14 ms·

Linus on Oregon HB 2748 and US education in general

178 points by praptak 14y ago

davidw 14y ago
Linus talking about politics is... still politics, even if one happens to agree with him.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  HN seems to have a soft spot for educational policy. This makes sense when you consider the importance of education for both a hacker's work and play.
jasonjei 14y ago
I agree that our K-12 sucks, but why is our university system considered good? For instance, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT/FSF, Carnegie-Mellon, UIUC, etc, have made valuable contributions to Computer Science (this is becoming less true as commercial and open-source have overtaken academia in many respects). Is it possible that our K-12 system is broken is the reason that our kids are capable of pursuing their own interests instead of the rigor of rote learning? As a kid, I remember the easiness of school homework allowed me to spend many afternoons in IRC and learning programming on my own. E.g, with too much free time on your hands, are you capable of thinking different instead of answering challenging homework? Not defending our K-12, just wondering how bringing in a Confucian system like Asia and Europe would affect the outside-the-box thinking.
- clicks 14y ago
  Only responding to a small part of your argument: For every univ. that is good, there is a Univ. of Phoenix. But, for every univ. that is good you also have Bronx High school of NY... which produced 8 Nobel prize laureates, you have Stuyvesant, which produced 5 Nobel prize laureates. America is much a place of extremes -- you'll often find the best and worst from nearly every category.
  - jballanc 14y ago
    This is practically the only description of America that you need, and it's only become more apparent to me now that I've left. America is obsessed with extremes. You could add health care to schools as an example. America is the last place in the world I'd want to be if I broke my arm (especially if I happened to be uninsured at the time), but probably the first place I'd go if I was diagnosed with some obscure cancer.
    - drstewart 14y ago
      Spoken like someone who hasn't had to receive health care in Africa. Or maybe you have. Can you tell me why you'd rate your experience in rural Angola as so good that you'd rather go there to treat a broken arm than Johns Hopkins?
      - octagonal 14y ago
        He probably meant "I'd rather be in any other developed nation than the US"
- Dewie 14y ago
  > I agree that our K-12 sucks, but why is our university system considered good? For instance, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT/FSF, Carnegie-Mellon, UIUC, etc, have made valuable contributions to Computer Science (this is becoming less true as commercial and open-source have overtaken academia in many respects). The US has some world-class universities, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the tertiary education system is great overall: for that I guess you would have to average all the universities. > Is it possible that our K-12 system is broken is the reason that our kids are capable of pursuing their own interests instead of the rigor of rote learning? As a kid, I remember the easiness of school homework allowed me to spend many afternoons in IRC and learning programming on my own. E.g, with too much free time on your hands, are you capable of thinking different instead of answering challenging homework? Not defending our K-12, just wondering how bringing in a Confucian system like Asia and Europe would affect the outside-the-box thinking. I can appreciate the possibility of having less time to do rote memorization busywork could actually be a boon, but... to something like the idea of K-12 being bad, and spin into something that actually makes people better off as a whole nation... that sounds like rationalization on a whole new level. I guess anything to keep the America uber alles idea alive.
jmspring 14y ago
I can't find the original story I heard a couple of weeks ago (on the radio), but another egregious sign of the state of public education in the US -- people are jailed for lying about their address in hopes of getting their child into a better school. The story I recall hearing a couple of weeks ago was about a woman who was periodically homeless and used the address of her baby sitter (or something like that) to get her child into a better school. Now she faces jail time. Searching google for lying about address to get into a better school resulting in jail time shows that this is not an isolated phenomena.
- spikels 14y ago
  I think you are probably talking about the story linked below. Very sad but I guess it is a form of fraud and theft. Certainly it indicates something is wrong with our current education system but there are so much other evidence (e.g. dropout rates, test scores, college preparedness) that this is hardly news. http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-3437974.php http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-sentenced-...
  - jmspring 14y ago
    Thanks, that was the story. Prison time for falsely reporting an address for purposes of schooling? A sad commentary on this society.
walshemj 14y ago
Rather ironic as Finland has a comprehensive schooling system he seems to be arguing for selective schools by the back door. Though in Finland do seem to have the same rigid vocational / academic track similar to Germany where going to the wrong sort of school locks you out of or makes it very hard to go to the top universities. And comparing his experience a tiny European country with a small and homogenous population and thinking that the USA is going to have the the same challenges or possible solutions is a bit naive.
- fosap 14y ago
