---jtr1962--- Formal education produces no appreciable boost in intelligence when measured by way of non-culturally specific tests. It's been put to bed.
Because it's not meant to. The purpose of education is to let you maximize the potential of whatever intelligence you're born with. Obviously the often touted mantra that anyone can be a doctor or engineer is BS as most lack the intelligence for it. But a decent education helps you become the most you can be. Granted, it's far from the only factor, but it's one of the most important ones.
Nor have I ever esteemed the collegiate practice of rote memorization and regurgitation followed by low retention.
That's more like what you do in grade school. By the time you get to higher education you're being taught to think and reason, not just memorize pointless facts. The latter is even less important in this day and age where you can look up anything online, hence no need to fill your brain with a bunch of useless trivia.
I also don't care if my chiropractor, mechanic or dog sitter know the elevation of Buenos Aires or Planck's constant.
No, but I assume you care that they're educated in whatever service they're offering you. I wouldn't want to go to a doctor whose education is solely from WebMD.
Pride in unrelated, arbitrary courses of study is as impressive as owning a library card. At least a library card doesn't come with indoctrination and crippling generational debt.
How many people go around all their lives bragging about the courses they took in college? And the indoctrination part* doesn't apply to many courses of study. I personally favor more people getting STEM degrees. We need that, plus it's mostly useless liberal arts courses which may resort to indoctrination. As for crippling debt, I firmly believe student loans shouldn't exist because they're the very definition of predatory lending. You should have whatever level of education you merit fully paid for. "Merit" means keeping up a minimum GPA. It's in society's best interest to maximize the potential of everyone. For some that means paying for school through a PhD. For others it may mean paying for trade school. Regardless, education shouldn't be something you're forced to go heavily in debt for. Nearly every other first world country does exactly what I said. The US is one of the most properous countries on Earth. We can certainly afford it.
* Since you bought up indoctrination, it's funny how some of the same people complaining about schools indoctrinating their children are OK with religious indoctrination which shoves it down their throats whether they want it or not. At least attempted indoctrination in college can be better resisted by the nearly adult brains of college students. Children are very prone to brainwashing of all types. I'd rather just stick to basic academic education for children. No talking about gender identity OR religion. When they become adults they can learn about those subjects if they wish.
Point being I do not believe formal education is the stairway to heaven as it was sold to my generation.
The message was distorted. Instead of being a place where you learn to think, college was sold as an "investment". The payoff was supposedly a higher paying job. Unfortunately, that ignores the basic rules of supply and demand. More supply of something, in this case college graduates, the less that degree is worth. The colleges were happy to go along with this given the money fountain from government in the form of student loans. Perhaps we should have held these colleges to their promises. If they fail to find that well-paying job for a graduate by a certain time frame, the college is on the hook for the student loan, not the student. At least it would make them get rid of useless majors and stop turning campuses into luxury resorts. I remember my dorm in college was basic, and we all shared a bathroom/shower. This was in Princeton. Nowadays even low tier colleges are offering dorms with private bathrooms, pools, spas, etc. The lifestyle is being sold more than the education.
I am far my convinced the morality and stability of the traditional family unit is every society's catapult but that's another discussion.
I don't disagree but it's merely one of many factors.
I will leave you with this, we are more intelligent and more advanced than ever... where's the utopia?
Because we're not more intelligent and advanced than ever. The very fact a poor person has to borrow heavily for education means many who would benefit from it decide against it. They don't want to go into debt. I can't blame them. I might have gone a lot further had I gone to graduate school but as it was the debt load I was carrying just to get my BSE scared the sh*t out of me. I wasn't about to double or triple it. The downside of loans instead of grants is we have a large and growing uneducated/undereducated population. Add to that certain factions who actually glorify ignorance. When I was in school this wasn't the case. Most people agreed an education was good. But even then we were replacing grants/scholarships with loans. Bad move.
As for "utopia", maybe a good start to heading that way is to stop glorifying corporate profits and the accumulation of massive wealth over all else. Then there's also the ownership concept, where entities claim ownership over the planet's resources. That needs to go. The resources of the planet belong to nobody and everybody.
