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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’?

#511

Post by ericns »

dctoedt wrote: post #508
rayiner wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. (In some ways, even more so than the EU. For example, the EU has no equivalent of our anti-commandeering principle. The EU can direct national administrative organs to carry out task, while the U.S. federal government can’t direct state administrative units. The issue of why taxpayers won’t pay doctors to deliver children i…

> We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. That ship sailed over the horizon a long time ago, like at the latest with the adoption of the 14th Amendment nearly 150 years ago. When you took the oath to become a lawyer, you didn't swear allegiance to whatever state you happened to be living in at the time. And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens thin…

Texan's thinking themselves Texan's is bad because it might be a hurdle to further illegitimate concentration of state power to the federal gov't.

Looking at your bio, I'd guess your party to the democratic/republican conspiracy to localize government power in Washington, DC via courts and unconstitutional laws (FISA, all drug laws, PATRIOT ACT). You're all ABA (prosecutors, judges, legislators, politicians) and have set yourselves up in places beyond legal accountability. Y'all then selectively enforce your laws against those that seem to impede your ability to concentrate power (last couple presidents ordered the execution of American's without trial, where you boys at on that?).

Hilarious a lawyer cites the 14th Amendment which IIRC mostly references equal protections while ensuring their ilk are beyond that legal accountability.

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

#512

Post by ta2162 »

dwater wrote: post #53
whb07 wrote: post #15

Controlling education is a political life source for the Democratic party in the U.S. One of the largest, if not the largest, unions is the teacher's and they are a major donor to the Democratic party. Thankfully, the one good thing about the shutdowns has been the ability for parents to observe a couple things: * how little the school system cares about the child * the indoctrination and political ideas being passed…

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…

>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

This isn't reality, schools are ran by school administrators and education leadership heavily skew leftist.

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

#513

Post by dctoedt »

ericns wrote: post #511
dctoedt wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. That ship sailed over the horizon a long time ago, like at the latest with the adoption of the 14th Amendment nearly 150 years ago. When you took the oath to become a lawyer, you didn't swear allegiance to whatever state you happened to be living in at the time. And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens thin…

Texan's thinking themselves Texan's is bad because it might be a hurdle to further illegitimate concentration of state power to the federal gov't. Looking at your bio, I'd guess your party to the democratic/republican conspiracy to localize government power in Washington, DC via courts and unconstitutional laws (FISA, all drug laws, PATRIOT ACT). You're all ABA (prosecutors, judges, legislators, politicians) and have…

I'm guessing you were my downvote, and yet I can't downvote your comment.

The relevant text of the 14th Amendment here is its opening declaration: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ...." [0] (Emphasis added.)

In other words: Under the 14th Amendment, United States citizenship takes precedence over state citizenship — kind of like the old boast, civis romanus sum: I'm a Roman citizen. (The implication was: fuck with me at your peril.) Cf. Act 22:25: "As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, 'Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?'"

To be sure, there are Lost-Cause diehards who claim that the 14th Amendment never actually came into effect because the Southern states refused to ratify it and so it didn't get the necessary 3/4 of states; courts have consistently rejected that claim [1]. If anything, the former Confederate states should be grateful that they didn't get the treatment that the Allies meted out to the Germans and Japanese in 1945 and afterwards — one recent commentator, remarking on the outrages perpetrated in and by the post-Civil War South, tweeted that "Sherman should've mowed the deep south like a lawn, making multiple passes." [2]

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

[2] https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843

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

#514

Post by moate »

suifbwish wrote: post #424
water8 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People are doubting you but they fail to realize that the more intelligent the person, the more consequential functional applications they can see in everything around them. The difference between a baboon and a human genius is their ability to see tools and techniques by looking at what is around them. We might also consider that money, gold and other non useful items have valuable largely because very smart and inf…

Simply put: When you are trying to decide whether you should use your last hundred dollars towards food or rent, moving isn't really a choice. You might as well ask why poor people don't just decide to become rich if they don't want to be poor

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

#515

Post by aroundtown »

bagacrap wrote: post #501
aroundtown wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improving access to education is not enough. You have to improve opportunity. For example, I grew up extremely poor, and went to a small school. The most my parents knew about college was that I was going to go to one. Now I had the intelligence to get into just about any school I wanted, but I had no idea what/where those schools were. I also was unaware of how scholarships worked, or that I could have afforded most…

I don't know if I'd characterize this as a systemic lack of opportunity because it's a problem that would have been addressed by a simple college counselor. These days the internet would clue you in. (I'm sure someone doesn't have access even to that, and that should be fixed, but that doesn't seem sufficient to end all disparity.)

