A month or so I went to Stratford-on-Avon in Britland and visited the schoolroom where William Shakespare allegedly went to school.
The spiel of the guide was that, back in 1570 in Stratford at age 8, the average boy started work. Or he went to a school with 40-50 boys of all ages in one room with a single schoolmaster. And what they learned was Latin and Arithmetic by rote and recitation.
Oh No! Rote learning! But that made sense because there was only one schoolmaster and you had to pay big bucks for paper. Plus, if you had a problem you asked the older kid sitting on the next Form to help you.
But then I got to read Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. Clearly the guide's spiel came from this book.
But Greenblatt added another wrinkle. Parents liked the idea of their kids not starting work and learning Latin because of the prestige. And the uselessness. Latin wasn't really going to give you any useful skills. But it sure proved that your parents could afford it.
So you tell me. How much of modern education is all about showing "I can afford it." I mean everything from kindergarten through grad school?
Because if we were purely trying to be practical, and save money, I reckon that the practical thing to do would be for the neighborhood women to get together and teach the kids the Three Rs: reading writing and arithmetic. And then the kids would become apprentices at some employer, that would be mandated by the ruling class to teach the kid a useful trade and extend their education, subject to the most frightful penalties for non-performance. And the employer would bear the cost of the training. Of course he would because he would be the beneficiary of the low wages paid to the apprentice and the skills evenutally acquired by the apprentice.
Hey, I think that kids should start work just about as soon as they have completed their Three Rs. Unless.
Unless your parents want to demonstrate their wealth and status and have you learn useless stuff like Latin and French and History and Music and Social Studies and Ruling Class Ideology.
I mean: that was the point of young ladies in Jane Austen novels becoming a "proficient" in the piano and in singing. They were "accomplishments" that a young lady was expected to have if she hoped to attract a husband. To say nothing of that all important dowry.
And, really, isn't that the point of sending today's Woke young activist feminists to college? Accomplisments? Maybe not. Maybe the point is the dowry, that upper-middle-class young men won't marry a woman unless she has a professional credential, worth at least $80k a year in salary. Or is the minimum level these days more like $120k?
See, I reckon that if you are the average white working-class people your goal is a job, a house, a family. But that is not enough for the upwardly bound. That is why the average selective college makes its applicants jump through all the ridiculous hoops writing essays about their experience in charitable work and basically starting their own charitable foundation and planting trees in the Himalayas. Accomplishments. Just like the young ladies of old.
Also, I suspect, it is necessary to gild the lily of the average boring jobs in the administrative bureaucracy of the ruling class -- academia, lawyering, foreign service, foundations, art -- and represent them as creative, caring, compassionate careers. Completely different from the average dead-end job of the average deplorable. Not.
And, of course, the whole point of the big-government administrative state is to provide meaning for the lives of ruling-class scions, so they have deplorable boobs to order aound and punish when they step out of line.
No really. Imagine an America without a big-government state. What would average dull scions of the nobility do then, poor things? No creative careers -- boring jobs -- for people of no particular talent. No opportunities for ordering the plebs around. It would be a very living hell. For dull scions of the ruling class.
I think the opposite is true. I think that nobody has a clue about educating children. I think that nobody has a clue about what teenagers and young adults should be doing. I think that nobody has a clue about how to organize work and career and blend it with the real work of humans, which is wiving and thriving.
But this is what I think. I think that the neighborhood women should get together and cooperate to allow the kids to learn the Three Rs. And I'll bet that the kids of literate parents would automatically learn the Three Rs without too much trouble or much educational expertise in their mothers. As for the children of the lower class, well I'd say that is the job of us, the educated class, to organize on our own without benefit of government monopoly.
I think that skills training should be done by private business, who are probably the folks most likely to know what skills we should be teaching the kids and what skills will be needed around the next corner. And let's put kids to work as soon as possible. And become Really Useful Citizens.
As for the folks wanting to display status, I'd say all power to them. Let them spend fortunes on getting their prestige kids into prestige schools to learn prestige things and accumulate prestige contacts. But hey, if there aren't prestige careers in the administrative state -- that afford the scions of the rulers plenteous opportunities to order the deplorables around and pat the ruling-class Little Darlings on the butt -- then these scions of the rulers will have to get a job and do something useful rather than something prestigious.
