8 ms·

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key piece of that work, because it truly can be a great equalizer. You will notice not just different curriculum, but entirely different methods being used at a posh place for the elite like Eton, vs a (US) public school or even most upper middle class private schools. Class war is real, the rich are winning, and education is a key part of that war.

wutbrodo 5y ago
I believe the gap between private schools and public schools, because I've seen it (a good friend of mine had to repeat a grade coming from his rich-area public school to our private school). But is there any evidence of a gap in instructional quality between (eg) Eton and upper-middle-class private schools? I don't know a ton about the topic, but this would be pretty surprising given my current low-confidence understanding. I believe that there's a success gap, but that's plausibly down to the inescapable networking advantages of concentrating elites, and isn't relevant to the specific claim you're making.
- derbOac 5y ago
  Even here on HN I've seen "looking to hire" posts where they basically come out and say they will only consider people from elite colleges and universities. It's hard to see stuff like that, so blatant, and not conclude there's a signaling-networking phenomenon going on. It comes up in other things I've seen too, where I know some idea has been floated over and over again by various groups, and then some deal is announced in the news where some institution (university or corporation) is given the grant or funding or whatever, for the same thing as all the other proposals, and it's obvious it's a rich get richer phenomenon. These issues are always so complicated because they don't operate in any of the ways that people assume stereotypically. One person will be hit by circumstance positively or negatively in a way that's idiosyncratic to them, and privilege operates in subtle ways sometimes. As for your question, a few years ago there was a blog post making the rounds showing that across colleges, students improve across their undergrad years on standardized testing, but it's pretty much uniform across colleges. More selective colleges have higher means (and in some studies lower variance) but the rate of learning isn't any different, and there's huge overlaps in distributions between institutions. I've tried to find it but haven't been able to from where I'm at at the moment.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Those posts give me the sense that those companies are looking for investors (the rich parents) rather than somebody to do work
    - rkk3 5y ago
      Google famously only hired people with elite education credentials in the beginning. "We also didn't want to hire anyone from what were considered lesser universities" Eric Schmidt https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756 https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - derbOac 5y ago
        Stuff like that is so soul crushing to me. It's caste systems in another guise.
        esyir 5y ago
        And, with the push against objective metrics for entering, the castes get ever more solid.
        rkk3 5y ago
        It's good to remember that Primogeniture and hereditary monarchy are only recently out of fashion in the west.
BobbyJo 5y ago
I hear this a lot and I have a hard time believing it. What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Your example with public vs private schools has less to do with diminishing public schools and everything to do with their maximizing their own children's education. If we end private schools, do we still allow paid tutors? If so, I don't see how that field gets levelled.
- luffapi 5y ago
  > What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? https://www.fastcompany.com/90642878/worker-pay-went-up-just-1-8-in-2020-ceo-pay-increased-nearly-16 https://www.fastcompany.com/90642878/worker-pay-went-up-just... And that’s not even starting on lobbying and policy.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    So the rich made stocks go up because they want to destroy the middle class?
    - luffapi 5y ago
      As per the source I linked: the rich captured all the gains and failed to increase everyone else’s pay to even match inflation.
      - BobbyJo 5y ago
        As per the source, the rich are paid in stock, and they made more because stocks grew in value. You're making it sound like a scheme when it's a paycheck. Everyone in the US is free to convert all of their money into stock whenever they like. The reason the CEOs get paid in stock to to tie their compensation to the value of the company, not to disenfranchise the poor.
        luffapi 5y ago
        Nowhere in that article does it talk about executive compensation coming solely from stock. Mismatched equity grants are one of the levers, but so is regular salary. Regardless, the fact is executive pay has been rising while worker pay has been stagnant for decades. That’s not even up for debate, it’s a fact.
wyager 5y ago
You’re making the same exact mistake that education activists have made for the last 60 years. Education does not significantly improve outcomes. Period. What people observe is that people who went to top-tier schools end up being very successful, and make the (totally false) inference that top-tier schools make you successful. In reality, the people who were almost certainly going to be successful anyway get into the top-tier schools, partially on merit and partially because this is the legitimation process for the upper class in the US. If you stuff a million poor people into the top-tier schools, this won’t actually fix anything, because A) those people are much less likely to succeed no matter what B) you can’t actually have a million people in the upper class. We’re currently in the throes of dealing with B). Turchin calls this “elite overproduction”. You have millions of people who (think they) went through the process to become upper class (going to college), but it turns out that was just a signifier - a signifier that’s been totally destroyed by the push to send everyone to college.
