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What draconian reason could you possibly have to make the argument that we shouldn't try to give every child an equal opportunity for a high quality education?
by p1esk 2y ago
What draconian reason could you possibly have to make the argument that we shouldn't try to give every child an equal opportunity for a high quality education?
Opportunity, sure. But an opportunity to get a good education is not the same as actually getting good education. Because every child is different and we want to spend a lot more efforts to educate a child who shows genius level potential than on a child who has zero interest in anything. This is assuming limited educational resources - an assumption challenged by AI education initiatives.
If I have two sons, and one is bright and curious and hard working, while another is dim and lazy, the first one will get 95% of my attention.
- __loam 2y agoThe biggest predictor of whether or not a child is "gifted" is the amount of attention they receive as children from their parents and from the education system. Actual genetically driven genius is rare. The kids that gifted child programs benefit are largely the children of affluent parents and not the so called geniuses of our generation. They mostly serve to create a two tier education system within public schools. I'm not saying we tolerate disruptive kids or that we shouldn't reward merit, but this kind of rich kids get the resources and attention system is counterproductive to the outcome you seem to want. Furthermore, there is zero proof that AI will give us the kind of system that will allow us to shore up the limited education system. The actual solutions to many of these problems are things like paying teachers more to retain the best people, giving kids free lunch, funding after school programs and one on one tutoring etc etc etc. But doing those things is hard, so tech bros who believe in the myth of the gifted child, who don't have any background in education at all, come in with these systems that they think are silver bullets, then are shocked when they don't work, blaming the unruly children of the proletariat on their failure to fix anything.
- darkwater 2y agoAnd what will you do with the lazy one? Kill him? Let him die when in problems? Maintain it throughout his live? Ignore him and let him live a miserable life?
- p1esk 2y agoThe lazy one gets exactly the same *opportunity* to have a good education as the bright one. Do you see the difference?
- __loam 2y agoThey often don't have the same opportunity but I'm glad we as grown adults are sitting here and judging a child on their dedication to academic rigor.
- lelanthran 2y ago> I'm glad we as grown adults are sitting here and judging a child on their dedication to academic rigor. In a conversation about academic performance, what were you expecting? I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know: in a conversation about resources being poured into academic outcomes, why is a child's athletic ability, or artistic ability, etc relevant? We are comparing outcomes of investment into academic performance - do you expect this conversation about ROI to be completely without judgements?
- __loam 2y agoWe're talking about changing the entire trajectory of someone's life when they're a child because they find school boring when they're 8 years old. Talking about ROI and hard numbers about this makes your look like a ghoul. I think aggregate measures over years are required to accurately measure the impact educational investment, but we should pay teachers more and hire more of them to reduce class size because we have a moral obligation to do so, not just because we'd get an ROI.
- lelanthran 2y ago> We're talking about changing the entire trajectory of someone's life when they're a child because they find school boring when they're 8 years old. Maybe you are. We are not. No one is suggesting decreasing the resources made available to a cohort of children. We're suggesting increasing the resources for gifted children within that cohort. > Talking about ROI and hard numbers about this makes your look like a ghoul. How else are you going to discuss what is obviously a very important investment into humanity? Personal attacks, maybe?