I’m a few percentage points into the Kindle version of this and I can tell you the case is already well made that school fails the students and the parents on such a massive scale I struggle to understand why we still have them.
Well, it is a good daycare system.
The issues of the state, the nanny state, the system of education, the unions, the agendas are all there and are all valid, but what really sticks me is the observation that nearly no schools teach for-reals job skills.
Seemingly no schools teach copywriting, e-commerce or entrepreneur skills, or marketing. I got as far as Algebra II and I can tell you I have not algebra-ed since then ever. Not once.
I know, they teach you “how” to think. Nope.
The book illustrates how that actually isn’t so, how nearly no students retain what they’ve learned in a short time frame, and by no means in a long time frame, but more than that, those who are not math majors or require higher math ever used trigonometry or calculus after class.
It is an easy thing to ask why are we still letting the school system fail our kids? I see no reason to think the world of employment will bear anything to the world of work I learned and started in. Yeah, there will always be some fast food chain and food service industry for work, but those are scarce jobs and the pool of employees is much larger than the quantity of jobs. Isn’t the smart thing to do teaching our kids how to be entrepreneurs, how to make and sell items on-line? A transportable income stream, or income streams which can follow Johnny and Sally everywhere? Maine, Seattle, Burma, Japan, Iceland or anywhere they see fit to live, as long as there is electricity and Wifi, they have income. But, that’s getting ahead of the rest of the class.
Buy the book, learn what’s not right and then work with your kids to mend those errors. Education is properly a life long process and what Charlemagne did or ate whenever he did or ate those things really makes no difference in your’s, mine, or your kid’s life. I was visited by a young man seeking employment as the lawn care kid. He was so poor at his presentation, not his fault, that if he had a shovel and I 3 feet of snow I would have passed on his offer. Gumption cannot be taught, but some of the skills of presentation, marketing, fix the pain-point can be taught, and are not. What, then, are they learning, from whom are they learning it (not entrepreneurs) and why not other things? That’s the meat.
Go buy and read. Then fix.
