> Spaceship Earth – we’re all in this together; let’s take care of each other and our planet
> The American Experiment – let’s revive our sense of wonder, curiosity, and responsibility about what America is and can be
> The World Makers – as a student of McLuhan, Postman would be remiss if he didn’t invite students to make the tools and narratives that thereafter make us
These memes make me nostalgic for the pre-9/11 era. I remember being taught to consider myself as a “citizen of the world.” That seems exceedingly quaint now.
But the more I hope, the more one single cynical sociopath seems to co-opt the entire commons for their own purposes. The leverage of sociopathy is incredible.
That seems pretty good. I might add "curious" and "skeptical."
Availability of resources does not entail skill in leveraging them. I'm not sure classical eduction is the best way to learn that, but it's certainly better than nothing and a useful first step.
But this question is tripped up in the idea of work being one's only value. If programming by humans were made illegal tomorrow, what would Steve Krouse do for work? How would he find a path forward? Who would he turn to for advice? How would he build community to this new goal?
If it's not clear, thinking about this is what to teach a child. Even in the end of the article we sort of elide the importance of teaching others to act with grace and reflection, but what more significant thing can you share with the next generation?
Partially agreed.
Whatever we teach today will be solved or obsolete tomorrow anyway. In fact, in school we learn methods that are never used in real life anyway. So the "what" is not fully the point.
It's how we teach it and what the point of it. The point of it is to teach how to learn things, how to practice, how to become experts, how to struggle with them and persevere eventually. It is not a sort of an exercise for our minds, but it is exactly an exercise for our minds. That's the point.
The "what" matters in that it is a foundation of knowledge upon which future knowledge and understanding is built.
So, I agree with the spirit of the argument but it is a bit more nuanced.
>become a good citizen
>make the world better
That's basically the whole game right there. Or as Hillel might say, the rest is commentary.
Could essentially be saying, obey and work. A lot of people won't agree that is the ideal life. If that's not how you interpreted it then you have my point.
My grandfather and uncle were mechanics...
I am not, in fact my understanding of mechanics is extremely basic.
If I go back into my family tree, I can find three generations of Sugar House Labourers in Scotland in the early 1800s.. a profession that no longer exists in the UK as far as I can tell, and I'm certain they had a specialisation.
We'll be fine, your children aren't you, they'll find their own passions.
Our jobs as parents is to teach values and make sure they're good people and have the tools to make good decisions too, not to set them on a particular path... that's a losing goal, we can't tell the future for the next year- how could we possibly predict what works well 20 years from now?
Mona Lisa Vito, is that you?
I'm in the same boat as the author, have four kids and I struggle with keeping them motivated and this has been my anchor so far.
Industrial revolution, the shift from manufacturing to services, the shift of technology over time.
Hell, they say that the reason millennials are so nostalgic and enjoy childish things is because of rapid technological and societal change in the last 30 years.
I doubt it'll slow down, the era of doing anything until you die was a foolish thing for even our grandparents generation.
I strongly disagree with that.
> In my opinion, that heavily depends on your personality and depends significantly more on nature than nurture.
Nature has set us up to be amongst the most adaptive creatures on the planet. I think only the rats and the microbes have us beat. We are everywhere. One of the things that struck me while traveling the world and visiting some pretty out-of-the-way places is that there were always people living there as if it was perfectly normal.
> It’s also basically a tacit approval of dabbling in a field, or having a shallow knowledge of many fields, something I think the world will move further away from the more broad shallow tasks that AI will be able to accomplish at human levels.
Why would it have to be shallow? If you spend your time wisely you can easily pick up more than a shallow knowledge about multiple fields. Yes, it is work. So what.
> Teaching adaptability is basically a version of throwing up your hands and saying I don’t know what to do.
Not really, but again, you are welcome to that opinion, I just don't share it.
The time when a single skill would get you from the cradle to the grave is over and done with. And probably has been for a while but it is going to be much more fractured going forward.
The New Renaissance is Coming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCvixEyV10Q
I disagree. Making money is a means to an end, that end being one's ability to live a comfortable life as a member of society. If other means are able to achieve that end, then that reduces the need (or even desire) for money.