  I'm German. I'm not sure what you are talking about. You do need to graduate a "Gymnasium" (years 5-12 or 13, right after elementary school). But any "Gymnasium" will do. Every town has a "Gymnasium", you don't have to move or bake cookies. However, the "Gymnasium" is just one three schools. Only about 30% of students attend. If your marks get too bad you have to leave for "lower" school. On the other hand it's possible to attend a "Gymnasium" of pupils of a "lower" school if they have good grades. (About 20% of my final class came form "lower" schools.) The German system is a kind of elitist. And it's criticized that the parents income is too important. But it is elitist regarding to your marks, and not your district.
  - rbehrends 14y ago
    This is what tracking means -- that you get "sorted" into either they "Gymnasium", "Realschule", or "Hauptschule" track after fourth grade. However, this is not what happens in Finland. In Finland, everybody gets the same basic education until age 16, then picks either general upper secondary or vocational upper secondary education (note that vocational upper secondary education does not bar you from attending a university, despite what the GP thinks). However, what he mostly doesn't seem to realize is that Germany (or Finland, for this matter) does not really have the same type of highly competitive admission process for its universities as the United States [1]. For example, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, one of the best German universities to study computer science at (according to a recent ranking, the best), has open admission for its CS Bachelor program. [1] The Bologna Process americanized the system a bit, but it's still mostly about managing supply and demand. If you can't hack it, you won't graduate, but admission is not particularly selective, especially not at the Bachelor level.
taylodl 14y ago
Linus is now seeing firsthand that opportunity is not equal in the United States. You typically need to have attended a good university to get a good job and to get into a good university you need to have graduated from a good secondary school - which you need to have paid for either through tuition or taxes. The goal is to keep the wealth concentrated in the already wealthy. That's how it works here in the United States. I'll assume for the moment that Oregon's intentions are noble, and they're attempting to right this wrong. How ironic that it will achieve the exact opposite result. The old law of unintended consequences and all. Those of us who were in school in the 70s during mandatory desegregation will recall that too had the opposite effect of what was intended: instead of providing better learning opportunities for black students the white families left for the suburbs leaving the black students behind in worse schools than what they had started out with. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it I suppose. So what is the answer? I think we really need to understand the problem: public schools are locally funded and operated and small locales can use real estate to become exclusive. The solution then is to realize that exclusivity can't be had on a large scale. You need to expand the scope of 'local' in the local school system. A good start would be to expand 'local' to the county level. While certainly there are some counties richer and more exclusive than others, they are much more homogenous than individual communities. At least it would be a step in the right direction that would better serve everyone.
- newbie12 14y ago
  Not sure where you live, but most school districts are already a combination of county and state funding. The state funding does the work of helping poorer districts, and targeted federal funding in turn helps poor states. You are assuming that money is the problem, when the reality is that the US spends far more per student than Finland. http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/ http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-... In fact, some of the worst performing districts in America are also the most well-funded, like the District of Columbia. The problem is the teachers unions control the delivery system, and swaths of American culture that don't value education.
- enjo 14y ago
  You typically need to have attended a good university to get a good job and to get into a good university you need to have graduated from a good secondary school - which you need to have paid for either through tuition or taxes. You left yourself a wiggle word there, but it doesn't make the sentiment correct. Just as a programmer I've worked with and for folks who have graduated from such juggernauts as Northwestern Oklahoma State, Southeast Missouri, San Jose State, and a host of other non-premier colleges. Not to mention the huge number of folks from public schools of various orders. I myself attended from Central Arkansas, and have had no issue getting a good job. My wife's experience in her field has been much the same. Now that doesn't mean the playing field is completely fair. As an entrepreneur I've been frustrated by the advantages kids coming out of the top-tier schools have. This is especially true in anything related to finance. Those schools are a ticket into that world, and it's a really amazing advantage. Both in terms of landing extremely high paying jobs (fund managers and the like) and in terms of raising money. It's much easier to fund raise when you come with that sort of credibility and direct connection to those who have a lot of money. Still, lets not confuse matters here. People from lower tier schools make it, and make it big, all the time. The system isn't rigged, it's remarkably fair. I worked hard to become very good at what I do. I put myself in a position to learn and experience a big win. That's given me the credibility I need to start to enjoy some of those advantages as well. Lots of others have done the same thing. So I reject the premise of your statement. Although I largely disagree with the notion that education is in crisis. There are certainly areas of crisis, but those cultures seem cultural and not institutional. Studies have shown that the vast majority of our kids are competitive on the world level. It's that our lowest performing areas REALLY underperform. I also reject the idea that further divorcing school from the community it serves is a good idea.
