Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Comic: the value of knowledge


Schools are respected institutions because people believe they teach valuable knowledge to our children. However, the value of knowledge is subjective. While schools do communicate a lot of information, it is questionable whether a student will find any use in knowing these at all. Quite often, students will pursue enjoyable activities they can put to direct use much more productively and successfully than what they are forced to do at school. Still, these private activities tend to be considered less important than random school knowledge. That's a bad incentive structure which may delay the accumulation of worthwhile knowledge far too long.

(source: xkcd)

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