- oezi 5y ago
  I agree about the signifier, but still think education has a real value outside the pure signalling. You need experts and for that you need schools/colleges because in most jobs you will not learn wide enough nor deep enough (exceptions are possible).
  - wyager 5y ago
    Yes, you need experts, but the people who are going to really benefit from expert-level training were probably already going to go to college anyway. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc are part of the upper class in one way or another.
    - oblio 5y ago
      A huge chunk of "doctors, lawyers, scientists" come from the middle class or lower, though.
      - wyager 5y ago
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I won't dispute the existence of class war (though I don't think it's about "middle class" and more about "working class" and I don't think this process is deliberate, more systemic).... But I would quibble about the role education content plays. Canada doesn't have the same kind of tiered education system that the US has. Public schools are funded out of pooled revenue not local taxes for example so poor neighbourhoods don't get poorly funded schools (though that doesn't rule out what happens with "fundraising" but that's another issue). And universities are more affordable and don't generally get 'elite' status and name branding. Universities are generally all of high quality and most sane employers wouldn't sneer based on where your CS degree came from, etc. But we have similar income inequality issues to the US. Because it's not the curriculum, it's the ongoing class structure, that's the problem. Now, there's definitely different levels of education quality, but I have yet to see evidence that curriculum content is the problem. I'd argue the chief value of private schools and elite universities is the network of other wealthy people (am I allowed to use the word 'bourgeois?) you'll meet there. It's connecting with people of your own class. When I worked at a startup here I quickly realized that most founders and investors I met knew each other or knew of each other through the private school circuit. But it was the exclusiveness of the networks they got through there that benefited them, not the quality of the education. They weren't any smarter than me, just better acculturated into the world of investment, finance, etc. by nature of who they knew, what resources they had, and whose kids they were.
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  I disagree strongly about curriculum. Just to give an example, here is an exerpt about the language curriculum at Eton from a modern (90s) graduate: "Everyone must learn Latin and French for the first two years. Most boys have studied Latin and French for a couple of years before they arrive at the school. The cleverer boys also do Ancient Greek. There are many more languages offered besides these ones. The additional foreign languages are Russian, Spanish, German. Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Arabic. Those who are not good at languages need do only French and Latin." - Calers (1) To me this is just one of a myriad of examples that highlight the kind of difference in actual education curriculum between the oligarchs and the rest of us. I would argue much of this is about quality of life instead of "success outcomes", and generally about having a strong liberal arts background being a key component of ANY education worth anything. Which is also why I strongly disagree with those who advocate for sending students straight to vocational schools, and that whole general line of reasoning, for example. How many of your referenced founders and investors knew Latin and French before the age of 13? 1. https://gcalers.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/what-makes-eton-so-special/ https://gcalers.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/what-makes-eton-so-...
GuB-42 5y ago
> The oligarchs have been working to destroy the middle class for a long time now Why would they? The middle class is made of doctors, engineers, artists, craftsmen, chefs,... If you are rich and powerful, you want doctors to care for you when you are sick, engineers to design your private jet, artists to entertain you, craftsmen to build your mansion, chefs to prepare you the best meals,... Mindless slaves had some value in the pre-industrial times, but now, we have machines that do the work of thousands of slaves, cheaper and better. The rich want people to serve them, sure, but they want them smart and productive. And people don't become smart and productive when they are struggling with life. Just look at the rich and powerful during the pandemic, they got hit like the rest of us. Better treatment, and they quarantined in paradise islands, but they still died and had to do all the social distancing stuff. And guess who saved their ass, yep, middle class, and they know it, they are not stupid. There is no class war, no conspiracy. In fact, if there is war, it is between the member of each class. It is a tragedy of the commons situation, where the common here is the workforce.

