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I have a saying when my peers compare themselves to the Zuckerbergs and Gates and Musks of the world: How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did your parents

• airstrike 8y ago
  > I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner. I have an even crazier idea: subsidize education so much that every school is as good as the ones Zuckerberg and Gates attended. Other than healthcare and law enforcement, everything else can be 100% privatized.
  • tedajax 8y ago
    Or like, federal funding for public schools instead of this property tax funding which basically means the only good public schools are in affluent areas. Privatization ruins lots more than just healthcare and law enforcement.
    • extrapickles 8y ago
      Some states try to redistribute a portion of the property taxes, but it typically gets seen as a piggy bank ripe for raiding to fund various pet projects of the state legislature.
      • gumby 8y ago
        California does this. Seemed like a great idea. Instead the parents in Palo Alto band together to hire teacher's aides, add art programs, build the high school a theatre, all as "donations" (voluntary property taxes -- it all comes off your tax return you know!) The neighborhood deltas got so bad that these donations themselves are pooled and spread around Palo Alto!
        • TheBeardKing 8y ago
          So what happens if you don't donate? Do you still get to reap the benefits if you live in the school zone?
          • gumby 8y ago
            Yes you do. People pay a lot of money to get into the Palo Alto Unified School District and some can't afford to donate. But there's apparently a lot of pressure to do so (according to my GF; my kid went to private schools). But what this means is that the kids in, say, Lodi are still getting shafted even though the whole point of spreading the money around was to try to level the school spending difference between rich and poor areas.
            • 8y ago
• downrightmike 8y ago
  "Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools." Germany does this.
  • Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    I think Norway has a similar program. 16 year olds go to school - it can be trade school or continuing education for university prep (or both, depending). It also isn't mandatory, even though most folks go.
    • Thlom 8y ago
      Yes. Unfortunately trade school looks more and more like regular high school these days and apprenticeships in many trades is I low supply. :-(
      • hinkley 8y ago
        Do you think there's a way we could run apprenticeships that makes them more attractive to adults seeking to retrain? I wonder sometimes how much of the problem with switching careers comes down to the usual scapegoat - lack of humility - and how much of it comes instead from infantilizing the students. If we're going to keep moving the workforce around every 15 years then we need a way for someone^W most people to comfortably have 3-4 fairly distinct careers in their lifetime.
        • hajile 8y ago
          Worked construction when I was younger. If you're in the electrical Union, you'll easily make 60k per year (even in southern States where average family incomes are often under 40k). After a few years, making over 100k is very possible. In addition, the benefits and retirement are very good. But you'll be putting in 50-60 hour weeks in the cold and heat. On the bright side, the work isn't as physically demanding as some other jobs. I've pitched the idea to a bunch of friends who seem to have an aptitude. They'd all rather with as delivery boys, waiters, or whatever low end job. They don't want a "dirty job". They want to hold out for an easy money desk job. Screw working in the cold, I'll just stick with my $7.25/he job.
• rblion 8y ago
  I finally gave up comparing myself to them. Even Jobs. It's just a waste of time and a pointless exercise to feed/starve the ego. No one in my family has been to college. I am a first-generation American from the Bible Belt, a state that is 49th in education. I was fortunate that I loved nature, books, music, sports, computers, creative service, big ideas. This helped me find a way out of poverty, out of a life of drugs and crime surrounded by cops and judges. I am a minority but that is not my identity. I am a man but I respect women, hoping for equality for all. Yet, above everything, I believe in a meritocracy. I was in SF last fall, realized that I don't even want to move there anymore. I am visiting NYC this month for work/fun, maybe that's where I'll want to be. Maybe though, I'll aim even higher (live by some mountains like originally planned) because SF felt like it was too one-dimensional for me. NYC looks amazing but I may just see it a place I visit when I need to instead of moving there. I was rejected from YC once and I felt bad about it. I still love HN but I've learned that SV isn't the gatekeeper anymore, the Internet as a whole is. If I keep chugging away every day and put myself in the best position to get my ideas out into the world, I believe that the best design and marketing will always beat out a team with better engineers that lacks good design/marketing. I have no trust fund or inheritance, just the sweat of my brow, this brain aided by computers, and the vision inside my heart. "Fortune favors the bold"
  • superhuzza 8y ago
    So basically everyone from where you came from is held back by poverty and lack of education, and you believe the world is a meritocracy?
