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> 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

> 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.
- tchaffee 6y ago
  > 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 Sure, I'll go with that. So we've got some percentage of 3% who see the school system as a failure. That's a tiny percentage. This is why data is important. I'll even agree that the real percentage of parents or graduates who think the school system is a failure is much higher. But how much higher? > You’re really digging in here, and seem to be taking personally Not at all. I'm interested in learning and I don't trust anecdote. I trust data. So I was hoping you have data but it seems like you won't ever have data because you're convinced that anecdote is enough. For some of us, it's not enough. We like data because we've seen anecdote paint a false reality far too many times. > something which seems plainly obvious to many successful people: school failed to prepare them for their professional lives, I'll make the opposite claim: it's not obvious to most successful people. It's also not obvious to the companies hiring people. Yes new employees need some training. But they do not need years of retraining to compensate for an "abject failure" of a school system that trained them for twelve years. Most employees start adding value pretty quickly. I've run my own companies. I was happy with how quickly employees started adding value. So this is another example of why anecdote fails to help us understand a situation. My anecdote is different from your anecdote is different from someone else's anecdote. > in many cases school was a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. School or being around other kids? Kids are brutal. Work is also too often a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. But usually not as brutal as children can be to each other. What might prepare you for success in that kind of work environment? > This isn’t an argument based upon data, it’s an argument based upon a constellation of anecdotal data. Perhaps there is a constellation out there, but I don't see it and you're not willing to show it other than saying "trust me, it's obvious a lot of people feel this way". What 's obvious to me is that Americans have one of highest standards of living in the world and the largest and most important economy in the world, along with a very high median wage. So what's hard to believe is that this has been the case for so long when 90% of the children who will go on to contribute to that economy as adults were educated in a system that is an "abject failure" when it comes to preparing them for their professional lives. That the twelve years of public education they went through needs to be thrown out, and companies have to start from the beginning in teaching all of the basic skills the schools failed to teach them. I would also extend this to all developed countries. They all offer a high standard of living, even to lower middle class people. Most often healthcare is considered a human right. How does all this progress manage to happen when the first twelve years of education are an "abject failure"? With all of that said, I don't want to silence or dismiss you or anyone who had a horrible time at school. For sure I had some less than ideal experiences myself. There is a lot that can be improved. But if we are going to improve, it has to start with moving from anecdote to data. We need to understand causation and what can be fixed and what is outside the responsibility of the school system and should be the responsibility of parents and society at large. We are not going to get there thanks to articles that promise video games are a silver bullet. If many developers truly do see education as an "abject failure", then they are going to have to do what I have done: teach, write educational software, and in short get deeply involved in the industry you are trying to improve. By which point you will have a far more nuanced understanding of what does and does not work and you'll firmly be out of "it's all an abject failure" territory.

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.

tchaffee 6y ago
> 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 Sure, I'll go with that. So we've got some percentage of 3% who see the school system as a failure. That's a tiny percentage. This is why data is important. I'll even agree that the real percentage of parents or graduates who think the school system is a failure is much higher. But how much higher? > You’re really digging in here, and seem to be taking personally Not at all. I'm interested in learning and I don't trust anecdote. I trust data. So I was hoping you have data but it seems like you won't ever have data because you're convinced that anecdote is enough. For some of us, it's not enough. We like data because we've seen anecdote paint a false reality far too many times. > something which seems plainly obvious to many successful people: school failed to prepare them for their professional lives, I'll make the opposite claim: it's not obvious to most successful people. It's also not obvious to the companies hiring people. Yes new employees need some training. But they do not need years of retraining to compensate for an "abject failure" of a school system that trained them for twelve years. Most employees start adding value pretty quickly. I've run my own companies. I was happy with how quickly employees started adding value. So this is another example of why anecdote fails to help us understand a situation. My anecdote is different from your anecdote is different from someone else's anecdote. > in many cases school was a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. School or being around other kids? Kids are brutal. Work is also too often a physiologically damaging, stifling experience. But usually not as brutal as children can be to each other. What might prepare you for success in that kind of work environment? > This isn’t an argument based upon data, it’s an argument based upon a constellation of anecdotal data. Perhaps there is a constellation out there, but I don't see it and you're not willing to show it other than saying "trust me, it's obvious a lot of people feel this way". What 's obvious to me is that Americans have one of highest standards of living in the world and the largest and most important economy in the world, along with a very high median wage. So what's hard to believe is that this has been the case for so long when 90% of the children who will go on to contribute to that economy as adults were educated in a system that is an "abject failure" when it comes to preparing them for their professional lives. That the twelve years of public education they went through needs to be thrown out, and companies have to start from the beginning in teaching all of the basic skills the schools failed to teach them. I would also extend this to all developed countries. They all offer a high standard of living, even to lower middle class people. Most often healthcare is considered a human right. How does all this progress manage to happen when the first twelve years of education are an "abject failure"? With all of that said, I don't want to silence or dismiss you or anyone who had a horrible time at school. For sure I had some less than ideal experiences myself. There is a lot that can be improved. But if we are going to improve, it has to start with moving from anecdote to data. We need to understand causation and what can be fixed and what is outside the responsibility of the school system and should be the responsibility of parents and society at large. We are not going to get there thanks to articles that promise video games are a silver bullet. If many developers truly do see education as an "abject failure", then they are going to have to do what I have done: teach, write educational software, and in short get deeply involved in the industry you are trying to improve. By which point you will have a far more nuanced understanding of what does and does not work and you'll firmly be out of "it's all an abject failure" territory.