Do you reject the idea that some people are better at things than others? 99% of people simply can’t learn the same level of mathematics that a pure mathematician does, no matter how hard they try or how competently they’re taught, and then what happens in your system to people who would have been pure mathematicians?

> Do you reject the idea that some people are better at things than others?

No. Of course not.

> 99% of people simply can’t learn the same level of mathematics that a pure mathematician does

Why would this be a requirement for all citizens? Perhaps you misunderstood "demonstrate the same level of mastery". I meant that there would be a specified minimum requirement, though we definitely shouldn't set the bar too low. What I would reject is social promotion, where students get to move along to the next level as long as they have a D grade or higher. This does not demonstrate sufficient understanding of the material taught.

Grades are for ranking. I'm suggesting that we ditch grades and simply demand that everyone learn what we expect them to learn. If students learn more than what's expected, good for them, that's not a problem.

> what happens in your system to people who would have been pure mathematicians

I'm not sure what you mean. How am I preventing people from becoming pure mathematicians?

How do you decide who to filter into the more difficult and faster-paced classes that will prepare someone to be a pure mathematician, other than grades?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "filter into" or at what level or stage of classes you're referring to.

To a large extent, it's self-filtering: who is going to voluntarily take advanced math classes except those who are intered in advanced math?

There are of course larger societal questions of how much schooling is funded by the government and how much needs to be self-funded.

I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but I had to take the Graduate Records Exam in order to get into grad school. But the GRE is not taught or administered by the university, so in that sense it's not part of the educational system. You don't actually have to be in the math department to take an advanced math class, though, and other students may take the classes as part of a PhD minor or just for some other interest.

You need to filter them way before that. Certainly by 16, probably even earlier like 12 or 13, someone destined for a career in STEM will be bored and wasting time by any material that 90% of people are capable of learning.

I still don't know what you mean by "filter". I asked, and you haven't elaborated.

The only thing I can think of is that you (mistakenly) assume that I'm suggesting all students must move at the same pace? But that would be a very weird interpretation of me, since I've already expressed strong criticism of that idea: "Our current educational system is designed like an assembly line, based on age and social promotion. Everyone of the same age is expected to follow the same track."

Sort students into different classes based on their ability and interest.

I have no objection to that, and I don't know why you think I would.

You seem to be assuming that "all students must meet these standards" means that all students must meet these standards at the same age and time, but I never said or implied that.

Right, but how do you filter students, if not by grades? With no grades, how do you know which ones are capable of a more rigorous program? (Similarly, later, how do you know which ones should get into the best universities? And so on)

> Right, but how do you filter students, if not by grades? With no grades, how do you know which ones are capable of a more rigorous program?

The concept here is mastery rather than grades. When a student has mastered a subject, they can move onto more rigorous subjects. If they haven't mastered a subject, then they need to continue studying that subject. When we socially promote students who receive a grade of D, C, or even B, I wonder, what is the student missing? Why are we giving up and moving on just because an arbitrary amount of time has passed? And if the student has failed to completely learn things at the current level, what's going to happen when the student moves on to higher, harder levels? That's a disaster waiting to happen, compounding ignorance over time.

It appears that the "answer" to these questions is that our society cares more about ranking students than it does about educating students. So we allow the education to be incomplete for many or perhaps most students, as long as we already have our ranking from "best" to "worst" (at a given age). This is, in my opinion, an unfortunate consequence of the multiple conflicting purposes of the educational system.

> (Similarly, later, how do you know which ones should get into the best universities? And so on)

I already talked about the GRE, for example, so I don't know why you're still confused about that. (I'm not actually defending the GRE, or the SAT, another standardized test, but there are clearly ways to evaluate people separate from schools and grades.)

I do have some problems with the inequality of opportunities implied by "the best universities", but that's a whole other discussion. I've already mentioned that the conflicting purposes of the educational system extend to the college level too, are arguably even worse at that level. Think back to the very first quote I posted, from the A.I. cheater for whom the point of an Ivy League university was not to receive an education but to make the right social connections. How is academic achievement even relevant there? To me, this is a sign that the current system is fundamentally broken.

> why you think the educational system needs to be part of the social ladder.

Depends if you want the people running the country to be competent or not.

> Depends if you want the people running the country to be competent or not.

In some sense, the goal of the educational system should be to make everyone competent. In any case, it's unclear what you mean by "running the country". Politically speaking, the people currently running the US are not competent, despite the fact that the educational system and the social hierarchy are inextricably entangled.

Whatever kind of -ocracy you're proposing (I'm personally not proposing here that we abolish democracy), I don't see any inherent reason why a social ranking system and the educational system can't be separate rather than combined into one.

When employers start looking the alma mater of applicants, their grades in school, and such (reportedly Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical is obsessed with high school!), that's when the entire educational system gets warped. Learning gets cast aside in favor of credentialism, and consequently, cheating to get ahead.