit from there.
Sadly, the vast majority of Conservative voices against the Humanities (and more broadly the Liberal Arts) understand what comprises neither. Also they actively hate other Humanities fields like Critical Thinking for obvious reasons.
I'm sure there are some that hate them, at least in their current form, and perfectly understand them too. Also, how the Hell is Critical Thinking a Humanity? It has as little to do with humans in particular as Biology.
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana I don't think you understood what OP meant when they said ,"Also they actively hate other Humanities fields like Critical Thinking". Critical Thinking is a field of study in the humanities (a subset of the Liberal Arts). They're not literally talking about humanity, as in the human species.
I read pedagogy of the oppressed in my college education pedagogy class. Great shit, but I’m no longer a teacher…... Thanks for doing what you guys do.
I was fortunate, I got into IT, AA degree, took about 10k in debt, but I made a lot of money with what I learned. Fortunately my school required me to take accounting, public speaking, entrepreneurship, and psychology, which I ended up using WAY more than my tech degree. With the skills I learned I was able to start a business, grow to be good sized, and now I teach at the college I attended, and encourage those same things. Seriously though, take psychology, that and public speaking. Helped me SOOOO much.
Dude, totally agree with you as a native Floridian how horrible it was even 20 years ago. So glad I'm all the way across the country from it. Also a victim of The Art Institutes colleges (don't even work in the field I paid too much for). Didn't get into debt relief before Supreme Court struck it down, so my only hope now is to take legal action and ride the wave of lawsuits against them to forgive my entire loan. I learned way more just teaching myself from Khan Academy for free, and Brilliant for trial, than I ever learned from public education.
These ideas shouldn't be limited to college. Every citizen, every voter needs to be able to think critically. You are exactly right that we prioritize cramming facts into the heads of students - easily testable and easily regurgitatable (that may not be a word) facts. That part of the problem is outright laziness on the part of educators. I am daily frustrated by the inability of people to understand how to think. Thinking is a skill, it requires discipline and honestly and self denial. My limited opinion is that both the humanities and the sciences are necessary subjects for the training of a good mind. Both have rules and boundaries and both will illuminate when you are just fucking wrong. Those are the vital lessons for understanding how reality actually works beyond our preconceptions and current imagination. They help us grow and become more than just opposable thumbs and a hyoid bone. Your videos are excellent. They should be shown in Florida schools. Edit to add: I've attended several graduations in the last three years and what currently qualifies for a masters or doctoral thesis is sad. Diplomas are being handed out in very much a job training program.
I studied in one of the best universities of my country, which rarely gets in the top 100 best colleges of the world, but it happens from time to time. However, it helped me to get a job since in my country they ask titles more than anything, and I didn't have to pay a cent because I passed everything with good grades. As long as you do that and you ask for a scholarship, in my country students are PAID. It's a symbolic number, not a lot, but I received over 5000 euros a year for studying my psychology career. Of course, as soon as you start failing your exams, the money stops flowing, and the situation reverses. Enrolling in a subject for the second time implies around 800 euros, depending on the subject and the hours it takes. And if you fail a few of them, you get your scholarship denied. This thing I hear from you and my American family is incredible, they are almost enslaving you for life.
Very well said. The most important things I learned in college, the skills and values that make up a big part of who I am now, had nothing to do with job training. It's really unsettling how education is being attacked lately
This video makes me grateful that I treated college like a tasting menu. Taking classes simply because I wanted to learn whatever interested me at the time. We may be going through a dark time, but “as long as people continue to pursue the meaning of Freedom, these things will never cease to be!”
Nice that you're willing to talk about this, although I must say that a nineteen minute video isn't going to be able to go deep enough to even touch the tip of the iceberg of this issue. There is sooooo much to say about this topic. Just one thing for example, back in the early 2000s internet, I was in university myself, but I found (on the itunes store, no less) Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford courses for absolutely free. I was hooked, the quality was miles ahead of the courses I was paying for. I took almost every course I could find, from astronomy to philosophy, art history to computer science. Sadly, one can no longer find courses like this, as I'm sure the institutions decided that they shouldn't be giving away the material like that anymore. As well, there is no way to credit me for the learning that I did. Back then I thought "wow! this is radical and can make the best education free for everyone, we just need to work out accreditation". Again sadly, this is not what happened, and now we're in a hyper-capitalized, hyper-oversaturated market for education. Meanwhile people are still making bank with basic drop-shipping scams and youtube videos of grass cutting. Being over-educated actually feels more like a curse, as I work in construction with guys fresh out of high school, making more money than people I know with masters degrees. Having thoughts about Socrates and Nietzsche while I grunt my way through the day is basically a recipe for resentment. Let me also say that the people that I know that work in education, as much as they are smart people, are more like people that figured out the credential and social ladders, more than people that are actually interested in the material or have anything original or valuable to add to the conversations. They're basically just credentialed people that never left academia, and when I talk to them at parties, they seem fearful, sad, unoriginal, overpaid, and out of touch, adding fuel to the resentment fire in my soul. Anyways, enough blah blah, but I could probably go on ad nauseam...
I wanted to and really tried to go the critical thinking route in college, truly learn the subject matter and get involved instead of rote memorization. I did absolutely terrible. Once I turned into an automaton, my grades shot up, but it took the joy out of learning and I didn’t retain much. What in the actual heck is American higher education trying to do.
You just needed a tutor, maybe learn some better study skills. Pretty much everyone hits "the wall" at some point in their academic career, some earlier (HS), some later (college). It's where whatever you've been doing no longer works, and you basically have to "level up" your ability to literally learn. But that's not indicative of individual failure on your part, or a systemic failure. Someone should've explained that to you 😢
I tried both ways, rote memorization(via anki for constant revisions) and doing the things which I felt was interesting and fun. I live in Denmark so the experience may differ, I do a hybrid, memorization for facts with context for when that fact or term is relevant, and just practicing or doing weird connoctions / mnemonic to remeber what I learned, to keep my learned knowlege. Eg. Royalist: have a picture of a crown and some reasons for why they support the monarchy WITH YOUR OWN WORDS, in the glorious revolution, related terms and why the related terms are different. As a weird mnemonic I remember the formula for molar mass in chemistry is c=m/M Which i remember as communism=masses above monarchs. Or small one above big ones. I use rote memory to solidify/retain learned knowlege, not to hammer it into my brain without any context or usage cases.
@@mandisaw no, it was cuz I wanted to read the source material and do the actual reading assignments. I wanted to learn the philosopher texts. Instead of, you know, readings summary or just regurgitating what I took notes on. I was a science major but felt that the humanities classes were where I was going to get educated. I actually tried to read and ponder it, and that was a mistake cuz there’s simply no time to read opaque texts. Btw I’m a physician now, and I only mention that cuz my field highly rewards rote memorization of facts rather than critical thought, since you need a ton of facts to synthesize together to work the problem. Physicians are no smarter than anyone else, we just have to develop extreme blind memorization to get by. Physicians are definitely put on a pedestal but in my experience humanities careers and majors have much higher critical thinking and are overall more interesting people than us docs, especially with understanding of power, ideology, historical context. I started to do really well when I gave up on learning and just accepted the fact that I probably will never be able to learn philosophy. Its a damn shame that profound knowledge is hidden behind opaque texts and even more esoteric professors in overpriced colleges (for which the professors get almost none of the profits). At least in the US, GPA is extremely important for med school admissions, and a few bad grades will absolutely destroy you. Thank goodness for Michael burns and wisecrack for breaking philosophy down for dumb dumbs like me. Thanks for being concerned. Oh, and all that school and neurosurgeons aren’t that much smarter than the average person. I totally agree: www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-067883
@@shakenbacon-vm4eu Ah, yeah, biological sciences are the most rote-memorization heavy of the lot - it's one reason I always preferred the physical sciences 😂 And straight math, of course - given one or two facts, you can derive the universe LOL I think there's a difference between what amounts to academic survival skills, and the sort of deeper, contextual learning it seems you were looking for. Your avg 13-15wk semester is just not long enough to get that level of depth & nuance. Prioritizing what to read & what to skim, or even what to drop, is unfortunately part of the process. For my part, I went to a "fire hydrant" school, where acad survival meant figuring out how to drink without being blasted by the sheer volume of coursework & information. I was able to get some taste of that depth & breadth across the humanities, and in sciences outside my own, but at the cost of my overall GPA. (Cost me Columbia grad, but gained me a better career-choice, I think.) You sound like the perfect candidate for those readers' forums, or continuing-ed classes, that are popular with retirees. Depending on your practice/situation, I imagine you may have limited outside time, but diving into audiobooks from the Wisecrack bibliography, or your old syllabi, might scratch that itch to wrinkle your mind before you're ready to hang up the stethoscope. Happy thinking :)
Dude I'm not one to be caught off guard very often, but the whole " I'm coming from a place of confused loved....and your state looks like a weener" got me. I actually had a delayed reaction, props
Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a must read. Problem solving education is better than top-down-banking method, students should not be a passive recipients. I like the ideas he presents. The book is about revolution, critical thinking and changing the system in solidarity with each other.
"I don't know, I have computer money." When society idolizes the wrong qualities through media we create a generation of youth that aspires to all the wrong things.
The problem is classical education. As in, education that utilizes classrooms. One person having to force some 30 odd people to pay attention to some topic that holds no interest or relevance to their lives. And from that point out there is no going back to some mutually supportive environment as the hierarchy comes first.
As someone deeply passionate about this topic, I want to add some book recommendations. Most importantly is "Not for Profit" by Martha Nussbaum. Excellent book on this topic. Then, the broader issue of neo-liberalism (chapter 6 is on education) "Undoing the Demos" by Wendy Brown. Another excellent read.
Up until about the 1960's, a college degree was indeed a ticket to the track to a good career as so few people had degrees. Having higher education was believed to make for a "better learner" when being trained, even if the skills were non-specific (whether this was true or not is debateable). As so few people were enrolled in colleges, it was also more affordable as well. As employers demanded that more people have degrees, however, the educational marketplace provided by cranking out these degrees. Higher education became less marketable, tuition became more expensive and, very likely, education was "dumbed down".
My guidance counselor gave me shit when I i was graduating. "You want to go into the humanities?! What are you going to do with that? Be a teacher?" I have a BA in history with a minor in theatre and a bachelor of education, so yeah, that is what I did. I happily teach Social Studies, English, and Drama in high school. Her comments were so revealing to me. Despite being in education herself, she didn't value it and felt her profession, a low paying one, was not of worth. I am very proud of what I do. It's hard work, but every day I see the value of what I do. Never so obvious as when I look south of the border and worry for a whole nation.
14K in the hole and because of a bunch of unfortunate life circumstances I couldn't finish my degree and while I desperately want to go back i'm worried about going even further into debt and not getting a better job to balance out thr added debt.
