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Based on what criteria? Which countries? When was it better and by how much? Also worth mentioning that everyone is the best armchair quarterback in the world.

Based on what criteria? Which countries? When was it better and by how much? Also worth mentioning that everyone is the best armchair quarterback in the world. If you've got new perspectives that are so effective, start your own school and show the experts how wrong they are. Get rich by offering such a better product. It should be child's play to do measurably better than an abject failure.

gfodor 6y ago
Most people will just home school their kids. I am in the US so that is what I was referring to. Not really worth the effort trying to argue the point - many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives, and in many cases caused immense harm to their growth as educated citizens.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  Most (all) people have no counterfactual to compare against. We can compare across cultures, though, and say that more educated ones tend to be more prosperous along nearly every dimension than less educated ones.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    Yes, richer countries buy more consumer goods and experiences. You have the relation right but the causality reversed. Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe and poorer than it. Richer countries buy more of everything they want. The most obvious example of economic growth not being associated with education is post Deng Xiaoping China. The huge majority had primary school education at best and the economy just kept growing and growing. On the other side look at any of the Arab petrostates, many university graduates, no real economy except pumping oil.
    - tchaffee 6y ago
      > Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe Source please? I have been working in Brazil for the past few years and the education level here is nowhere near 1970s Europe. Not even close. The public primary school system is so bad that any family who can afford it - even poor people - pay for private school. Sometimes only a $100 a month for the cheapest private schools. They are not very good, but they are better than the public schools and so there are an estimated 40,000 private schools in Brazil. About 40% of the primary and secondary schools. So about 60% of Brazilians get a very substandard primary and secondary school education. At least 26% of the population earns below $56 USD a month and as a result the government gives them $13 a month but only if their children are vaccinated and stay in school. That should give you an idea of the level of poverty and the tax base upon which the public schools in those areas have to operate on. Conversely, the free government run universities are excellent and hard to get into. Ironically, the vast majority of students accepted are from elite and expensive private primary and secondary schools. So the free public universities are mostly a service for wealthy or at least upper middle class kids. Your claim that almost all of Latin America is more highly educated now than 1970s Europe is highly suspect unless you can provide something to back that up.
      - barry-cotter 6y ago
        Algeria, Tunisia, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina and Indonesia all have a greater proportion of the populace in third level education than France did in 1970. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-enrollment-ratio-in-tertiary-education?country=FRA~DZA~ARG~BRA~CHL~TUN~ETH~IDN~VEN~BOL~MEX https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-enrollment-ratio-in...
        tchaffee 6y ago
        I can see now where you are getting your idea but that's a quantitative measure only which does not consider quality of education. The reason that 1970s Europe was better educated than Brazil or Latin America today is because of the substandard education so many will get from public secondary school and that's where their education stops. Enrollment ratio in university also doesn't say much about graduation rates. What surprised me after living in Europe and that you will not find nearly as often in Latin America, is just how well educated someone is who only attended secondary school. Your claim also included a question about why these countries are still poor. Brazil is not competing with the France of the 1970s.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Have you compared the salaries of an Eastern European developer with a CS degree to the salary of a self taught developer in the USA? Economic migration is basically the act of declaring your education worthless and declaring the destination to be more important.
    - tchaffee 6y ago
      Maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't make any sense. Isn't economic migration the act of declaring that your education is worth more in different country?
