Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 308 posts

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#31

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

adamnemecek wrote: post #7
dudul wrote: post #2

It sucks, but what's the solution? Because let's face it, the primary purpose of "being rich" is to provide for one's family, at least from my point of view. If I work my ass off it's to make sure I can help my kids do better than I did. What's the point of being "wealthy" if it's not to help your kids have a better life than your own? I don't want to sound insensitive. All these studies about kids born in poverty an…

Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time.

even if the educational system is fixed, it doesn't change the fact that if you're poor you first have to find a job, and entry level jobs in careers are hard to find, so you might end up getting something you're overqualified for just to pay the bills, something unrelated, then maybe while you work at something unrelated life happens, you maybe get married, or have kids, and now leaving your underqualified but paying unrelated job becomes impossible, and by the time you can you've lost 10-15 years and your opportunities will be minimal.

If you're rich, you start working in your parents' business, you're also likely to intern in it, and/or in your parents' peers' companies, and if you're any decent you're likely going to be groomed for an exec position, a position the poor college grad will never be able to aspire to, and if you're not decent you're probably going to get some sort of face-saving "consultancy" position, paying again way more than the poor graduate can ever hope to get.

This is unrelated to the education system, and it's not something you can ever fix, because people will always try to make sure their family has an advantage, which means that as soon as a family reaches a position of influence it will use it to perpetuate its position.

Meritocracy is nice in theory, but humans as a species are wired a lot more for tribalism than for meritocracy, hence why to get some semblance of it you need a culture/government that fosters it, and those are in short supply.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#32

Post by kbenson »

adamnemecek wrote: post #19
dudul wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you do that?

Fundamentally I think that we have to get rid of the concept of a teacher and replace it with person who helps you when you get stuck. I think that fundamentally, the school should just teach you to read as soon as possible and from there on it should just give you things to read. You should also have much more freedom in what you want to study, e.g. if you want to check out idk, optical engineering in high school (e…

> I think that fundamentally, the school should just teach you to read as soon as possible and from there on it should just give you things to read.

I fail to see how this won't devolve into parents that have more time to devote to their children's education through encouragement, steering, tutoring, or paying for the same having a better outcome. And since I think having more money is causal for having more time, I think that's just a way to make the problem worse, not better.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#33

Post by Florin_Andrei »

harryh wrote: post #12
adamnemecek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time.

The educational system is a scapegoat for far bigger and more entrenched problems.

Exactly.

I strongly suggest to speak with some actual teachers, instead of blindly relying on ridiculous propaganda. The problem is not the system, the problem is social mobility.

Poor kids don't do well in school because their families and their environment don't value education. They perceive (correctly, BTW, from a statistical perspective) that if you're born poor, there isn't much you can do. You're gonna die poor anyway. So why worry about school? Families don't care (exceptions do exist, of course), peers look down upon you if you're "bookish", it's a vicious cycle.

There's a lack of hope among those at the bottom. No amount of educational reform will fix that. People know they're in a social straightjacket from birth.

Fix whatever systemic problems keep America's social mobility so low, and the aforementioned issues will get a lot better.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#35

Post by dudul »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #18
dudul wrote: post #2

It sucks, but what's the solution? Because let's face it, the primary purpose of "being rich" is to provide for one's family, at least from my point of view. If I work my ass off it's to make sure I can help my kids do better than I did. What's the point of being "wealthy" if it's not to help your kids have a better life than your own? I don't want to sound insensitive. All these studies about kids born in poverty an…

If you worked very hard to become rich in your life (and presumably secure a future for your children), then congratulations, your hard work paid off. If your children squander your fortune and squabble over their inheritance, how you feel about that is entirely up to you. Warren Buffet said he would donate the vast majority of his wealth to charity upon his death. When asked about inherentance for his children, he s…

Note that I wasn't talking about inheritance or legacy. The article makes the point that people with money are able to spend more time helping their children, or maybe pay for a tutor, or send them to a great private school. Basically spending money to help them learn how to be successful and be happy.

I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I have a "fortune" to give to my kids :)

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#36

Post by adamnemecek »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #31
adamnemecek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time.

even if the educational system is fixed, it doesn't change the fact that if you're poor you first have to find a job, and entry level jobs in careers are hard to find, so you might end up getting something you're overqualified for just to pay the bills, something unrelated, then maybe while you work at something unrelated life happens, you maybe get married, or have kids, and now leaving your underqualified but payin…

> entry level jobs in careers are hard to find

Jobs aren't hard to find if you are one of the few people in the world who can do the job. I know, these aren't entry level jobs but given the right education, you can skip those I think.

> This is unrelated to the education system,

Fundamentally, I think that few things in society aren't fundamentally related to the educational system. Or more precisely, quite a bit of society can be explained by looking at the educational system 10 years ago.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#37

Post by nostromo »

This is presented as if this opinion journalist found a causative relationship when he's done no such thing. He's just looking at correlations and then shoehorning in his favorite explanations (glass floors, glass ceilings, diploma mills).

Take a look at his previous articles and maybe you'll identify a trend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/matt-obrien/

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#38

Post by RangerScience »

paulpauper wrote: post #8

https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/10/... Hmmm but it doesn't look so bad when you consider that 67% of poor college grads are at least 50-percentile in wealth, vs 49% of rich high school dropouts. I'm sure is even better when you compare poor high school dropouts vs. poor college graduates, which is why a college degree may still be worth the money and the best pathway out of poverty, especiall…

I like where you're going with this, but, it does a shit job of establishing what "poor" means. The words in the article first mention the middle class vs rich, which makes it harder to derive real conclusions. I mean, I think you're right - doesn't look so bad for the people in the "poor" category - we just don't know what category that actually is.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#40

Post by csallen »

adamnemecek wrote: post #7
dudul wrote: post #2

It sucks, but what's the solution? Because let's face it, the primary purpose of "being rich" is to provide for one's family, at least from my point of view. If I work my ass off it's to make sure I can help my kids do better than I did. What's the point of being "wealthy" if it's not to help your kids have a better life than your own? I don't want to sound insensitive. All these studies about kids born in poverty an…

Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time.

I, too, think the educational system is the place to turn to help fix lots of society's problems. We have kids "captive" for 8 hours a day for 13 years, so it's an amazing opportunity to do some good. The problem is that everyone has different opinions about what "good" is. I tried a little experiment a couple months ago: I asked 5 of my highly educated friends from MIT how they would improve the educational system. And I got back five very different answers, most of which I found pretty unimpressive.

For example, my material scientist friend immediately launched into a tirade about how we should teach kids how subatomic particles actually work rather than the simplified model of the atom, about about how history is a useless subject that should be removed from school altogether. I couldn't have disagreed more.

Personally, I'd like to see tons of changes, including:

- vastly more funding, so we can attract more skilled and experienced teachers and have smaller class sizes

- year round school programs, so poorer children don't fall so behind during summer break

- more emphasis and encouragement around reading, which much fewer restrictions on what we consider "acceptable" to read (my high school did everything in its power to get kids to hate reading)

- systematic experimentation around different teaching styles and educational systems, so we can learn what works and doesn't

- history classes more focused on storytelling and distilling lessons from historical events, and less focused on pro-America propaganda and remembering random disconnected facts and dates

- more focus on practical psychology, rhetoric, debate, logic, and/or research in the curriculum (how can people become productive citizens and informed voters when they can't dissect an argument or perform research?)

- more emphasis on the benefits of the scientific method compared to alternatives

- practical education around business, finance, etc, so that poor kids aren't left behind in that arena

I could go on forever.

Post reply on HN