As a STEM grad, lemme tell you ... Naive definition of Trig: Study of the relative geometry of Right Triangles. Better definition: Study of cycles with helpful functions that convert cyclic information into Cartesian coordinates. Best definition: Nobody knows, we made it all up. But it's useful when solving practical and theoretical problems, so we learn it.
10:33 SHOUTOUT TO THE EDITOR. And yes, I had to yell there: As a foreigner who worked at a public school here, I kept having flashbacks to a very dreadful past every day when the pledge came on the PA. And about the last question in the video: it's C. It's definitely option C.
Got a Master's in Education and in a few of my classes we had discussions about how the system of education wanted us to teach to the test while we just wanted to let children become well rounded individuals. As soon as you said teach to the test so children could get jobs and make money I was like THAT is what we used to talk about all the time. We all knew it would likely be impossible the first few years to even try and carve out our own way of teaching without tenure and just had to do what was asked of us. Which is not how it should be I feel. I'm sure most educators would want to teach Socraticly but with large class sizes and the Standards, not even including short class periods, that's not going to happen. Also some of my most interesting and debate heavy classes in college were the Humanities. As an English major I understand how useful it is to be able to read and write and not just use numbers. My Shakespeare professor, who also taught Humanities 101, even told our class about how it was required because everyone needs to be able to write even if your major is STEM or something else.
We used to do this. I went to school in the 90s (J/HS - Uni) and our classes were entirely Socratic discussion, hands-on labs/activities, and a constant feedback loop between teachers & students. Lots of latitude for independent exploration of the subject, and bringing our own POVs to the curriculum material. HS classes capped around 28-34 students, College major/core lectures could be 150-200+, but most classes were 30 or fewer. And we had tests out the ass - Statewide ones in K-12, and min 4 exams or essays + final for every class, in addition to weekly problem sets, labs, fieldwork, etc. Difference was that was all some flavor of G+T track. So the assumption was that the investment in us was worth it. All this talk about "who needs education" is only directed at poor/working class folks. The kids of the rich & striving-middle classes absolutely get a quality education.
And your SP teacher was correct - even as a software dev, 60% of my job is communicating with the humans, not the computer. Blows students' minds every time I tell them 😅
@@mandisaw The sad thing is in relation to tests, the Education department at the college I attended had within a year of my taking classes gotten rid of the portfolio review before the head of the department to qualify to be a teacher in favor of sending a video and lots of written essays and over analyzed Standard equivalent materials to the textbook company Pearson. They had people, most who weren't teachers, watch the provided videos and decided if they could be teachers or not. Which is a long way of agreeing that a John Dewey ideal of teaching is possible if we actually let teachers help the students become ready for the world. Those that need the most attention are the ones who suffer because of lack of funding, resources, etc. Which we know but refuse to do anything about.
@@mandisaw Someone has to make sure the computers work correctly, which would be the people that know how they function. And if you can't communicate to the other devs about what's wrong, they can't know how to aid you. English is a robust subject and I admire all English teachers everywhere for teaching while other things encroach on their classrooms, like assemblys.
@@rebgates Wow, they outsourced student teacher review? That's wild, but it sounds like classic under-resourced districts/States going for the cheap option instead of the more-efficient one. I'd never go back to teaching, it's a real shitshow these days.
So I am debating on pursuing my PhD and shifting my career aspirations from landscape architecture and urban planning to focus more on challenging existing pedagogies in design education. Many of these views come from my experience within design school, I will not go into why. This video was great and has gave me much to ponder over. I appreciate you.
As college grad who used to work in higher ed, I went in wanting to believe that the 4-year model was superior in helping build character in addition to improving job opportunities... But after grinding through the pandemic, all of the stories I heard from students about their health and family struggles conflicting with their rigid class schedules, the responses from Student Accounts basically being "either keep attending your classes or drop out and lose your investment," the concerns about high prices (in spite of campus-wide closures of housing, libraries and gyms - who wants to pay for amenities they can't even use???) and the resentments of having to pay the same amount for a Zoom course that you would for an in-person class... It got incredibly messy, polarized and political. Don't even get me started on the multiple lawsuits and the hit to our morale... I also knew people with administration access who told me that the college was basically doing everything in its power to acquire and keep the most money possible - even if it meant "retiring" (i.e. quiet firing) unionized professors (after receving a PPP loan, too!), reducing our departments to skeleton crews and selling off assets left and right - it got to be impossible for me to justify the 4-year model for everyone if it was just being used by greedy administrators to keep their $300k+ salaries while everyone else suffered. I was hoping "big changes" would mean widening the acceptance of applications, being more flexible with time requirements for degree completion, and tying administrative salaries to the college's revenue... but what it ACTUALLY meant was closing the college itself, leaving students with massive debts and dubious degrees. Good thing I got out of there before the figurative ax came down... but I come out of the experience unable to justify the 4-year model as it is. There need to be some serious overhauls regarding emergency situations, time/resource investments, and actual academic freedom, especially with respect to professors, their staff, and of course the students, themselves. And job security really should NOT be dictated by a student's ability or willingness to go through what amounts to financial hazing. Also, my new job in municipal government pays TWICE what I was making at the college, has 4-day work weeks, kick-ass benefits AND IS UNIONIZED... and they only required graduation from HIGH SCHOOL. (Search for Governmentjobs.com and check your local listings - you never know what's out there!)
00:00 Here we go! If Michael isn't drunk, I don't want it. 00:50 Oh yeah, he's lit. If a philosopher isn't drunk (or into drugs in general), are they really a philosopher? 3:10 I hope that he goes into vocational schools at some point. 3:33 I love this edgy drunk blathering of an overthinker. 4:06 Defensive overthinking. Clearly, Michael is anticipating some stupid shit that he's had to deal with. Can you bank on nuance being recognized by your audience, Michael? We're compelled to try, aren't we. 5:35 Michael, you had better bring up vocational schooling. 6:10 Hey, but you made it onto a popular show! 6:35 Michael, you'd better mention the transformation of college being a place to learn how to learn vs vocational job training. 6:55 Okay, setting the lead up to the history of college. 7:23 Showing that college is about how to think/learn (and apply it, right?) ~7:30-8 Leading up to the transition of how to learn vs vocation, right? 9:25 Pitting conservative views as opposed to free thinking... This doesn't feel right. 9:36 That defensiveness coming back up again. I feel you, Michael. 10:00/10:39/11:00 Wait, you're telling me that history isn't just a set of events to memorize? 10:51 Oh this 9:25 part is coming back up. It doesn't feel like you got this one, Michael. This isn't the insight that you're making it out to be. 11:00 This part is best illustrated on how history is simply taught as a series of events instead of the conflicts and contexts that they're really made of. We might call it 'whitewashing' of history, but that line is moreso a 'history is written by the victors' kind of thing and that line is coming from a Western thread of education--you know what I mean. 11:10 School was obviously indoctrination. Didn't we notice how prison-like it was? 11:45 Trigonometry is the math of triangles. sin cosin tan and all of that 12:20 Freethinkers, UNITE! 12:40 Mfker, don't say that after the shit you were drawing in 9:25. You said conservatives, but you meant Republicans (in Florida in general). I feel your pain when you get defensive about getting stuck over superficial parts with the audience that misses the concepts that you're really focusing on. 13:36 "Jacked up" isn't what I'd call it. You're covering the slurring a bit, but you're still obviously buzzing. 14:24 Slurrrr. "I juss gotta telly you guys:: I love you so much" 14:29 Ok really, I lvoe you gus. 15:38 Oh man, you'd better address vocational education. Instead you pass off elitist undertones of how to think instead of appreciating practical vocational knowledge. 16:30 Oh hey, you're touching the glaring lack of practical education that college has led up to. 17:30 Okay Michael, we're taking you on a sabbatical. Get a fresh pair of Sam Vines' boots--we're going walking. 17:50 This guy didn't even address the vocational aspect being pressed over college. You meant university this WHOLE time and called it college. Colleges--even in traditional sense--have included vocational tracks, haven't they? (I'm really not sure) No mention of tenure/Ph.D/pushing culture's boundaries/publishing--which is what university has much long been a developing center for. No mention of the pushing/transformation of universities into being more like vocational schools. Michael, you're fun, don't get me wrong, but I feel as though you and your audience might enjoy you freestyling on a podcast; I mean, just rant it out--you practically made this into a therapy session where you did anyway, and it was still fun. I enjoyed it. Someone take this guy for tacos and tequila to Mexico. A few dollars will go a long way for food and liquor out there.
Did you know: Betsy DeVos (wife to Amway's chief) was on the Department of Education, and Trump had been offered Amway's event venue for a speech. While Democrats seem to adore destruction, Republicans heavily support nested pyramid schemes like Amway, Vemma and LuLaRoe.
College is for careers, which usually doesn't work and leaves people working in fields they didnt go to school for but for some reason still pay back their student loans like perfect little bootlickers. Institutional learning for learning's sake is obsolete, we have the internet.
Current grad student from a school that has embraced the DEI initiative here. What I've noticed is how Education is defined in this video isn't happening either! I disagreed with some of the readings and students literally said "I've never thought about disagreeing with the coursework. " that was a scary thought to me
This really felt like half the story. What about how education plays a role in getting a job and how some jobs shape your life? Many jobs consume vast amounts of a person’s life, but are necessary like doctors.
I'm English, I went to Brunel University late 1997 and graduated class of 2001. I was the last year that were awarded free degrees, qualification is what got you in not money. My 4 student loans amounted to about £8,000. A degree is 3 years, the extra year was because i took a "thin sandwich" degree with 18 months industry placement and experience, it was a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science. This was a course specifically tailored to getting you into a particular industry. Specifically i wanted to be a computer programmer. Sandwich degrees were created with industry to address the problem of graduates not having any practical skills or experience after graduation, back in the 60s. And a specific type of university was created, the polytechnic. So this is nothing new in the UK, we invented it i think.
I’m really glad to see this discussed. I’m been screaming this for years by now. University is not mere job training, and trying to turn it into such is a huge cause of the cultural crises we face now. Carl Sagan called in the early 1990s: “I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Many of our founding fathers were Renaissance men who valued education, wrote articulately and persuasively, and challenged the status quo (even religion). Asking questions, even uncomfortable ones, isn't a challenge unless your values can't withstand scrutiny. Education isn't the same thing as job training. Education expands mind, soul, and character. The purpose of teachers and schools is to show young minds how to learn.
Going to college is a great experience for broadening your horizons but if you're not passionate for a field that's in demand and pays well or your pretty aimless about what you're getting out of it, you'd be better served by learning a trade that will definitely bring you into the middle class and then go back to school once you're financially established and want to progress in your career. I grew up feeling pressured into going to college like I was going to end up homeless or stuck in a crappy minimum wage job if I didn't get at least a BA or BS but if I would've got into the trade that I'm in now back then, I'd probably own at least a few houses by now and be living a much more comfortable life. I'm still glad that I did go to college but once you progress from community colleges and move on to 4 year universities, it's far too cost-prohibitive to enroll just to "find yourself". You better have a game plan and a purpose. Otherwise you're just wasting your money and years of your life for information that you could've gotten elsewhere for free.
