恶人谷

The older I get, the stronger my suspicion grows, that every piece of useful knowledge and skill I have, I certainly did not learn in school. It's a gut feeling that I have not thought about enough to articulate. Now I don't need to. I strongly recommend this video by a physicist and lecturer "Dr. Tae," aka Yung Tae Kim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVTtla_JUTU

The video is also posted on his Web site:
http://drtae.org/

Another pretty interesting talk about why schools are not only useless but potentially harmful by Ken Robinson on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_r ... ivity.html

(Robinson is identified as a "creativity expert". Not sure what that means, which is probably a good thing. )

We all know that you won't learn so much in school. But you need to have a diploma to get a job in the real world, unless you have a business of your own. Our education path is a pre-qualifying system which make it easy for the HR and managers.

我隔三差五地上来鼓吹一下教育无用论---注意不是读书无用论---并非真的以为有人会因为看了这些言论而辍学不上了。即使教育并非无用，即使你不同意我的立场，上面引用的两个视频也是很有意思的（而且它们也并不是宣扬教育无用），值得听一听。这个话题其实是关于好几个值得考虑的话题：接受和欣赏人与人的天赋差异，拒绝崇拜随大流与统一价值观，人脑天然的学习方法与机制，对秩序与权威的healthy skepticism。

对于教育系统保持一定skepticism，对一切普遍拥护与宣扬的assumptions和信念保持一定skepticism，我觉得对人对己对后代都有很大的好处。独立思考与判断，不仅是一种能力，更是一种生活态度。教育的目的有时候简直就象要把人弄蠢弄呆，真正有点出息的都是读了圣贤书但一点也不买账的少数人。

名校高材生和权威，毫无能力毫无见识毫无本事不仅无能而且添乱的例子，我见得多了去了，因其名校镀金，屁股后自动跟了一堆仰慕盲信者，不仅无益而且贻害深远。读书读得太多而脑子变僵变傻的不限于高材生自己，还有过分信仰这一套群众和社会。

对教育系统存些skepticism，至少可以帮人多几分欣赏和尊重“体制外”的天赋与才能，而不是把僵化的价值系统直接装进自己脑子里，唯文凭学历识人。

我朋友在脸书上参加了unschooling community，因此也常转摘类似的文章。好像这群人也经常有conference什么的，大力推广他们的理念，最近还有不上学的青少年现身说法的小录像。

学校呢，我觉得基本是个看孩子的地方；大学更是为了控制就业市场的supply, 暂时圈着年轻人。