    • rblion 8y ago
      No. I believe that I need to pick my battles and I can't win them all.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • antidesitter 8y ago
      Can you point out where they said they “believe the world is a meritocracy”?
• jorblumesea 8y ago
  Looking at the problem another way, we could just fund education properly and provide a better social safety net. I also went to a "decent but not great" public school and saw similar behavior. Teachers were underpaid and overworked, and are basically just baby sitters with a lip service to actual teaching. Most of the kids went wild because their home life was so bad and had no rules once they left schools. This is because their parents were working poor, often working two jobs and with no time to properly raise kids. Or trapped in a cycle of poverty that causes all sorts of other home issues. Most of these problems begin at the home and then cash strapped school systems have to deal with the consequences. Schools have become "child jails" because of broader societal problems.
  • magduf 8y ago
    The other big problem I see with these "cash strapped school systems" is that they're all locally-run, and mostly locally-funded. So poor counties have poor and crappy school systems; there's no higher level of government making and enforcing standards to any serious degree. You don't see this at the college level because state universities are run at the state level (and are also funded in an entirely different way, but they do receive state tax funds for in-state students to my knowledge).
    • Konnstann 8y ago
      I grew up in one of the richest counties in the U.S. and the teachers were just as underpaid and overworked, the added money the schools got was spent on useless tech like putting smartboards in every classroom. I had a friend in college who grew up in an even richer neighborhood, and his school inflated GPAs to the point where most top-tier schools threw away their applications. Not saying you're wrong, but lack of money isn't the only issue in the public education system in America.
    • jorblumesea 8y ago
      In some ways, it doesn't really matter how much we throw at the schools because they are expected to solve for very large societal problems such as the massive inequality that exists in this country. In the US at least, schools bear the brunt of consequence of the lack of social safety nets. They are expected to not only teach but also raise kids that have no real parents (who are either working two jobs or the victims of a life time of poverty themselves) If we want to improve education, we need to take a broader look at inequality and the cycles of poverty that feed into each other.
• swagtricker 8y ago
  Your idea about ending school sooner is spot on. My wife has almost 2 decades experience teaching High School English. Your Junior & Senior years are fluff - they're not tracked with standardized testing of any sort in those last two years (at least in Washington State) and you've met all of the content requirements needed to graduate (just not the credit count). That's why running start exists - you're already "done" with your public education content by the time you've hit year 10 - go ahead and get your "credits" at local college/community college and get both the HS diploma and AA degree.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    I'm not sure if this is true in your wife's school, but in my high school junior and senior year was when people loaded up on AP courses that would supposedly get them out of introductory math/science/writing in college.
    • zolthrowaway 8y ago
      I think that's what GP is saying. AP classes are supposed to be college level work. If high school ended after sophomore year, you could just actually just start your college education. It doesn't hurt AP kids at all, in fact it probably helps them immensely. It also helps the kids who don't want to be in school. These kids are likely taking fluff classes. The area that it hurts are the kids who aren't quite AP kids but want to learn. Some type of college prep would need to replace those last two years.
      • cbm-vic-20 8y ago
        There's a cumulative effect too, in some cases. I took AP and "dual credit" classes in high school (and the local university) that got me out of some of freshman required classes. Near the end of my undergrad program, I had time in my schedule to take graduate-level classes.
  • ArtDev 8y ago
    11th and 12th grades should be for community college and starting to work. That is what kids will be doing!
• citilife 8y ago
  I commented further down, but this is already the case. The U.S. has this, many high schools have trade programs. You're still "technically" in school you spend your junior and senior year at a trade school and often working / making money (some as early as sophomore year) Unfortunately, this is only true for places with trade schools nearby. I grew up outside of Chicago and every school had this option.
  • ng12 8y ago
    My school had this, a "trade school" that was basically day care for the kids who didn't care. Problem is they had a 10-1 student-teacher ratio while the handful of AP classes the regular high school offered were closer to 50-1.