asveikau 14y ago
I don't know why Linus says that Americans blindly accept the crappiness. Perhaps they accept it because its systemic nature makes a hard thing to fix, but the acceptance isn't blind. Most smart people I know in this country seem to have had some clash with the school system in some form or another. Linus talks mostly about funding, but there's also the huge problem that schools don't seem to be teaching math and science, or anything for that matter, very well. For me personally, thinking back to my youth, I think the most important lesson I learned in school was to be cynical and not trust people in positions of authority, to go off and do things on your own instead of relying on them to catch up with you, which is a helpful lesson but probably not one that you'd want to need to discover so young. On another topic, I can't help but think some of his description of the American acceptance of the brokenness has something to do with his setting of the northwest. When I lived in Seattle I was really shocked at how unwilling people were to question the status quo, especially when it came to things that could be changed by political action. On topics where more aggressive east coasters would loudly complain or maneuver around, apathy and letting things go as they had been seemed to be the default for most things. Of course the education problem is a national one and these latter traits are not unknown to other parts of the country. But the northwest is less cynical, and more content to let things just drift.
- btbuilder 14y ago
  I didn't feel his comment was as general as 'blindly accept the crappiness'. What I read (which mirrors my own sentiment) is that it is seen as the normal and proper thing to supplement some local public services with fund raisers because they are underfunded. Firefighters breakfasts and school bake sales. Seriously we don't pay enough taxes to cover these basic services?
  - smsm42 14y ago
    If people pay a lot of taxes and still don't have enough money in the budget to finance what's important for them, maybe they should take a look into the local budget and figure out where the money went. I'm sure people of Linus' grade of brainpower could do that. There's also a chance they'd discover that some of the city workers have pretty cushy benefit packages and the cost of it is more than they though it would be. And that they may be underfunded because some of the city workers fly to global warming conferences in luxury hotels in Hawaii on their dime, that is known to happen too. I wonder if that happens in Finland. There's a long known bureaucratic principle then when the budget is short, first thing you cut is something that the public really feels the need - schools, firefighters, police, if you can find a way to involve sick or orphans - that's the gold. Because if you cut something really wasteful, you a) admit you wasted money and b) never get this money back ever. But if you cut something that is needed or perceived as needed, you show how bad it is hurting and if the situation ever improves, you get everything back at the first chance. Of course, the alternative of looking at the local budget is to cry for the federal government to take the money from "the rich" and give to the schools - because think of the children!
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
Bake-sale style funding for the military instead of for schools. That is a fantastic idea. I love it.
- ams6110 14y ago
  This bumper sticker has been seen on Volvos since the 1970s.
  - irrelative 14y ago
    Indeed it has -- for those less familiar: http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-Bumper-Sticker-(5729).jpg http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-Bumpe...
    - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
      I was unfamiliar, thanks.
manaskarekar 14y ago
The alternative many will be forced to take will be Homeschooling + Online Courses, which is great! À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you.
- clicks 14y ago
  So, one of the big reasons homeschooling isn't more prevalent is that increasingly both parents have to work. Maybe a new, not before seen alternative is some sort of a quasi-daycare institution which has authority figures not teaching but just making sure the kids are focusing on their online courses and not horsing around! And only so occasionally answering questions the kids ask. Because you're still in an environment with other similar-aged peers, you can still have recesses to bond and mingle and have chances for having healthy socializing practices.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    So, basically, private school? This is where my wife and I want to send our daughter if we ever make it back to Chicago: http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum. Basically some guy decided to home school his kid, but let other kids join in.The result was a curriculum in which kids learn formal logic in middle school.
  - kamkazemoose 14y ago
