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Unpopular opinions: let’s not lose the forest for the trees here, macrologically the US is turning out productive and world-competitive minds and workers. The s

Unpopular opinions: let’s not lose the forest for the trees here, macrologically the US is turning out productive and world-competitive minds and workers. The system can have flaws and gaps without it being a total racket in need of ground-up rehauling. We don’t live in a concrete world so if you end up holding opinions at the extremes, you’re probably missing nuance.

kiliantics 9y ago
There is some nuance missing in your claims too. Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. They tend to have had a great deal of socio-economic advantage. The US is the richest global power, so it makes perfect sense that there are a lot of people who have such advantages in the US.
- skybrian 9y ago
  There also are plenty of good public schools and plenty of successful people who went to public schools. Schools are not all the same, you know? The only thing you can say without diving into the statistics is that it depends on when and where you went.
  - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    First, plenty of people succeed despite public school, not because of it. Second, how do you define success? If you define success in terms of money, education and intelligence play a very, very small role. The correlation of financial success to who you know and who you are related to is orders of magnitude higher than how smart you are or how much knowledge you have. The vast majority of PHDs are much more intelligent and educated that the vast majority of millionaires.
- morgante 9y ago
  > Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. That is highly unlikely. Even at elite Ivy universities, a majority of students attended public high schools. Public education is a lot better than people give it credit for. There's wide variation in quality but there are certainly plenty of excellent public schools available.
  - philipov 9y ago
    Public education is good in the areas where the upper middle class live. Old Greenwich, Cos Cob, and Riverside have great public schools because that's where all the IT professionals, quants, and middle managers move to raise their families. Those districts have access to many adults with an interest and ability to participate in the school community, and so the district ends up with a lot of extra resources. But the hedge fund upper management send their kids to Brunswick School, Sacred Heart, and the like, and the district on the super rich and the poorer, primarily-Hispanic sides of town, has a poorer reputation.
    - virgilp 9y ago
      The correlation is there, but I'm not convinced about causality. I know people pay good money to buy properties near a good public school... so, I suspect it's not that "public schools are great where upper middle class live", but that upper middle class moved where great public schools are.
      - philipov 9y ago
        I think it's a feedback loop.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        And they moved to where there are many other upper middle class families who are very involved in their children's education. As a result, you see schools with good metrics on standardized tests and the like even though the per pupil spend is not uncommonly less than that in urban schools with poorer metrics.
      - PeterisP 9y ago
        Possibly, but in any case the problem isn't that public schools are flawed as a concept, but rather that some of USA public schools are bad. If many of these schools run on the same set of general principles and processes (although often with more funding) but work, the problem is not with the concept or goal but rather with the particular (some) implementations, some of the managers, or (mis)allocation of resources.
zanny 9y ago
Are those minds the products of public schools, especially in the era where increased standardized testing has worked to hold back the best teachers from doing their jobs as well as many here will probably remember their favorite instructors doing? Or are they a product of culture, from their parents and society at large, pushing them to accel independently of public education?
- ghaff 9y ago
  Education has always been mostly about culture and family (and individual interest/motivation) as opposed to any specific role of public education if all of those things are lacking. IMO, the standardized testing bugbear is at least partly a red herring. An excessive focus on teaching to the test is bad; I'm sure we can all agree. But it's worth remembering that the increased focus on standardized testing grew out of a system where accountability and metrics of any sort were pretty much a four-letter word.
shams93 9y ago
You could mathematically prove that the return from providing free education in terms of the incoming taxes from an extremely educated and capable working population will outweigh any benefits from effectively strapping people down into indentured servitude. How many jobs are being lost because would be job creators are locked into something less than their full potential to service these kind of exploitation loans? How many more businesses and jobs would be developed if we didn't have Sallie Mae vampiring a huge chunk of productive potential?
- closeparen 9y ago
  How much lower would the premium for an educated worker be if college became the new high school? I’d also support free college, but I’d expect all wages to fall accordingly. Or for the loan situation to repeat itself, this time to pay the income taxes on tuition waivers for grad school, as a masters or PhD becomes necessary to set yourself apart in the labor market.
  - greeneggs 9y ago
    You might find this article interesting [1]. Although free tuition caused enrollment to rise 22%, still German "university graduates earn 40% more than those with a vocational education." And "making tuition free hasn’t led to any noticeable change in the demographics of who goes to college," partly because living expenses aren't free. [1] Jon Marcus, "Germany proves tuition-free college is not a silver bullet for America’s education woes" https://qz.com/812200/is-free-college-possible-germany-shows-there-are-downsides-to-tuition-free-college/ https://qz.com/812200/is-free-college-possible-germany-shows...
- Retric 9y ago
  Alternatively, education level is just used as a proxy for other forms of discrimination. If X is free they will just require X + 1, so free public education will simply reduce the number of productive years as people spend ever more time being educated.
  - grogenaut 9y ago

kiliantics 9y ago

There is some nuance missing in your claims too. Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. They tend to have had a great deal of socio-economic advantage. The US is the richest global power, so it makes perfect sense that there are a lot of people who have such advantages in the US.