Down with greed. Down with corruption. Hold everyone accountable. Do not be fool, these issues have been made by the evil rich and Corporations in a move to take full control. They don't want you, they want workers. They don't want you to have anything, because they want it for themselves
This would be true if it wasn't for the fact that they barely hire anyone from the USA these days, most big corpos I know of hire straight out of Canada, not the US these days.
One problem is that the college-level humanities have become incredibly watered down and are losing their academic rigor. This is because universities want to pump people in-and-out to get maximum profits. These humanities students will often avoid difficult STEM coursework, while STEM students will still take upper level humanities coursework. These students will take proof/argument based STEM and humanities courses, while the pure-humanities people will by and large avoid the “difficult work.” The rigorous humanities are important, but our profit-focused education system has made them less of an education and more of a necessary-evil to a piece of paper. STEM topics still have rigor, and so it attracts better students who are more intellectually curious-and willing to branch out.
this is exactly why i dropped out of high, left all of my shut and ran away to hawaii. i’ve learned more about myself, others, the world and everything inbetween over the past year than i have in the past 12 years ive spent in school.
I agree with the others who are pointing out that education isn't a scam, but the college system in the US and how we pay for it *is*. And it isn't just young adults fresh out of high school falling for it. I began college when i was 30 years old and my current student loan debt is worth $110,000. I started a program in a STEM field only to be counseled that I wouldn't be able to find a good job in my field without at least a Master's degree. So I kept going. I currently do not work in that field.
One thing that I would have appreciated being discussed is the common refrain of “I can learn that on my own.” Usually I hear it in response to my encouragement for people to go into the humanities for undergrad. I’m a history major, and one thing people think they can do on their own but never actually do is learn history. Can you? For sure. Will you? Most of the time the people who say that don’t. The benefit of studying something like history is that you are learning with other people-you’re being taught by a scholar and writing papers that at least one person will actually read and respond to. That process is crucial and wonderful, and unless you have really nerdy friends in life (presumably who also did a STEM or business or non-humanities major in college and thus are probably not interested at all) you’re not going to have that mentoring experience and you will not have practiced writing or thinking about that humanities subject under the tutelage of a professional. That’s indispensable for me as a history major. I’m a better thinker, writer, and person for it. You could do it on your own, but you will lack the resources and time to practice it. Also, where is Michael from? I live in Tallahassee, so if it’s not too personal I am curious to know what town he grew up in 😏
Engineer here. Last year I worked a shutdown for two months and was regularly consuming cold brew mixed with powdered Guarana (basically an extremely caffeine rich fruit from the Amazon). One time I ended up in the bathroom, so painfully and powerfully awake, having a panic attack and knowing that there was no reprieve - that I had to experience that moment fully, that there was no escape. Caffeine can fuck you up, man. One of the more significant experiences I've had in the last year or two.
Heck if I know exact values, but it was about $65k when I graduated and after 15 years of diligently making minimum payments... Now is hovering around $50k. And here my naive ass hoped to have them paid off by the time I'm 40. 😭
Long-time fan of the channel and really appreciate seeing my profession and vocation getting some love! Would love to hear your thoughts on how these models and philosophies of education intersect with standardized testing in the UK and North America vs. the free-form "pastoral" style schools that we sometimes see in Northern Europe. Also, highly recommend the collection of essays by bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, which builds on a lot of Freire's ideas within a more contemporary US context.
As a school teacher, I can confirm that we *do* want to infect children with the woke mind virus. I spend all day downloading TokTics about Transology into my young student's brains 🏳🌈🏳🌈
@@mandisawthe new maths syllabus has made my wife's marking so much easier now that the answer is always "it depends, it isn't an exact number but a spectrum/range of numbers".
Nooooo! 😡 Those TokTics downloaded in the students’ brains should be about JESUS! (But obviously not Bible-Jesus; more like a hybrid R/Donald Reagan/Trump version of Jesus - and he would know karate and go on adventures and be friends with Chuck Norris … they just don’t teach kids any of the IMPORTANT stuff these days … anyways-) I should have the freedom to force all the teachers to do this! I thought this was America!
Undergrad wasn’t so bad. Had little debt after working hard during summers. Med school however, was insanely expensive. Because of the rigorous nature of the program, class 7am-5pm Monday through Friday, having a part time job while also studying was a near impossibility. Now $250K debt and I’ll be paying off the minimum until the Govt forgives the rest in 20-30 years because I have a mortgage (yes, I’m lucky to have a house I know), preschool for two, student loans. My wife and I both work two jobs - this including my full time clinic job - and we just barely pay the bills. Even being a medical professional these days pays less than it used to in terms of buying power. I consider us lucky for having zero credit card debt. I worry about bouncing my account buying French fries to stay out of consumer debt. Assuming this model remains, I would never recommend a four year university to my children. I would recommend community college or trade school courses first and then entering a program if they really know what they want to for work.
But in Europe students are tracked early - only the top-performers get the free college. The rest aren't even prepared for college-level learning, and many don't even reach what we'd consider a HS grad level. Here we at least say everyone has a shot.
@@mandisaw This is false (maybe not totally as i mostly can talk about my own country). We have both private and public schools and universities, public ones are free for the ressourceless students, and fairly unexpensive for everyone else. While the quality of education in public colleges is not always top notch, it is almost always good enough. All in all our education system is so that performing younger will allow you to get quicker to what you want to study, but even if you're turning better a bit later in life you'll always be able to find a decent university to study.
@@H2SO4pyro Ah, countries' policies do differ. But do the mid-tier/low-tier students in your country also receive free college, and access to the same programs as the high-tier ones? Can a kid suddenly show promise at age 16+ and have had the same prep for college curriculum as someone who's been a strong student since they were young? My point wasn't that it's impossible for other kids/adults to go to college in Europe, but that if you're not on a college-track from grade school, then the gov't probably isn't going to foot the bill (or not the whole thing, anyway). In the States, most of the time, students in the same State all get the same K-12 material. Most colleges cater to the middle - middle-income, middle-grades, mid-tier job prospects. Some are geared towards low-tier/remedial learners, and some are elite, but you have access to the same funding no matter where you are in the hierarchy, or whether you're 18 or an adult student.
“I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, whatcha readin' for?' Isn't that the weirdest fuckin' question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, goddamnit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well . . . hmmm...I dunno...I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress.” - Bill Hicks
Honestly I feel education should be open to learning both skills that will advance your career and learning how to be a more rounded person capable of thinking for yourself and be based on furthering knowledge
Aka the standard liberal arts 4-year degree 😅 Core classes give you breadth, major classes provide depth and hands-on learning. Internships provide the critical 3rd piece, but it's absent from so many people's educations.
Precisely what's the point of going to school if we're not allowed to think. I lived in a country where the college education exist for jobs. Now we have a whole population of people that can't think
I think there's a lot of interplay with different factors all tying together when it comes to education. I feel like there's a bit of a feedback loop when it comes to "return on investment" and "college should train you for a career." The price of going to college is so high now that I couldn't justify the expense if I didn't learn some skills applicable to some career path. Based on the last few places I've worked, companies no longer feel it's worth while to train employees either. You're expected to show up to work with significant knowledge on how things get done, and while competitors in the same field might generally do things similarly, it's never exactly the same, yet no one seems to have time to point out the finer details until after you've done things wrong. It leaves me with a feeling that many of the people I'm working with aren't exactly sure what they're doing, but they're improvising day to day. On the attempts to shut down teaching of certain topics or subject areas, that to me smells like "you're teaching something I disagree with, therefore you're not teaching things I do agree with, or teaching that my position is inherently wrong, so you must be stopped." That isn't very sound logic, but at the same time, I think education does bear some scrutiny. I'd rather have topics be covered from multiple perspectives, and examine the strengths and weaknesses of each. Teaching only a perspective that I personally agree with is just as harmful as teaching only a perspective I disagree with. What strikes me though, is how easy it is to find an outraged response "how dare this government or that organization try to prevent teaching of x", while I rarely find a response pointing out "the school also teaches y, z, and h, so it's not the indoctrination it is being made out to be."
I go to a classical education school The rich people who found our school think it’s a republican making machine, but then most people come out of it with critical thinking skills, and can see past what they were doing
PAULO FREIRE! YEAH! Brazil represented! I really missed you saying his most famous quote: "When the education isn't liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." As a lawyer (just like Freire! He was also a Brazilian lawyer!), this has been proven true too many times... and that is why the right wing in Brazil has attacked him so much! he is the Brazillian with more quotes in academia, with more academic titles, etc... easily the most important Brazillian academic of all time. and he was not graduated as a teacher. he graduated in law, and he was a lawyer that decided to study pedagogy. truly a genius.
A college degree makes even less sense in the modern era. The bottom line is it doesn't really matter what you degreed in, what matters is who you are, who you know, and whether or not you belong to a protected group. Quotas do not consider merit, or aptitude, so the job market no longer rewards excellence or provides a level playing field.
Luckily I graduated without student debt because I was an adult student but even without the debt my degree has been borderline useless. I got a degree in journalism. I also graduated the same year Donald Trump got elected and America became even more cartoonishly partisan. Local news is dying, corporate consolidation has turned bigger media outlets into propaganda venues and the experiential requirement to get work is simply unfeasible. In the past year I've made more money creating adult content than I did in the five years trying to hustle as a freelance journalist.
Sad to say, journalism has been on the decline as a career where you can earn a decent living for at least 25-30yrs. Media consolidation, particularly in local news (print, radio & TV) has been an issue since the late 80s. If you just graduated in 2016, but weren't made aware of that, I think that's a guidance failure on the school's part, and maybe a research failure on yours. That said, I don't think the need for journalists will ever go away. But the industry hasn't figured out a way to pay people and keep the lights on, so it's rough going now & and for the foreseeable future.
my student debt is 0, cos i live in a place that care about your education and understand that putting people in debt will just take money out of use aka i am not an american
The function of education is different weather you're talking about public school, or paid-for college. The function of public school is to sell kids to the town. School gets town tax dollars, and the town gets kids. Simple transaction, we're selling the kids.
Those last two, though, you could argue that you learned them while attending college but there's nothing to say you wouldn't have learned those skills anyway.
@@Loctorak perhaps but not quite the same way as going to college forced me to be around people who were from different backgrounds from myself, through classes and extracurricular activities you’re forced to interact with others you might have never done so otherwise.