    I just wonder how effective that would be. I think kids would have a hard time focusing in front of a computer, and being lectured to. I think a large part of the elementary school education is working on activities and worksheets, especially in groups. I'm not sure you can replicate that in an online course, and I just wonder how effective an online course could be for younger kids. I'd actually be interested in seeing if there have been any studies done on this.
    - erichocean 14y ago
      CAVA is the CA Virtual Academy using the K12 curriculum, and despite having a higher-than-normal number of "special needs" students, does better on standardized tests than the other public schools in CA. (CAVA is a charter school, and thus part of the public school system. Anyone with kids in CA can sign up for it, and everything is paid for -- they even pay for Internet and give you a computer.) In my experience, CAVA is very effective in all the areas you've mentioned. And they do weekly in person group activities as well, plus field trips, etc. I honestly don't know anyone in CAVA who's wanted to go back to sending their kids to day care^HHHHHHHHpublic school.
tokenadult 14y ago
Linus is correct to disagree with the Oregon bill, and it's too bad that he didn't point to an existing example in another state with some cultural similarities to Oregon. Finding out what learning environment, inside or outside school, is optimal for each learner is definitely a worthy goal, especially if means are then provided to obtain that environment. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 so I'm always glad to discuss how to improve opportunities for learners with other participants here. I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle." http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm... Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis. http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two futher reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h... and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime. http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index... So Linus notes, in the article submitted here, that where he lives in Oregon, "And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of 'out-of-district tuition student' not be an option any more." That's crazy, because Minnesota's pattern of open enrollment has shown that every school district gains by enrolling as many students as it can attract, given the funding pattern here. Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detect the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and give it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices. The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better. To achieve the worthy goal mentioned in the article submitted here involves changing the incentives now operating in the school system in most countries, both as to direct regulations and as to funding. Schools should be eager to enroll new students, as a demonstration that the school is meeting learner needs, and then the schools should be rewarded for doing so.
rayiner 14y ago
It is objectively the case that our schools aren't bad in general. Not as good as Finland, but adjusted for demographics about average compared to the rest of Europe: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou.... You can't really compare the school systems of a homogenous country with low income inequality to one where 30% of the population is from either a historically oppressed racial minority group or relatively recent immigrants. It's especially misleading to look at school systems in urban areas, because that's where the U.S. puts most of the poor people. That is not to say we don't have a problem here in the U.S. But the problem isn't with the education system, it's with how we've dealt with the disadvantaged in our society. A great example of this is Chicago. Finland spends about $10,000 per year per student. Chicago spends about $20,000 per student. Chicago teachers are paid over $70k/year on average, almost double the $37k/year Finnish teachers are paid. Why does Chicago do so poorly? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it has nothing to do with money or school quality, but the fact that 86% of Chicago's students come from low-income families, and 87% are disadvantaged ethnic minorities.
- vacri 14y ago
  Teachers in Chicago are not paid over $70k/year http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-the-74000-lie/ http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-the-7400...
  - rayiner 14y ago
    The link you cited is highly misleading. The Chicago metro area is a census tract of 10 million people. The City of Chicago is 2.7 million people. The Chicago school system and the Chicago teachers union disagree about how to compute the number, but CTU cites $71k and CPS cites $76k: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-public-school-teachers-make/ http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-p... Also misleading from that link: Chicago's cost of living is right around the US average: http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chicago http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chica...
diakritikal 14y ago
One thing Linus didn't mention about Finland and education which some of you may find interesting and of note; is that the right to education is enshrined in the Finnish constitution. http://www.oph.fi/english/education http://www.oph.fi/english/education Coming from a family of educators I can't help but think this plays an important role in cementing Finland's position at the top of the OECD education rankings. Furthermore, being a Scotsman and understanding how the Scots have long since had a history of free universal education, I think it's fair to say that this played an important part in the industrial revolution. It's also worth mentioning that Scotland is about to have it's independence referendum next year and high on the list for those who would see Scotland have self-determination is a written constitution. The UK is an anomaly in the developed western world for not having a written constitution and many of us would like to see free universal education enshrined into our new constitution, should we vote for independence.
