Governments used (and still use) education systems as a brain-washing apparatus for kids. Instead of working on projects as proofs of ability, kids are subjected to passive listening, and remembering the understanding of the pre-programmed teacher's and textbooks' input, and this mode of learning kills curiosity. Instead of active mode of learning ("dig (=question), build and explore"), they get the passive mode of learning ("sit (=) watch and listen"), which ultimately leads to loss of curiosity for most kids.

It is not that hard to measure, how curiosity is eliminated at times of first- to-second year studies (the times when kids enter school with much curiosity and hope, and the time when they are subjected to the programs and their limitations): many teachers are a witness of that, and a specialized survey would measurably reveal it.

How this damage repair would work?

- Estimate loss (this would require running a project-based-learning schools, where kids are supported to excel in areas of their interests and dynamically changing directions of their own choosing, to statistically significantly compare life outcomes of a different K- 12, perhaps with focus on communications and outreach approach, whereby kids interests are supported through active outward communications with companies and organizations that have creativity tools and equipment to help kids realize their dreams, and that way short-cutting the social barriers in their self-actualization.)

- Identify cause (if it's rigid governmental education programs, it would be considered that they are the cause, because having ready a specific program for unique individual, is exactly the way to prevent them from non-specific (i.e., creative) exploration.)

- Measure relationship (of loss due to cause, for example, if the kids become much more successful in life than other kids, that followed governmental education programs, then the loss-delta would be attributable to those programs, relative to the said project-based learning schools)

- Assign a price (based on the measured relationship, for example, number of potentially lost prodigies, numbers of potentially lost successful lives),

- Sue governments for the damage (especially, in those, that made where school education with rigid government programs, and required parents have their kids attend, even if kids didn't want to attend them anymore, because they appeared useless in their pursuits.)

With increasing sample size, this kind of lawsuit would become increasingly realistic.
-- Inyuki, Jun 07 2021

Harvard Business Review: "Curiosity Is as Important as Intelligence" https://hbr.org/201...ant-as-intelligence
"CQ stands for curiosity quotient and concerns having a hungry mind. People with higher CQ are more inquisitive and open to new experiences. They find novelty exciting and are quickly bored with routine. They tend to generate many original ideas and are counter-conformist. It has not been as deeply studied as EQ and IQ, but there’s some evidence to suggest it is just as important when it comes to managing complexity in two major ways. (1), individuals with higher CQ are generally more tolerant of ambiguity. This nuanced, sophisticated, subtle thinking style defines the very essence of complexity. (2), CQ leads to higher levels of intellectual investment and knowledge acquisition over time, especially in formal domains of education, such as science and art (note: this is of course different from IQ’s measurement of raw intellectual horsepower). Knowledge and expertise, much like experience, translate complex situations into familiar ones, so CQ is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems." (this article is based on http://drtomascp.com/uploads/HungryMind_PPS_2011.pdf) [Inyuki, Jun 07 2021]

right-to-education.org https://www.right-t...20de%20facto%20ban.
"homeschooling is illegal" in "the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain number amongst these countries, and Sweden’s regulation of homeschooling is so stringent it is perceived as a de facto ban." [Inyuki, Jun 07 2021]

Wikipedia: Homeschooling Status https://en.wikipedi...atus_and_statistics
Map, showing where homeschooling is illegal. [Inyuki, Jun 07 2021]

YouTube: Our Educational System Destroys Curiosity https://www.youtube...watch?v=sMmhUgh9oV0
[Inyuki, Jun 07 2021]

Prior art from 1954 https://en.m.wikipe...ion_and_Personality
It's a scam. I was brought up to believe in it. I no longer do. See also what [bigsleep] said. [pertinax, Jun 09 2021]

What is the unit of curiosity, which you would use for measuring it?
-- pertinax, Jun 07 2021


// What is the unit of curiosity, which you would use for measuring it?

I've added link about the CQ (Curiosity Quotient), it has been defined.

Regarding how I would define it... Curiosity is a complex process, therefore, perhaps it could be properly captured only by observing many features, and running something like principal component analysis to figure out the combinations that are best descriptive of it.

Some of those features would definitely be things like the propensity to hypothesize, ask questions and run experiments to verify hypotheses, building own world model.

