6 ms·

Set standards, let people meet them, and don't worry about what they look like.

woodruffw 5y ago
There is nothing a priori wrong with offering different educational treatment based on academic standards. The problem arises when you try to produce an "empirical" measurement of academic excellence on real human beings (and particularly children): children spend their entire days under the control and potential neglect of others. One day's failure on an empty stomach[1] is another day's success. [1]: In case it isn't abundantly clear, this is a stand-in for a complex of issues.
- lazide 5y ago
  The challenge of course is abilities matter for society in a huge number of ways - irrespective of personal circumstances. We need the best surgeons, engineers, leaders, teachers, etc. - not the best weighted by some sort of ‘difficulty during upbringing’ score.
  - Wiseacre 5y ago
    How many Einsteins are out there that never had the upbringing and resources he did?
    - lazide 5y ago
      You aren't going to fix that by only letting folks with terrible upbringings in important positions. You'd need to start fixing those terrible upbringings, and likely wait a few generations.
      - Wiseacre 5y ago
        Who is saying only one thing should be done? You can see free lunch programs and free daycare but you can also see that is not a panacea by itself.
        lazide 5y ago
        Results and end capabilities matter. If there is a way to reliably produce better end results and capabilities, we should do them. If there is a way to better (as in more tied to reality) measure for better results and capabilities we should. I don’t see that being part of the discussion anymore though, and haven’t for awhile unfortunately. It used to be this discussion was about how to take better advantage society wide of folks who had good capabilities by not artificially restricting the set of folks being considered (and helping those who didn’t have an opportunity to learn/try). The goal posts keep moving though, and now seem to be ‘damn that, just give them a spot regardless’, which is terribly corrosive society wide. If someone is legitimately awesome and is in an underserved community, they’ll forever doubt their actual capabilities AND everyone else will too, because they know the system has been rigged at some level to favor them based on attributes other than their capabilities. It’s why nobility generally rotted out from the core too. Any method of choosing folks that isn’t based on effectiveness and actual quality will rot the system. It happens all the time, and most of the shiftiness we deal with in everything from healthcare to roads to politics is because we forgot this.
        Wiseacre 5y ago
        I'm not hearing any solutions.
        lazide 5y ago
        Look at some of my earlier posts around the thread. For a past example - The Romans typically considered it on the order of 100-150 yrs for an area (once conquerered) to ‘stabilize’, be functional , and ‘roman’ largely due to the same problems and effects. Going in and crushing a country (or a segment of a population, like has been happening for awhile) causes problems that take time to work out, requires lots of work on everyone’s part (including education, jobs, cultural factors, working up the economic ladder), policing/removing folks in various places that are making it worse, and it is individual by individual and family by family. For past examples just look at immigrants who were Norwegians, Irish, Germans, Catholics, Chinese, Japanese. Depending on the minority group we’re talking about depends on the specifics of the transition and amalgamation, but the trends are roughly similar. We seem as a nation to be trying to do a urgent rush job and then getting so impatient that it isn’t fixed NOW! we’re just screwing everyone over. We’re more likely to get enough backlash to slide into racial/nationalist fascism than succeed if we continue on this path, and that’s far worse for everyone. Especially the last decade plus. And it’s mostly because we seem to have lost track of actual reality here. Until people mix, they have very different cultural norms, interests, and priorities. Some won’t want to mix. Even if they want to do a specific job because of pay but it’s outside of a ‘normal job’ culturally, there will be friction - from their own culture, and from whatever other culture/subculture is dominant there. This happens even if everyone is the same color, and relatively homogenous. Having been an EMT, good luck being a straight male nurse for instance. Good luck being a stay at home dad in Japan. So what you see is the higher achievers and the ones less held to a standard are forerunners, kids start to accept/understand it’s possible, older generation dies out, younger generation who sees more possibilities comes in, rinse repeat. 