> We had a mandatory home economics class that taught how to balance a check book, cook, do laundry, and even how taxes worked. Yet people still thought that class was bullshit and a waste of time.
Sounds about right. This author is talking about whether the kids think the material is important as if kids have good judgement and can be trusted. But that obviously is not the case. Kids are overconfident and ignorant and have no basis at all to determine what is and isn't good learning for them.
> how taxes worked
Given that I worked with people well before the advent of LLMs who had no idea how marginal tax rates worked, it seems like we should be more aggressively pursuing this as an educational goal.
Last I checked only about half of US adults understand how marginal income tax rates work.
But how will they ever know that if they don’t go through the process? I am not saying the current way of teaching is perfect but you can’t tell what is and isn’t bullshit without some experience at some point.
We had a mandatory home economics class that taught how to balance a check book, cook, do laundry, and even how taxes worked. Yet people still thought that class was bullshit and a waste of time. Many classes such as health, gym, shop, a/v, typing, all had people blowing it off as useless stuff they will never need to know. ChatGPT turning every class into that is a nightmare future for the youth of the world. People will grow up entirely unable to think.