Is Education the Answer to Social Mobility?

[@Thezuule1]

Ask a generation of people with bachelors degrees working as waiters and cashiers.

[@t3mpl3guardian]

I agree. A good education will not guarantee a job that doesn't exist. A world view based on Atlas Shrugged is one that creates an environment where people simply hoard money instead of investing it into future generations. What good is money if it's all just sitting in a building? What good is food if it's just sitting in a building. What we view as security is just a fancy way to describe stagnation.

[@medithiful]

I like the first speaker more. She acknowledges the part education has in mobility, and the part inequality plays in it. We are not solely the fruit of ourselves, we are the mixture of environment and personal decisions.

[@t3mpl3guardian]

Maybe we should ask the question "What is it about society that creates the atmosphere where the kids who refrain from eating the marshmallow become successful people?" We have this social schizophrenia where we use impulsiveness to drive our overall economic success, but that same impulsiveness prevents people from from contributing directly to that economic success. Our system is a tree chopping at its own roots.

[@Rex1987]

thats very true. there a very big focus on upward social mobility. and very litte on downward social mobility.

[@Kojak7snap]

Not everybody has the drive to gain information needed to be an effective autodidact, and effective autodidacts often suffer socially. I say this as someone who is quite happy with my own autodidactism, but aware of its limits.

[@mdgqTube]

Great comments so far. Focus on quality parenting and teaching - independently of schools!

[@lkuzmanov]

great teachers who care make all the difference? you don't say. now, describe how you're going to pull that talent from the market into the school system and I'll be truly amazed.

[@DiaryOfAWolf]

This discussion misses an incredible opportunity: Our knowledge of the human mind and human development has made great strides. Curiously, we have not applied our knowledge to education. Education can and should be pursued as a science, related to psychology but very specific. Immaturity of any aspect of human potential is a disease. It is therefore only natural that psychologists be tasked with education, as unfufilled potential is disease and only psychology can effectively cure society.

[@giac01]

Somebody watched the Ken Robinson lecture?

[@sucraloss]

We need to reform the education system entirely, it's based upon Age of Enlightenment ideals and the Industrial Revolution. We need to change it so people work co-operatively more, encourage creativity and having more than 1 solution to a problem, and to have grade levels K-12 to be less dependent on age, and rather be based around academic achievement in particular fields.

[@andrelot]

To some extent that might happen, however children are also developing in all senses, and mixing up 8 years old with 12 years old because they have the same academic mastery also brings its own problems.

[@DiaryOfAWolf]

Objectivity is not a myth. How can you even suggest such a thing? Objectivity may be missing from our society; but that is only because hardly any human achieves their potential. Achieve your potential and you cannot help but be objective. How do I know? Because I am completely objective. It's what comes from achieving potential of moral reasoning - universal ethics.

[@templar2016]

More funding hasn’t increased test scores. Cig city urban schools that educate the poor spend more money per student than affluent suburban schools. More money per student has no discernable effect on test scores. The difference between rich and poor is personal responsibility for academic and life success. Poor parents turn education over to “the state” and think its “the system’s” problem. A sense of personal accountability and self determination is the key.

[@fullfist]

keeping students in school longer = more money for the education industry . the employers are catching on that formal education means less and less proof that the employer will be competent. The schools obviously need to work on returning a sense of confidence in their work by increasing standards. Yes, some will be left behind, but there's no sense in pandering to anyone either help them with a better program or let them go. . if things dont change there'll be no sense in going to school

[@kolo1729]

Cc

[@MarkoKraguljac]

Real education would dissolve social mobility as a concept, as people would find strength to see beyond rat race. People would do what they do best - cooperate. A few lord's (and other entrenched privileged clowns) heads would have to roll (at least politically) but that's a small price. Sanity would prevail. And it shall.

[@jozina1]

Pure objectivity isn't possible.

[@Kojak7snap]

Sycophancy has been with us as long as history.

[@j0hnwi11iams]

How about teaching them that science is the best way of approximating objective truth and that anything less is intrinsically subjective. That will likely disrupt parents plans to fill their children's heads with fairy tales about supernatural beings.

[@Johnywang1]

i dont think education is the key to social mobility. it think its government structure. we need to properly govern corportation and the education system. you have corportations who are stealing money and creating monopolies making millions while doctors and teachers barely make 100,000 (if they even reach that). education fights soo many other problems, but i dont think it fights social mobility, i think that has to do with the government

[@stinkgrinder]

education is the answer to the whole problem lol