I don’t like the vision. I consider schooling in its modern form (I’m not from the US but I doubt it’s much different over there) to be mostly a waste of time. And this makes me dislike the presented vision of the future because under the layers of technological gimmickery it seems like a call to heap on more pointlessness.
It’s not stated explicitly in the article—the system could be coupled with an useful educational program, one that would teach a small amount of universally useful knowledge and give a good starting point to specialize. But the hints scattered throughout, like the part about forcing everyone to learn 3 foreign languages fluently by the age of 16 or the part about the “mindless games of today” disappearing completely because no one has time to play them, make me fill in the blanks with gloomy visions of children laboring to gain absurdly high amounts of knowledge that someone has deemed right and proper for any ‘respectable’ citizen. And the point system would render the old and tried strategy of cramming like crazy, passing the test and forgetting it unworkable. They would be forced to actually master all of that crap.
Like gwern, I suspect it’s about status. But not only the languages part. All of it. Today status is tied to education level. People who expend more effort end up higher on the social ladder. But social inequality is bad, so why not have everyone expend extreme amounts of effort? That way everyone will be impressive and shiny and thus happy, right?
(Also, about the “mindless games” disappearing, I wonder if the author isn’t aware that adults can play computer games too, or is it simply that the envisioned transformation into workaholics happened across all demographic strata.)
I don’t like the vision. I consider schooling in its modern form (I’m not from the US but I doubt it’s much different over there) to be mostly a waste of time. And this makes me dislike the presented vision of the future because under the layers of technological gimmickery it seems like a call to heap on more pointlessness.
It’s not stated explicitly in the article—the system could be coupled with an useful educational program, one that would teach a small amount of universally useful knowledge and give a good starting point to specialize. But the hints scattered throughout, like the part about forcing everyone to learn 3 foreign languages fluently by the age of 16 or the part about the “mindless games of today” disappearing completely because no one has time to play them, make me fill in the blanks with gloomy visions of children laboring to gain absurdly high amounts of knowledge that someone has deemed right and proper for any ‘respectable’ citizen. And the point system would render the old and tried strategy of cramming like crazy, passing the test and forgetting it unworkable. They would be forced to actually master all of that crap.
Like gwern, I suspect it’s about status. But not only the languages part. All of it. Today status is tied to education level. People who expend more effort end up higher on the social ladder. But social inequality is bad, so why not have everyone expend extreme amounts of effort? That way everyone will be impressive and shiny and thus happy, right?
(Also, about the “mindless games” disappearing, I wonder if the author isn’t aware that adults can play computer games too, or is it simply that the envisioned transformation into workaholics happened across all demographic strata.)