As the type of adult who gets sad every late summer because I’m not going back to school, I do think college is a scam. Or rather it’s purpose to the world at large is a scam. So often your degree isn’t a reflection of capability but rather a reflection of class and or economic status. The requirement of a degree for employment is so hostile to people who couldn’t finish their degrees. I had a drug problem due to self medicating brain damage, and I needed to return home to take care of my grandfather with Alzheimer’s. I went from talking about Walter Benjamin and the French Arcades to struggling to get through the week. 90% of the time I’ve been smarter than my boss (this is a low bar to clear so I’m not saying I’m special) or they’ve enlisted me to do their job as well as my job. It’s like salt in the wound seeing incapable people fail upward simply because they were able to get C’s in college. There should be a CED, a college equivalency degree. Problem is, then the extremely costly college scam would be at risk. 🙄
I owe $34k for a Electrical Technologies degree, that it turns out was not accredited to count towards a journeyman program I was working towards. I would've had to retake all those classes AT THE SAME SCHOOL again under sponsorship from an employer to become a journeyman and escape $12/hr life as an apprentice. I work in insurance now.
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what was that coffee you were on?
14:23
So Michael, that African American history curriculum you joined in middle school ... would you say it operated with a "Socratic model, in which the teacher was open to learning from YOU?" ( 11:21 )
As an Aussie that had a free education i feel scared to ask, how much do you owe even after a teaching career Micheal? and i imagine around 20yrs paying.
Keep in mind, DeathSantis sees nothing wrong with saying slaves were taught things to better their lives..I really wish this stupidity wasnt real, but they keep proving its very real
This is a cultural issue as well. Not just a systemic one. Loads of parents aren't interested in the work of raising a smart child. They just want an obedient one
And that is an acute problem primarily in conservative families.
Or a well adjusted person instead they want a kid to go into something that make lot of money and become rich despite making the child miserable
The LEFTIST ideology of mandatory education blowing up in your faces, when well-roundedness turns out to include don't say gay. Simply because deomcratic voters WILL express their will through the CORRECT channel, and that is what state is there to do, and choose which ideology voters would push. School is not for that, and for kidults to miserably scream "we're making a home here", whether you gain cash on that investment or won't.
The business practice of de facto making education mandatory gets its ideological backing from the left, even if you try to blame markets for forcing companies to only hire people with useless degrees. Try to figure out if indoctrinating children is a threat you pose or one you're victimized by, before blaming one side that this is a non-issue when they have something to say.
Or the 3 posts above combined. Ex: Asian parents.
@@ayanabeads1614 thank you.
I went to a predatory college which has since closed (Westwood College of Technology.) I owed about $80,000 after graduation for an entry-level bachelor degree in computers that I technically didn't need and couldn't use. Thankfully, I kept all my paperwork from school. After learning that Westwood was sued and later closed and recalling suspicious policies they enforced, I went looking for solutions. I waited for the Trump administration to pass (because Betsy DeVos was an obstacle in getting anything done regarding predatory colleges) and once the Biden administration got into swing, I applied for loan forgiveness through the Borrower Defense program. It was a long and confusing application process, but I was approved and my loans were forgiven. My credit has shot up and life has gotten significantly less stressful.
Love to hear it brotha
Great job! I'm a big fan of public universities. Private ones should really be limited on how they prey on students
@@Glue_Stick98 the wording of this is funny because it implies you think they should still be able to prey on students just a little bit, which I hope and believe you don't think, but gave me a little giggle
That's the muck and the mire the rich inflict on the rest of us.
@@Sam-lr9oi fair nough. Although making things too strict invites a lil mischief
College isn't a scam. Student loans are.
Agreed.
Also dumbasses on the internet or politicans who tell you to not go into college
Yeah, if everybody had the right to levy taxes, nobody would have to get ripped off.
My EE degree was an incredible privilege. I loved pushing so much knowledge into my brain with the set deadlines and structure. My masters in EE is ongoing and I am always excited to learn more. I am not excited about the cost.
well, if u gotta get students loans, u most likely got it for college. and if student loans need to climb and be comparable to the price of college, i would argue college is inherently a scam too. like, if i sold a used camera for full msrp, u would probably argue the price is a scam. then u later find out its broken, it doesn't make one or the other not a scam. it's all a scam, a charade, as a whole.
I’m an old time fan of the channel, and I’m happy how well the scripts are developing for a more materialistic critic of our days, keep the great work!
hearing that last part of the video was a breath of fresh air
Thanks! and thanks for sticking with us!
Yes, I was put off of Wisecrack for a while because of the shallow clickbaity direction I felt it had been moving, but checked in recently and was pleasantly surprised
@@MrLugubrious Thanks for checking us out! And know that any "click bait" in the titles and thumbnails is truly just to make the RUclips algorithm like us, we're never going to dumb down the quality of our actual videos.
I've been a viewer since the channel started and I've felt the videos in the last year or so have seemed really clickbaity. Recent videos are much improved!
Paulo Freire is one of the brightest minds to come out of Brasil. His take on critical pedagogy is incredibly lucid, it's like a materialist approach to education - he focused on the concrete realities and experiences of learners, emphasizing the transformative potential of education to address societal issues and empower marginalized individuals. Thank you so much for bringing him into the spotlight!
Imagine a world where college wasn't 100k, where you can actually learn about things that spark your interests. The biggest problem w college today is the price.
Where I'm from there's cheap colleges that don't cost lots of money. But granted the degrees still don't prep the student for work.
It's called public universities - been around for decades. You can go to an R1 tier State school for a few grand/yr, and in-state financial aid can bring that down to $0 in most cases. The major State systems (NY, CA, WI, MA, TX, PA, MI, CO, few others for some majors) have more academic resources & better career-prep than most private schools.
Many families unfortunately have no real idea what they actually need in a college, and so tend to go for whatever "brand name" they happen to know. Happens with int'l students as well - they'll go for Harvard every time, even if they're not going into a field Harvard's good at (like engineering).
There was one not so long ago. I started my BA in Communication Studies in 94 in the UK and didn't pay anything for it. My MA costed me a bit over 2300 quid. That's all gone now but it was there
@@mandisaw This, and add to trade schools being a thing. A lot of people don't know that trade schools are even an option if they don't feel like they're doing well in a traditional academic setting. My cousin went to a trade school and is now certified in electrical engineering and works as one of the top maintenance guys at the RV company he works for. He, along with his wife, now earn a 6 figure salary between the both of them. I'm personally going to my local state university to eventually become a social studies and/or history teacher for middle and high schoolers, it's much cheaper than if I went to a big out-of-state university like a lot of people do.
You don't have to imagine it, it's happening right now, just not in America. What you want, we cannot give you, and might take generations for you to get back, but, we thank you for your sacrifice, because in those parts of the world, there is no better argument than "we don't want to end up like them". Sadly, my country, and many others, have not yet chosen a side. They still look upon the American model of education, or highway system, or justice system, or healthcare, with greed, not knowing that adopting such systems would ruin them. America only holds because it's the bank of the world, and can print money to hide problems. Should that change, God help you guys!
As a Brazilian, I feel very proud to see Freire being brought up to such an important discussion, of the nature of knowledge itself, and it saddens me as well to know his work is being targeted by the right wing here in Brazil to try and "stop indoctrination", when in reality what they want is to monopolize indoctrination to their side of the political spectrum
Well perceived, well said
I'm geography teacher in Paraná, Brazil. I want to die a slow and paifull death everytime i hear influent people around here advocating the US educational model as a "golden standard" for us to follow.
Ps. Escrevi em inglês para os gringos acompanharem.
I was going to comment just that. Hugely proud of Paulo Freire.
I had an English teacher in grade 11 with a more Socratic teaching method. I'm 40 years old and not only do I remember the lessons from his class but have been able to apply them in different circumstances. Thanks Mr. Nash!
Im a 2020 high school graduate, i felt very unsatisfied about the educational system in a lot of different areas. Not only learning
Certainly the outlook of the near-medium-&-long term future is another one.
Oh buddy let the comments tell you about pre-NCLB act and it’s shockwave to today.
I'm so sorry you had to graduate during covid... Hopefully senior year was good for you
@@BeerPatio
Goodhart's Law. When a measure like good grades become the target of a school's evaluation, it ceases to be anything more than a meaningless metric.
I am an English Teacher in Florida. I am doing my best to create a classroom that promotes curiosity and dialogue. One thing I’m going to try and do is promote the idea that no one is stupid if they don’t have the answer, they just don’t know something that someone else does know. And that learning comes when we give new information to each other.
Keep up the good work.
If it's of any help, we, my team and I (2nd Grade), are working to rephrase the "stupid question" narrative so that it shifts the onus onto the person answering. "Every question is an opportunity for everyone to learn."
Coming from a fine arts background, it took me a long to figure out that it is totally respectable, and sometimes smart, to just say "I don't know". There is a needless amount of pressure to have an answer for every single question someone might ask. Sometimes, I just don't freaking know!
Cool! I'd also like to see a shift from getting something wrong = FAILURE to, getting something wrong = opportunity to figure out how to get it right.
have you explained to the kids yet that the S.E.S. they're born into is the one they'll die in? It's important that kids know that economic mobility in America is more restricted than it is in "socialist hellholes" like Europe.
The only good American is an America that's willing to burn this country to the ground with every politician & their family still inside!
Our schools only teach how to take tests. Here's how I got a 98% on a final exam that I barely studied for in a class that I barely attended WITHOUT cheating.
Half the class was online, and our teacher foolishly told us that the final was just a combination of the 10 practice quizzes available online.
I quickly realized that since they didn't count against our grade, I could turn in a blank exam and get all the correct answers.
I spent the next hour before the exam just reading through the questions, and only the correct answers for them. I didn't even read the wrong answers.
When it came time for the test, I read the question, and just picked the answer I recognized having read before. There was ZERO comprehension going on.
I got 98%. The only 2 I missed were the 2 from the first practice exam that I actually tried on and had gotten wrong.
I passed with a C in the class and I didn't learn a thing, except how to give the answers they wanted me to give.
"I didn't learn a thing, except how to give the answers they wanted me to give."
You'd be surprised how many employers want that skill.
Your school prepared you very well for the corporate world, especially executive work.
wait what
Your final exam in school was just picking answers?
Is this like your final exam in One subject (if yes which subject?) or THE final exam when you leave school?
I would say you learned critical thinking AND how to think outside the box, AND a more efficient form of test taking given known obstacles. If that's not partially what college is for then what are we doing?
Please share this life hack with as many students as possible!
I was in college for about 15 years before finally getting my PhD, then I taught at a public middle school, did some private tutoring, and then...worked at a farm. The PhD only helped me get the job because the boss said "I think you might be a little overqualified" to which I replied "Well that's why you should hire me." Now I have my own farm that's still focused around teaching customers about ecology. It is my blessing. It is my curse. It is my destiny.😜
i missed out on college due to high cost and no time having to work. i choose to teach myself coding... it was rough and i wish college was accessible to people like me. I am now a software developer and life's good. I love the concept of college i just wish our society was more open to all forms of learning and respecting that no everyone needs to follow the same path. your videos are the best at showing the rational side of how we structure our society keep up the great work.
you just happen to pick the one thing people will hire uneducated people for. everyone needs coders. who needs an artist? especially these days.