skybrian 9y ago
There also are plenty of good public schools and plenty of successful people who went to public schools. Schools are not all the same, you know? The only thing you can say without diving into the statistics is that it depends on when and where you went.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
  First, plenty of people succeed despite public school, not because of it. Second, how do you define success? If you define success in terms of money, education and intelligence play a very, very small role. The correlation of financial success to who you know and who you are related to is orders of magnitude higher than how smart you are or how much knowledge you have. The vast majority of PHDs are much more intelligent and educated that the vast majority of millionaires.
morgante 9y ago
> Those productive world-competitive people more than likely did not go through the public school system in the US. That is highly unlikely. Even at elite Ivy universities, a majority of students attended public high schools. Public education is a lot better than people give it credit for. There's wide variation in quality but there are certainly plenty of excellent public schools available.
- philipov 9y ago
  Public education is good in the areas where the upper middle class live. Old Greenwich, Cos Cob, and Riverside have great public schools because that's where all the IT professionals, quants, and middle managers move to raise their families. Those districts have access to many adults with an interest and ability to participate in the school community, and so the district ends up with a lot of extra resources. But the hedge fund upper management send their kids to Brunswick School, Sacred Heart, and the like, and the district on the super rich and the poorer, primarily-Hispanic sides of town, has a poorer reputation.
  - virgilp 9y ago
    The correlation is there, but I'm not convinced about causality. I know people pay good money to buy properties near a good public school... so, I suspect it's not that "public schools are great where upper middle class live", but that upper middle class moved where great public schools are.
    - philipov 9y ago
      I think it's a feedback loop.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      And they moved to where there are many other upper middle class families who are very involved in their children's education. As a result, you see schools with good metrics on standardized tests and the like even though the per pupil spend is not uncommonly less than that in urban schools with poorer metrics.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Possibly, but in any case the problem isn't that public schools are flawed as a concept, but rather that some of USA public schools are bad. If many of these schools run on the same set of general principles and processes (although often with more funding) but work, the problem is not with the concept or goal but rather with the particular (some) implementations, some of the managers, or (mis)allocation of resources.

zanny 9y ago

Are those minds the products of public schools, especially in the era where increased standardized testing has worked to hold back the best teachers from doing their jobs as well as many here will probably remember their favorite instructors doing? Or are they a product of culture, from their parents and society at large, pushing them to accel independently of public education?

ghaff 9y ago
Education has always been mostly about culture and family (and individual interest/motivation) as opposed to any specific role of public education if all of those things are lacking. IMO, the standardized testing bugbear is at least partly a red herring. An excessive focus on teaching to the test is bad; I'm sure we can all agree. But it's worth remembering that the increased focus on standardized testing grew out of a system where accountability and metrics of any sort were pretty much a four-letter word.

shams93 9y ago

You could mathematically prove that the return from providing free education in terms of the incoming taxes from an extremely educated and capable working population will outweigh any benefits from effectively strapping people down into indentured servitude. How many jobs are being lost because would be job creators are locked into something less than their full potential to service these kind of exploitation loans? How many more businesses and jobs would be developed if we didn't have Sallie Mae vampiring a huge chunk of productive potential?

closeparen 9y ago
How much lower would the premium for an educated worker be if college became the new high school? I’d also support free college, but I’d expect all wages to fall accordingly. Or for the loan situation to repeat itself, this time to pay the income taxes on tuition waivers for grad school, as a masters or PhD becomes necessary to set yourself apart in the labor market.
- greeneggs 9y ago
  You might find this article interesting [1]. Although free tuition caused enrollment to rise 22%, still German "university graduates earn 40% more than those with a vocational education." And "making tuition free hasn’t led to any noticeable change in the demographics of who goes to college," partly because living expenses aren't free. [1] Jon Marcus, "Germany proves tuition-free college is not a silver bullet for America’s education woes" https://qz.com/812200/is-free-college-possible-germany-shows-there-are-downsides-to-tuition-free-college/ https://qz.com/812200/is-free-college-possible-germany-shows...
Retric 9y ago
Alternatively, education level is just used as a proxy for other forms of discrimination. If X is free they will just require X + 1, so free public education will simply reduce the number of productive years as people spend ever more time being educated.
- grogenaut 9y ago