- daxelrod 14y ago
  The right to an education is enshrined in many US states' constitutions as well. That's unfortunately not enough to make the difference.
thrownaway2424 14y ago
SHOCKING NEWS: Ethnically and linguistically homogeneous people from tiny, frozen nation easier to educate than diverse citizens of world's most-immigrated-to nation. Stay tuned for more surprising revelations, as soon as we hear them!
- jrockway 14y ago
  So if the US were colder we wouldn't have education problems. Interesting theory.
  - thrownaway2424 14y ago
    No, if it were colder nobody would want to immigrate here.
    - lotsofcows 14y ago
      That explains why Canada's full of WASPs! That always got me!
- purplelobster 14y ago
  Shocking news: downsides of the US being blamed on demographics and size. This satisfies the population to accept the crappiness. I've had this conversation too many times, but I'll say it again: Americans (and all people who have not lived abroad) tend to overestimate the differences within their own population and underestimate the differences in outside populations. You overestimate the diversivness of America. This is about the point someone says something stupid like Alabama and California are as different as two different countries.
  - bromang 14y ago
    Should we ignore demographics? Why?
    - purplelobster 14y ago
Nrsolis 14y ago
I went to public school with Sheryl Sandberg at North Miami Beach Sr. High School. She was a senior while I was a junior. Her little brother was my lab partner in AP Chemistry. It really was a fantastic school. Some parents would put their kids in private school but we'd always see them back a semester later when it turned out that the private school wasn't much better than the public one. I took a look at that school recently and I can tell you that I wouldn't send my kids (if I had any) there: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/districts/miami-dade-county-public-schools/north-miami-beach-senior-high-4851/test-scores http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/di...
anarchotroll 14y ago
He says he dislikes a private system but, at the same time, indirectly acknowledges that what makes the system at his district work is the fact that it is partly private. It is partly private because people actually raise money voluntarily and charge outsiders in order to make it work.
- acjohnson55 14y ago
  He does acknowledge that. The problem is not that empowering the community to pay for its education doesn't work; the problem is that different communities have vastly different resources to pull from, both financially and in terms of the soft assets that communities share, like social mobility, intellectual capital, etc. It's unfair because your average low-income school district can't pull off a bond issue or massive fundraiser to fund new initiatives.
qdog 14y ago
I live in Oregon, although this might limit some of the funding for certain schools, when I was moving between school districts for my son, I could not start him in the new school district until I was a resident. The only public school we looked at that actually followed this method was Riverdale (www.riverdaleschool.com), and it was about $3k/year. Most of the public schools won't let you attend unless you live in their boundaries. There are a lot of public schools in Portland that have special programs, and you enter via a lottery, so that's kind of cool. However, it's my experience that Portland Public Schools are crippled vs. the surrounding suburban school districts. I don't really understand it, since PPS has a higher funding per kid. Also the facilities in suburbia (sports fields, buildings, etc.) are generally newer and bigger. If I had it to do over again, I'm not sure what state I would try and move to for education.
djvu9 14y ago
Sometimes I have a feeling that the US government is so good at being politically correct that the only thing they care is being politically correct.
linuxhansl 14y ago
I can relate a story of a coworker of mine who recently moved back to Germany with his two kids after living the US for many years. They looked at some houses and ended up touring the local school and talking to the principal. The conversation went something like this: Coworker: You ave a nice school. Principal: Thanks. Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: ? Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: What do you mean with "space"? Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: Your kids are required to go to school. We will have space. The question of space/waitinglists/applications/etc did not occur to the principal.
smsm42 14y ago
Something that I didn't understand - why Linus thinks it is completely nuts that people help finance their kids' education locally? Why the only sane thing is to give money to some anonymous amorphous central government, and then ask for some of it back to build the school and hope some bridge to nowhere or festival of cowboy poetry or some bigwig's 500K/night hotel bills don't come first? I understand you can disagree which way is more efficient - but why the local way is described as insane "to any sany person"?
- olau 14y ago
