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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’?

#121

Post by mc32 »

gumby wrote: post #82
slibhb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe? I don't think Europe is "worse" than the US. I think Europe is optimized for the poor whereas the US is optimized for the middle class and above. There are good arguments for both of these situations. In…

> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation. They have iphones, windows pcs, use google, etc like everyone else. Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business both in handsets and wireless network equipment. And this wasn't just the manufacturers; texting was pretty heavy and ubiquitous in the mid 1990s while it was still a novelty for the US a decade later. Europe was a…

Has regulation changed appreciably the last two or three decades resulting in less drive for innovation?

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

#122

Post by iammisc »

whb07 wrote: post #74
dwater wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools are controlled primarily by state and local governments, which are not universally controlled by Democrats but split along typical red state/blue state lines: https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/parti... Republican legislatures have shown they are quite capable of passing legislation about education that serves little purpose beyond a political agenda, as this year's crop of bills banning c…

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…

> I think Thomas Sowell said once something along the lines that the black schools in DC at about late 1800s-early 1900s was OUTPERFORMING those of the white schools in the region. If one is to look at the present day schooling in the same region, those children/teens are functionally illiterate.

There's a lot of quiet stereotyping going on where people assume that blacks have always underperformed whites in schooling, economic growth, etc.

In reality, this is a recent phenomenon. Well into the 50s/early 60s, black incomes were growing much faster than whites.

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

#123

Post by paulpauper »

marcinzm wrote: post #20
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while also chronically underfunding schools Schools are not underfunded in the U.S., they waste money. Big difference.

Yup, from what I can tell the US has one of the highest per student spending amounts for primary and secondary schools.

That can be explained in part by compulsory schooling and individual education programs

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

#124

Post by dehrmann »

slibhb wrote: post #67
TrackerFF wrote: post #19

In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. Furthermore, strong labor laws have compressed salaries towards the mean, so people are not locking themselves into poverty by working low-wage / low-skill work, but there's a difference enough that people are incentivize…

> You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe? I don't think Europe is "worse" than the US. I think Europe is optimized for the poor whereas the US is optimized for the middle class and above. There are good arguments for both of these situations. In…

> If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe?

Someone told me a joke about the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The Vasa was an ambitiously designed ship that capsized shortly after leaving the shipyard on her maiden voyage. The joke was that they build the museum to send the message that if you try to do anything ambitious, you'll fail, and they'll build a museum to your failure so others won't make the same mistake.

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

#125

Post by rejectedandsad »

refurb wrote: post #93
doytch wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, but the core flaw that I've never had explained away for me in voucher or "school choice" systems is how "bad" schools get better. E.g., school in my district is bad. They don't have enough resources, or their teachers are bad. People begin taking their kids out of the school which means the school now has less money. Assuming they could fire teachers at will, they can't even now afford the "better"…

I mean, take a look at how the non-voucher system works in SF. Lottery system and if you end up with a crappy school, you either put your kid in a private school or try and game the system to get them switched. The parents who are poor don’t have the bandwidth or knowledge to do it so they just get stuck with whatever school. So you end up with the same problem. Crappy schools have kids of parents who don’t value edu…

What exactly makes a crappy school? I went to the school dictated by my geography my whole life which online rankings don’t indicate as anything special - is this just a thinly veiled proxy for SES?

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

#126

Post by neartheplain »

Interesting to see this on the front page right next to "Software Developer Shortage Is Coming":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606393

Can't speak to other forms of higher education, but my degree in computer science has more than paid for itself and acted as my ladder to the upper-middle class.

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

#127

Post by Jcowell »

autocorr wrote: post #115
viscanti wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US could create an amendment to say something like "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". Which would give individual States the right to control a lot of things. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

To anyone who does not get the irony in the above, this already exists as the Tenth Amendment. It is effectively ignored because it is considered legally redundant with the Constitution itself.

I disagree if it was effectively ignored, a lot of things would be better and alot of things would be worse. While the lines between state and federal power has even diminished, it’s very much still there.

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

#128

Post by mc32 »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #117
alexgmcm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat agree with the sentiment although I think it's a bit pessimistic and as described holds a stronger resemblance to a YA dystopian novel than reality. I went to a state school (i.e. public school in American terminology) in a poor area and studied hard and did well, got scholarships, went to Uni etc. There are some problems with people not being able to afford to dedicate time to study - this can be solved b…

Eh, it’s pretty real, we just call it going to a top school. People like me will never achieve what the people at Ivy+ schools will, and I’ll be locked in a lower caste for good.

I thought one of the main complaints of the system is “too many ivy leaguers” (who share diff values), so why aim for the thing that we talk bad about?

What’s bad about not being part of the derided elite class?

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

#129

Post by Jcowell »

kungito wrote: post #31
John23832 wrote: post #7

Two parts: First, I think the ability to DO THINGS is the great equalizer at this point. Being a do-er lifts you out of poverty (or at least out of poverty's worst resting state). Being a do-er expands your network. Being a do-er prolongs your life (people with jobs/daily activities tend to live longer healthier lives). The best part about this is that technology has made it easier to become a do-er. You don't need a…

I feel like the US has to split into separate countries and maybe adopt a system like EU. Everything in the us gets so generalized no one has any agency over it except companies with enough money to push a narrative across 300 mil people. Either that or the way you think about US has to change. I find it hard to believe every state does things the same way but still you say "US" has a problem and not Georgia or Calif…

You should find it hard to believe that every state does things the same way because they don’t. That’s the point.

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

#130

Post by cindarin »

viscanti wrote: post #48
kungito wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the US has to split into separate countries and maybe adopt a system like EU. Everything in the us gets so generalized no one has any agency over it except companies with enough money to push a narrative across 300 mil people. Either that or the way you think about US has to change. I find it hard to believe every state does things the same way but still you say "US" has a problem and not Georgia or Calif…

The US could create an amendment to say something like "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". Which would give individual States the right to control a lot of things. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

I originally assumed you were a dumbass here, not a smartass. well played.
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