wutbrodo 5y ago

I believe the gap between private schools and public schools, because I've seen it (a good friend of mine had to repeat a grade coming from his rich-area public school to our private school). But is there any evidence of a gap in instructional quality between (eg) Eton and upper-middle-class private schools? I don't know a ton about the topic, but this would be pretty surprising given my current low-confidence understanding. I believe that there's a success gap, but that's plausibly down to the inescapable networking advantages of concentrating elites, and isn't relevant to the specific claim you're making.

derbOac 5y ago
Even here on HN I've seen "looking to hire" posts where they basically come out and say they will only consider people from elite colleges and universities. It's hard to see stuff like that, so blatant, and not conclude there's a signaling-networking phenomenon going on. It comes up in other things I've seen too, where I know some idea has been floated over and over again by various groups, and then some deal is announced in the news where some institution (university or corporation) is given the grant or funding or whatever, for the same thing as all the other proposals, and it's obvious it's a rich get richer phenomenon. These issues are always so complicated because they don't operate in any of the ways that people assume stereotypically. One person will be hit by circumstance positively or negatively in a way that's idiosyncratic to them, and privilege operates in subtle ways sometimes. As for your question, a few years ago there was a blog post making the rounds showing that across colleges, students improve across their undergrad years on standardized testing, but it's pretty much uniform across colleges. More selective colleges have higher means (and in some studies lower variance) but the rate of learning isn't any different, and there's huge overlaps in distributions between institutions. I've tried to find it but haven't been able to from where I'm at at the moment.
- 8note 5y ago
  Those posts give me the sense that those companies are looking for investors (the rich parents) rather than somebody to do work
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Google famously only hired people with elite education credentials in the beginning. "We also didn't want to hire anyone from what were considered lesser universities" Eric Schmidt https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756 https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - derbOac 5y ago
      Stuff like that is so soul crushing to me. It's caste systems in another guise.
      - esyir 5y ago
        And, with the push against objective metrics for entering, the castes get ever more solid.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        It's good to remember that Primogeniture and hereditary monarchy are only recently out of fashion in the west.

BobbyJo 5y ago

I hear this a lot and I have a hard time believing it. What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Your example with public vs private schools has less to do with diminishing public schools and everything to do with their maximizing their own children's education. If we end private schools, do we still allow paid tutors? If so, I don't see how that field gets levelled.

luffapi 5y ago
> What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? https://www.fastcompany.com/90642878/worker-pay-went-up-just-1-8-in-2020-ceo-pay-increased-nearly-16 https://www.fastcompany.com/90642878/worker-pay-went-up-just... And that’s not even starting on lobbying and policy.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  So the rich made stocks go up because they want to destroy the middle class?
  - luffapi 5y ago
    As per the source I linked: the rich captured all the gains and failed to increase everyone else’s pay to even match inflation.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      As per the source, the rich are paid in stock, and they made more because stocks grew in value. You're making it sound like a scheme when it's a paycheck. Everyone in the US is free to convert all of their money into stock whenever they like. The reason the CEOs get paid in stock to to tie their compensation to the value of the company, not to disenfranchise the poor.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        Nowhere in that article does it talk about executive compensation coming solely from stock. Mismatched equity grants are one of the levers, but so is regular salary. Regardless, the fact is executive pay has been rising while worker pay has been stagnant for decades. That’s not even up for debate, it’s a fact.

wyager 5y ago

You’re making the same exact mistake that education activists have made for the last 60 years. Education does not significantly improve outcomes. Period. What people observe is that people who went to top-tier schools end up being very successful, and make the (totally false) inference that top-tier schools make you successful. In reality, the people who were almost certainly going to be successful anyway get into the top-tier schools, partially on merit and partially because this is the legitimation process for the upper class in the US. If you stuff a million poor people into the top-tier schools, this won’t actually fix anything, because A) those people are much less likely to succeed no matter what B) you can’t actually have a million people in the upper class. We’re currently in the throes of dealing with B). Turchin calls this “elite overproduction”. You have millions of people who (think they) went through the process to become upper class (going to college), but it turns out that was just a signifier - a signifier that’s been totally destroyed by the push to send everyone to college.

