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I grew up poor. I thought my ticket to not being poor was an education. By the time I was applying for colleges (I had good grades) I realized that the educatio

I grew up poor. I thought my ticket to not being poor was an education. By the time I was applying for colleges (I had good grades) I realized that the education system was a joke. I got through college, a very well-regarded engineering program, putting in the bare minimum effort to graduate. I make a lot of money now, 20 years later. I attribute none of my success to public education or college, I didn’t learn anything besides our education system (in the US) is not what they tell kids it is growing up. We beat the drum of education because it seems like a nice simple solution to fix a lot of perceived problems. “Oh you mean if we just throw money at this problem it’ll fix it?!” Baltimore city gets some of the highest per-student federal funding in the country. My daughter is in a public middle school there, living with her mom. I’m in the burbs with my wife and kids. She told me just yesterday she wants to go to high school in my district because “well it just seems more normal than city schools” She also thought California was a country up until yesterday. Straight A student. At some point, probably too late, we’ll realize we did it a wrong. Floating kids through high school, dropping an anvil of debt around their neck for a college degree they won’t use. Met a fellow the other day, he has his masters in social work. Making very, very good money, as a regional manager of a car sales group, I forget the specifics. Said he never used his degree and he is very grateful he has a clear path to pay the debt off. I don’t know what the fix is, but I’ve seen enough to know what we do now, ain’t it.

mystraline 6mo ago
> We beat the drum of education because it seems like a nice simple solution to fix a lot of perceived problems. “Oh you mean if we just throw money at this problem it’ll fix it?!” Its strange to say, but its actually thanks to black racism is why we're here. It started with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. The result was that the courts determined that "aptitude/IQ tests" unfairly discriminated against black people. However, education requirements are not seen as such. So, we get "decent paying job" requiring 'a degree'. What degree? Doesnt matter. The degree is the legal form of 'we dont hire blacks'. It also has the side effect of 'we dont hire the poors' as well. Obviously there are positions that require advanced schooling. Im not talking about those.
- deleted 6mo ago
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- tptacek 6mo ago
  It is an article of faith on message boards that IQ tests are somehow unlawful in employment in the US because of Griggs. That's patently not the case. Plenty of large corporations with deep pockets do general cognitive testing (and even IQ testing) of incoming applicants. The companies that administer these tests have logo crawls, like every other product company, and the names are companies your mom will recognize. Griggs says that you can't employ IQ tests to discriminate for jobs where the IQ threshold you established is immaterial to the job. For modern knowledge work, that's a trivial bar to clear. It is essentially the case that Griggs is a nonfactor in white collar employment. My motivation for calling this out isn't that I'm OK with discriminating against Black people; quite the opposite, in fact. IQ tests aren't used more widely because they aren't effective at qualifying employees. IQ is an idee fixee among A Certain Part Of The Internet, and part of their pitch is that IQ tests are a secret cheat code that would enable hiring purely on merit, if only the woke wouldn't prevent it. No, false.

mystraline 6mo ago

> We beat the drum of education because it seems like a nice simple solution to fix a lot of perceived problems. “Oh you mean if we just throw money at this problem it’ll fix it?!” Its strange to say, but its actually thanks to black racism is why we're here. It started with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. The result was that the courts determined that "aptitude/IQ tests" unfairly discriminated against black people. However, education requirements are not seen as such. So, we get "decent paying job" requiring 'a degree'. What degree? Doesnt matter. The degree is the legal form of 'we dont hire blacks'. It also has the side effect of 'we dont hire the poors' as well. Obviously there are positions that require advanced schooling. Im not talking about those.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
tptacek 6mo ago
It is an article of faith on message boards that IQ tests are somehow unlawful in employment in the US because of Griggs. That's patently not the case. Plenty of large corporations with deep pockets do general cognitive testing (and even IQ testing) of incoming applicants. The companies that administer these tests have logo crawls, like every other product company, and the names are companies your mom will recognize. Griggs says that you can't employ IQ tests to discriminate for jobs where the IQ threshold you established is immaterial to the job. For modern knowledge work, that's a trivial bar to clear. It is essentially the case that Griggs is a nonfactor in white collar employment. My motivation for calling this out isn't that I'm OK with discriminating against Black people; quite the opposite, in fact. IQ tests aren't used more widely because they aren't effective at qualifying employees. IQ is an idee fixee among A Certain Part Of The Internet, and part of their pitch is that IQ tests are a secret cheat code that would enable hiring purely on merit, if only the woke wouldn't prevent it. No, false.