[MD] 42

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[John]
I don't doubt there would be many failures in such a system but conversely there would be successes as well and that kind of open framework would produce more quality in the long run.

[Arlo]
One of the big problems, and one I think that Pirsig directly addresses, is that 'knowledge' itself has been moving from an 'objective' position to a 'subjective' opinion. We're in the process of swinging from one of Pirsig's horns to the other, but we are (as a culture) still failing to see the alternative Pirsig points towards. We've moved from "gravity is a fact" to "gravity is just an opinion". A large part of this has been the gradual usurping of intellect by social forces. The 'knowledge' taught by schools no longer has any dominance over social forces of belief. Evolution becomes just another "belief" that has no dominance over "creationism" (and in some circles, intellectual patterns are not just brought down to the social level, they are actively placed UNDER it). We are seeing a culture whose intellect has destroyed its own objective position (rightly so), but rather than an expansion of reason we are simply reverting to subjective relativism. I think the move towards fragmented schools is too often guided by a desire to place intellect in the hands of social authority, for parents to ensure their children are not exposed to what they would consider "subversive" thought, to make 'school' a place to indoctrinate social values. It doesn't have to be this way, and I think what you are envisioning is more a fragmented school built around learner needs and alternative assessment. I have no problem with alternative schools (charter or otherwise) that allow students with differing learning abilities and styles to excel and mature intellectually at a pace and in a place that helps them achieve their maximum potential. But, when alternative schools are used to backdoor social authority over intellect, as many (if not most) tend to be, then I have strong disagreement. "Home schooling", for example, is almost always talked about, by the parents involved, as a way to prevent their children from being exposed to 'values' that are not their own. You rarely hear it discussed by parents as a means to bring their children MORE diversity in thought and reason. 

[John]
Some sort of accreditation body would still be in effect so the most egregious errors you mention would be avoided.

[Arlo]
Sadly, I think accreditation is also falling prey to social authority, and is no longer a claim of "holy ground" by the Church of Reason. I mean, right now students are being educated in 'accredited' institutions and yet we are discussing the very failings of these educational structures. 

[John]
I kind of like the English school system.  If you're smart enough and study hard you go into the Uni but if you lack college status you get a vocational training of some kind.

[Arlo]
My concern is here is that your words seem to reflect the idea of privilege (vocational is only for kids too dumb to attend college). I think what we need is a total scrapping of these words as we use them. 

For example, if a purpose of education is cultural literacy (a valid argument), and its decided that kids should all read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then ALL kids should read this, not just 'college status' kids, as if often the case in the current public system where 'vocational kids' are not given the same literature exposure as 'college' kids. The underlying idea should be that just because someone will be a plumber rather than a molecular biologist doesn't mean that they should be given any less in their humanities education.

And, conversely, vocational education is not for the dumb. I know many 'college status' kids who would fail out of mechanics training within a week. We need to think more in terms of aptitude and interest, and stop privileging the idea that vocational education is the last stop on the conveyor belt where the intellectual rejects end up. Crawford makes this case better than I can, so I'll simply say that Shop Class as Soulcraft provides a good language base for how we should be talking about education.

That said, I think it helps to talk about two purposes for education, rather than 'college' and 'vocational', talk about 'humanities' and 'career' education. Its no secret (and as your quote below indicates) that right now these are disjointed. We 'expect' schools to provide us with job skills, but colleges and the like operate on the idea that education is more than job skills, often to the fact that 'college' kids have no job skills and 'vocational' kids have no knowledge of literature, arts, humanities and philosophy. I think we can do both, and everyone would be better served if we divorced these two ideas (at least somewhat) and gave all people avenues to 'job skills' as well as exposure to the Church of Reason. 

[John]
Society doesn't just dump you, it tries to provide everybody with some kind of living.

[Arlo]
Stop being such a radical. ;-) What if I counter with "living is more than employment"?

[John] 
That sounds good.  I'd like to see pure football colleges too. College football has become ridiculous.

[Arlo]
Yeah, I agree, its an odd model that requires everyone to collectively bury their heads in the sand. Thing is, 'athletics' is now as viable a career as 'biology'. Why can't someone major in "football" (with a curriculum of coaching strategies, historical understanding of the game, not to mention play strategies and even sportsmanship)? The idea someone is a 'student athlete' is a little strange, we don't say 'student scientist' or 'student philosopher'. But, conversely, that same student majoring in football should be held to the same academic standards taking all the humanities requirements that defines 'college'; meaning if we move the student into a vocational-football path (parallel to a student being in a vocational-biologist path), then both students should still be held to same humanities/cultural literacy/creative/critical standards as everyone else. 

[John provides a quote]
"So he’ll amass a gigantic debt, miss out on four or five years that could be spent honing his specific skillset, and end up exactly where he could have been, and would have been, without college. Only now he’s 28 thousand dollars in the hole and half a decade behind the curve."

[Arlo]
As above, the problem here is that the expectation that the degree confers a labor skill, and one commensurate with cost, while the degree was never meant to confer economic value. That is, the Academy was never meant to be a "jobs program". One failure is that we, as a culture, have lost the language to talking about this 'humanities' or 'liberal arts' knowledge. On the other hand, this humanities knowledge was never meant to be (although at times it historically was) a playground for wealthy, privileged people. As cost increases, I do think we should expect people to question why a lifetime a debt is worth learning philosophy, on the other hand, learning philosophy should not be an economic goal. So we are stuck in the middle. And I think eliminating tuition is the best way out this. In other words, philosophy should be something everyone gets but something that no one should be forever indentured economically when they do. 

One alternative model I've seen discussed (it has its pitfalls, including further entrenching the economic valuation of intellect, and creating an economic caste system within the Academy) is to base the credit-cost of a degree (and its associated courses) on the expected economic return. Thus an engineering degree may cost $75k, but a degree in ancient medieval literature would cost only $5k. Although as I mentioned, I am not a fan of this model, I do appreciate that at least people are starting too look for ways to get an humanities education to everyone without bankrupting them in the process.