  I'm from Scandinavia and I think I can answer that. Over here, there's a pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are well off shouldn't give you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are less well off. Equal opportunities and all that. For instance, in Denmark education is free, including university. You even get a monthly allowance from the state if you study. That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is a better place than the US to do it, because despite high taxes statistically you are far more likely to move on the social ladder in Denmark: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
  - smsm42 14y ago
    >>>> Over here, there's a pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are well off shouldn't give you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are less well off. This is both counterfactual (money alone matters very little - worst schools routinely spend per pupil more or roughly the same as good schools with no improvement in results) and futile. Of course children of successful educated parents would be better off that children growing in broken up family with absentee parents and zero attention to their education. The only way it could be otherwise is to drag everybody down to the lowest possible level. The whole talk about "unfair advantage" sounds insane to me - why not then beautiful people or smart people have "unfair advantage"? Let's do it like in the Vonnegut's Sirens on Titan (or Harrison Bergeron) - let everybody be dragged down to the lowest level, let everybody has poorest education that we can provide to everybody, let everybody be as ugly as the ugliest person alive, as weak as weakest person alive, as dumb as dumbest person alive, as miserable and sick as the most miserable and sick person alive. This is only way it can be "fair". And people seriously think this approach is not only sane, but the ONLY sane one? Just boggles the mind. The problem is that redistribution does not solve the problem. Moreover, by becoming obsessed with redistribution solving the real problems only becomes harder. We are way beyond the stage where the money were the actual issue, all bake sales aside. The problem is much harder and has to do with the community, the general environment, the history, the social engineering failures, there's a huge mess there, but it there not because of the lack of government involvement. If anything, partially it's there exactly because of this involvement, which failed to predict the consequences. >>>> That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is a better place than the US to do it Highly doubt it. Somehow where I live there's Google, Facebook, and hundreds others already done, and thousands others in the making, and in Denmark you have.... well, I couldn't name one, to be frank. Maybe there are some, but not many heard of them. Somehow Stroustrup is in Texas and DHH is in Chicago, and we don't have a huge wave of US citizens moving to Denmark to pursue their dreams. Maybe if you move there, you have higher chance of secure mediocre living, but it's not exactly what people call "American dream".
nnq 14y ago
not on topic, but how comes any time there's a comparison of education or healthcare or overall "social health" of the northern European countries (Linus's Finland, Norway, Sweden) with any other country in the world, the northeners are always better? How did they manage to get so many "social" problems so right? Does anyone know of a good case-study about how these countries reached their current level?
- Ras_ 14y ago
  Start here: http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Davos-The-nordic-way-final.pdf http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Davo... Then follow up on things that picque your interest. Like social trust and Nordic social contract.
  - nnq 14y ago
    10x kudos! really great resource to start from!
keithpeter 14y ago
"Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales." UK: we have the same affluent area/good school, poor area/poor school issues in the UK. I so wish we could get to the situation than Finland finds itself in, but I doubt the government wants to invest in the teaching profession to the extent required. PS: Buildings don't matter above a certain threshold level. Shiny classroom equipment doesn't matter, just BYOD with a few loaner laptops and WiFi would be good.
Vlaix 14y ago
The only thing that chocks me is that there's only one Swedish-speaking school in Finland that teaches Latin (ofc the US public system thing is alarming, bu it's nothing of a bombshell). Am I the weird guy here or ..?
- Ras_ 14y ago
  No demand. Our university education is not based on liberal arts, which makes the likes of Latin effectively vanity subjects. Also not having any Catholic tradition lessens the appreciation of Latin.
Ras_ 14y ago
Did you know that Sweden (which included Finland) had effectively 100% reading ability as early as the first part of 18th century? This was due to a decree (Church law of 1686) by Charles XI which required reading skill in order to be allowed to wed. There are complete parochial records ("church examination registers") to study this progress up to level of single individuals. Surprisingly enough these documents prove that writing ability and reading ability don't need to go hand in hand which has often been thought as self-evident. tl;dr What you don't see immediately in Finnish/Swedish education is hundreds of years of reading tradition and deep historical commitment to literacy (ability to read), quite unconnected to industrialization (unlike elsewhere), which happened rather late in Sweden and Finland. More: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Context, pg. 28 "The history of literacy in Sweden" http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fi#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=fron... "The reading ability campaign in Sweden was carried through almost completely without the aid of proper schools." (pg. 42) Thus there has always been a strong component of household education.

