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“think of the children” has always been a lie, though. Or at best a surface level truth. When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) t

“think of the children” has always been a lie, though. Or at best a surface level truth. When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. In many ways the pandemic response was in line with the norm: rich kids do just fine, poorer kids are mostly ignored.

lisper 6y ago
It's not quite a lie, just a very narrow scope. The implied context of "think of the children" is usually something like, "Think of how horrible it would be if the children were exposed to temptations like sex and drugs." Other aspects of children's welfare don't figure as highly in the calculus of those who espouse this slogan.
- afavour 6y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking with "surface level truth". I think if you asked the majority of the US population if they cared about children they'd say yes and I don't think they would be lying. But there's an ignorance of the bigger picture.
  - lisper 6y ago
    I think that's still not the right way to look at it. Calling it "ignorance" is unnecessarily pejorative. It's a difference in quality metric. Some people attach a lot of value to avoiding (what they believe to be) moral transgressions because they believe it imperils their soul in the afterlife or something like that. You may vehemently disagree with this goal, but if you accept that as a goal then this narrowly focused "think of the children" actually makes logical sense because the afterlife lasts a lot longer than this one does.
    - vagrantJin 6y ago
      > but if you accept that as a goal then this narrowly focused "think of the children" actually makes logical sense because the afterlife lasts a lot longer than this one does. The afterlife may last for a few minutes for all we know. While I do agree with you that not everything neccesarily needs to be looked at and judged quantitatively, the deep dive into esoteric ideas such as the afterlife is misplaced.
      - lisper 6y ago
        You have missed the point. This is not about whether or not there is an afterlife. This is about getting to the root of the disagreement, which is not the sincerity or disingenuousness of the slogan "think of the children". It's about the weight people place on avoiding certain kinds of moral transgressions, and the fact that whose who do believe in an afterlife almost universally believe it is eternal.
sokoloff 6y ago
Rich kids and poor kids alike were ignored by the school districts. The vast difference is that rich kids had many other avenues for learning and some may even have progressed more quickly freed from the tyrannically slow pace of in-person schooling.
watwut 6y ago
I dont know, US seems to me to ve obsessed with early childhood education. The expectations on when the kid should read and what not seem to be pushes to very low ages.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  It’s weird. Kids are either expected to be little geniuses or are left to the wolves. In the suburban district my nephews attend, parents double down on sports and refuse to let kids take standardized tests to make them look as good as possible. It’s monsterous.
- sjg007 6y ago
  In the US early childhood education programs describe services from birth to kindergarten such as preschool, preK and screening services for autism, learning disabilities etc...
umanwizard 6y ago
> When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. What countries fund education better per capita than the US? Can you give numbers? According to various sources, for example https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp , US per-student K-12 education funding is only behind four OECD countries: Switzerland, Austria, and Norway (and far behind Luxembourg, which is an outlier). The US is ahead of highly developed peer countries like Ireland and Belgium, and *way* ahead of the OECD average. Meta-point: It irritates me when people assume the problem with US education is low spending, because the US education system is obviously so bad that that must be true, when in reality the problem is much more complex. In my experience the people who believe this never have numbers at hand; they are just shooting from the hip.
- YarickR2 6y ago
  Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education, details matter. Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation do nothing to increase quality of schooling compared to countries where all those measures are unnecessary (safe urban environments with parents able to feed kids by themselves)
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    > Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education Right. Are you agreeing with me? Is this not my entire point? > Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation Any numbers on what fraction of school budgets these typically are?
    - krapht 6y ago
      I can't be bothered to break out Excel to tally up the numbers, but here's a link to a typical suburban school district budget if you want to run the numbers yourself: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Superintendents-Proposed-Budget_final.pdf https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Supe...
mancerayder 6y ago
Rich kids have access to private schools, which aren't subject to teacher's unions and political battles like the confusing one you had in New York between the Governor and the Mayor of NYC. They were contradicting each other on policy predictions and did a big disservice. In California, apparently teacher's unions have been blocking school opening plans. That's what I read and it could just be false or misleading news. Again, rich people afford private schools, tutors, etc. In contrast, in France they just went under lockdown in the north this weekend, yet for many months now they had schools open. In the US we're opening up but schools stay closed in many places. Who's being scientific and who's being political? Nothing makes much sense! We must question authority and special interest groups, constantly. Take nothing for granted, even if a politician claims to be on the side of science.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  Between "rich" and "poor" there's an ever-shrinking, but still a quite large layer of middle-class kids, who cannot afford private schools, tutors and summer camps abroad, but still manage to somehow get educated.
- cpwright 6y ago
  I think the idea of "rich kids can go to private schools" is not actually the what is the largest driver inequality of outcomes for children. Roughly 10% of K12 pupils attend private school in the US. I was unable to find anything that pointed towards a definitive increase in private school enrollment; though that doesn't mean that it isn't there. Sure, the "rich" families can afford private school tuition; but even just well-off families are better able to handle the at home school situation. They are more likely to have flexible schedules or work from home arrangements that allow them to properly supervise their children's learning - which I hypothesize that this better being able to supervise remote learning, is a much bigger driver of divergent outcomes than the fairly small number of private school pupils.
underseacables 6y ago
Your comment reminded me of a Modest Proposal for the covid age.