While I'd cynically agree that modern society as structured today will fight tooth and nail to keep those other means from being viable (because the current powers-that-be are such specifically because they were able to accumulate the most money), that doesn't have to be the case. We can and should demand better.
What happened to religion? Last I checked it was doing well.
> We typically confuse why something claims it exists, ie to glorify God, vs the forces that actually perpetuate it, which are subtler, we’d prefer not spoken aloud, and more prosaic, ie endowments, prestige, and needing someone to watch one’s kids.
We typically confuse that that particular confusion is the thing. God is the model's weights running on the distributed computer that we form collectively with our brains and whose running realization we call "society." The Christians (which are superb at sleazing their way around the irrefutable lack of supernatural divinity) call it "concursus dei". Considering that in some parts of the world people consistently elect whoever looks more like a radical God-GPU-node, I would say this particular one among our "dī" is still firmly at the helm.
I disagree here that agentic AI somehow replaces the need for humans to be resourceful. LLMs and their harnesses are just more resources for humans to use to uncover and solve problems, and resourcefulness is more important than ever for navigating a world increasingly riddled with slop (of the AI-generated variety or otherwise) and enshittification. A properly-functioning education system should absolutely emphasize resourcefulness as the primary skill to teach students, even (especially!) in the post-AI world.
Without clear goalposts, external accountability, and support, self paced learning feels like running in a desert. You just end up going in circles. That’s exactly why MOOCs never worked for me, nor for thousands of others.
That's less Mcluhan and more Foucault.
Nope, ship sailed. You haven’t had a child in school yet. It’s not like that anymore.
5 years ago in Palo Alto (Paly High) it was: Take your shoes off, get on your phone to watch a season of whatever you want, leave for “up to” 40 minutes. Paying attention to a teacher… who may have been teaching? or not? Why not just head over to the wellness center and get snacks? They let you hang out there.
Those IN CHARGE didn’t care to make learning matter or be rewarding. With AI, it “matters” less, in the credential-sense of schooling.
Institutions are meh. My bet is on individuals.
Perhaps Palo Alto isn't representative, and in fact might be doing some things wrong?
Not necessarily stuff like hunting and dismembering animals... but basic trades skills go a loooong way. Being able to do basic wiring tasks without ending up like the "how did you know my nephew's home burnt down" meme, woodworking, metalworking, painting, plumbing, maybe some basic car maintenance like changing tires, checking important stuff such as tire depth, tire pressure, operating fluids... soooooooooo many young people have zero skills in manual labor and have to call in tradespeople for everything.
That and how to find solutions for problems using Google are the most important skills my father taught me, and that is what I plan on teaching my children one day.
Being proficient in reading, at least one instrument, and one additional language is always welcome, regardless of the timeline.
"Passion" is a luxury. We all have to choose from what the market demands.
The music bit is mostly things you’d want to impart on your kids if you care about that sort of thing. (Which I do!) The public versions of it are not great where I am but individually you can do a lot.
I'd say giving them the tools to make good decisions will naturally lead them to a particular path, why not push that path as well?
That said, I am probably going to do with my kids exactly what your parents did and just hope I’m not wrong about their economic future and passions. But man, it’s a tough strategy call.
My mum did emphasise my reading though, and that went well.
its a lottery.
But maybe that's because I grew up in a place where you can make a decent living in a wide variety of jobs. Or because almost nobody in my (childhood) vicinity ever had a STEM, or even any white collar job.
For those for whom making money is a primary goal, they miss their essential purpose in life.
What you've just stated is a Marxist/materialist perspective. Up to a certain point of meeting basic survival needs, it's probably true. But there are other ways to think about what ultimately determines human goals once survival needs are met. This illustrates my point about the humanities, often we put our thinking into boxes without realizing that the box exists at all.
ThrowawayR2•1h ago
Gates had excellent grades and was credited in an academic paper during his undergraduate years. Not exactly like the average dropout.
> "Now that I think of it, apparently Einstein was a mediocre student, but his contributions to science were his way out. "
That's a myth. Einstein got top grades in science and mathematics.
As for the original question, "If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.", incorrectly attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry