i suspect you are overstating the effects here. just living in the same society as people with education, alot of that exposure to education rubs off. for example, you have hernan cortex (the spanish dude that conquered the entire aztec empire of millions of people). by all accounts, he, himself, was in fact illiterate. but he came from a generally very educated society though. on the other side you had the aztecs, who while they had many cool advancement, but had failed to invent a written language. this put their society generally at a huge disadvantage when they came up against an opponent from an educated society. reading and written language allows us to have exposure to vastly more experiences without having to actually live through each of them, we still gain the benefit from them though.
the point being, is that you look at the aztec king kept falling for the same stupid tricks with cortez. he walked right into several obvious ambushes, and generally was retarded about it. i would subscribe a big part of that to coming from an "uneducated" society.
i think we are alright, and that generally education is a little over emphasized. rather than more education, i would push for better education. classes in high school need to be about how credit works, and how to balance your bank statement. how to find a good apartment. auto maintenance. more civics type stuff. how the criminal justice system works. how your city government works. how to register to vote, and then actually do so. and more vocational type training. getting kids to read shakespear sure sounds nice, but really, what the fuck are you preparing them for? i have no beef with a good, well rounded education, but i think we to be putting much more of a focus back to practical education. i suspect you would see the drop out rate go way down, if you showed the kids who were thinking about dropping out a practical use for education in their lives. most of the kids who are dropping out know that they are not very smart (we are glossing over the minority of very smart but troubled kids that drop out) and know that they are not going to college. they know that they will be working for minimum wage or close to for most of their lives. and i simply does not make any sense to stick around in high school, learning about trigonometry when they could be out making a living. i understand their calculation. i vote for better, not more.
oh and fallopian tubes.
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