lisper 6y ago

It's not quite a lie, just a very narrow scope. The implied context of "think of the children" is usually something like, "Think of how horrible it would be if the children were exposed to temptations like sex and drugs." Other aspects of children's welfare don't figure as highly in the calculus of those who espouse this slogan.

afavour 6y ago
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking with "surface level truth". I think if you asked the majority of the US population if they cared about children they'd say yes and I don't think they would be lying. But there's an ignorance of the bigger picture.
- lisper 6y ago
  I think that's still not the right way to look at it. Calling it "ignorance" is unnecessarily pejorative. It's a difference in quality metric. Some people attach a lot of value to avoiding (what they believe to be) moral transgressions because they believe it imperils their soul in the afterlife or something like that. You may vehemently disagree with this goal, but if you accept that as a goal then this narrowly focused "think of the children" actually makes logical sense because the afterlife lasts a lot longer than this one does.
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    > but if you accept that as a goal then this narrowly focused "think of the children" actually makes logical sense because the afterlife lasts a lot longer than this one does. The afterlife may last for a few minutes for all we know. While I do agree with you that not everything neccesarily needs to be looked at and judged quantitatively, the deep dive into esoteric ideas such as the afterlife is misplaced.
    - lisper 6y ago
      You have missed the point. This is not about whether or not there is an afterlife. This is about getting to the root of the disagreement, which is not the sincerity or disingenuousness of the slogan "think of the children". It's about the weight people place on avoiding certain kinds of moral transgressions, and the fact that whose who do believe in an afterlife almost universally believe it is eternal.

sokoloff 6y ago

Rich kids and poor kids alike were ignored by the school districts. The vast difference is that rich kids had many other avenues for learning and some may even have progressed more quickly freed from the tyrannically slow pace of in-person schooling.

watwut 6y ago

I dont know, US seems to me to ve obsessed with early childhood education. The expectations on when the kid should read and what not seem to be pushes to very low ages.

Spooky23 6y ago
It’s weird. Kids are either expected to be little geniuses or are left to the wolves. In the suburban district my nephews attend, parents double down on sports and refuse to let kids take standardized tests to make them look as good as possible. It’s monsterous.
sjg007 6y ago
In the US early childhood education programs describe services from birth to kindergarten such as preschool, preK and screening services for autism, learning disabilities etc...

umanwizard 6y ago

> When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. What countries fund education better per capita than the US? Can you give numbers? According to various sources, for example https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp , US per-student K-12 education funding is only behind four OECD countries: Switzerland, Austria, and Norway (and far behind Luxembourg, which is an outlier). The US is ahead of highly developed peer countries like Ireland and Belgium, and *way* ahead of the OECD average. Meta-point: It irritates me when people assume the problem with US education is low spending, because the US education system is obviously so bad that that must be true, when in reality the problem is much more complex. In my experience the people who believe this never have numbers at hand; they are just shooting from the hip.

YarickR2 6y ago
Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education, details matter. Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation do nothing to increase quality of schooling compared to countries where all those measures are unnecessary (safe urban environments with parents able to feed kids by themselves)
- umanwizard 6y ago
  > Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education Right. Are you agreeing with me? Is this not my entire point? > Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation Any numbers on what fraction of school budgets these typically are?
  - krapht 6y ago
    I can't be bothered to break out Excel to tally up the numbers, but here's a link to a typical suburban school district budget if you want to run the numbers yourself: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Superintendents-Proposed-Budget_final.pdf https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Supe...

mancerayder 6y ago

Rich kids have access to private schools, which aren't subject to teacher's unions and political battles like the confusing one you had in New York between the Governor and the Mayor of NYC. They were contradicting each other on policy predictions and did a big disservice. In California, apparently teacher's unions have been blocking school opening plans. That's what I read and it could just be false or misleading news. Again, rich people afford private schools, tutors, etc. In contrast, in France they just went under lockdown in the north this weekend, yet for many months now they had schools open. In the US we're opening up but schools stay closed in many places. Who's being scientific and who's being political? Nothing makes much sense! We must question authority and special interest groups, constantly. Take nothing for granted, even if a politician claims to be on the side of science.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Between "rich" and "poor" there's an ever-shrinking, but still a quite large layer of middle-class kids, who cannot afford private schools, tutors and summer camps abroad, but still manage to somehow get educated.
cpwright 6y ago
I think the idea of "rich kids can go to private schools" is not actually the what is the largest driver inequality of outcomes for children. Roughly 10% of K12 pupils attend private school in the US. I was unable to find anything that pointed towards a definitive increase in private school enrollment; though that doesn't mean that it isn't there. Sure, the "rich" families can afford private school tuition; but even just well-off families are better able to handle the at home school situation. They are more likely to have flexible schedules or work from home arrangements that allow them to properly supervise their children's learning - which I hypothesize that this better being able to supervise remote learning, is a much bigger driver of divergent outcomes than the fairly small number of private school pupils.

underseacables 6y ago

Your comment reminded me of a Modest Proposal for the covid age.