• lawrenceyan 8y ago
  > I have a saying when my peers compare themselves to the Zuckerbergs and Gates and Musks of the world: How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did your parents spend on your education? Because you have to realize that is who you are competing with. I went to a VERY RURAL high school. We had 3 math classes that everyone went through... none of them college level. My math class decided it was funny to rip up the floor tiles and smash them against the blackboard when the teacher's back was turned. Kids would just not do the homework and they would pass them so they didn't have to deal with them for another year. No AP classes, no test prep to speak of. Top of the class were just the obedient kids who did the 7th-grade level homework assignments. We had a small band and it was tight-knit and fun. I get really down on myself because I'm so far away from what I actually want to be. But did I actually have a chance? Yeah. But a small one. Much smaller than a lot of other people. And now the kind of jobs I can get are... fine I guess. Not great, just fine. I'm almost 30 and now I need to learn a ton of mathematics my peers have known for a decade. I ended up going to whatever Chicago college would take me at an affordable rate ( DePaul ). College was hard. I worked 40 hours a week and went to night classes. I struggled through the "easy" classes and SCRAPED past on the hard classes. Still, my early education wasn't SO BAD. At least I didn't have to worry about violence or a gang trying to draft me. I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner. Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools. For most of the country, school is just child jail. Why are we forcing students who WANT TO LEARN AND IMPROVE deal with students who do not want to be there, and are going to end up working at a tire plant anyway? "But but but.. the education!" They are not getting an education anyway. The schools do not have enough resources to teach these kids. They do not want to be there. They are torturing everyone around them because they are bored. I think there's some value to recognizing where you've come from and the hardships you faced / still are facing. But there is fundamentally a mindset of inferiority laced within your comment that is completely unnecessary and frankly just disrespectful to yourself. You say you're "almost 30" as if somehow you're another decade from death. Forgive me if this is harsh, but I think it's important for you to hear this. You're acting like a loser right now, and if you don't change that, you're going to stay a loser for the rest of your life. Your comments about yourself and their self deprecating nature will end up 100% true if you don't snap yourself out of this nasty and grisly self-fulfilling prophecy. This doesn't have to be the case though, and it is completely up to you whether you want to continue walking down the current path you are following. Whatever your circumstances from the past, whatever things outside your control, there is one factor that you have complete sovereignty over, and that is yourself. Everyday you make a choice in how you live your life. Individually they have relatively little impact. In combination, they are quite literally the definition of what your life is, "destiny" or "fate" being some words that people often use in order to absolve their personal responsibility to the final outcome. So what will your choice be for today?* * A reminder that choosing to do nothing is still very much a choice.
• Consultant32452 8y ago
  Your suggestion is an option, it's just not the path of least resistance. You can get your GED early (or graduate traditional high school early) and then go to college.
• soperj 8y ago
  None of these guys are really all the accomplished as programmers though. Sure smart guys, but Microsoft bought DOS. Zuckerberg was far away from programming by the time that facebook was actually making money, and Musk didn't actually build any of the products he's famous for (Rockets, electric cars, or paypal).
  • Zanni 8y ago
    Gates was a pretty accomplished coder. He famously wrote the bootloader for his Basic interpreter by hand on the plane trip to Altair. Microsoft bought DOS out of expedience, not because they were incapable of developing it on their own.
    • stuxnet79 8y ago
      Bill Gates also made some waves in the academic world when he came up with what was at the time the most efficient implementation of pancake sort [1] [1] https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/Bounds%20For%20Sorting%20By%20Prefix%20Reversal.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/Bounds%20F...
    • soperj 8y ago
      Yeah, that was Paul Allen not Gates, and he wrote the bootloader on the plane. The interpreter was already finished. Only full on Gates program I've ever heard of is Donkey.bas
      • dragonbonheur 8y ago
        Donkey.bas was most likely written as an educational exercise, although IBM ordered it. Microseft needed to show people how to code with their interpreters and compulers too, so Donkey.bas is not that sophisticated. Gates was responsible for writing the first Altair Microsoft BASIC interpreter, except the bootloader, the software for the Kyotronic clones (designed in collaboration with Kay Nishi and licenced to Kyocera, Tandy and others). Gates also had ample experience in programming minicomputers such as DEC PDP series together with Paul Allen. You can read all about it in all the Bill Gates biographies out there.
• snambi 8y ago
  Totally agree. Reduce school time. Let them train on the job. Education should be over by 14 or 15. Then learn to do a job or specific profession. By 21 they should be proficient in their jobs. It is better than going to college.
