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Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

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Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#41

Post by rickycook »

LordKano wrote: post #20
Chinjut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(And, yes: education can of course grant skills which are genuinely required for certain jobs. This being Hacker News, I suppose we'll hear that everyone should learn to code. I'm all for everyone getting to do whatever they wish to do, and if that wish is learning to code, so be it. But I suspect, if everyone did suddenly learn to code, we'd find that coding would, with corresponding suddenness, cease to be a ticket…

I hate the idea that some people seem to hold that teaching everyone to code will fix the world's problems. It won't. People who want to code, should learn to code. Some people should learn to weld. Some people should learn to drive a commercial truck. Some people should learn to cook. Some people should learn to landscape. Some people should learn to fix automobiles and son on and so forth. We have a society that ne…

people learning to code isn't about getting people jobs in which they can code. it's about allowing people to solve repetitive tasks in their daily lives and jobs

if everyone were able to code, there'd be much more automation of menial jobs, which generally means a more productive economy in the long run

it's the same thing that we do with running scalable information systems; automate the mundane so you can do things that really have an impact on quality, rather than spending hours doing something you could code and be done with it

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#43

Post by rickycook »

galdosdi wrote: post #28
Chinjut wrote: post #11

Well, yeah. Education increases individual income primarily through competitive advantage in the job market, right? But, also, the function of education in the job market is largely just as a certification arms race, right? Just a ritual we go through to compete for jobs that don’t actually make any use of or require our advanced educations, in most cases. So educating us all doesn’t produce many benefits, because th…

Have you found noticing this (the large degree to which education is just a filtering/grading ritual rather than a process for actually imparting useful learning) incredibly frustrating?

and that's the problem. our "modern" education frequently just ends up being a ranking system, rather than teaching people how to think, learn, and get excited about things

can you imagine how much better the world would be if kids came home from school telling their parents how amazing numbers are?

to anyone that doesn't think that's possible, I'd suggest looking at how kids react to kerbal space program. there's plenty of examples of 8-15 year olds getting excited about putting things on the "mun" with simplified orbital physics. try and teach that the way we teach it in school, and they might pass a test and then forget it a year later

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#44

Post by lotharbot »

redthrow wrote: post #38
hrehhf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you looked at the table? Chemistry and Mathematics are in the upper half of the table, i.e. higher earnings.

Right, Math being "pretty weak" was a bit of an overstatement. I meant that for a major that's generally considered to be hard and lead to a lucrative career (it's part of "STEM" after all), it's not that different from Pol Sci or Business (and it does worse than Accounting or Economics, both of which are non-STEM), which most people probably wouldn't expect.

I find it shocking that accounting and economics aren't considered STEM. (Though at least some subsets of economics are on the official DHS list.)

I would expect (but do not have data to support) that those who do accounting/econ who take a more math-oriented approach do better than those who take a less math-oriented approach.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#45

Post by lotharbot »

anovikov wrote: post #42

To me it sounds obvious, education improves your competitive position. If everyone improves their competitive position, nobody does. It is the employers who are better off, not people.

but people now live in a society which has been made better by more-educated people who have produced better products more efficiently etc.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#46

Post by Chinjut »

chii wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #14

It's worthwhile to consider where the point of diminishing returns is with education. I'd argue that we are well past it. There is not really that much work even in the modern economy that requires more than a 10th grade general education. We know that because in countries like Germany it is quite common for someone to exit the formal schooling system at 16 and still get a white collar job.

I think rather than not educating, I say there needs to be more education, for advanced topics, such as the sciences. More people ought to be doing research. Research into better tech, material sciences, bio sciences etc. A 10th grade education is not enough.

If there's a lack of people doing scientific research, it's not because there's a lack of people educated enough to do so. Look at the supply of science PhDs vs. openings for science jobs. Every year, more science PhDs graduate and most of them find themselves unable to get jobs actually doing the science they love and trained for.

(Everyone should be able to access whatever education they want, for whatever reason they want it. There are serious inequalities in education access (like everything else) in this country(/world), which need be addressed as a moral issue. So don't misread me as against any of that. But, again, if there is a national deficit in scientific research, it's not because we fail to produce science PhDs, but rather because we fail to fund jobs which take substantive advantage of those PhDs)

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#49

Post by KJP191 »

cro1 wrote: post #19

This is just a random unqualified observation so take it with a pinch of salt. When I compare educated Indian and Chinese people to Americans I just see more willingness to put in hard work on the mundane stuff. Americans with the same educational qualifications who see a year or two of grunt/drudge work ahead of them to move up the food chain, will more likely quit and do whatever is currently hip. Now some small fr…

I live in Beijing and can assure you that there is no shortage of lazy Chinese people with degrees. If you're American, perhaps what you see is just a result of the type of people who make it through the immigration process

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#50

Post by pfisch »

Chinjut wrote: post #11

Well, yeah. Education increases individual income primarily through competitive advantage in the job market, right? But, also, the function of education in the job market is largely just as a certification arms race, right? Just a ritual we go through to compete for jobs that don’t actually make any use of or require our advanced educations, in most cases. So educating us all doesn’t produce many benefits, because th…

What about job creators? Some people are going to create new business opportunities through education, and then they will hire more educated people to help them.

It seems like you have experienced education from a bunch of non-entrepreneurial sides. Not everyone is an employee.

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