My grandfather and uncle were mechanics...

I am not, in fact my understanding of mechanics is extremely basic.

If I go back into my family tree, I can find three generations of Sugar House Labourers in Scotland in the early 1800s.. a profession that no longer exists in the UK as far as I can tell, and I'm certain they had a specialisation.

We'll be fine, your children aren't you, they'll find their own passions.

Our jobs as parents is to teach values and make sure they're good people and have the tools to make good decisions too, not to set them on a particular path... that's a losing goal, we can't tell the future for the next year- how could we possibly predict what works well 20 years from now?

> Spaceship Earth – we’re all in this together; let’s take care of each other and our planet

> The American Experiment – let’s revive our sense of wonder, curiosity, and responsibility about what America is and can be

> The World Makers – as a student of McLuhan, Postman would be remiss if he didn’t invite students to make the tools and narratives that thereafter make us

These memes make me nostalgic for the pre-9/11 era. I remember being taught to consider myself as a “citizen of the world.” That seems exceedingly quaint now.

Gates had excellent grades and was credited in an academic paper during his undergraduate years. Not exactly like the average dropout.

> "Now that I think of it, apparently Einstein was a mediocre student, but his contributions to science were his way out. "

That's a myth. Einstein got top grades in science and mathematics.

As for the original question, "If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.", incorrectly attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Without clear goalposts, external accountability, and support, self paced learning feels like running in a desert. You just end up going in circles. That’s exactly why MOOCs never worked for me, nor for thousands of others.

I'm in the same boat as the author, have four kids and I struggle with keeping them motivated and this has been my anchor so far.

“Teach them to create more happiness than they destroy, for others as much as themselves. For we are a finite planet, with nowhere else to go, and thus we all have an obligation to make this sole home the best and happiest place it can be.”

It’s to not bet that tomorrow’s solution might solve today’s problems, but to fix them as they arise. It’s cleaning up your own messes rather than relying on others to clean up after you. It’s not self-sufficiency, but planetary sufficiency, and navigating the impossibly complex systems that influence and impact those outcomes.

Let the children choose their specifics, and connect them with educators and mentors who will nurture their unique learning styles and growth patterns to full blossom. Otherwise, teach them that there is a finite amount of happiness on this planet, and we must do our best to ensure there’s always enough to go around for everyone.

Partially agreed.

Whatever we teach today will be solved or obsolete tomorrow anyway. In fact, in school we learn methods that are never used in real life anyway. So the "what" is not fully the point.

It's how we teach it and what the point of it. The point of it is to teach how to learn things, how to practice, how to become experts, how to struggle with them and persevere eventually. It is not a sort of an exercise for our minds, but it is exactly an exercise for our minds. That's the point.

The "what" matters in that it is a foundation of knowledge upon which future knowledge and understanding is built.

So, I agree with the spirit of the argument but it is a bit more nuanced.

>become a good citizen

>make the world better

That's basically the whole game right there. Or as Hillel might say, the rest is commentary.

That seems pretty good. I might add "curious" and "skeptical."

That's less Mcluhan and more Foucault.

I disagree here that agentic AI somehow replaces the need for humans to be resourceful. LLMs and their harnesses are just more resources for humans to use to uncover and solve problems, and resourcefulness is more important than ever for navigating a world increasingly riddled with slop (of the AI-generated variety or otherwise) and enshittification. A properly-functioning education system should absolutely emphasize resourcefulness as the primary skill to teach students, even (especially!) in the post-AI world.

Nope, ship sailed. You haven’t had a child in school yet. It’s not like that anymore.

5 years ago in Palo Alto (Paly High) it was: Take your shoes off, get on your phone to watch a season of whatever you want, leave for “up to” 40 minutes. Paying attention to a teacher… who may have been teaching? or not? Why not just head over to the wellness center and get snacks? They let you hang out there.

Those IN CHARGE didn’t care to make learning matter or be rewarding. With AI, it “matters” less, in the credential-sense of schooling.

Institutions are meh. My bet is on individuals.

Not necessarily stuff like hunting and dismembering animals... but basic trades skills go a loooong way. Being able to do basic wiring tasks without ending up like the "how did you know my nephew's home burnt down" meme, woodworking, metalworking, painting, plumbing, maybe some basic car maintenance like changing tires, checking important stuff such as tire depth, tire pressure, operating fluids... soooooooooo many young people have zero skills in manual labor and have to call in tradespeople for everything.

That and how to find solutions for problems using Google are the most important skills my father taught me, and that is what I plan on teaching my children one day.

