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Once poor, always poor?

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Re: Once poor, always poor?

#281

Post by digianarchist »

dijit wrote: post #195
pjerem wrote: post #188

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education. I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education. But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. So…

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education". I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious. I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test r…

I don’t agree with the uniforms point. If uniforms are replaced with a student's own clothes they will be bullied relentlessly for not sporting the latest fashion.

This happens today because shoes and bags aren’t part of the uniform. Other than the colour requirements. That was a source of bullying for myself and others.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#282

Post by MrsPeaches »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #272
MrsPeaches wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Homework is a necessary part of education. Is it though? Sounds like it was actually exclusionary in your case. I believe that Finland has no homework and yet has some of the highest PISA scores.

It is not true, there is homework. It is false information, likely spread from a Michael Moore documentary that made the exaggerated claim. https://finland.fi/life-society/the-truth-about-finnish-scho... https://www.reddit.com/r/Finland/comments/99l5ke/is_that_tru...

Thank you for posting the links. Cunningham’s law in action!

https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#283

Post by dustintrex »

inglor_cz wrote: post #258
wobblybubble wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t surprising that groups like descendants of chattel slavery who have had the same legal rights as white people for about half a century are systematically worse off than groups like middle class immigrants from East Asia.

"middle class immigrants from East Asia" That is just a small part of the entire picture. Plenty of Asians arrived as low wage manual workers or refugees (boat people) from then-strongly underdeveloped countries. Sometimes as orphans or incomplete families with all male relatives killed. Or you can look at Jewish people, terrorized, oppressed and killed by their neighbours for centuries. Expressions like "pogrom" and…

There are clear differences between these groups that reflect their circumstances though. Indian Americans tend to be well educated offspring of the Indian elite, and they're also the richest Asian-American subgroup. Hmong, Laotians and Vietnamese mostly descend from penniless refugees, and surprise surprise, they're at the bottom of the income table. Working your way from nothing to owning a nail salon or a donut shop is an achievement, but in financial terms it pales compared to the income of the IIT grad Brahmin who did their master's at Stanford and went on to work at Microsoft.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#284

Post by inglor_cz »

dustintrex wrote: post #283
inglor_cz wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"middle class immigrants from East Asia" That is just a small part of the entire picture. Plenty of Asians arrived as low wage manual workers or refugees (boat people) from then-strongly underdeveloped countries. Sometimes as orphans or incomplete families with all male relatives killed. Or you can look at Jewish people, terrorized, oppressed and killed by their neighbours for centuries. Expressions like "pogrom" and…

There are clear differences between these groups that reflect their circumstances though. Indian Americans tend to be well educated offspring of the Indian elite, and they're also the richest Asian-American subgroup. Hmong, Laotians and Vietnamese mostly descend from penniless refugees, and surprise surprise, they're at the bottom of the income table. Working your way from nothing to owning a nail salon or a donut sh…

Yes, undeniably so, but the same applies to non-Asian groups.

Nigerian Americans have the highest # of PhDs per 1000 people. Albanian Americans (white) are among the poorest Americans, while Russians are among the richest ones.

As usual, there is a lot more diversity within the big racially defined groups than among them.

And I would not discount the "nail salon" achievements at all. In my experience, it is the parents who build up these small shops, but their kids set their sights much higher than just inheriting those.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#285

Post by RHSeeger »

ausbah wrote: post #225
RHSeeger wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm spending like $20/month to pay for house that I own. Even assuming you own the house outright (which is not true for most people that have bought a house less than 30 years ago), that number seems ridiculously low. In every place I've lived, the land taxes alone are an order of magnitude higher than that. And then maintenance for the house is on top of that (something that people renting don't pay directly). I…

aren't things like taxes and maintance passed along to the renters?

The person was commenting on renting vs owning, so I assumed they were talking about the house they lived in (vs renting it out to someone else). When comparing the costs of renting to owning, the "extra" costs of owning a house (taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc) add up to a considerable sum, generally.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#286

Post by mixedCase »

echelon wrote: post #264
as_i_fall wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean what's the alternative? I don't think dumping kids out of school is going to improve anything for anyone.

To help foster growth, kids need a person that encourages them when they fail, keeps them from trouble and bad influences, disciplines them when they make bad decisions, helps with their mental health, and encourages them to learn and grow in whatever interest the kid enjoys. Not all children have access to this kind of role model. And even if they do, it's not a guarantee, just a more favorable probability. School i…

Why did this get downvoted? Do people deny the influence that good role models make for children or just extremely resent the fact that we don't have a good universal solution for that problem?

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#287

Post by rbanffy »

digianarchist wrote: post #281
dijit wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education". I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious. I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test r…

I don’t agree with the uniforms point. If uniforms are replaced with a student's own clothes they will be bullied relentlessly for not sporting the latest fashion. This happens today because shoes and bags aren’t part of the uniform. Other than the colour requirements. That was a source of bullying for myself and others.

> This happens today because shoes and bags aren’t part of the uniform

I see that too here in Ireland. Uniforms (and meals) should be included with education. Everyone should have at least all the materials they need.

This was one of the ideas behind the OLPC laptop - it was supposed to be a standard tool and end up cheaper than printing and shipping physical books. Didn’t work out, but beget netbooks, chromebooks and other low end laptops, which are kind of great for kids.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#288

Post by RHSeeger »

drdec wrote: post #270
RHSeeger wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that educational debt in America can never be voided through bankruptcy seems like a conscious systemic decision to create debt slaves The inability to be voided through bankruptcy, as I understand it, was setup so that educational loans would not wind up with insane interest rates. Given that they are unsecured (there's nothing for the lender to repossess if the borrower fails to pay), there is much great…

> The inability to be voided through bankruptcy, as I understand it, was setup so that educational loans would not wind up with insane interest rates. Given that they are unsecured (there's nothing for the lender to repossess if the borrower fails to pay), there is much greater risk to the lender. Most loans issued before 2010 are guaranteed by the US government. So while they are technically unsecured, the governmen…

> Since 2010, student loans are actually owned by the government

Federal student loans are owned by the government. Private student loans, of which there are many and more every day, are owned by private (generally for-profit) companies. They're also not covered by the student loan relief efforts of recent times (CARES), if I understand correctly.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#289

Post by thmorriss »

pnutjam wrote: post #256
eadmund wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. "Oh, you got a bachelors in Biology? Well, I guess that's fine. Come work at my tech company in a way that is completely unrelated to Biology." In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdles for poor people to jump through. In the U.S., this is due to the fact tha…

You don't think class enters into it? Tell us you grew up in an middle-upper class environment without telling us you grew up middle-upper class.

Agree. Laughed when I saw that

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#290

Post by rbanffy »

User23 wrote: post #252
dijit wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education". I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious. I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test r…

> How do you measure efficacy of a school? Over the long term? The frequency and size of the checks their alumni write them. It's good signal that the alumnus likes the school well enough wish to do so and was prepared to be successful enough to be able to.

> The frequency and size of the checks their alumni write them

This only measures economic success, which is only a single dimension of educational success. It also fosters inequality, as schools with better outcomes from other factors (such as rich parents) will receive more resources as the ones that fail for factors the school system can’t control (such as, surprise, poverty).

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