Conversation

The universe lets you learn until it doesn’t, but it basically never attempts to train you. There is no training set for life. There is no such thing as being house-trained to the universe. You can either choose to feel at home in it or not. You’ll eventually die either way.
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If you’re being trained somewhere, you’re also being untrained elsewhere. If you have a teacher for X, you also have an unteacher for not-X. If you’re being being prepared for X you’re being de-prepared for not-X. No free lunch.
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Pedagogical skills aside, teachers aren’t good or bad, I have no strong feelings for/against schooling as an institution. Teachers and schools are just bets on your future, like stocks. They’re just more or less efficient at the training they attempt. That’s like commissions.
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But there’s a cost to training that is always a net loss: to the extent you must surrender, letting others choose your path, your initiative, sense of agency, confidence, boldness etc. all atrophy.
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There are two ways training and instruction fail learners: they train you to bad bets (trained for X in a future of not-X) or the exact too high a cost in terms of initiative atrophy. In my experience the latter is FAR more common.
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The bets are rarely wrong, at least in STEM. You’re just made too passive in the process of placing them. There’s nothing wrong about say the typical stats 101 or calculus 101 class. They don’t teach you wrong things. They just render you passive in the process.
Replying to
I’m not an unschooling or rewilding radical. Just very aware of the costs of schooling, having had perhaps too much of it. Fortunately between the inefficiency of the schooling and my own mediocre engagement, the damage/cost was mitigated to the point I came out ahead overall 😇
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Replying to
This feels like the key to me. The Passivity. School’s just not real engagement with the world. Its kicking the engagement can to some later date.. I like it though lol - probably going to pay for that later.
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