Thread by @petruch10

Since I'm being contrarian on main, universal literacy and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

I spent a decade being a teacher in public and private schools. For the vast majority of students there is a hard limit to their educability.

(Yes, there's a hard limit to *everyone's* educability but for the vast number of students, what can be taught to them falls off way before senior year. The % who can't be educated past 6th grade is near 50% in public schools I taught at and 0% in private schools I taught at.)

What we have now is a vast system of semi-structured daycare for 2 types of people: those who will never do anything economically useful in any conceivable world (%age of school varies by location) & those who could but are forced to do an additional 6-10 years of school first.

I think it's true that Jeffersonian Universal Literacy is a Good ThingTM for a certain value of 'good', which is that 200 years ago whatever untapped potential resident in the population of the time (and for some time thereafter) could be found out and integrated.

What we should be for is not Universal Literacy but *Pareto Optimized Literacy*. Ideally there would be a mechanism in schooling to identify the endpoint of a child's extractive potential from school and gracefully sweep them into the workforce thereafter.

For myriad reasons, this can't happen. But not least of which is that the very people who militate for universal schooling (teachers) would take a huge hit in job status. Public school teachers are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to GPA and GRE scores.

They aren't very bright. (I can say this because I'm a school teacher with an MA in Ed., right?). Anyway, teachers will tell you formal education works. If it didn't work, there'd be no need for teachers, right?

Study after study, as if I were the type to cite studies, bear out that students who are not formally schooled have absolutely no disadvantage in life outcomes vs. formally schooled peers. Feel free to check.

So, we are, as a society, spending *massive* amounts of treasure for no *educational* benefit. As to why we do it, the cui bono, I think that's rather obvious. Jobs program, money laundering scheme, prison pipeline, propagandizing opportunity.

I can tell you what's actually happening from a teacher's perspective: we just pass everyone. There's no system of failure in the 'American' system. I teach most recently in Chinese schools in the American system, but have taught in American ones & can vouch they are the same.

Zeroes don't exist anymore. Homework isn't done. Kids just sleep through class. You're welcome to say I'm not a disciplinarian, but the opposite is true: I enjoy a lot of time in meetings with administrators who want me to tone it down.

Kids are routinely removed from my class and put in Art, the fakest of the fake subjects. This, by the way, is at a Decent Private School where monied parents with failsons send their kids. American public school is much worse. (Chinese public school is much better).

All the students who want to go to American University will go whether qualified or not. The end product of Universal Literacy and Amero-Credentialism is that in a century you go from the cream of Latin Grammar School to college grads who can barely string together a sentence.