[WS:] I am not sure, though, that these are the answers that people want to hear. The prevailing mode of thinking about education in general is what can be characterized as "frat or club mentality:" - if I get admitted to the right club or frat house, the magic door of prosperity will open for me.
This is the driving force behind the push for private education. Yuppie helicopter parents, who have everything planned out for their young, know that the trick of getting to Harvard or Yale is being on the "right track", starting from kindergarten. Hence they push for private education, often on the public dime. The way it works, at least in the DC/Montgomery county area is to have a shrink certify that the kid has some kind of "emotional disability" and place him/her
in a special education program, which entails the following "head-start" benefits: extra time and assistance on standardized tests - which automatically translates into better test scores - and private placement if the lawyer the parent hire can "demonstrate" that public schools do not meet the kid's "special needs." Of course, those who can afford a $30k a year tuition send their kids straight to private schools without trying to milk the public coffers.
Of course, private schools do their part in meeting the market demand by putting together and marketing programs that are more connected to current fads than to any solid body of knowledge. After all, it is all about being on the "right track" in the "right compartment" and having enjoyable experience all the way - while gaining knowledge, if any, is at best incidental to this process.
My un-scientific observations of public and private universities is that the former tend to provide more rigorous instruction whereas the latter aim at marketing themselves providing a more enjoyable and "results-oriented" learning experience (e.g. trendy or "fun" subjects taught by celebrity faculty.) Of course that does not mean that all that public schools teach is serious knowledge and all that private schools teach is marketing gimmicks - it is a mixed bag in both cases - but marketing of "enjoyable results-oriented learning experience" tends to play a much pronounced role in private schools.
I have little sympathy for people who fall for this marketing of private education crap and then cannot find a job that pays their bills. They made an expensive bet and they lost - even though other less risky and less expensive choices were available to them. The main reason why they made those expensive bets is that they wanted to get a "head-start" in a rat race, be better than others - for which they deserve a hearty "fuck you and pay up."
Wojtek
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 9:19 PM, <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> On Mon, October 18, 2010 4:47 pm, Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>> I have to wonder 14k volumes of what? Tech manuals on Adobe's latest
>> media suite? This is called knowledge but there is nothing there.
>
> Such is the madness of for-profit education. Incidentally, many top-notch
> videogame studios have their own podcasts nowadays, and two of the most
> frequent questions from fans are, "(1) how do I get into the gaming biz
> and (2) what art-and-design college do you recommend?"
>
> The studio employees will always answer as follows: (1) if you truly love
> making and playing games, grab the open source tools out there and start
> building your own from scratch, i.e. jump into the gaming community; and
> (2) it's not about skills, it's about perspectives -- the tools are always
> changing anyway, so get the broadest, most cosmopolitan, mind-expanding
> liberal arts education you can find.
>
> In short, do the exact opposite of what the neolib education model
> prescribes.
>
> -- DRR
>
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