Post #110877
October 19, 2017, 06:15:04 AM
There are so many things that should be compulsory for students that they'd spend 16 hours a day in school and wouldn't get out until they're 30.
We have a complex society and navigating it skilfully takes a lot of knowledge. Proof of that is that generally smart people will still fall for ridiculous bullcrap or hold wack positions without any basis in reality. Think of the people you know who are usually reasonable, except they're anti-vaxxers, for instance. Or the really smart people who are gullible as all get out. We all fall for stupid crap designed to appeal to our vulnerabilities. I know that when I see something priced at $6.99 I have to stop myself from thinking of it as 6 bucks when it's really 7. I know that, you know that, but we still get caught if we're not vigilant.
Everyone should learn mental judo, to convince and resist being manipulated, but everyone should also learn the basics of our legal and political systems, they should have a more rigorous scientific education, they should learn home economics and the basics of the economics system, they should learn philosophy, they should learn programming, they should learn multiple languages and they should learn to read their mother tongue better because a huge segment of the population is functionally illiterate and we should let little boys run around and get spent, else they don't learn as well as little girls.
At some point it's up to each of us to arm ourselves and prepare for a life in an environment that doesn't really want anything out of us but our time, productive years and money. You can't fully rely on compulsory education for that.