- tchaffee 6y ago
  > Most people will just home school their kids. Wrong and by a huge factor which is why I asked for sources. This source [1] says 3% of children in the US are home schooled. This source [2] says about 3.5%. Even you could give a source that triples those number to 10%, you are are still completely wrong about "most". > many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives How many? Not only are you speaking for other people, but this is anecdote, not evidence. So far you have a sample size of one: yourself. > not preparing them for their adult lives That's partially a failure on the part of parents, not schools. Schools can only do so much. Their job is basic English and math literacy along with some exposure to STEM, perhaps a foreign language and other electives. A high school education will no longer prepare you for adult life, which is why so many countries offer affordable university education. So at the best you might be able to claim that the job of public schools is to prepare you for university. Which loads of public schools in the US are capable of doing. If you work hard in most high schools you can get into a good university. Are there underperforming schools and especially in some states? For sure. And especially in poor areas. I agree that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately that's not unique to the US. But if all of US public education is an abject failure like you claim, then you should be able to show how much better either home schooled kids do in life (adjusting for income of parents as causation) or how much better in life kids from other countries do. Lacking either of those, then public schools are doing a pretty good job at least relatively to all available options. I repeat again: if it were so easy to beat public schools and provide a better service, everyone would already be doing it. It's not that easy. Just as one example, after accounting for the socioeconomic background of students, public school students scored higher than their private school peers on a federal math test [3]. Abject failure? [1] https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp [2] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html#homeschl https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statist... [3] http://www.nea.org/home/17824.htm http://www.nea.org/home/17824.htm
  - gfodor 6y ago
    The “most” I was referring to wasn’t the most of all parents, but of people who you say should just go out and start a new school system. It seems somewhat self evident that the people who are homeschooling their kids have some % that do so because they see the school system as a failure. The point is if you’ve flipped the bozo bit on public schools, the next fix is go to a private one, and the next is to homeschool, and only after you’ve decided you care more about education itself and not just your own children would you actually try to attack the problem in the way you state. You’re really digging in here, and seem to be taking personally something which seems plainly obvious to many successful people: school failed to prepare them for their professional lives, and in many cases school was a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. You keep trying to turn this into a relativistic argument, or think I am saying schools are an abject failure based upon data. This isn’t an argument based upon data, it’s an argument based upon a constellation of anecdotal data. The reason you see a lot of software engineers talking about this is because they see this as a problem, and many see it as a problem not because of data, but because they feel based on their own experiences of them and their children that something is very wrong with the way we educate the young. Edit: also, you keep implying that I said fixing these problems would be easy. Where did I say that? My original post was literally a few words - I am generally disgusted when elitism enters threads on “hacker” news. Credentialism is stupid, and good ideas can come from anywhere, and often do come from people who have a deep talent stack beyond a narrow domain. Chastising people for having opinions on subjects they are under informed about is dumb - at worst, that’s an opportunity to (ironically) educate them. At best, their beginners mind may offer a chance to think differently.
coryrc 6y ago
> start your own school and show the experts how wrong they are Let parents have vouchers to attend my school and I will.
- tchaffee 6y ago
  If your ideas are so effective, why can't you compete you against the many private schools already in existence?
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    For the same reason tesla competes against toyota, not against porsche. The gap in education is at the bottom, not at the top

