yeah

My impression is that we are currently suffering from this continual pattern of trying to turn students in to factory workers for factories that no longer exist

I'm not feeling this framing from the get-go, your really looking for your educational system to produce good citizens. That is people who can be part of society and bear the responsibilities that go along with that.

So you need to develop skills so they can be productive, and certainly school should lay the groundwork for that

You also need knowledge of how society is structured, so that needs to be taught.

i think the question is how you define better workers

if it's just more skilled workers then sure the schools should go for that

I will disagree with everyone based on the Aristotelian argument that a society is ultimately grounded in shared virtue and that virtue is the root of excellence, so that it's essential for the future citizens of a society to be taught moral values, such as being taught loyalty towards one's friends and neighbors.

but if a better worker is one who keeps their head down and works instead of questioning the system, that's not something the school should go for

I mean

whose morals?

morality is too vague of a term

A society requires that people have basic agreement on the ultimate goods and bads, otherwise they cannot create laws which are universally acceptable. So, the society's morals. It is only because some moral rules are unquestionably accepted that many others can be left up in the air.

which society?

and at what point in time?

Are these morals going to be stagnant, or are they going to develop over time?

Morals are relatively fluid and subjective

That is false

Do we teach stealing is always wrong, or only wrong in certain situations?

There's nuance there, after all

I mean, look at the Heinz dilemma

Also, morals heavily do vary

for example

I can't really, y'know

Own a person right now.

@Alice Redacted Aristotelian virtue isn't a list of rules, it's a list of qualities that a person has. In my view you teach children qualities like wisdom and courage - you don't for the most part tell them exactly what to think.

Slavery, as generally agreed upon, is bad

Today

what's wise? What's courageous?

@Alice Redacted I thought that's fluid and relative?

Wisdom to one might be foolish to another

A few hundred years ago its pretty much universally accepted

Courage to one might be idiocy to another

no a specific action might be courageous to one and idiotic to another

that's what I'm saying

the abstract concept of courage is agreed upon to be good

It's too abstract and has no applicable use

the question is how to apply that fact specifically

kind of like "virtue"

Don't confuse not being able to explain how bread is ultimately constituted with an inability to bake bread

Virtue is too vague of a term to have any real meaning