The US has somewhat stepped out (been forced out of the arbiter role, frankly, much to everyone's delight) and this was supposedly going to be bad for the US since "everybody else will step in and get the goodwill the US gives up" ... and it's pretty clear now that in reality nobody stepped in and the animus to step in is at an all-time low and dropping further. It has to get a lot worse before we'll even consider (spending the money) to make it better again.

And, no worries! The EU will save us! Or so they claim ... what they mean is they will use economic sanctions to fix things! (They're "free", as don't require budget allocations and so no political conflicts, and very useful for political corruption). Except of course free is between quotes because there is a reason every economist hates them: they are in fact more expensive than just about anything else. But no budget line item!

Oh, in negotiation theory I'm of the opinion that economic sanctions cause wars rather than solve them. Wars are started because one party feels they can improve their economic situation through physical conquest. Add sanctions and there's two options: give in to sanctions (which means you have lost the war, and so have to give up anything the sanctioning side wants, or they'll just sanction you again), or win the war (which will give the opposing side no choice but to give up sanctions, since there's nothing to be gained anymore, and the sanctions will hurt them too). Obviously this means it's not just dictators that will react to sanctions with aggression, everybody will. There's even the problem that they may generate the worst possible outcome. Situation: 2 parties are at war. Someone imposes economic sanctions "to help", but sanctions inevitably also hurt others. Shortly afterwards 5 parties are at war. Oh, and historically economic sanctions have caused far more wars than they have solved, and have in fact dragged more countries into wars they initially didn't participate in.

So that's what the world has decided to do (not the US, in fact I would argue the US was the party that had the least to do with this decision, because the US absolutely didn't choose to lose it's overwhelming economic and military advantage, everyone else very slowly took it away without taking over security. Deciding, in fact, again and again and again, to let security slip further. This was not "a slippery slope", but governments worldwide taking vote after vote after vote to never do anything about an aggressor, time and time again. But, of course, this is not how it will be presented in the press)

Anyway back to why doctor would be good:

1) lots of them will be necessary since obviously lots of countries will be free to wage war on one another without having to face the US as well and so ... they will wage war on one another

You know, what the UN GA, and the "non-aligned movement" have worked for, for decades now. I feel like someone should walk into that meeting, smile like doctor Strange did at the end of that movie, and point out the obvious to these delegates that finally got what they wanted for decades: "Congratulations! You just got everything you ever wanted. You're NOT going to like it!"

2) the rest of the world will get more and more entangled with specific conflicts (Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, no doubt dozens of conflicts that probably have already started but they're not on the news constantly yet ...) and will feel the necessity to "interfere", which will bring loads of countries into one war or another

This will be especially true since those countries that have started small wars are where our raw materials are mined (you know, what we absolutely positively cannot do without).

3) doctors don't have to fight, even an army in a desperate situation would be mad to send doctors to the front

4) not only do they not have to fight, BOTH sides actively avoid attacking doctors. Even hamas has shown consideration for Jewish medical facilities in their attacks.

5) oh and doctors are both an absolute necessity and the ultimate luxury in one neat package, so doctors do well during economic disaster periods AND during periods where things go well

6) it's actually hard to be a doctor, so there won't be excessive competition and your kid will actually learn a lot

7) anything a doctor does is good. It a very morally unambiguous profession, and lots of people will be forced to make questionable choices in the next decades ... and doctors have the moral luxury that they simply will do their best to minimize the impact of those decisions on actual living humans. That impact will be horrible, obviously, but a doctor can actually help

But this question is tripped up in the idea of work being one's only value. If programming by humans were made illegal tomorrow, what would Steve Krouse do for work? How would he find a path forward? Who would he turn to for advice? How would he build community to this new goal?

If it's not clear, thinking about this is what to teach a child. Even in the end of the article we sort of elide the importance of teaching others to act with grace and reflection, but what more significant thing can you share with the next generation?

What happened to religion? Last I checked it was doing well.

> We typically confuse why something claims it exists, ie to glorify God, vs the forces that actually perpetuate it, which are subtler, we’d prefer not spoken aloud, and more prosaic, ie endowments, prestige, and needing someone to watch one’s kids.

We typically confuse that that particular confusion is the thing. God is the model's weights running on the distributed computer that we form collectively with our brains and whose running realization we call "society." The Christians (which are superb at sleazing their way around the irrefutable lack of supernatural divinity) call it "concursus dei". Considering that in some parts of the world people consistently elect whoever looks more like a radical God-GPU-node, I would say this particular one among our "dī" is still firmly at the helm.