If you don't have access to a college counselor or someone doing a similar job, that is still an opportunity you don't have.

The internet helps as long as you have something to look for. If you don't know you are lacking knowledge/information, the the internet isn't going to help you find it.

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

#516

Post by Izikiel43 »

mgh2 wrote: post #196

Education is worthless if there are no opportunities. In Argentina, there are PhDs as cab drivers. Opportunities are correlated to how well authorities run the country. There is some data trying to pinpoint relationships with other factors: GDP, corruption, and religion, etc. https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22

The classic engineer of the 90s in Argentina

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

#517

Post by Izikiel43 »

sc68cal wrote: post #324
mgh2 wrote: post #196

Education is worthless if there are no opportunities. In Argentina, there are PhDs as cab drivers. Opportunities are correlated to how well authorities run the country. There is some data trying to pinpoint relationships with other factors: GDP, corruption, and religion, etc. https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22

Don't forget that Argentina's economy was the brainchild of the right wing in the United States, and specifically the Chicago School of economics. They overthrew a democractically elected government and installed a military dictatorship, in order to push their preferred economy

> Don't forget that Argentina's economy was the brainchild of the right wing in the United States, and specifically the Chicago School of economics.

Does the Chicago school of economics promote increased public spending, money printing and giving money away? I mean, that's been Argentina's model since the 70s up to now, except for a brief period in the 90s

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

#518

Post by Izikiel43 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #392
mgh2 wrote: post #196

Education is worthless if there are no opportunities. In Argentina, there are PhDs as cab drivers. Opportunities are correlated to how well authorities run the country. There is some data trying to pinpoint relationships with other factors: GDP, corruption, and religion, etc. https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22

Did you ask these cab drivers why did they pursue a PhD with the associated cost in time and money if they knew in advance there is no opportunity to use it? Most people that I know with a PhD working outside universities did it for status or for spending some more years studying and not working, not because they needed it.

Completely anecdotal data, but in my experience in Argentina people just study what they want just because, in general there isn't an economic reason.

Argentina's public universities are tuition free, backed by the state, so you don't have to spend any money to study anything you may want, which leads to people choosing non economically viable careers (PHD in social sciences and other stuff), I think in part because they don't have any cost to recover from, as well as people not liking math.

The number of people going into STEM is super low, despite paying much better than other careers, and also allowing you to go to other countries to work. As an example, the School of Psychology in the University of Buenos Aires has around 16k students distributed across 4 degrees (Psychology, musical therapy, and 2 more), whereas the School of Exact and natural sciences had around 7k across ~10 degrees (comp sci, math, physics, geology, biology, chemistry, paleontology and some other I'm forgetting).

Comp sci alone probably has 1000 active students. The school of engineering has around 8.5k across several engineering degrees.

Data: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidad_de_Buenos_Aires#Es...

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

#519

Post by onetimeusename »

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…

Do you have any evidence or reasoning that the kids from poor families are 'hungrier, more motivated' and 'ARE better than the lazy rich'? These things should probably be discussed and proven before we make changes based on those assumptions.

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

#520

Post by wheelinsupial »

tablespoon wrote: post #434
bernulli wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Not that I’m a fan, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book (Outliers) about how this is not true. IIRC, that book cited a study by someone who strongly believed that IQ was a strong predictor of great success...and his own study found that wasn't true. IIRC, he followed a bunch of very high IQ kids from childhood to adulthood, and the most successful of them only achieved middling success.

Are you referring to the comparison between Robert Oppenheimer and Christopher Langan in Outliers?

From Christopher Langan’s Wikipedia entry [1], “In comparing the lack of academic and life success of Langan to the successes of Robert Oppenheimer, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2008 book Outliers, points to the background and social skills of the two men.” It seems to argue that intelligence alone isn’t enough to succeed.

I’m not sure how middling success is defined, but results from Vanderbilt’s study of mathematically precocious youth over a 49 year period seems to say, “by mid-life they were extraordinarily accomplished and enjoyed a high level of life satisfaction.”[2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan

[2] https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/degrees-programs/smpy_wat.php

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