@@eatmanyzoos that's exactly why i wish other fields were open to accepting uneducated people or people who don't have a degree to do it. We need all jobs to be acceptable to all people while allowing education to be free as well. This turning college into a way to make money has turned it into a force of gate keepers. It might be crazy but i want all fields to be accessible.
@@golddeagle7 not crazy. essential.
@@eatmanyzoosSo the Arts are pointless? You don’t like paintings? Comics? Animation? CGI and practical effects in your Summer blockbuster? And that’s just ONE aspect of the visual arts. Which is just one aspect of the Arts as a whole.
@@kourtneyr.scruggs0988 no I AM an artist and no one gives a shit. id have to go to school to get the connections to get the jobs you mentioned. otherwise im a bum who should just die according to the country i live in. im glad YOU give a shit. do you have a job for me? didnt think so.
I'm Florida born and bred. I lived in Sarasota for 7 years and went to high school there, and loved it. I'm mentioning this because, that's where New College is. It's a very artsy area, very unique. As someone who doesn't fit into society's mold, that place felt like home to me, and I always felt accepted for who I was. To see that area targeted, just makes me sad.
I love Florida, but honestly I'm ashamed to see the direction it's headed thanks to it's leadership..... DeSantis you Suck.
"Great educators should be creating the conditions for their own obsolescence."
Just like.
"A managers job is to build systems to make himself redundant."
Both well said.
As a former assistant manager, this often just translates to "make the guy below you do your work"
@@MisterCynic18Yes, because the limit of you is 1, while the only limiting factor to people below you is money. Therefore, it scales better.
They should make playing and beating Factorio a requirement/class in school.
@@MisterCynic18 and the guy below can't decide that for you. :)
So good to see Paulo Freire being important here.... in Brazil there are people who wants to destroy all of his work.
Noted, adding him to the list of authors to read.
Not only does liberal education help us be better citizens politically, it also gives us a better toolbox to express our feelings about our lives and about our interpersonal relationships. That’s my individualist take on it and how my English, Psychology, and Philosophy classes informed my life.
High school class of '99. I first majored in Gym, then Philosophy, then as I learned that the great philosophers were mathematicians and vice versa, I switched to physics, then astrophysics, then astrophysics AND math. I am now a pharmaceutical engineer. I don't regret a second of any of it. Education for education's sake is how we should live.
Astrophysics was my first love, but I ended up majoring in geochemistry, while learning programming, media studies, & foreign languages for fun. Now I'm a software developer, and can work well with, and make apps/games for, people from all sorts of cultural & technical backgrounds.
All the folks who decry a broad-based education just come off as ignorant. Most career paths are not linear, and it's those soft skills in communication, "social" studies, and the human experience that tend to offer the most lifetime ROI.
@@mandisaw AAAAmen!
Bro really experienced healthy mind in a healthy body before he read about it
that is your opinion.
most people do not have the time, money or inclination to spend so much time "learning".
some people would rather learn thru experience, rather than classrooms.
Easy to say as someone privileged enough to even contemplate such an education.
At a young age, I realized the US education system was fostered to create obedient and relatively competent worker bees. Living in 6 states and being in public, private, & charter schools makes you realize that. Many of the US public school customs spawned from the Industrial workers of the Victorian age. Made to be competent but only knowledgeable enough to create labor worth exploiting.
As someone who challenged authority was openly curious and asked many thought-provoking questions from elementary and on, I quickly realized that the education system wasn’t designed for me. The mold they want for you to become someone ready to be a proud, willing participant in Corporate Capitalism by the time you graduate.
I put off going to college for 8 years after High School and spent that time learning on my own, mostly about myself and the world around me. I wanted to be a CS major and make a lot of money when I was 18.
Now, I want to learn as much as I can and just be a better human.
I have no pressure to get loans, or to finish my degrees in any amount of time. I'm simply taking a class or 3 a semester, fully paid for by financial aid (no scholarships, just basic FAFSA) and continuing to find a career path that works WITH my life and ambitions versus my career BEING my life.
I apply to a new job everyday and hold my employer to the same standards that they hold me, and it's given me control of my life in a way I never thought I'd have.
Not everyone needs a higher education to live a content and happy life, but they do need to be able to think critically (about themselves) and question the status quo in order to achieve it for themselves, otherwise you'll feel as if you have no agency IN YOUR OWN LIFE.
Humanities Teaching Assistant here (mostly film studies) - Great video!
Graeber is the reason I quit my office job and went back to get my PhD.
I'm an education professor and one of my biggest fears is that as a society we have lost the language and ability to discuss education as a public good, rather than a private good. If a private good is all we can see I think we will struggle to look beyond the workforce preparation lens.
I'm at $0. However, my first degree was a trades degree from Community College. Then went back later as an adult, having grants and military help me pay through.
We need to change how we view education funding. Every dime the government gave me to get through school, comes back with my increased income through taxes.
Our government invested in me when I was low. Now that I'm high they reap the rewards in taxes. Basic fundamentals of sound investing, and generating wealth and well-being to our country.
This! Public education wasn't about doing right by kids, it was about creating hard-working, highly-taxable adults 😂 Critical thinking is a nice side benefit heh
There are plenty of studies that estimate how much money society makes long-term for every additional $100 spent on a kid's education. What changed was that voters decided not to make the investment anymore (and dump it into families/individuals).
@@mandisaw makes me sad, cause that should be the whole culture. To invest in our future, so our kids can be brighter, wealthier, happier than us. Also, if they're wealthier, there's more to help us when we're out of the productive age.
@@focofox37 Add it to the ways Reagan, et al convinced people to act against their own self-intetest. We're on the cusp of the 401k/pension-less generation hitting retirement, unions & labor rights are at an all-time low, and now folks are convinced not only to defund public education, but go back to turn-of-20c. ideals of "only as much education as you need to pull the lever". This can't end well.
Education is literally the best ROI spend a government can make. Iirc, it's like a 7x return on every $ on average. Other things, like public transport, sanitation and healthcare also provide really good ROI, but they're also things the US gov is tentative to spend on (despite spending a higher proportion of GDP on healthcare than all other wealthy countries, countries which also provide taxpayer-funded healthcare free at point of use). The US gov is allergic to spending public money on the public good that will make a visible return - the good old "small government" myth strikes again
@@TAP7a It's not an allergy, it's a virus, and this one really was man-made. Same folks who wanted to rollback FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society are out here trying to get rid of food, shelter, education, healthcare, and retirement for all but the rich & powerful.
We used to all believe in the public good - tarnished by racism & sexism, xenophobia, etc, but still "public". Then folks bought into the idea that everyone was just a rich person who hasn't hit the number yet, and it went to shit from there.
Sadly, the vast majority of Conservative voices against the Humanities (and more broadly the Liberal Arts) understand what comprises neither. Also they actively hate other Humanities fields like Critical Thinking for obvious reasons.
Capitalism hates the arts. They just praise entertainment and money (and use artwork to wash money and evade taxes).
I'm sure there are some that hate them, at least in their current form, and perfectly understand them too.
Also, how the Hell is Critical Thinking a Humanity? It has as little to do with humans in particular as Biology.
There is always a reason why conservative voices attack things like that, and it's never good.
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana I don't think you understood what OP meant when they said ,"Also they actively hate other Humanities fields like Critical Thinking". Critical Thinking is a field of study in the humanities (a subset of the Liberal Arts). They're not literally talking about humanity, as in the human species.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz If Critical Thinking it is a field in Humanities, it proves the program has none.
I read pedagogy of the oppressed in my college education pedagogy class. Great shit, but I’m no longer a teacher…... Thanks for doing what you guys do.
thanks!!
I was fortunate, I got into IT, AA degree, took about 10k in debt, but I made a lot of money with what I learned. Fortunately my school required me to take accounting, public speaking, entrepreneurship, and psychology, which I ended up using WAY more than my tech degree.
With the skills I learned I was able to start a business, grow to be good sized, and now I teach at the college I attended, and encourage those same things.
Seriously though, take psychology, that and public speaking. Helped me SOOOO much.
Dude, totally agree with you as a native Floridian how horrible it was even 20 years ago. So glad I'm all the way across the country from it. Also a victim of The Art Institutes colleges (don't even work in the field I paid too much for). Didn't get into debt relief before Supreme Court struck it down, so my only hope now is to take legal action and ride the wave of lawsuits against them to forgive my entire loan. I learned way more just teaching myself from Khan Academy for free, and Brilliant for trial, than I ever learned from public education.
These ideas shouldn't be limited to college. Every citizen, every voter needs to be able to think critically.
You are exactly right that we prioritize cramming facts into the heads of students - easily testable and easily regurgitatable (that may not be a word) facts. That part of the problem is outright laziness on the part of educators.
I am daily frustrated by the inability of people to understand how to think. Thinking is a skill, it requires discipline and honestly and self denial. My limited opinion is that both the humanities and the sciences are necessary subjects for the training of a good mind. Both have rules and boundaries and both will illuminate when you are just fucking wrong. Those are the vital lessons for understanding how reality actually works beyond our preconceptions and current imagination. They help us grow and become more than just opposable thumbs and a hyoid bone.
Your videos are excellent. They should be shown in Florida schools.
Edit to add: I've attended several graduations in the last three years and what currently qualifies for a masters or doctoral thesis is sad. Diplomas are being handed out in very much a job training program.
I studied in one of the best universities of my country, which rarely gets in the top 100 best colleges of the world, but it happens from time to time. However, it helped me to get a job since in my country they ask titles more than anything, and I didn't have to pay a cent because I passed everything with good grades. As long as you do that and you ask for a scholarship, in my country students are PAID. It's a symbolic number, not a lot, but I received over 5000 euros a year for studying my psychology career. Of course, as soon as you start failing your exams, the money stops flowing, and the situation reverses. Enrolling in a subject for the second time implies around 800 euros, depending on the subject and the hours it takes. And if you fail a few of them, you get your scholarship denied.
This thing I hear from you and my American family is incredible, they are almost enslaving you for life.
I owe 40 thousand in student debt, 40 thousand in fertility payments. I will be in debt for the rest of my life.
@@daviddobarganes9115️ I feel that. 💯
It's called "economic slavery".
@@daviddobarganes9115 That's terrible, I am so sorry. That shouldn't be allowed.
My Student debt is about 5000$. Did 2 years at a community college before university and used a ton of scholarships/grants.
Very well said. The most important things I learned in college, the skills and values that make up a big part of who I am now, had nothing to do with job training. It's really unsettling how education is being attacked lately
This video makes me grateful that I treated college like a tasting menu. Taking classes simply because I wanted to learn whatever interested me at the time. We may be going through a dark time, but “as long as people continue to pursue the meaning of Freedom, these things will never cease to be!”
