> make education about education, not testing and certification

We tried this. The whole grades-are-racist nonsense movement (in part a reaction to NCLB).

It doesn’t work. Learning requires confronting difficulty and evaluation, even if you’re learning alone. If you want to see what attempting to learn without tests looks like, see people who think they’ve taught themselves a topic by chatting with AI. Nine times out of ten they think they know something but can’t solve actual problems on their own.

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zabzonk 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I have learned a lot about computer programming from reading books and from more experienced programmers. This is what Illich was talking about - give people an allowance and let them spend it as they will, for example on books and mentors, or indeed on classic universities.

> The whole grades-are-racist nonsense.

Wow, swerve off topic. I never mentioned anything like that and I do not want to.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> have learned a lot about computer programming from reading books and from more experienced programmers I like learning from textbooks and others. I would say self testing myself is the difference between reading nonfiction and trying to learn something. > never mentioned anything like that and I do not want to It’s the rhetoric that was used to push back against examination in California and New York. Explicitly. The rhetoric was new, but it was essentially Illich’s ideas. The result was kids in wealthy districts with tutors or with educated parents who valued learning for its own purpose (and had the time and skill to convey that to their kids) did well while those in poorer districts got left behind because absent measurement you have no accountability.