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>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more o

>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? >Real equality means equality of outcomes. I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these choices have real consequences. I personally do not think it's fair to force the same outcome on some college kid that binge drinks and smokes weed all day versus some college kid that studies his bum off. Imagine what this does to incentives!? >Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications. Would you elaborate on this? I'll be honest here that I'm not too well-versed in this topic but I think it's interesting to talk about nonetheless. Full disclosure: I'm from the Netherlands where I feel there is quite some equal opportunity. Nearly every kid can go to a good primary school, high school, and any university if they try hard enough. There are little financial barriers as tuition is only 2.000/year. Contrast this to US universities if you do not have a scholarship, etc. However, the fact that everyone can go to the same university doesnt mean that everyone will end up exactly at the same place. People make choices and these choices have consequences.

js8 9y ago
> So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.
minipci1321 9y ago
This educational system you describe is great, no doubt, but are you sure it offers __equal opportunity__ to every kid? In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc. I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.

js8 9y ago

> So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.

minipci1321 9y ago

This educational system you describe is great, no doubt, but are you sure it offers __equal opportunity__ to every kid? In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc. I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.