Nice that you're willing to talk about this, although I must say that a nineteen minute video isn't going to be able to go deep enough to even touch the tip of the iceberg of this issue. There is sooooo much to say about this topic. Just one thing for example, back in the early 2000s internet, I was in university myself, but I found (on the itunes store, no less) Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford courses for absolutely free. I was hooked, the quality was miles ahead of the courses I was paying for. I took almost every course I could find, from astronomy to philosophy, art history to computer science. Sadly, one can no longer find courses like this, as I'm sure the institutions decided that they shouldn't be giving away the material like that anymore. As well, there is no way to credit me for the learning that I did. Back then I thought "wow! this is radical and can make the best education free for everyone, we just need to work out accreditation". Again sadly, this is not what happened, and now we're in a hyper-capitalized, hyper-oversaturated market for education. Meanwhile people are still making bank with basic drop-shipping scams and youtube videos of grass cutting. Being over-educated actually feels more like a curse, as I work in construction with guys fresh out of high school, making more money than people I know with masters degrees. Having thoughts about Socrates and Nietzsche while I grunt my way through the day is basically a recipe for resentment. Let me also say that the people that I know that work in education, as much as they are smart people, are more like people that figured out the credential and social ladders, more than people that are actually interested in the material or have anything original or valuable to add to the conversations. They're basically just credentialed people that never left academia, and when I talk to them at parties, they seem fearful, sad, unoriginal, overpaid, and out of touch, adding fuel to the resentment fire in my soul. Anyways, enough blah blah, but I could probably go on ad nauseam...
America is the worst for education in the school system
I can guarantee there’s worse countries lol, go try getting an education in Somalia
Agreed
Haha, don’t come to Asia then. We dream of the freedom the American system has (not the price, though).
I wanted to and really tried to go the critical thinking route in college, truly learn the subject matter and get involved instead of rote memorization.
I did absolutely terrible. Once I turned into an automaton, my grades shot up, but it took the joy out of learning and I didn’t retain much. What in the actual heck is American higher education trying to do.
Teach you to be an automated consumer
You just needed a tutor, maybe learn some better study skills. Pretty much everyone hits "the wall" at some point in their academic career, some earlier (HS), some later (college). It's where whatever you've been doing no longer works, and you basically have to "level up" your ability to literally learn.
But that's not indicative of individual failure on your part, or a systemic failure. Someone should've explained that to you 😢
I tried both ways, rote memorization(via anki for constant revisions) and doing the things which I felt was interesting and fun.
I live in Denmark so the experience may differ,
I do a hybrid, memorization for facts with context for when that fact or term is relevant, and just practicing or doing weird connoctions / mnemonic to remeber what I learned, to keep my learned knowlege.
Eg. Royalist: have a picture of a crown and some reasons for why they support the monarchy WITH YOUR OWN WORDS, in the glorious revolution, related terms and why the related terms are different.
As a weird mnemonic I remember the formula for molar mass in chemistry is c=m/M
Which i remember as communism=masses above monarchs.
Or small one above big ones.
I use rote memory to solidify/retain learned knowlege, not to hammer it into my brain without any context or usage cases.
@@mandisaw no, it was cuz I wanted to read the source material and do the actual reading assignments. I wanted to learn the philosopher texts. Instead of, you know, readings summary or just regurgitating what I took notes on. I was a science major but felt that the humanities classes were where I was going to get educated. I actually tried to read and ponder it, and that was a mistake cuz there’s simply no time to read opaque texts. Btw I’m a physician now, and I only mention that cuz my field highly rewards rote memorization of facts rather than critical thought, since you need a ton of facts to synthesize together to work the problem. Physicians are no smarter than anyone else, we just have to develop extreme blind memorization to get by. Physicians are definitely put on a pedestal but in my experience humanities careers and majors have much higher critical thinking and are overall more interesting people than us docs, especially with understanding of power, ideology, historical context.
I started to do really well when I gave up on learning and just accepted the fact that I probably will never be able to learn philosophy. Its a damn shame that profound knowledge is hidden behind opaque texts and even more esoteric professors in overpriced colleges (for which the professors get almost none of the profits). At least in the US, GPA is extremely important for med school admissions, and a few bad grades will absolutely destroy you. Thank goodness for Michael burns and wisecrack for breaking philosophy down for dumb dumbs like me.
Thanks for being concerned.
Oh, and all that school and neurosurgeons aren’t that much smarter than the average person. I totally agree:
www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-067883
@@shakenbacon-vm4eu Ah, yeah, biological sciences are the most rote-memorization heavy of the lot - it's one reason I always preferred the physical sciences 😂 And straight math, of course - given one or two facts, you can derive the universe LOL
I think there's a difference between what amounts to academic survival skills, and the sort of deeper, contextual learning it seems you were looking for. Your avg 13-15wk semester is just not long enough to get that level of depth & nuance. Prioritizing what to read & what to skim, or even what to drop, is unfortunately part of the process.
For my part, I went to a "fire hydrant" school, where acad survival meant figuring out how to drink without being blasted by the sheer volume of coursework & information. I was able to get some taste of that depth & breadth across the humanities, and in sciences outside my own, but at the cost of my overall GPA. (Cost me Columbia grad, but gained me a better career-choice, I think.)
You sound like the perfect candidate for those readers' forums, or continuing-ed classes, that are popular with retirees. Depending on your practice/situation, I imagine you may have limited outside time, but diving into audiobooks from the Wisecrack bibliography, or your old syllabi, might scratch that itch to wrinkle your mind before you're ready to hang up the stethoscope. Happy thinking :)
Dude I'm not one to be caught off guard very often, but the whole " I'm coming from a place of confused loved....and your state looks like a weener" got me. I actually had a delayed reaction, props
This all day. Thank You for this one Wisecrck team, reporting from a School Education Conference.
hope the conference has an open bar! and thanks!
Thanks!
Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a must read. Problem solving education is better than top-down-banking method, students should not be a passive recipients. I like the ideas he presents. The book is about revolution, critical thinking and changing the system in solidarity with each other.
"I don't know, I have computer money." When society idolizes the wrong qualities through media we create a generation of youth that aspires to all the wrong things.
Private schools, colleges and universities follow the principles of capitalist ideology and teach us to follow capitalist rules...
The problem is classical education. As in, education that utilizes classrooms. One person having to force some 30 odd people to pay attention to some topic that holds no interest or relevance to their lives. And from that point out there is no going back to some mutually supportive environment as the hierarchy comes first.
As someone deeply passionate about this topic, I want to add some book recommendations. Most importantly is "Not for Profit" by Martha Nussbaum. Excellent book on this topic. Then, the broader issue of neo-liberalism (chapter 6 is on education) "Undoing the Demos" by Wendy Brown. Another excellent read.
Thanks for those recommendations!
The Aristotelian view on education actually inspired me to go and try to read some books out of the College Library.
Up until about the 1960's, a college degree was indeed a ticket to the track to a good career as so few people had degrees. Having higher education was believed to make for a "better learner" when being trained, even if the skills were non-specific (whether this was true or not is debateable). As so few people were enrolled in colleges, it was also more affordable as well. As employers demanded that more people have degrees, however, the educational marketplace provided by cranking out these degrees. Higher education became less marketable, tuition became more expensive and, very likely, education was "dumbed down".
My guidance counselor gave me shit when I i was graduating. "You want to go into the humanities?! What are you going to do with that? Be a teacher?"
I have a BA in history with a minor in theatre and a bachelor of education, so yeah, that is what I did. I happily teach Social Studies, English, and Drama in high school. Her comments were so revealing to me. Despite being in education herself, she didn't value it and felt her profession, a low paying one, was not of worth.
I am very proud of what I do. It's hard work, but every day I see the value of what I do. Never so obvious as when I look south of the border and worry for a whole nation.
14K in the hole and because of a bunch of unfortunate life circumstances I couldn't finish my degree and while I desperately want to go back i'm worried about going even further into debt and not getting a better job to balance out thr added debt.
As a STEM grad, lemme tell you ... Naive definition of Trig: Study of the relative geometry of Right Triangles. Better definition: Study of cycles with helpful functions that convert cyclic information into Cartesian coordinates. Best definition: Nobody knows, we made it all up. But it's useful when solving practical and theoretical problems, so we learn it.
And we need a t-shirt saying: think of the children. M'kay?!
There should be no education system, public or private 🧘
@@user-fo3sb2fv9v Star Trek model is impossible even if money is abolished
@@MarshalMarrsthat is peraphs the weirdest takes I have ever seen
@@user-fo3sb2fv9v no, I meant letting libraries do the teaching
@@robertoleary5470 indeed
10:33 SHOUTOUT TO THE EDITOR. And yes, I had to yell there:
As a foreigner who worked at a public school here, I kept having flashbacks to a very dreadful past every day when the pledge came on the PA.
And about the last question in the video: it's C. It's definitely option C.
Got a Master's in Education and in a few of my classes we had discussions about how the system of education wanted us to teach to the test while we just wanted to let children become well rounded individuals. As soon as you said teach to the test so children could get jobs and make money I was like THAT is what we used to talk about all the time. We all knew it would likely be impossible the first few years to even try and carve out our own way of teaching without tenure and just had to do what was asked of us. Which is not how it should be I feel. I'm sure most educators would want to teach Socraticly but with large class sizes and the Standards, not even including short class periods, that's not going to happen.
Also some of my most interesting and debate heavy classes in college were the Humanities. As an English major I understand how useful it is to be able to read and write and not just use numbers. My Shakespeare professor, who also taught Humanities 101, even told our class about how it was required because everyone needs to be able to write even if your major is STEM or something else.
We used to do this. I went to school in the 90s (J/HS - Uni) and our classes were entirely Socratic discussion, hands-on labs/activities, and a constant feedback loop between teachers & students. Lots of latitude for independent exploration of the subject, and bringing our own POVs to the curriculum material.
HS classes capped around 28-34 students, College major/core lectures could be 150-200+, but most classes were 30 or fewer. And we had tests out the ass - Statewide ones in K-12, and min 4 exams or essays + final for every class, in addition to weekly problem sets, labs, fieldwork, etc.
Difference was that was all some flavor of G+T track. So the assumption was that the investment in us was worth it.
All this talk about "who needs education" is only directed at poor/working class folks. The kids of the rich & striving-middle classes absolutely get a quality education.
And your SP teacher was correct - even as a software dev, 60% of my job is communicating with the humans, not the computer. Blows students' minds every time I tell them 😅
@@mandisaw The sad thing is in relation to tests, the Education department at the college I attended had within a year of my taking classes gotten rid of the portfolio review before the head of the department to qualify to be a teacher in favor of sending a video and lots of written essays and over analyzed Standard equivalent materials to the textbook company Pearson. They had people, most who weren't teachers, watch the provided videos and decided if they could be teachers or not. Which is a long way of agreeing that a John Dewey ideal of teaching is possible if we actually let teachers help the students become ready for the world. Those that need the most attention are the ones who suffer because of lack of funding, resources, etc. Which we know but refuse to do anything about.
