parrhesia.substack.com
SS: Americans are rather ignorant about history. Moral reasoning by historical analogy is bad. Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions. These facts suggest that the utility of history courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Math Classes Are Mostly Useless
Americans are rather ignorant about math. Folk reasoning by math is usually bad - many common fallacies are based on math. Using math poorly can be misleading for making predictions - naive application of math is responsible for many ponzi schemes and lost investments. These facts suggest that the utility of math courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.
--
Even if they're useless for 80% of the population, and 10% of the population will learn it anyway, math/literature forced-education of some sort potentially causes a lot of people to make better decisions / be smarter / more productive than they otherwise would. Even if the right move is to filter most of the population out of history/math classes, and only keep 10-20% in ... that's still a very different message than 'history classes are useless'.
not that i'm a fan of schools or education!
This makes my argument look worse because it changes a word in my premise. But changing a word drastically alters the argument. For example:
Article:
Title: Eating animals is wrong
Subtitle: Animals are in inhumane conditions. Animals suffer a lot! Do not eat them.
Comment:
Eating plants is wrong
Plants are in inhumane conditions. Plants suffer a lot! Do not eat them.
Obviously, you cannot refute my argument by changing the meaning/words in the argument.
I did not say 'history classes are useless.' I said "history classes are mostly useless."
I actually endorse the animals/plants comparison because suffering is only bad in that it is absence-of-goodness, or deprival of goodness or ability of some sort - not-killing-animals by replacing them with plants causes the animals to not ever exist, which is transparently worse than existing and dying, whether that death is by human or natural hands. So the suffering you're preventing is just the animal's knowledge of its terrible situation and untimely end, which isn't made better by not living at all. Plants suffer too - they have 'pain responses' and attempt to avoid death and deprival - but their suffering is manifestly less because of their lesser capability.
My point was that even if only a small minority of students get something out of history, it's still worth teaching, and the same is true of math. And maybe the math and history rub off a bit on the students who mostly aren't getting anything out of it. Now, as an entirely separate educational issue, and this is much of why most math and history education is pointless - students are taught both history and math in a way totally detached from any practical use by the student, the student can't even act out miniature versions of historical lessons in their own goals or trials because there are none other than 'do what the teacher says to do' homework assignments, and sports or video games, neither of which even attempt to replicate the complexity of human organization or technical development. So nobody is actually learning how to govern a country, or even how to run a furniture factory or improve a product for one's own use - what does one even use of one's own making? Kids should be making real products and having real political struggles - real in the sense they have complex, organic ties to output or real goals - in miniature.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link