That would be an America worthy of the name, and worthy of the American people, and worthy of our beloved Founders.
The spiel of the guide was that, back in 1570 in Stratford at age 8, the average boy started work. Or he went to a school with 40-50 boys of all ages in one room with a single schoolmaster. And what they learned was Latin and Arithmetic by rote and recitation.
Oh No! Rote learning! But that made sense because there was only one schoolmaster and you had to pay big bucks for paper. Plus, if you had a problem you asked the older kid sitting on the next Form to help you.
But then I got to read Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. Clearly the guide's spiel came from this book.
But Greenblatt added another wrinkle. Parents liked the idea of their kids not starting work and learning Latin because of the prestige. And the uselessness. Latin wasn't really going to give you any useful skills. But it sure proved that your parents could afford it.
So you tell me. How much of modern education is all about showing "I can afford it." I mean everything from kindergarten through grad school?
Because if we were purely trying to be practical, and save money, I reckon that the practical thing to do would be for the neighborhood women to get together and teach the kids the Three Rs: reading writing and arithmetic. And then the kids would become apprentices at some employer, that would be mandated by the ruling class to teach the kid a useful trade and extend their education, subject to the most frightful penalties for non-performance. And the employer would bear the cost of the training. Of course he would because he would be the beneficiary of the low wages paid to the apprentice and the skills evenutally acquired by the apprentice.
Hey, I think that kids should start work just about as soon as they have completed their Three Rs. Unless.
Unless your parents want to demonstrate their wealth and status and have you learn useless stuff like Latin and French and History and Music and Social Studies and Ruling Class Ideology.
I mean: that was the point of young ladies in Jane Austen novels becoming a "proficient" in the piano and in singing. They were "accomplishments" that a young lady was expected to have if she hoped to attract a husband. To say nothing of that all important dowry.
And, really, isn't that the point of sending today's Woke young activist feminists to college? Accomplisments? Maybe not. Maybe the point is the dowry, that upper-middle-class young men won't marry a woman unless she has a professional credential, worth at least $80k a year in salary. Or is the minimum level these days more like $120k?
See, I reckon that if you are the average white working-class people your goal is a job, a house, a family. But that is not enough for the upwardly bound. That is why the average selective college makes its applicants jump through all the ridiculous hoops writing essays about their experience in charitable work and basically starting their own charitable foundation and planting trees in the Himalayas. Accomplishments. Just like the young ladies of old.
Also, I suspect, it is necessary to gild the lily of the average boring jobs in the administrative bureaucracy of the ruling class -- academia, lawyering, foreign service, foundations, art -- and represent them as creative, caring, compassionate careers. Completely different from the average dead-end job of the average deplorable. Not.
And, of course, the whole point of the big-government administrative state is to provide meaning for the lives of ruling-class scions, so they have deplorable boobs to order aound and punish when they step out of line.
No really. Imagine an America without a big-government state. What would average dull scions of the nobility do then, poor things? No creative careers -- boring jobs -- for people of no particular talent. No opportunities for ordering the plebs around. It would be a very living hell. For dull scions of the ruling class.
I think the opposite is true. I think that nobody has a clue about educating children. I think that nobody has a clue about what teenagers and young adults should be doing. I think that nobody has a clue about how to organize work and career and blend it with the real work of humans, which is wiving and thriving.
But this is what I think. I think that the neighborhood women should get together and cooperate to allow the kids to learn the Three Rs. And I'll bet that the kids of literate parents would automatically learn the Three Rs without too much trouble or much educational expertise in their mothers. As for the children of the lower class, well I'd say that is the job of us, the educated class, to organize on our own without benefit of government monopoly.
I think that skills training should be done by private business, who are probably the folks most likely to know what skills we should be teaching the kids and what skills will be needed around the next corner. And let's put kids to work as soon as possible. And become Really Useful Citizens.
As for the folks wanting to display status, I'd say all power to them. Let them spend fortunes on getting their prestige kids into prestige schools to learn prestige things and accumulate prestige contacts. But hey, if there aren't prestige careers in the administrative state -- that afford the scions of the rulers plenteous opportunities to order the deplorables around and pat the ruling-class Little Darlings on the butt -- then these scions of the rulers will have to get a job and do something useful rather than something prestigious.
That would be an America worthy of the name, and worthy of the American people, and worthy of our beloved Founders.
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