@@mandisaw Someone has to make sure the computers work correctly, which would be the people that know how they function. And if you can't communicate to the other devs about what's wrong, they can't know how to aid you. English is a robust subject and I admire all English teachers everywhere for teaching while other things encroach on their classrooms, like assemblys.
@@rebgates Wow, they outsourced student teacher review? That's wild, but it sounds like classic under-resourced districts/States going for the cheap option instead of the more-efficient one. I'd never go back to teaching, it's a real shitshow these days.
So I am debating on pursuing my PhD and shifting my career aspirations from landscape architecture and urban planning to focus more on challenging existing pedagogies in design education. Many of these views come from my experience within design school, I will not go into why.
This video was great and has gave me much to ponder over. I appreciate you.
As college grad who used to work in higher ed, I went in wanting to believe that the 4-year model was superior in helping build character in addition to improving job opportunities...
But after grinding through the pandemic, all of the stories I heard from students about their health and family struggles conflicting with their rigid class schedules, the responses from Student Accounts basically being "either keep attending your classes or drop out and lose your investment," the concerns about high prices (in spite of campus-wide closures of housing, libraries and gyms - who wants to pay for amenities they can't even use???) and the resentments of having to pay the same amount for a Zoom course that you would for an in-person class... It got incredibly messy, polarized and political. Don't even get me started on the multiple lawsuits and the hit to our morale...
I also knew people with administration access who told me that the college was basically doing everything in its power to acquire and keep the most money possible - even if it meant "retiring" (i.e. quiet firing) unionized professors (after receving a PPP loan, too!), reducing our departments to skeleton crews and selling off assets left and right - it got to be impossible for me to justify the 4-year model for everyone if it was just being used by greedy administrators to keep their $300k+ salaries while everyone else suffered.
I was hoping "big changes" would mean widening the acceptance of applications, being more flexible with time requirements for degree completion, and tying administrative salaries to the college's revenue... but what it ACTUALLY meant was closing the college itself, leaving students with massive debts and dubious degrees.
Good thing I got out of there before the figurative ax came down... but I come out of the experience unable to justify the 4-year model as it is. There need to be some serious overhauls regarding emergency situations, time/resource investments, and actual academic freedom, especially with respect to professors, their staff, and of course the students, themselves. And job security really should NOT be dictated by a student's ability or willingness to go through what amounts to financial hazing.
Also, my new job in municipal government pays TWICE what I was making at the college, has 4-day work weeks, kick-ass benefits AND IS UNIONIZED... and they only required graduation from HIGH SCHOOL. (Search for Governmentjobs.com and check your local listings - you never know what's out there!)
00:00
Here we go! If Michael isn't drunk, I don't want it.
00:50
Oh yeah, he's lit.
If a philosopher isn't drunk (or into drugs in general), are they really a philosopher?
3:10
I hope that he goes into vocational schools at some point.
3:33
I love this edgy drunk blathering of an overthinker.
4:06
Defensive overthinking. Clearly, Michael is anticipating some stupid shit that he's had to deal with.
Can you bank on nuance being recognized by your audience, Michael? We're compelled to try, aren't we.
5:35
Michael, you had better bring up vocational schooling.
6:10
Hey, but you made it onto a popular show!
6:35
Michael, you'd better mention the transformation of college being a place to learn how to learn vs vocational job training.
6:55
Okay, setting the lead up to the history of college.
7:23
Showing that college is about how to think/learn (and apply it, right?)
~7:30-8
Leading up to the transition of how to learn vs vocation, right?
9:25
Pitting conservative views as opposed to free thinking... This doesn't feel right.
9:36
That defensiveness coming back up again. I feel you, Michael.
10:00/10:39/11:00
Wait, you're telling me that history isn't just a set of events to memorize?
10:51
Oh this 9:25 part is coming back up. It doesn't feel like you got this one, Michael. This isn't the insight that you're making it out to be.
11:00
This part is best illustrated on how history is simply taught as a series of events instead of the conflicts and contexts that they're really made of. We might call it 'whitewashing' of history, but that line is moreso a 'history is written by the victors' kind of thing and that line is coming from a Western thread of education--you know what I mean.
11:10
School was obviously indoctrination. Didn't we notice how prison-like it was?
11:45
Trigonometry is the math of triangles. sin cosin tan and all of that
12:20
Freethinkers, UNITE!
12:40
Mfker, don't say that after the shit you were drawing in 9:25. You said conservatives, but you meant Republicans (in Florida in general).
I feel your pain when you get defensive about getting stuck over superficial parts with the audience that misses the concepts that you're really focusing on.
13:36
"Jacked up" isn't what I'd call it. You're covering the slurring a bit, but you're still obviously buzzing.
14:24
Slurrrr.
"I juss gotta telly you guys:: I love you so much"
14:29
Ok really, I lvoe you gus.
15:38
Oh man, you'd better address vocational education. Instead you pass off elitist undertones of how to think instead of appreciating practical vocational knowledge.
16:30
Oh hey, you're touching the glaring lack of practical education that college has led up to.
17:30
Okay Michael, we're taking you on a sabbatical. Get a fresh pair of Sam Vines' boots--we're going walking.
17:50
This guy didn't even address the vocational aspect being pressed over college. You meant university this WHOLE time and called it college. Colleges--even in traditional sense--have included vocational tracks, haven't they? (I'm really not sure)
No mention of tenure/Ph.D/pushing culture's boundaries/publishing--which is what university has much long been a developing center for.
No mention of the pushing/transformation of universities into being more like vocational schools.
Michael, you're fun, don't get me wrong, but I feel as though you and your audience might enjoy you freestyling on a podcast; I mean, just rant it out--you practically made this into a therapy session where you did anyway, and it was still fun.
I enjoyed it. Someone take this guy for tacos and tequila to Mexico. A few dollars will go a long way for food and liquor out there.
He loves tacos, tequila, and Mexico.
When a president goes on stage "I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED" well...
Pretty sure that was Trump
Did you know: Betsy DeVos (wife to Amway's chief) was on the Department of Education, and Trump had been offered Amway's event venue for a speech.
While Democrats seem to adore destruction, Republicans heavily support nested pyramid schemes like Amway, Vemma and LuLaRoe.
College is for careers, which usually doesn't work and leaves people working in fields they didnt go to school for but for some reason still pay back their student loans like perfect little bootlickers. Institutional learning for learning's sake is obsolete, we have the internet.
Current grad student from a school that has embraced the DEI initiative here. What I've noticed is how Education is defined in this video isn't happening either! I disagreed with some of the readings and students literally said "I've never thought about disagreeing with the coursework. " that was a scary thought to me
This really felt like half the story. What about how education plays a role in getting a job and how some jobs shape your life? Many jobs consume vast amounts of a person’s life, but are necessary like doctors.
I'm English, I went to Brunel University late 1997 and graduated class of 2001.
I was the last year that were awarded free degrees, qualification is what got you in not money.
My 4 student loans amounted to about £8,000.
A degree is 3 years, the extra year was because i took a "thin sandwich" degree with 18 months industry placement and experience, it was a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science.
This was a course specifically tailored to getting you into a particular industry.
Specifically i wanted to be a computer programmer.
Sandwich degrees were created with industry to address the problem of graduates not having any practical skills or experience after graduation, back in the 60s. And a specific type of university was created, the polytechnic.
So this is nothing new in the UK, we invented it i think.
I’m really glad to see this discussed. I’m been screaming this for years by now. University is not mere job training, and trying to turn it into such is a huge cause of the cultural crises we face now.
Carl Sagan called in the early 1990s: “I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Love your videos Michael! You're iconic!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Many of our founding fathers were Renaissance men who valued education, wrote articulately and persuasively, and challenged the status quo (even religion). Asking questions, even uncomfortable ones, isn't a challenge unless your values can't withstand scrutiny. Education isn't the same thing as job training. Education expands mind, soul, and character. The purpose of teachers and schools is to show young minds how to learn.
Going to college is a great experience for broadening your horizons but if you're not passionate for a field that's in demand and pays well or your pretty aimless about what you're getting out of it, you'd be better served by learning a trade that will definitely bring you into the middle class and then go back to school once you're financially established and want to progress in your career.
I grew up feeling pressured into going to college like I was going to end up homeless or stuck in a crappy minimum wage job if I didn't get at least a BA or BS but if I would've got into the trade that I'm in now back then, I'd probably own at least a few houses by now and be living a much more comfortable life.
I'm still glad that I did go to college but once you progress from community colleges and move on to 4 year universities, it's far too cost-prohibitive to enroll just to "find yourself". You better have a game plan and a purpose. Otherwise you're just wasting your money and years of your life for information that you could've gotten elsewhere for free.
Down with greed. Down with corruption. Hold everyone accountable.
Do not be fool, these issues have been made by the evil rich and Corporations in a move to take full control. They don't want you, they want workers. They don't want you to have anything, because they want it for themselves
This would be true if it wasn't for the fact that they barely hire anyone from the USA these days, most big corpos I know of hire straight out of Canada, not the US these days.
I am a brazillian student and i am so happy that you mentioned Paulo Freire!
One problem is that the college-level humanities have become incredibly watered down and are losing their academic rigor. This is because universities want to pump people in-and-out to get maximum profits. These humanities students will often avoid difficult STEM coursework, while STEM students will still take upper level humanities coursework. These students will take proof/argument based STEM and humanities courses, while the pure-humanities people will by and large avoid the “difficult work.”
The rigorous humanities are important, but our profit-focused education system has made them less of an education and more of a necessary-evil to a piece of paper. STEM topics still have rigor, and so it attracts better students who are more intellectually curious-and willing to branch out.
this is exactly why i dropped out of high, left all of my shut and ran away to hawaii. i’ve learned more about myself, others, the world and everything inbetween over the past year than i have in the past 12 years ive spent in school.
$88k for a masters in creative writing.
I work in a call center.
I agree with the others who are pointing out that education isn't a scam, but the college system in the US and how we pay for it *is*. And it isn't just young adults fresh out of high school falling for it. I began college when i was 30 years old and my current student loan debt is worth $110,000. I started a program in a STEM field only to be counseled that I wouldn't be able to find a good job in my field without at least a Master's degree. So I kept going.
I currently do not work in that field.
One thing that I would have appreciated being discussed is the common refrain of “I can learn that on my own.” Usually I hear it in response to my encouragement for people to go into the humanities for undergrad. I’m a history major, and one thing people think they can do on their own but never actually do is learn history. Can you? For sure. Will you? Most of the time the people who say that don’t. The benefit of studying something like history is that you are learning with other people-you’re being taught by a scholar and writing papers that at least one person will actually read and respond to. That process is crucial and wonderful, and unless you have really nerdy friends in life (presumably who also did a STEM or business or non-humanities major in college and thus are probably not interested at all) you’re not going to have that mentoring experience and you will not have practiced writing or thinking about that humanities subject under the tutelage of a professional. That’s indispensable for me as a history major. I’m a better thinker, writer, and person for it. You could do it on your own, but you will lack the resources and time to practice it.