• dorchadas 8y ago
  > I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner. YES, YES, YES! As a teacher at a rural high school (the same one I went to and that I was blessed to have a few really good teachers and accelerated only classes with kids who wanted to be there), this is what's needed. Most these kids don't want to be here, and it's just frustrating everyone and lowering standards around the board. I would also say that your first point leads to something else too -- kids from not-so-wealthy parents don't understand the importance of things like internships and networking; I sure as hell didn't, compared to many of my kids (at a "rich kid" college). I took my summers to go to Europe, for free on school funding, and didn't get the experience or connections I needed to go to other jobs; that's a big part of the reason why I'm teaching where I graduated from... There's a lot of stuff I wish I had done differently looking back, mostly things like that. And I can't blame my parents; they didn't really know it either -- mom was a teacher and dad worked for the family business most of my childhood. (Really, I kinda blame the school; I think they assume everyone knows it, when that's really not true at all...). That's part of where the issues lie as well...and, once you're behind, as you mention, it's harder to catch back up.
  • intended 8y ago
    And to add to this - It only works for people if a few people are doing it. Its a "meta" advantage that evolved after there was a stable state of people going to college and getting jobs. Now that the economy has changed, the drop of pay power in other jobs make the well paying ones stand out - and more competitive. IF everyone were to go to find connections, you would basically recreate the old boy networks and quid pro quo social networks of old India/China.
    • dorchadas 8y ago
      At least where I'm at, they already still exist. It's easy to tell who will move to superintendent of our schools, who will become principle etc. It's all a good ole boy club, even now.
• beauzero 8y ago
  ...an option for this is online high school usually run by K12.com. Usually it is your state curriculum but you can accelerate it. Our kids are both going through it. First one started college courses 2nd year, second one will start her freshman year. Suggest picking the cheapest "state school" town and moving close by. It works until it doesn't. Georgia modified the laws last year to limit number of yearly college credits. Alabama offers something similar. Can still take close to a full load though. Good luck. In Georgia, look for the Georgia Cyber Academy gca.k12.com, it is an online charter school. Your other choices are expensive housing in the suburbs (good public schools) or private school.
• pathseeker 8y ago
  Why do you assume Zuckerberg had/has strong math skills outside of your grasp?
• naveen99 8y ago
  Competition to be the best is a zero sum game. But education isn’t. You speak of life before internet, youtube, wikipedia, github, bigquery. Things aren’t so bleak.
  • CamperBob2 8y ago
    Competition to be the best is a zero sum game. Of course it's not. Almost everything you own is better because the people who made it were trying to outcompete some other people.
• vonseel 8y ago
  We’re about the same age. I agree with most of your statements. Success is not only determined by how much parents spend on education, though. It’s a lot harder to start a Facebook or Apple in 2019 than it was in 1980 or 2004. Or to start a Snapchat or Twitter than it was in 2009. That isn’t to say all the good ideas have been taken. Technology is just much more mature than it was in the early 2000s. Many of the ideas (which seem obvious now) have already been fulfilled by dominant, established players. I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks at someone like Dell and says “crap, if I was 20 years older, I could have definitely done something like that.”. Nope. Wishful thinking. I was always a top-scoring test taker but I actually don’t like complex mental work that much. I wish “trade” jobs paid more, because honestly, it sounds much more relaxing to do electrician type work or mechanical work than sit and stare at a computer all day.
• robomartin 8y ago
  I know this meme and argument is exhausted, but I also believe is true: Education in the US is broken. Everywhere. We live in an excellent upper middle class area with excellent schools. And yet the same truth applies here as it does everywhere else in the nation: Kids graduating high school are only qualified for stacking boxes on shelves, making coffee or, maybe, applying for college. They know nothing useful and have trouble adding value above minimum wage. Knowing this was the case I got my college-bound kid ready for the real world at various levels. He can work with his hands (woodwork, weld, manual and CNC mill, etc.) as well as his brain (programming, various MOOCs and a Nanodegree on web development). By the time he left high school he could reach for jobs making 4x to 5x what his friends could land. He also got an education on financial matters. He has, as a result, saved more money than many of his friends will see in five years and is getting ready to start investing some of it. All while he works on his university degrees. Secondary education has become useless. We give our kids to these institutions until they are 18 and they come out barely ready to stack boxes in a warehouse. This is criminal. It is an incredible waste of over a decade of someone’s life. Not sure how to solve this problem. It involved forces and interests that are hard to wrestle with.
• youeseh 8y ago
  Not to take away from your overall point, but "almost 30" isn't old. You still have time to learn everything you want in order to get involved with really interesting projects / jobs. But don't waste your time wallowing and start dedicating time each day / week now to filling your gaps.
  • Zanni 8y ago
    Indeed. Thirty feels old ... when you're 30. Get another decade or two under your belt, and you'll look back and realize you had so much time.