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Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#361

Post by dwater »

wyager wrote: post #344
8note wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to areas with "good schools" is one. Only schools where wealthy people live get good funding, so when they concentrate where they live to one place, everywhere else suffers

The US has some of the best-funded public schools in the world and some of the worst outcomes in public schools. “Funding” is a red herring at best and an excuse for extractive politics in reality. It turns out that life outcomes have approximately nothing whatsoever to do with how much money your childhood schools got. It also strikes me as quite perverse to blame people who are able to move their children out of sc…

Yes, the problem is not school funding but school segregation. It takes more than money to help high needs students, it takes attention and support. If your child needs attention and support and they go to a school where the majority of their peers have the same needs, none of them will get it.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#362

Post by moate »

water8 wrote: post #351
borodi wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, the easiest way to be successful is to be born in a successful family

Its better to be born in the 95th percentile in intelligence vs the 95th percentile in wealth in terms of where you will actually end up.

Citations[1] Needed[2] Please[3].

1-https://users.nber.org/~denardim/research/Wealthsurvey.pdf - 2https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68507/13/Karagiannaki_Effect%20of%... 3-https://ifs.org.uk/publications/14954

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#363

Post by Applejinx »

grumblenum wrote: post #358
Applejinx wrote: post #321

A lot of people here need to talk to some entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter how good, or how well funded, the school system is: if the family is poor, you're not going to be able to float rent on the storefront you need, or purchase initial inventory of whatever you're making, much less soak up a few false starts, much less take out a bank loan to do any of these things. Period. This does not in ANY WAY mean there sho…

Here I thought I was underachieving because I was reading HN comments instead of doing anything productive. Now I see that the world, or at least subsets of the population I’m allowed to blame for my problems, has wronged me, which appeals to my petty sense of envy and bitterness and assuages the guilt I had about not actually trying. Perhaps this inequality is actually a grand conspiracy. I wish the press, academia,…

Don't get it twisted. By all means DO stuff.

It's not going to wind up making you rich unless your family was rich, and if you're not rich, you're not going to be able to buy your way into mainstream attention, either.

Go ahead and DO stuff.

If you're the kind of person where it doesn't matter unless you can 'scale' and get real competitive with all the other heavy hitters, I guess don't bother?

I would humbly suggest that the best recipe for making it big is having the resources to support your attempt, AND doing something that you would still care about if you were just small time. Just saying.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#364

Post by bernulli »

water8 wrote: post #351
borodi wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, the easiest way to be successful is to be born in a successful family

Its better to be born in the 95th percentile in intelligence vs the 95th percentile in wealth in terms of where you will actually end up.

Not that I’m a fan, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book (Outliers) about how this is not true.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#365

Post by oezi »

wyager wrote: post #339
arminiusreturns wrote: post #291

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key piece of that work, because it truly can be a great equalizer. You will notice not just different curriculum, but entirely different methods being used at a posh place for the elite like Eton, vs a (US) public school or even most upper middle class private sc…

You’re making the same exact mistake that education activists have made for the last 60 years. Education does not significantly improve outcomes. Period. What people observe is that people who went to top-tier schools end up being very successful, and make the (totally false) inference that top-tier schools make you successful. In reality, the people who were almost certainly going to be successful anyway get into th…

I agree about the signifier, but still think education has a real value outside the pure signalling. You need experts and for that you need schools/colleges because in most jobs you will not learn wide enough nor deep enough (exceptions are possible).

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#366

Post by bhupy »

renewiltord wrote: post #187
xyzzyz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly how the USA was originally designed to work, and how it originally worked up until early-to-mid 20th century. It was only then when a bunch of power grabbing politicians, along with a bunch of complicit elements in the judicial apparatus, have twisted the US into completely different system that we now get to suffer from.

It’s not just power-grabbing politicians. It’s what the populace desires. Look at the overwhelming support for something like universal health care. That is a massive expansion of federal power. A large number of Americans desire massive federal power.

> A large number of Americans desire massive federal power.

It's complicated.

A 2016 Gallup poll (https://news.gallup.com/poll/27286/government.aspx) revealed that 55 percent of respondents preferred power to be concentrated in state governments; 37 percent preferred the federal government.

Another group of surveys (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa759_web...) shows that Americans strongly prefer state and local governments to lead on health insurance (62 percent, versus 38 percent preferring federal leadership), welfare (68/31 percent), unemployment (55/26 percent), education (75/25 percent), pre-kindergarten education (71/25 percent), transportation (78/22 percent), law enforcement (73/20 percent), job training (75/20 percent), housing (83/18 percent), and paving roads (77/9 percent).

The problem with the universal health care polls is that 1) "universal healthcare" is such a broad term that can mean anything from NHS style single provider to Switzerland style universal privatized systems, and 2) it's entirely possible to favor a "universal healthcare" system that's administered and funded at the State level as opposed to the Federal level.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#367

Post by bhupy »

dlp211 wrote: post #329
xyzzyz wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why healthcare isn't greatly expensive in Europe, with, you know, 40+ independent countries?

