“Childhood and Education #14: The War On Education” by Zvi

The purported main purpose of school, and even of childhood, is educating children.

Many people are actively opposed to this idea.

Either they have other priorities that matter more, or sometimes they outright think that your child learning things is bad and you should feel bad for wanting that.

Some even say it openly. They actively and openly want to stop your child from learning things, and want to put your child into settings where they will not learn things. And they say that this is good.

Or they simply assert that the primary point of education is as a positional good, where what matters is your relative standing. And then they pretend this doesn’t imply they both should and are going around preventing children from learning.

In other places, we simply epicly fail at education and don’t seem to care. Or education ‘experts’ [...]

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Outline:

(01:07) An Introductory Example

(10:33) Total Failure

(11:35) Partial Failure

(13:38) The War on Algebra

(16:14) The War on Evaluation

(20:00) The War on Reading

(22:37) The War to Enslave Bright Students

(27:17) The War on Ability Grouping

(38:01) The Battle of North Carolina Ability Grouping

(44:01) The War on Reading Ability Grouping In Particular

(52:10) The War Will Continue

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First published:
September 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aGFX5yydKXRC9RFD3/childhood-and-education-14-the-war-on-education

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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