Those kids that are shut silent by the education system, tend to have fewer questions, and not actively building world model, but passively getting hypnotized by the ed system narrative.
-- Inyuki, Jun 07 2021


It is noticeable that the Wikipedia page for "Curiosity Quotient" includes the heading "No Viable Test".
-- pertinax, Jun 07 2021


More fundamentally, there's this: experimental schools, of one sort or another, have been around now for several generations. The one thing that most of them have in common is precisely this idea of making each child's education more specific to that child. My father was a product of one such school, and one of my aunts, of another. They both turned out as nice adults - but not conspicuously more successful than other people of their class and generation.

So, if the easily measurable benefit from this kind of education were real, why hasn't it been easily measured already?
-- pertinax, Jun 07 2021


// It is noticeable that the Wikipedia page for "Curiosity Quotient" includes the heading "No Viable Test". //

// why hasn't it been easily measured already? //

[pertinax], I agree that the "Curiosity Quotient" and comparing "Life Outcomes" is a non-trivial measurement problem, however, absence of "viable test" does not equate to "immesurability" (or ability to imagine an approve a test, making it "viable").

// get them out of school and homeschool them [...] //

Actually, there is a number of countries, where homeschooling is made illegal (link).
-- Inyuki, Jun 07 2021


The naturally incurious conformists could counter-sue the brain-washed people, claiming that the original lawsuit reduces their rights and opportunities to be indoctrinated into passivity, thus damaging the natural expression of their incurious nature, and also having knock on effects on the entire economy and society by causing more instability due to an excess of curiosity.
-- pocmloc, Jun 07 2021


// causing more instability due to an excess of curiosity. //

Indeed, possible, and I thought of what would happen, if suddenly, people became much more of the "dig and explore" type, -- it could influence governance quite soon, because of outward communications, just think what would be if everyone were like the character "Young Sheldon", and go contacting the people here and there, creating cognitive stress to the adult-run world... But some stress is good.
-- Inyuki, Jun 07 2021


I think that school has a lot less influence on child development than home. I think most of the really important brain structures and ways of thinking and behaving are developed in the first two or three years of life. All the rest is just growing structures of knowledge and manipulation on top of that.

Surely any child that has got to the age of 5 in a stimulating and supportive household will find their main problem at school to be supressing laughter at the ridiculous things that the "system" presents them with.
-- pocmloc, Jun 07 2021


//Surely any child that has got to the age of 5 in a stimulating and supportive household will find their main problem at school to be suppressing laughter at the ridiculous things that the "system" presents them with.//

Not laughter, rage.
I did not allow the school system to squash my curiosity or creativity but they did succeed in convincing me I was stupid at a young age. I learned... differently than the other kids and was made well aware that nonconformity was a failing in my character.
It wasn't just mental abilities which they actively squashed.
I didn't just learn differently I was also physically different from the norm and that was also used to demoralize.
I remember they used to make us take the Canada Fitness Award Program every year. It was purposly designed to filter out overall athletic ability while destroying the self image of anybody other than the sought for ideal.

I was always incredibly small for my age so in certain events like the flexed arm hang and sit-ups I would get awards-of-excellence. In long distance running I would get a gold medal, (short on legs, but long on endurance), I'd get a few silvers and a few bronze medals in other events.
It was strictly forbidden for a student to exchange excellence medals for gold or gold for silver etc. and you needed so many of any one medal to receive one, so every f#@&ing year I would win a stinking Participation-pin which we had to wear as a visible reminder that we just didn't measure up.

...then it was off to the communal unsupervised showers and the towel whipping.
That made the beatings at home from step-dad easier to take, because basically school was way more terrifying, but I couldn't wait to escape from both equally.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 07 2021


// I think most of the really important brain structures and ways of thinking and behaving are developed in the first two or three years of life. All the rest is just growing structures of knowledge and manipulation on top of that. //

[pocmloc], I think so too, and makes sense, though, I've heard that most of the synaptic pruning occurs by 12 years old, so I think it's a little more streatched (though, from my experience, I would also say, that my most influential years of life were when I was of age of 2-3, and I do remember that well, my primary life goals didn't change since then.)
-- Inyuki, Jun 07 2021


Anybody else read the title and think "Ah, so we're compensating Martians for all the garbage we're leaving on the planet" ?

