A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
This may not be a popular opinion but I personally reject the belief that universities have a monopoly on education. In fact I think most are designed to create a more compliant employee.
That said libraries are free, piracy is free, YouTube hosts millions of lectures by experts in their field and can be downloaded to watch or listen offline. I personally have spent the past couple years learning about the affects of US imperialism and haven’t spent a cent on it
I think most are designed to create a more compliant employee.
Thus is exactly it. The diploma is proof that you're willing to play the game and become a debtor and can be squeezed - HARD - because of it.
free education on your own time only works to a point, when it starts needing a structured more advanced understanding of the subject. thats exclusive to universities, such as thing that requires wet lab work, essay writing,,,etc and also mathematics.
coding and computer programming you can do on your own, but an engineer , you would need hands on training.
There are all sorts of classes available at top schools via opencourseware. You can take the highest tier courses that the US has to offer, and become educated. While not degree offering, it still would look great on a CV, if you can somehow prove you did the work.
Free books. A few years ago, I read a free electrical engineering book available on the internet, which I found fascinating. It has been a little helpful in practice as well, but I think it’s just cool to know how capacitors and motors work. Public libraries exist for a reason. Gutenberg is another option.
Many 2 year community colleges are now free tuition if you reside in the state.
And of course, there are still ways to get a degree cheap, if the paper is important to you. I finally landed at WGU 15 years ago and it was very reasonable, and has paid dividends on my original investment.
To be fair a lot of college graduates learn very little.
Khan Academy is also free and amazing. It's possible with free YouTube and KA to learn nearly any subject you desire.
Formal education isn't for education but for the formal paper. There is so much information on the web, just learn from that. Also, libraries often times have material other than physical books
Hello, if you would please refer to "Wage labour and capital":
We have just seen how the fluctuation of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production.
...
What, then, is the cost of production of labour-power?
It is the cost required for the maintenance of the labourer as a labourer, and for his education and training as a labourer.
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Thus, the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage, like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual, but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate themselves; but the wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations, to this minimum.
The price of education can only fall once the supply of laborer requiring said education falls below the demand of such laborers and, consequently, the price of their labor power rises above the cost of creating this labor power. The (even more) bad news is:
But the productive forces of labour is increased above all by a greater division of labour and by a more general introduction and constant improvement of machinery. The larger the army of workers among whom the labour is subdivided, the more gigantic the scale upon which machinery is introduced, the more in proportion does the cost of production decrease, the more fruitful is the labour.
...
Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production.
Essentially, because it takes labor to create educational material. Unless you own slaves labor isn't free. And in fact with the modern library and Internet access I'd argue self educating is more accessible than ever in history.
The only cost to an education or learning about subjects, ideas and people these days is the cost in TIME, NUTRITION AND EFFORT
Sure you can spend tens of thousands of dollars and go to university, college or whatever institution for a whole bunch of years and learn a bunch of stuff. Or you can just take the time to read a bunch of books, study them, learn from them on your own time.
I never had the opportunity to attend post secondary school ... I read, I write on my own and do things on my own. I'm not the smartest person but I've surprised my more educated friends and family in my ability to know a lot about many things. I've also traveled the world to many countries and in each country I visited, I took the time to read about it's history, read books from there and learn as much as I could about it all. I also enjoy learning about the latest technologies, so I've learned to tear apart computers, put them back together, install, uninstall, reinstall an OS and just generally play around with computer systems often. I have friends who are teachers and nurses with qualification in many things and lots of education, yet they come to me to fix their computers and they're surprised when I can talk to them about most subjects about history, politics, travel, countries, science, technology and many other things.
I hate to say it because it sounds stupid ... but having an education these days often doesn't amount to much. Unless you have a well defined goal as to what you want to do and you have a lot money, resources and support, you get to become a well rounded, educated, knowledgeable and capable individual. Otherwise, the majority of post secondary educated people I've seen are just people collected certifications and diplomas to add to a collection and don't really gain much of an education in anything valuable.
Read, read books, read all kinds of things and read often ... it's probably the biggest thing they get people to do in higher education. There is so much content out there that is freely available. Read, watch and listen to lectures that are freely available in all sorts of sites and made by actual highly educated and knowledgeable professors and professionals. Find those free resources that are vetted, recommended by people you trust.
The other part of the equation I honestly believe is nutrition. Eat properly and eat enough of the right things. My mom literally raised us on oatmeal every morning. I grew up with kids who ate sugar pops or nothing at all and the majority of them didn't end up with a good life path. Then we seldom had processed foods as mom and dad were hunters and trappers that fed us a steady diet of wild meat and especially fresh fish. We're Indigenous so a lot of our diet was from the land ... we were poor and didn't get to eat much but the food we ate was highly natural and nutritious. Eat enough good natural food, enough protein and fats, exercise, walk and train if you are young and capable and all that nutrition and blood pumping will get you to learn more, faster and retain things longer. The younger you do all this, the better it is because the older you become, the harder it is to do anything.
Obtaining education doesn't increase your intelligence.
It doesn't. It costs money to get the diploma that's proof of your smarts. The Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz didn't actually get a brain, he got a diploma.
My son is a committed cinephile, and has systematically watched nearly every movie ever made, in any country, in any era ( it seems). He's an expert, by anyone's estimation. He just started back to college for a degree in Film Studies, because while he has the knowledge, in order to get a job teaching film, or working in an archive, etc., he needs the degree.
So you aren't buying the knowledge, any person who makes a serious commitment can get the knowledge, you are paying for an organization ( a school) to endorse your knowledge. Kind of a Certificate of Authenticity for your intelligence.
It doesn't cost money to get smarter.
It costs money to get a piece of paper from old, decrepit, incompetent assholes who once got pieces of paper from older, decrepiter, incompetenter assholes.
Take it from a man who dropped out of three colleges after a collective ten semesters: A college degree in most majors is a certificate of bullshit satthroughedness, not a mark of intelligence. Take it from a man who made a 97% on the FAA's Fundamentals of Instruction test and whose flight students have NEVER ONCE failed a test he's endorsed them for: Most of the college professors I've met couldn't teach a cat to meow. A rare few of them could teach a fish to bark. And "tenure" is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of outside of the Republican National Convention.
In the words of Samuel Clemens, "I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Go to the library and read. Read books, read scientific journals, don't read white papers, they're journalism-shaped marketing. And above all: Try shit.
Where im from we have libraries and the internet. Now getting job skills. that is a tough one.
Honestly you can't even buy an education outside of some technical fields needed in the economy. The only way to really become educated is to be a life long enjoyer of knowledge across many domains. There is almost no educated people left anymore since all of that has gone to the way side to make room for authoritarianism and orwellianism. Economics is a great example. Go to the most prestigious schools in the U.S and you will not learn even the most basic principles and facts of economics. Law is the same. You will not learn law as it actually is, but this totalitarian mindrot version of law.
gatekeeping