oezi 5y ago
I agree about the signifier, but still think education has a real value outside the pure signalling. You need experts and for that you need schools/colleges because in most jobs you will not learn wide enough nor deep enough (exceptions are possible).
- wyager 5y ago
  Yes, you need experts, but the people who are going to really benefit from expert-level training were probably already going to go to college anyway. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc are part of the upper class in one way or another.
  - oblio 5y ago
    A huge chunk of "doctors, lawyers, scientists" come from the middle class or lower, though.
    - wyager 5y ago

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

I won't dispute the existence of class war (though I don't think it's about "middle class" and more about "working class" and I don't think this process is deliberate, more systemic).... But I would quibble about the role education content plays. Canada doesn't have the same kind of tiered education system that the US has. Public schools are funded out of pooled revenue not local taxes for example so poor neighbourhoods don't get poorly funded schools (though that doesn't rule out what happens with "fundraising" but that's another issue). And universities are more affordable and don't generally get 'elite' status and name branding. Universities are generally all of high quality and most sane employers wouldn't sneer based on where your CS degree came from, etc. But we have similar income inequality issues to the US. Because it's not the curriculum, it's the ongoing class structure, that's the problem. Now, there's definitely different levels of education quality, but I have yet to see evidence that curriculum content is the problem. I'd argue the chief value of private schools and elite universities is the network of other wealthy people (am I allowed to use the word 'bourgeois?) you'll meet there. It's connecting with people of your own class. When I worked at a startup here I quickly realized that most founders and investors I met knew each other or knew of each other through the private school circuit. But it was the exclusiveness of the networks they got through there that benefited them, not the quality of the education. They weren't any smarter than me, just better acculturated into the world of investment, finance, etc. by nature of who they knew, what resources they had, and whose kids they were.

arminiusreturns 5y ago
I disagree strongly about curriculum. Just to give an example, here is an exerpt about the language curriculum at Eton from a modern (90s) graduate: "Everyone must learn Latin and French for the first two years. Most boys have studied Latin and French for a couple of years before they arrive at the school. The cleverer boys also do Ancient Greek. There are many more languages offered besides these ones. The additional foreign languages are Russian, Spanish, German. Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Arabic. Those who are not good at languages need do only French and Latin." - Calers (1) To me this is just one of a myriad of examples that highlight the kind of difference in actual education curriculum between the oligarchs and the rest of us. I would argue much of this is about quality of life instead of "success outcomes", and generally about having a strong liberal arts background being a key component of ANY education worth anything. Which is also why I strongly disagree with those who advocate for sending students straight to vocational schools, and that whole general line of reasoning, for example. How many of your referenced founders and investors knew Latin and French before the age of 13? 1. https://gcalers.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/what-makes-eton-so-special/ https://gcalers.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/what-makes-eton-so-...

GuB-42 5y ago

> The oligarchs have been working to destroy the middle class for a long time now Why would they? The middle class is made of doctors, engineers, artists, craftsmen, chefs,... If you are rich and powerful, you want doctors to care for you when you are sick, engineers to design your private jet, artists to entertain you, craftsmen to build your mansion, chefs to prepare you the best meals,... Mindless slaves had some value in the pre-industrial times, but now, we have machines that do the work of thousands of slaves, cheaper and better. The rich want people to serve them, sure, but they want them smart and productive. And people don't become smart and productive when they are struggling with life. Just look at the rich and powerful during the pandemic, they got hit like the rest of us. Better treatment, and they quarantined in paradise islands, but they still died and had to do all the social distancing stuff. And guess who saved their ass, yep, middle class, and they know it, they are not stupid. There is no class war, no conspiracy. In fact, if there is war, it is between the member of each class. It is a tragedy of the commons situation, where the common here is the workforce.