4-5 generations later, it’s done. It works because the folks earned it, there was policing and removal of the bad actors (critical), who are shitty, etc. If someone starts getting roles without being able to do the job as well, it undermines this progress, as it builds resentment across a wider range of the population, quality decreases which impacts everyone (and removes popular support), and the in and out group fighting leads to social fragmentation into hard groups instead of mixing. If you want to see what that looks like, check out Lebanon. It’s like a form of toxic equality going on - everyone MUST have the same interests, aptitudes, outcomes, and support the same things - even if they don’t want it, don’t support it, or aren’t interested in making the trade offs to get it. It’s dumb.
dahfizz 5y ago
Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chmod600 5y ago
  Why should there be an expectation of uniformity? Subgroups of people come from different families and cultures, and at an aggregate level (not necessarily individuals) will have different values. Those values will lead to different talents and interests. Those different talents and interests will lead to meeting and failing different sets of standards. Wouldn't it be a boring world if things were entirely uniform? Can you really say that different cultures even exist if the differences are so trivial that they don't really make any difference to your life? Of course, nobody should be locked into a cultural stereotype. If they, individually, meet the standards, they should be treated as anyone else who does.
  - hedora 5y ago
    It's all about incentives. It's easier for education departments to shoot the messenger (the college admissions board) than admit the K-12 system they're responsible for is hopelessly racist.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      Or it is classist. Or is just plain failing.
- anamax 5y ago
  > Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable. Like the NFL or NBA?
- Ekaros 5y ago
jedberg 5y ago
That's one way to do it, but then you just perpetuate the biases inherent in the system. For example if the standards include "child of an alumni", that's not very fair. If the standards include GPA, that's not very fair to someone who went to a school that doesn't offer AP tests. And what they look like is important because certain people experience life very differently depending on what they look like.
- abledon 5y ago
  A colleague i know also argues that people tend to hire/promote people who look like them (subconscious bias that they prefer their own 'kind' / stemming back to tribal era etc)
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    This is pure, 100% anecdote, but, I remember at my first tech job, there were basically 3 teams working on different aspects of the product. I, a white male, was on a team with 3 other white males. There was another team of around 5 or 6 who were all Chinese. The last team was probably 10-15, all Indian. All these people were damn good at their jobs, but it was rather interesting how the demographics fell.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Part of this might be nepotism and networking. Maybe we should ban those from recruitment. Can't recommend anyone anymore. Just purely blind system, maybe text or voice changer, so visuals involved...
      - actually_a_dog 5y ago
        Orchestras have blind auditions for precisely that reason, and it apparently works. It's not a perfect system, mostly because the classical music world itself has certain barriers built into it that are tough to navigate, but it certainly does have the intended effect.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SyzygistSix 5y ago
The debate is about what standards to set. The people who do well at standardized tests and GPA think those should be the metrics by which admissions are judged. Harvard has other ideas.

