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

Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

insidermag.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 715 posts

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#651

Post by j_walter »

fatbird wrote: post #634
j_walter wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that…

Below, you say but at the school level what can they do? Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out. There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. H…

Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#652

Post by imtringued »

armagon wrote: post #590
throw0101a wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people live paycheck to paycheck Roughly half of US salary earners, per BLS: * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin... (Though that includes students with summer jobs; still a lot though.)

Oh my goodness! That's appalling. How is our system so broken?

People want to pretend that it is all about "financial skills". Mostly because they want to blame poorer people who are bad at something because they are good at it and thus get to show off their superiority. It's not about useful skills, it's about the relative difference in skill to support a mental model/world view.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#653

Post by CountDrewku »

gjulianm wrote: post #572
CountDrewku wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That statistic, by itself, is meaningless. Immigrants have almost double the poverty rate of US natives too. Most immigrants come to America desiring to improve their circumstances from what they dealt with in their home countries. This means they're coming in at a much lower standard than people who've been in the US their whole life. This would explain why they have a higher rate of poverty. It has nothing to do w…

> This would explain why they have a higher rate of poverty. It has nothing to do with America being uniquely bad at helping immigrants improve their lives. My point is not regarding that, just that the amount of business owners does not help too much in seeing whether they do harder work than others or not. > Exactly what are immigrants not allowed that citizens born in the US are? Citizenship? Permanent residence?…

You seem to be confusing illegal immigrants with legal ones.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#654

Post by j_walter »

fatbird wrote: post #634
j_walter wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that…

Below, you say but at the school level what can they do? Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out. There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. H…

Here is another data point...

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/illinois/...

99.9% minority students, 94% economically disadvantaged. Testing scores are horrible...across the board. 2.8% percentile for their SAT scores...26% of the students took an AP exam and 3% those that took them scored acceptable (3). This brings up a lot of questions...like why is a school that can barely graduate kids (54%) focused on having 1 out of every 4 seniors take an AP exam?

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#655

Post by fatbird »

j_walter wrote: post #651
fatbird wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below, you say but at the school level what can they do? Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out. There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. H…

Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...

Staffing is a pipeline problem: a good ratio might not help a particular issue, but you'll never be able to address those issues without it.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#656

Post by crispyambulance »

j_walter wrote: post #621
crispyambulance wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the surface it might look like it's just about "discipline" but in the kinds of school districts you're talking about the problems are very deep-rooted and multi-faceted. Discipline alone is not nearly enough to address what's going on.

Agreed...but at the school level what can they do? If the parents aren't engaged in their kids getting an education and behaving (for whatever reason)...it's not really the school's job to fill that gap.

At school level? Only so much.

Some school districts are now having a measure of success with having ONE school but tracking the kids into "accelerated" or "regular" programs and elevating the resources for both.

There was a whole podcast about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren...

This happened as a result of a large-enough number of well-to-do parents no longer being able to get their kids into very desirable and academically rigorous city-wide schools, so they effectively "took over" a neighborhood public/charter school by participating VERY HEAVILY in the PTA, the school's funding, and getting deeply involved with the ALL the kids, teachers and administration.

From what I can tell, it required a very uncomfortable and ongoing dialog about race and class. Not every school in every big city can do this, IMHO, but AFAICT it lead to better outcomes for all the students, including the at-risk students.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#657

Post by LAC-Tech »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #88
LAC-Tech wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest thing to me is this mid-wit notion of thinking you are 'informed' by reading news sites and getting a degree from a 21st century university.

Yes, far more informed than reading Dinesh D’Souza Facebook posts or natural wellness Instagram stories.

Is that the only other alternative?

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#658

Post by jokethrowaway »

I think we're approaching a point in time in which class climbing will become impossible, but we're not there yet.

I'm worried about my sons' future and I feel like I need to earn money for them as well.

Right now there is still plenty of opportunity, but it gets harder and more sophisticated every year.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#659

Post by jokethrowaway »

js8 wrote: post #287
zests wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parents were immigrants. They were successful -- just not in the way its normally measured.

Don't immigrants show that not only hard work (which they usually did) but other factors (like emigrating from a bad environment, which can be pretty risky) are needed for a better life?

I don't think it's the emigration part that's needed.

People are usually forced to emigrate somewhere else because of the conditions or their home country. Those who are down to emigrate to a foreign country (especially if their original country is not a warzone or is not that bad - implying they're really trying hard to improve their life) probably have some other characteristics that can be useful for achieving success.

The debate then moves on how much of those characteristics are genetic and how much are due to the bad environment per se (or maybe the good environment their families where able to setup in a bad environment) - on which I think we don't yet have a scientific answer.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#660

Post by mensetmanusman »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #88
LAC-Tech wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest thing to me is this mid-wit notion of thinking you are 'informed' by reading news sites and getting a degree from a 21st century university.

Yes, far more informed than reading Dinesh D’Souza Facebook posts or natural wellness Instagram stories.

Politics is preference. If you don’t read any D’Souza, you might not know what half the country thinks?
Post reply on HN