Education Doesn't Work 2.0 - Freddie deBoer

With so many resources devoted to the business of elite academics and so many people scrambling for the limited space at the top of the ladder, it is worth asking what exactly it is you get in the end—what it is we all get, because the elite students of today, as their institutions never tire of reminding them, are the leaders of tomorrow.

In fact, international research that studied thousands of workers—more than three-quarters of whom did not have tertiary education—produced findings that resonate with a major theme of the book: that sometimes the actions that provide a head start will undermine long-term development, whether that is choosing a career or a course of study, or simpl... See more

Schools were built for a static industrial age. The education system assumed that the outcomes you wanted to produce were clear and you could harness massive scale to train students, factory style.

If aristocratic tutoring were a significant factor behind declining genius, we would expect to see a split: fields like science where tutoring is rare would lose their geniuses, whereas fields like music where tutoring is common would be as genius-filled as ever. But people use music as a typical example of a declining-genius field. So that can’t b... See more