gfodor 6y ago

Most people will just home school their kids. I am in the US so that is what I was referring to. Not really worth the effort trying to argue the point - many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives, and in many cases caused immense harm to their growth as educated citizens.

ethanbond 6y ago
Most (all) people have no counterfactual to compare against. We can compare across cultures, though, and say that more educated ones tend to be more prosperous along nearly every dimension than less educated ones.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  Yes, richer countries buy more consumer goods and experiences. You have the relation right but the causality reversed. Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe and poorer than it. Richer countries buy more of everything they want. The most obvious example of economic growth not being associated with education is post Deng Xiaoping China. The huge majority had primary school education at best and the economy just kept growing and growing. On the other side look at any of the Arab petrostates, many university graduates, no real economy except pumping oil.
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    > Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe Source please? I have been working in Brazil for the past few years and the education level here is nowhere near 1970s Europe. Not even close. The public primary school system is so bad that any family who can afford it - even poor people - pay for private school. Sometimes only a $100 a month for the cheapest private schools. They are not very good, but they are better than the public schools and so there are an estimated 40,000 private schools in Brazil. About 40% of the primary and secondary schools. So about 60% of Brazilians get a very substandard primary and secondary school education. At least 26% of the population earns below $56 USD a month and as a result the government gives them $13 a month but only if their children are vaccinated and stay in school. That should give you an idea of the level of poverty and the tax base upon which the public schools in those areas have to operate on. Conversely, the free government run universities are excellent and hard to get into. Ironically, the vast majority of students accepted are from elite and expensive private primary and secondary schools. So the free public universities are mostly a service for wealthy or at least upper middle class kids. Your claim that almost all of Latin America is more highly educated now than 1970s Europe is highly suspect unless you can provide something to back that up.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      Algeria, Tunisia, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina and Indonesia all have a greater proportion of the populace in third level education than France did in 1970. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-enrollment-ratio-in-tertiary-education?country=FRA~DZA~ARG~BRA~CHL~TUN~ETH~IDN~VEN~BOL~MEX https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-enrollment-ratio-in...
      - tchaffee 6y ago
        I can see now where you are getting your idea but that's a quantitative measure only which does not consider quality of education. The reason that 1970s Europe was better educated than Brazil or Latin America today is because of the substandard education so many will get from public secondary school and that's where their education stops. Enrollment ratio in university also doesn't say much about graduation rates. What surprised me after living in Europe and that you will not find nearly as often in Latin America, is just how well educated someone is who only attended secondary school. Your claim also included a question about why these countries are still poor. Brazil is not competing with the France of the 1970s.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Have you compared the salaries of an Eastern European developer with a CS degree to the salary of a self taught developer in the USA? Economic migration is basically the act of declaring your education worthless and declaring the destination to be more important.
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't make any sense. Isn't economic migration the act of declaring that your education is worth more in different country?
tchaffee 6y ago
> Most people will just home school their kids. Wrong and by a huge factor which is why I asked for sources. This source [1] says 3% of children in the US are home schooled. This source [2] says about 3.5%. Even you could give a source that triples those number to 10%, you are are still completely wrong about "most". > many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives How many? Not only are you speaking for other people, but this is anecdote, not evidence. So far you have a sample size of one: yourself. > not preparing them for their adult lives That's partially a failure on the part of parents, not schools. Schools can only do so much. Their job is basic English and math literacy along with some exposure to STEM, perhaps a foreign language and other electives. A high school education will no longer prepare you for adult life, which is why so many countries offer affordable university education. So at the best you might be able to claim that the job of public schools is to prepare you for university. Which loads of public schools in the US are capable of doing. If you work hard in most high schools you can get into a good university. Are there underperforming schools and especially in some states? For sure. And especially in poor areas. I agree that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately that's not unique to the US. But if all of US public education is an abject failure like you claim, then you should be able to show how much better either home schooled kids do in life (adjusting for income of parents as causation) or how much better in life kids from other countries do. Lacking either of those, then public schools are doing a pretty good job at least relatively to all available options. I repeat again: if it were so easy to beat public schools and provide a better service, everyone would already be doing it. It's not that easy. Just as one example, after accounting for the socioeconomic background of students, public school students scored higher than their private school peers on a federal math test [3]. Abject failure? [1] https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp [2] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html#homeschl https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statist... [3] http://www.nea.org/home/17824.htm http://www.nea.org/home/17824.htm
- gfodor 6y ago
  The “most” I was referring to wasn’t the most of all parents, but of people who you say should just go out and start a new school system. It seems somewhat self evident that the people who are homeschooling their kids have some % that do so because they see the school system as a failure. The point is if you’ve flipped the bozo bit on public schools, the next fix is go to a private one, and the next is to homeschool, and only after you’ve decided you care more about education itself and not just your own children would you actually try to attack the problem in the way you state. You’re really digging in here, and seem to be taking personally something which seems plainly obvious to many successful people: school failed to prepare them for their professional lives, and in many cases school was a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. You keep trying to turn this into a relativistic argument, or think I am saying schools are an abject failure based upon data. This isn’t an argument based upon data, it’s an argument based upon a constellation of anecdotal data. The reason you see a lot of software engineers talking about this is because they see this as a problem, and many see it as a problem not because of data, but because they feel based on their own experiences of them and their children that something is very wrong with the way we educate the young. Edit: also, you keep implying that I said fixing these problems would be easy. Where did I say that? My original post was literally a few words - I am generally disgusted when elitism enters threads on “hacker” news. Credentialism is stupid, and good ideas can come from anywhere, and often do come from people who have a deep talent stack beyond a narrow domain. Chastising people for having opinions on subjects they are under informed about is dumb - at worst, that’s an opportunity to (ironically) educate them. At best, their beginners mind may offer a chance to think differently.

coryrc 6y ago

> start your own school and show the experts how wrong they are Let parents have vouchers to attend my school and I will.

tchaffee 6y ago
If your ideas are so effective, why can't you compete you against the many private schools already in existence?
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  For the same reason tesla competes against toyota, not against porsche. The gap in education is at the bottom, not at the top