Also, where is Michael from? I live in Tallahassee, so if it’s not too personal I am curious to know what town he grew up in 😏
Engineer here. Last year I worked a shutdown for two months and was regularly consuming cold brew mixed with powdered Guarana (basically an extremely caffeine rich fruit from the Amazon). One time I ended up in the bathroom, so painfully and powerfully awake, having a panic attack and knowing that there was no reprieve - that I had to experience that moment fully, that there was no escape. Caffeine can fuck you up, man. One of the more significant experiences I've had in the last year or two.
Heck if I know exact values, but it was about $65k when I graduated and after 15 years of diligently making minimum payments... Now is hovering around $50k. And here my naive ass hoped to have them paid off by the time I'm 40. 😭
what are the yields on student loans?
Long-time fan of the channel and really appreciate seeing my profession and vocation getting some love! Would love to hear your thoughts on how these models and philosophies of education intersect with standardized testing in the UK and North America vs. the free-form "pastoral" style schools that we sometimes see in Northern Europe.
Also, highly recommend the collection of essays by bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, which builds on a lot of Freire's ideas within a more contemporary US context.
My student loan debt is $0, because I learned a marketable skill at a community college. and paid it off before I hit 40.
Hell yeah, happy for you!
Education is a path to better education which leads to unlearning and relearning
As a school teacher, I can confirm that we *do* want to infect children with the woke mind virus. I spend all day downloading TokTics about Transology into my young student's brains 🏳🌈🏳🌈
Is Transology commutatative, or transitive? 🤔 *Math teacher jokes*
@@mandisawthe new maths syllabus has made my wife's marking so much easier now that the answer is always "it depends, it isn't an exact number but a spectrum/range of numbers".
@@v.sandrone4268 Exactly! Numbers aren't binary - sometimes they're decimal, or even hexadecimal
@@mandisawI believe transology may be *i* imaginary..?
Nooooo! 😡 Those TokTics downloaded in the students’ brains should be about JESUS!
(But obviously not Bible-Jesus; more like a hybrid R/Donald Reagan/Trump version of Jesus - and he would know karate and go on adventures and be friends with Chuck Norris … they just don’t teach kids any of the IMPORTANT stuff these days … anyways-)
I should have the freedom to force all the teachers to do this! I thought this was America!
Undergrad wasn’t so bad. Had little debt after working hard during summers. Med school however, was insanely expensive. Because of the rigorous nature of the program, class 7am-5pm Monday through Friday, having a part time job while also studying was a near impossibility. Now $250K debt and I’ll be paying off the minimum until the Govt forgives the rest in 20-30 years because I have a mortgage (yes, I’m lucky to have a house I know), preschool for two, student loans. My wife and I both work two jobs - this including my full time clinic job - and we just barely pay the bills. Even being a medical professional these days pays less than it used to in terms of buying power. I consider us lucky for having zero credit card debt. I worry about bouncing my account buying French fries to stay out of consumer debt. Assuming this model remains, I would never recommend a four year university to my children. I would recommend community college or trade school courses first and then entering a program if they really know what they want to for work.
Love this content. How was paternity leave Michael?
still on it - we filmed this before it started.
The Wisecrack team is on point! Thanks for all the hard work, super informative! o7
Imagine living in Europe where we have access to quality education with 0 debt
Glad I don't live in the US either
But in Europe students are tracked early - only the top-performers get the free college. The rest aren't even prepared for college-level learning, and many don't even reach what we'd consider a HS grad level. Here we at least say everyone has a shot.
@@mandisaw This is false (maybe not totally as i mostly can talk about my own country). We have both private and public schools and universities, public ones are free for the ressourceless students, and fairly unexpensive for everyone else. While the quality of education in public colleges is not always top notch, it is almost always good enough. All in all our education system is so that performing younger will allow you to get quicker to what you want to study, but even if you're turning better a bit later in life you'll always be able to find a decent university to study.
@@H2SO4pyro Ah, countries' policies do differ. But do the mid-tier/low-tier students in your country also receive free college, and access to the same programs as the high-tier ones? Can a kid suddenly show promise at age 16+ and have had the same prep for college curriculum as someone who's been a strong student since they were young?
My point wasn't that it's impossible for other kids/adults to go to college in Europe, but that if you're not on a college-track from grade school, then the gov't probably isn't going to foot the bill (or not the whole thing, anyway).
In the States, most of the time, students in the same State all get the same K-12 material. Most colleges cater to the middle - middle-income, middle-grades, mid-tier job prospects. Some are geared towards low-tier/remedial learners, and some are elite, but you have access to the same funding no matter where you are in the hierarchy, or whether you're 18 or an adult student.
@@mandisaw I can only speak for France but you're clearly wrong.
“I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, whatcha readin' for?' Isn't that the weirdest fuckin' question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, goddamnit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well . . . hmmm...I dunno...I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress.” - Bill Hicks
Honestly I feel education should be open to learning both skills that will advance your career and learning how to be a more rounded person capable of thinking for yourself and be based on furthering knowledge
Aka the standard liberal arts 4-year degree 😅 Core classes give you breadth, major classes provide depth and hands-on learning. Internships provide the critical 3rd piece, but it's absent from so many people's educations.
Precisely what's the point of going to school if we're not allowed to think. I lived in a country where the college education exist for jobs. Now we have a whole population of people that can't think
I wanna be friends with Michael so badly, the parasocial relationship is not enough anymore
I think there's a lot of interplay with different factors all tying together when it comes to education. I feel like there's a bit of a feedback loop when it comes to "return on investment" and "college should train you for a career." The price of going to college is so high now that I couldn't justify the expense if I didn't learn some skills applicable to some career path. Based on the last few places I've worked, companies no longer feel it's worth while to train employees either. You're expected to show up to work with significant knowledge on how things get done, and while competitors in the same field might generally do things similarly, it's never exactly the same, yet no one seems to have time to point out the finer details until after you've done things wrong. It leaves me with a feeling that many of the people I'm working with aren't exactly sure what they're doing, but they're improvising day to day.
On the attempts to shut down teaching of certain topics or subject areas, that to me smells like "you're teaching something I disagree with, therefore you're not teaching things I do agree with, or teaching that my position is inherently wrong, so you must be stopped." That isn't very sound logic, but at the same time, I think education does bear some scrutiny. I'd rather have topics be covered from multiple perspectives, and examine the strengths and weaknesses of each. Teaching only a perspective that I personally agree with is just as harmful as teaching only a perspective I disagree with. What strikes me though, is how easy it is to find an outraged response "how dare this government or that organization try to prevent teaching of x", while I rarely find a response pointing out "the school also teaches y, z, and h, so it's not the indoctrination it is being made out to be."
I go to a classical education school
The rich people who found our school think it’s a republican making machine, but then most people come out of it with critical thinking skills, and can see past what they were doing
The Golden Age of Humanities in Higher Education: the 1950s and 1960s.
PAULO FREIRE! YEAH!
Brazil represented!
I really missed you saying his most famous quote: "When the education isn't liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor."
As a lawyer (just like Freire! He was also a Brazilian lawyer!), this has been proven true too many times...
and that is why the right wing in Brazil has attacked him so much! he is the Brazillian with more quotes in academia, with more academic titles, etc... easily the most important Brazillian academic of all time.
and he was not graduated as a teacher. he graduated in law, and he was a lawyer that decided to study pedagogy. truly a genius.
A college degree makes even less sense in the modern era. The bottom line is it doesn't really matter what you degreed in, what matters is who you are, who you know, and whether or not you belong to a protected group. Quotas do not consider merit, or aptitude, so the job market no longer rewards excellence or provides a level playing field.
Luckily I graduated without student debt because I was an adult student but even without the debt my degree has been borderline useless. I got a degree in journalism. I also graduated the same year Donald Trump got elected and America became even more cartoonishly partisan. Local news is dying, corporate consolidation has turned bigger media outlets into propaganda venues and the experiential requirement to get work is simply unfeasible. In the past year I've made more money creating adult content than I did in the five years trying to hustle as a freelance journalist.
Sad to say, journalism has been on the decline as a career where you can earn a decent living for at least 25-30yrs. Media consolidation, particularly in local news (print, radio & TV) has been an issue since the late 80s. If you just graduated in 2016, but weren't made aware of that, I think that's a guidance failure on the school's part, and maybe a research failure on yours.
That said, I don't think the need for journalists will ever go away. But the industry hasn't figured out a way to pay people and keep the lights on, so it's rough going now & and for the foreseeable future.
I hope the kind of work you are doing now is okay to you. That you find joy and can pay all you need to pay.
So glad to see you cite Paulo Freire! Great job!
my student debt is 0, cos i live in a place that care about your education and understand that putting people in debt will just take money out of use
aka i am not an american
The function of education is different weather you're talking about public school, or paid-for college. The function of public school is to sell kids to the town. School gets town tax dollars, and the town gets kids. Simple transaction, we're selling the kids.
I learned a lot in college. Job skills and life skills. Also how to problem solve and how to try to see the world from someone point of view.
Those last two, though, you could argue that you learned them while attending college but there's nothing to say you wouldn't have learned those skills anyway.
@@Loctorak perhaps but not quite the same way as going to college forced me to be around people who were from different backgrounds from myself, through classes and extracurricular activities you’re forced to interact with others you might have never done so otherwise.
Yay, Pedagogy of the Oppressed! It was one of the first "philosophical" works I read on my own, and it illuminated so much for me.
I consider myself lucky to only have $14,000+ in student loan debt. Going to community college before university helped a lot
As the type of adult who gets sad every late summer because I’m not going back to school, I do think college is a scam. Or rather it’s purpose to the world at large is a scam. So often your degree isn’t a reflection of capability but rather a reflection of class and or economic status.
The requirement of a degree for employment is so hostile to people who couldn’t finish their degrees. I had a drug problem due to self medicating brain damage, and I needed to return home to take care of my grandfather with Alzheimer’s. I went from talking about Walter Benjamin and the French Arcades to struggling to get through the week. 90% of the time I’ve been smarter than my boss (this is a low bar to clear so I’m not saying I’m special) or they’ve enlisted me to do their job as well as my job. It’s like salt in the wound seeing incapable people fail upward simply because they were able to get C’s in college.
There should be a CED, a college equivalency degree. Problem is, then the extremely costly college scam would be at risk. 🙄
Anyone else extremely concerned that “Math” is thrown in there?! Also huge fan of the Socratic method combines with modern scientific process.
I owe $34k for a Electrical Technologies degree, that it turns out was not accredited to count towards a journeyman program I was working towards. I would've had to retake all those classes AT THE SAME SCHOOL again under sponsorship from an employer to become a journeyman and escape $12/hr life as an apprentice.
I work in insurance now.