Because you pay your taxes to the central entity that is running those programs. In the US, the majority of taxes go to the Federal gov't, not the states.

In Canada, the single payer healthcare system is Provincial, not Federal, and yet the income tax brackets at Canada's Federal level are roughly equal to those in the US (in fact are actually higher for some earners).

If we wanted to take Canada's cue, there's plenty of room to increase State tax rates even if we did nothing about Federal taxation. Or we could take Switzerland's cue and totally flip the distribution, where Cantonal taxes far exceed Federal income tax.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#368

Post by qqtt »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #356
BobbyJo wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot and I have a hard time believing it. What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Your example with public vs private schools has less to do with diminishing public schools and everything to do with their maximizing their own children's education. If we end private schools, do we still allow paid tutors? If so, I don't see how that field gets levelled.

>What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Vigorously target labor unions. Lobby for substantial decreases in state and Federal taxation, reductions that have in turn necessitated major reductions in education spending and substantial tuition increases that hit middle class families [1]. Attempt (so far unsuccessfully) to privatize social security. Strongly oppose healthcare re…

Those examples aren't really "the rich".

Business tax cuts benefit shareholders, and globally there has been a race to the bottom to pit locations against each other to try to drive profit margins. These things have largely affected manufacturing - manufacturing itself being marginalized in the greater business landscape as other more profitable industries have gained favor. Note that "the rich" are not all that intertwined in the minutiae of manufacturing.

Opposing health care reform is also a niche issue dominated by well-connected insurance companies. Many other industries would like nothing more than the government to take over health care costs and lower their own burden (including tech companies who end up paying exorbitant amounts to fund these benefits against other competitors). The health insurance companies (and related industries which benefit from price gouging in the health care industry) are entrenched in lobbying and congress and have the clout to block these efforts. Insurance companies aren't "the rich" they are simply well connected with government.

Much of the talk about "the rich" trying to "destroy the middle class" really come down to two large buckets:

* Company shareholders benefiting from profit margins (outsourcing, manufacturing, lowering cost without oversight or regulation) - this benefits "the rich" is so far as "the rich" are shareholders of these companies

* Niche industries having disproportionate influence in our political system - such as private prison lobby, health insurance lobby, etc. - these players have in turn disproportionate impact on our legislative process because they are entrenched and intertwined with members of congress

It doesn't benefit "the rich" to have a poor population, if anything it makes the rich more vulnerable. What we are seeing play out is actually unintended consequences of greed and plain as day corruption which continues without oversight and regulation.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#369

Post by cmrdporcupine »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #291

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key piece of that work, because it truly can be a great equalizer. You will notice not just different curriculum, but entirely different methods being used at a posh place for the elite like Eton, vs a (US) public school or even most upper middle class private sc…

I won't dispute the existence of class war (though I don't think it's about "middle class" and more about "working class" and I don't think this process is deliberate, more systemic)....

But I would quibble about the role education content plays. Canada doesn't have the same kind of tiered education system that the US has. Public schools are funded out of pooled revenue not local taxes for example so poor neighbourhoods don't get poorly funded schools (though that doesn't rule out what happens with "fundraising" but that's another issue). And universities are more affordable and don't generally get 'elite' status and name branding. Universities are generally all of high quality and most sane employers wouldn't sneer based on where your CS degree came from, etc.

But we have similar income inequality issues to the US. Because it's not the curriculum, it's the ongoing class structure, that's the problem.

Now, there's definitely different levels of education quality, but I have yet to see evidence that curriculum content is the problem. I'd argue the chief value of private schools and elite universities is the network of other wealthy people (am I allowed to use the word 'bourgeois?) you'll meet there. It's connecting with people of your own class.

When I worked at a startup here I quickly realized that most founders and investors I met knew each other or knew of each other through the private school circuit. But it was the exclusiveness of the networks they got through there that benefited them, not the quality of the education. They weren't any smarter than me, just better acculturated into the world of investment, finance, etc. by nature of who they knew, what resources they had, and whose kids they were.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#370

Post by iammisc »

techrat wrote: post #150
whb07 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a couple things to note: 1. An entrepreneurial teacher/teachers could provide a service for these suddenly flush parents at $4600 per child. 2. Most politicians, from either side are either corrupt or incompetent, so these labels don’t matter much to me. But if you actually look at the people running most say schools/admins and even large chunks of the government bureaucracy it’s people who believe in large gove…

> So what needs to be done, is to give a voucher to every parent to decide where to go. So, we just say 'fuck all the kids who were born in the wrong zip code' and can't overcome the distance gate to go to a better school with the voucher?

It's a fallacy to think there are not good schools possible in poorer areas; they used to be quite common, and still are in many places: https://www.city-journal.org/html/irreplaceable-9836.html

Rich elites, which almost everyone on this forum is, imagine that the poor people in the inner city who want vouchers want to send their kid to some swanky rich kid school where everyone wears a blazer.... they don't. They want to send their kids to the ordinary private schools that would exist in their communities if they were able to afford non-public education.

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