I keep waiting for the latest US dune buggy to go retrieve the parachute, and bury or sequester it.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 07 2021


[2 fries shy of a happy meal]; sounds like you had it pretty rough. At least you've come out the other side a good bloke.
At least I had the excuse of a physical disability to get me around the PhysEd testing crap.
Something I've never understood is the dichotomy between intellectual elitism and physical elitism. People have no problem worshipping the very ground that sports stars walk on; but as soon as anyone dares suggest that some people are smarter than others, most people get all "you can't say that!". I think it's even getting worse than it was some decades/centuries ago. (eg. Newton & his contemporaries were equivalent to rock-stars. Public talks & shows of experiments were all the rage.)
-- neutrinos_shadow, Jun 07 2021


And this money would come from...? It would seem an undercreative society wouldn't have the economic means to make this work, and it becomes a self-building "stupid tax" as it takes away from resources needed to teach the next generation.

I had a father who was undereducated but a creative type who made a lot of machines and farm implements and taught me the value of curiosity. I also had a step-father who taught me by his bad example of what not to do.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 08 2021


//But how are you today?//

Skeptical. Authority completely earned my mistrust. I wasn't born with it.

Besides that... great. Got the world by the balls. 52 years old, apparently the reflexes of a 19 year old, (according to on-line crap), and the doctors I've allowed to examine me since my first physical exam at 46 keep asking me what I do to stay healthy and keep all of my numbers at the centres of their little height/weight/age charts.
I have a loving family, (though I'll admit I learned a lot about the subject while raising a daughter... mostly from her).
I found a worthwhile project property which has expansion room enough to outlast my ability to fill it in my lifetime and should provide for my great great grand-kids, (if mine are smart enough to hold on to what I sacrificed decades to obtain).
Seriously, If I pull this shit off I will be able to spend my old age learning, inventing, and building tree forts with my little brother.

Life is good...

...but to protect myself enough to get there I had to get a good hard look at the evil in men...

...and then 'not' be that while being raised in it... while 'also' being empathic and intuitive.

...

I ain't normal that's for sure, but I turn negatives into positives, so I'm damn near peachy now.

Bit jumpy maybe, and authority can kiss my ass until it proves itself.

But, yeah... I'm good.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 08 2021


// You, of course. Unless you can convince the mob that you’re as much a victim as any of them. //

And, obviously, it would be unproductive to deprive the high CQ society that remains of generic resources (ordinary money), and let them be consumed by the people of lower CQ, as a damage recovery. The simplistic "money transfer to the affected" lawsuit reasoning wouldn't be very useful to the progress of society.

Therefore, instead, such sourced money would have to go to fund the initiatives to recover the lost CQ assets. After all, human capital is what makes money be well-spent, so before that damage repair can be paid in full, it would make sense to restore the human capital itself (so it can spend that money better).

And, of course there will be other constraints: it may become apparent that applying the same resources to the education of the new generation without the aforementioned flaws, may create more social progress, than trying to apply it directly to recover the damage of the old generation.

In fact, applying the existing resources to the new generation may even be a necessary step to create the very resources needed to recover the CQ damage for the older generation, and that step would have to be a part of such CQ recovery initiatives.
-- Inyuki, Jun 08 2021


//I've never understood is the dichotomy between intellectual elitism and physical elitism. People have no problem worshipping the very ground that sports stars walk on; but as soon as anyone dares suggest that some people are smarter than others, most people get all "you can't say that!". I think it's even getting worse than it was some decades/centuries ago.//

Woah sorry [neutrinos_shadow] I was typing without seeing your post.

It's all part of he Great Dumbing-Down of North America and friends.
As far as I can tell it started with the end of WW2 and fermented with the squashing of Tesla.

The war never ended... it just turned fiscal... and since North America and its politicians are for sale...

...well, here we are.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 09 2021


//The war never ended... it just turned fiscal//
That's brilliant, and I may need to steal it on occasion.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Jun 09 2021


Please do.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 09 2021


It is simpler to hate everyone else and to try and get as much of their money off them as you can.
-- pocmloc, Jun 09 2021


But are you the one that was proud to see them use the computer? And did you buy them the smartphone?
-- pashute, Jun 11 2021



random, halfbakery