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Your parents making a sacrifice isn't the same thing as you making a sacrifice. If my dad makes a sacrifice by working 100 hours a week to buy me a Maserati, t
by learc83 7y ago
Your parents making a sacrifice isn't the same thing as you making a sacrifice.
If my dad makes a sacrifice by working 100 hours a week to buy me a Maserati, the car is definitely a privilege not something I earned. And yeah, I may have lost out on spending time with my dad, but that wasn't a choice I made, so while it cost me something it wasn't a sacrifice on my part.
- solveit 7y agoI agree, but do we really want to disincentivise parents sacrificing for their children's education? I'm fine with taxing Maseratis at whatever rate, not so fine with this.
- learc83 7y agoFor society as a whole I don't think it is particularly beneficial to encourage people to move to rich neighborhoods/better school districts. The other factors are so far removed from most individual's control that I don't think we'll see much of an impact on behavior.
- cljs-js-eval 7y agoSometimes it's hard to see the second order effects of our actions, but it seems pretty clear cut how society will be affected if you punish people willing to invest in their childrens' education.
- learc83 7y agoI don't think that encouraging people to move to rich neighborhoods with better schools is necessarily beneficial for society as a whole.
- lenkite 7y agoFor many Asian-American's their children's education is a dream that they plan out and sacrifice for so that their kin can have better opportunity than what they managed for themselves. Many are tightly knit families where children look after parents or other close family members later in life. To penalise and denigrate the efforts of such families as "privilege" is awful.
- learc83 7y agoMany White, Black, and Hispanic families do the same thing. It's not denigrating that sacrifice to acknowledge that being born into cohesive, supportive family that values hard work is a privilege that many poor children do not have.
- lenkite 7y agoI guess we will have to disagree. When you are penalizing such efforts, you are most certainly denigrating them.
- learc83 7y agoHarvard has need based scholarships. These need based scholarships directly reduce the amount of children of wealthy parents who get into Harvard. Are need based scholarships denigrating the hard work of wealthy parents?
- lenkite 7y agoAre you truly comparing the scholarship need-based policies of one wealthy, private college to a fundamental change in the Scholastic Assessment Test used nation wide ? You have a choice to apply to Harvard - there is very little choice apart from SAT/ACT for higher education in the states.
- learc83 7y agoAre you avoiding the question? I'll rephrase it. If I give $5k dollars per year for college to every student in America whose parents make under $100k a year, am I denigrating the hard work of the parents who make more than that?
- lenkite 7y agoIf I give $5k dollars per year, for college, to every student in America whose parents make under $100k a year, am I denigrating the hard work of the parents who make more than that? No, you certainly are not. But this is completely different from adding a hidden adversity score to the SAT. Your proposal is equality of opportunity to earn merit. The other proposal is manipulation of outcome to negate merit.