There is nothing a priori wrong with offering different educational treatment based on academic standards. The problem arises when you try to produce an "empirical" measurement of academic excellence on real human beings (and particularly children): children spend their entire days under the control and potential neglect of others. One day's failure on an empty stomach[1] is another day's success. [1]: In case it isn't abundantly clear, this is a stand-in for a complex of issues.

lazide 5y ago
The challenge of course is abilities matter for society in a huge number of ways - irrespective of personal circumstances. We need the best surgeons, engineers, leaders, teachers, etc. - not the best weighted by some sort of ‘difficulty during upbringing’ score.
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  How many Einsteins are out there that never had the upbringing and resources he did?
  - lazide 5y ago
    You aren't going to fix that by only letting folks with terrible upbringings in important positions. You'd need to start fixing those terrible upbringings, and likely wait a few generations.
    - Wiseacre 5y ago
      Who is saying only one thing should be done? You can see free lunch programs and free daycare but you can also see that is not a panacea by itself.
      - lazide 5y ago
        Results and end capabilities matter. If there is a way to reliably produce better end results and capabilities, we should do them. If there is a way to better (as in more tied to reality) measure for better results and capabilities we should. I don’t see that being part of the discussion anymore though, and haven’t for awhile unfortunately. It used to be this discussion was about how to take better advantage society wide of folks who had good capabilities by not artificially restricting the set of folks being considered (and helping those who didn’t have an opportunity to learn/try). The goal posts keep moving though, and now seem to be ‘damn that, just give them a spot regardless’, which is terribly corrosive society wide. If someone is legitimately awesome and is in an underserved community, they’ll forever doubt their actual capabilities AND everyone else will too, because they know the system has been rigged at some level to favor them based on attributes other than their capabilities. It’s why nobility generally rotted out from the core too. Any method of choosing folks that isn’t based on effectiveness and actual quality will rot the system. It happens all the time, and most of the shiftiness we deal with in everything from healthcare to roads to politics is because we forgot this.
        Wiseacre 5y ago
        I'm not hearing any solutions.
        lazide 5y ago
        Look at some of my earlier posts around the thread. For a past example - The Romans typically considered it on the order of 100-150 yrs for an area (once conquerered) to ‘stabilize’, be functional , and ‘roman’ largely due to the same problems and effects. Going in and crushing a country (or a segment of a population, like has been happening for awhile) causes problems that take time to work out, requires lots of work on everyone’s part (including education, jobs, cultural factors, working up the economic ladder), policing/removing folks in various places that are making it worse, and it is individual by individual and family by family. For past examples just look at immigrants who were Norwegians, Irish, Germans, Catholics, Chinese, Japanese. Depending on the minority group we’re talking about depends on the specifics of the transition and amalgamation, but the trends are roughly similar. We seem as a nation to be trying to do a urgent rush job and then getting so impatient that it isn’t fixed NOW! we’re just screwing everyone over. We’re more likely to get enough backlash to slide into racial/nationalist fascism than succeed if we continue on this path, and that’s far worse for everyone. Especially the last decade plus. And it’s mostly because we seem to have lost track of actual reality here. Until people mix, they have very different cultural norms, interests, and priorities. Some won’t want to mix. Even if they want to do a specific job because of pay but it’s outside of a ‘normal job’ culturally, there will be friction - from their own culture, and from whatever other culture/subculture is dominant there. This happens even if everyone is the same color, and relatively homogenous. Having been an EMT, good luck being a straight male nurse for instance. Good luck being a stay at home dad in Japan. So what you see is the higher achievers and the ones less held to a standard are forerunners, kids start to accept/understand it’s possible, older generation dies out, younger generation who sees more possibilities comes in, rinse repeat. 4-5 generations later, it’s done. It works because the folks earned it, there was policing and removal of the bad actors (critical), who are shitty, etc. If someone starts getting roles without being able to do the job as well, it undermines this progress, as it builds resentment across a wider range of the population, quality decreases which impacts everyone (and removes popular support), and the in and out group fighting leads to social fragmentation into hard groups instead of mixing. If you want to see what that looks like, check out Lebanon. It’s like a form of toxic equality going on - everyone MUST have the same interests, aptitudes, outcomes, and support the same things - even if they don’t want it, don’t support it, or aren’t interested in making the trade offs to get it. It’s dumb.

dahfizz 5y ago

Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chmod600 5y ago
Why should there be an expectation of uniformity? Subgroups of people come from different families and cultures, and at an aggregate level (not necessarily individuals) will have different values. Those values will lead to different talents and interests. Those different talents and interests will lead to meeting and failing different sets of standards. Wouldn't it be a boring world if things were entirely uniform? Can you really say that different cultures even exist if the differences are so trivial that they don't really make any difference to your life? Of course, nobody should be locked into a cultural stereotype. If they, individually, meet the standards, they should be treated as anyone else who does.
- hedora 5y ago
  It's all about incentives. It's easier for education departments to shoot the messenger (the college admissions board) than admit the K-12 system they're responsible for is hopelessly racist.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Or it is classist. Or is just plain failing.
anamax 5y ago
> Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable. Like the NFL or NBA?
Ekaros 5y ago

jedberg 5y ago

That's one way to do it, but then you just perpetuate the biases inherent in the system. For example if the standards include "child of an alumni", that's not very fair. If the standards include GPA, that's not very fair to someone who went to a school that doesn't offer AP tests. And what they look like is important because certain people experience life very differently depending on what they look like.

abledon 5y ago
A colleague i know also argues that people tend to hire/promote people who look like them (subconscious bias that they prefer their own 'kind' / stemming back to tribal era etc)
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  This is pure, 100% anecdote, but, I remember at my first tech job, there were basically 3 teams working on different aspects of the product. I, a white male, was on a team with 3 other white males. There was another team of around 5 or 6 who were all Chinese. The last team was probably 10-15, all Indian. All these people were damn good at their jobs, but it was rather interesting how the demographics fell.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Part of this might be nepotism and networking. Maybe we should ban those from recruitment. Can't recommend anyone anymore. Just purely blind system, maybe text or voice changer, so visuals involved...
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Orchestras have blind auditions for precisely that reason, and it apparently works. It's not a perfect system, mostly because the classical music world itself has certain barriers built into it that are tough to navigate, but it certainly does have the intended effect.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SyzygistSix 5y ago

The debate is about what standards to set. The people who do well at standardized tests and GPA think those should be the metrics by which admissions are judged. Harvard has other ideas.