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Long essay, but I agree with a lot of what's said. I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood. I live in a bit of

Long essay, but I agree with a lot of what's said. I think a lot of quality time is wasted due to the rat race starting in early childhood. I live in a bit of a bubble in the commuter belt around London (ie not the US), but I observe some of the same obsessions here as well. In particular, I started to notice that my kid's friends suddenly had a lot less time for playdates in the year or two leading up to the 11-plus exam, which is a selective school thing. There are similar exams for the private schools in the area. Of course what was happening was that their parents would hire a tutor to help them pass the tests. The effect of this tutoring is on the whole negative. Obviously, it costs money. It also costs time that your kid would have to do other things. But also, it gives the kids the impression that school is super important, and they will be valued based on the outcome of this test. You end up with a few percent who get into the top selective schools, and everyone else is left with low expectations. Inevitably, it also means that it becomes a game for rich parents. I went to the induction day at the fancy school, and guess what. The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school.

takinola 2y ago
> The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school. The idea that the school you go to matters for your career seems unsupported by evidence (outside of consulting, law, medicine and investment banking). Most people don't go to ivy league schools (by definition). Looking around at senior leaders at most of the tech companies I have worked at, very few of them are Ivy leaguers. The Ivy League has a really great brand but the impact is overblown imho.
- illiac786 2y ago
  I think you are looking at the wrong metric here. It’s not about “how many successful people out there didn’t go to the Ivy League”, it’s about “how likely is it that _my kid_ will be successful?”. And the Ivy League really has a major impact on the latter metric. (I mean successful in the classic boring way here - completely agree that this is a very debatable goal, but that’s not my point)
  - takinola 2y ago
    But that's my argument exactly. Even if kids with Ivy League degrees disproportionately have successful careers, lots of non-Ivy League kids also go on to have very successful careers. One possible explanation is that the Ivy Leagues are just really good at spotting talent early and not that they are actually responsible for building the talent. Going to an Ivy League school might be an indication that you are smart, hardworking and driven. However, if you were not already that way, the school is not going to transform you into someone who is.
    - illiac786 2y ago
      Ivy League will not make you smart, no, it will make you successful with a very high probability. This is what is important to most parent, that’s what they pay for, this probability.
- lordnacho 2y ago
  > outside of consulting, law, medicine and investment banking The exact kinds of jobs that the parents are working and hate, but are scared of their kids not being able to get.
leovingi 2y ago
>it gives the kids the impression that school is super important >We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school. Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.
- watwut 2y ago
  It 100% makes sense for a parent to not want their own kid to be the "poor but capable kid" who stayed in "the wrong school". Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
  - nickd2001 2y ago
    To play devil's advocate, is a high stress, pressured, test obsessed selective school, populated by entitled kids with pushy parents, "the right school" for the poor-but-capable-kid..... ;). Will they make friends there and be happy and still want to read for pleasure and be curious about the world outside school? (OK , to be fair you might not want them to go school in a very rough area with drugs and other crime, either)
    - watwut 2y ago
      Then it is wrong school. But the other issue is that you are strongly drawing here on the stereotypes - that this school will be test obsesed, kids in it will be bad entitled kids and you cant make friends with them. Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.
      - riehwvfbk 2y ago
rickydroll 2y ago
it is called winning the birth lottery

takinola 2y ago

> The parents are a bunch of professionals, virtually nobody doing anything else, and most kids went to private primaries + got tutored. We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school. The idea that the school you go to matters for your career seems unsupported by evidence (outside of consulting, law, medicine and investment banking). Most people don't go to ivy league schools (by definition). Looking around at senior leaders at most of the tech companies I have worked at, very few of them are Ivy leaguers. The Ivy League has a really great brand but the impact is overblown imho.

illiac786 2y ago
I think you are looking at the wrong metric here. It’s not about “how many successful people out there didn’t go to the Ivy League”, it’s about “how likely is it that _my kid_ will be successful?”. And the Ivy League really has a major impact on the latter metric. (I mean successful in the classic boring way here - completely agree that this is a very debatable goal, but that’s not my point)
- takinola 2y ago
  But that's my argument exactly. Even if kids with Ivy League degrees disproportionately have successful careers, lots of non-Ivy League kids also go on to have very successful careers. One possible explanation is that the Ivy Leagues are just really good at spotting talent early and not that they are actually responsible for building the talent. Going to an Ivy League school might be an indication that you are smart, hardworking and driven. However, if you were not already that way, the school is not going to transform you into someone who is.
  - illiac786 2y ago
    Ivy League will not make you smart, no, it will make you successful with a very high probability. This is what is important to most parent, that’s what they pay for, this probability.
lordnacho 2y ago
> outside of consulting, law, medicine and investment banking The exact kinds of jobs that the parents are working and hate, but are scared of their kids not being able to get.

leovingi 2y ago

>it gives the kids the impression that school is super important >We must have left some poor but capable kids in the wrong school. Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either school is important, in which case both the parents pushing their children and the children pushing themselves are doing the right thing to improve their chances of later success, or it is NOT important, in which case it doesn't matter anyway which school the other children end up in.

watwut 2y ago
It 100% makes sense for a parent to not want their own kid to be the "poor but capable kid" who stayed in "the wrong school". Especially since the kid who was in "the wrong school" will be blamed for "being lazy" or "less capable" when they don't perform as well as equally capable and hardworking peers in the "right school".
- nickd2001 2y ago
  To play devil's advocate, is a high stress, pressured, test obsessed selective school, populated by entitled kids with pushy parents, "the right school" for the poor-but-capable-kid..... ;). Will they make friends there and be happy and still want to read for pleasure and be curious about the world outside school? (OK , to be fair you might not want them to go school in a very rough area with drugs and other crime, either)
  - watwut 2y ago
    Then it is wrong school. But the other issue is that you are strongly drawing here on the stereotypes - that this school will be test obsesed, kids in it will be bad entitled kids and you cant make friends with them. Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.
    - riehwvfbk 2y ago

rickydroll 2y ago

it is called winning the birth lottery