178 points by praptak 14y ago

davidw 14y ago

Linus talking about politics is... still politics, even if one happens to agree with him.

andrewflnr 14y ago
HN seems to have a soft spot for educational policy. This makes sense when you consider the importance of education for both a hacker's work and play.

jasonjei 14y ago

I agree that our K-12 sucks, but why is our university system considered good? For instance, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT/FSF, Carnegie-Mellon, UIUC, etc, have made valuable contributions to Computer Science (this is becoming less true as commercial and open-source have overtaken academia in many respects). Is it possible that our K-12 system is broken is the reason that our kids are capable of pursuing their own interests instead of the rigor of rote learning? As a kid, I remember the easiness of school homework allowed me to spend many afternoons in IRC and learning programming on my own. E.g, with too much free time on your hands, are you capable of thinking different instead of answering challenging homework? Not defending our K-12, just wondering how bringing in a Confucian system like Asia and Europe would affect the outside-the-box thinking.

clicks 14y ago
Only responding to a small part of your argument: For every univ. that is good, there is a Univ. of Phoenix. But, for every univ. that is good you also have Bronx High school of NY... which produced 8 Nobel prize laureates, you have Stuyvesant, which produced 5 Nobel prize laureates. America is much a place of extremes -- you'll often find the best and worst from nearly every category.
- jballanc 14y ago
  This is practically the only description of America that you need, and it's only become more apparent to me now that I've left. America is obsessed with extremes. You could add health care to schools as an example. America is the last place in the world I'd want to be if I broke my arm (especially if I happened to be uninsured at the time), but probably the first place I'd go if I was diagnosed with some obscure cancer.
  - drstewart 14y ago
    Spoken like someone who hasn't had to receive health care in Africa. Or maybe you have. Can you tell me why you'd rate your experience in rural Angola as so good that you'd rather go there to treat a broken arm than Johns Hopkins?
    - octagonal 14y ago
      He probably meant "I'd rather be in any other developed nation than the US"
Dewie 14y ago
> I agree that our K-12 sucks, but why is our university system considered good? For instance, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT/FSF, Carnegie-Mellon, UIUC, etc, have made valuable contributions to Computer Science (this is becoming less true as commercial and open-source have overtaken academia in many respects). The US has some world-class universities, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the tertiary education system is great overall: for that I guess you would have to average all the universities. > Is it possible that our K-12 system is broken is the reason that our kids are capable of pursuing their own interests instead of the rigor of rote learning? As a kid, I remember the easiness of school homework allowed me to spend many afternoons in IRC and learning programming on my own. E.g, with too much free time on your hands, are you capable of thinking different instead of answering challenging homework? Not defending our K-12, just wondering how bringing in a Confucian system like Asia and Europe would affect the outside-the-box thinking. I can appreciate the possibility of having less time to do rote memorization busywork could actually be a boon, but... to something like the idea of K-12 being bad, and spin into something that actually makes people better off as a whole nation... that sounds like rationalization on a whole new level. I guess anything to keep the America uber alles idea alive.

jmspring 14y ago

I can't find the original story I heard a couple of weeks ago (on the radio), but another egregious sign of the state of public education in the US -- people are jailed for lying about their address in hopes of getting their child into a better school. The story I recall hearing a couple of weeks ago was about a woman who was periodically homeless and used the address of her baby sitter (or something like that) to get her child into a better school. Now she faces jail time. Searching google for lying about address to get into a better school resulting in jail time shows that this is not an isolated phenomena.

spikels 14y ago
I think you are probably talking about the story linked below. Very sad but I guess it is a form of fraud and theft. Certainly it indicates something is wrong with our current education system but there are so much other evidence (e.g. dropout rates, test scores, college preparedness) that this is hardly news. http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-3437974.php http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-sentenced-...
- jmspring 14y ago
  Thanks, that was the story. Prison time for falsely reporting an address for purposes of schooling? A sad commentary on this society.

walshemj 14y ago

Rather ironic as Finland has a comprehensive schooling system he seems to be arguing for selective schools by the back door. Though in Finland do seem to have the same rigid vocational / academic track similar to Germany where going to the wrong sort of school locks you out of or makes it very hard to go to the top universities. And comparing his experience a tiny European country with a small and homogenous population and thinking that the USA is going to have the the same challenges or possible solutions is a bit naive.

fosap 14y ago
I'm German. I'm not sure what you are talking about. You do need to graduate a "Gymnasium" (years 5-12 or 13, right after elementary school). But any "Gymnasium" will do. Every town has a "Gymnasium", you don't have to move or bake cookies. However, the "Gymnasium" is just one three schools. Only about 30% of students attend. If your marks get too bad you have to leave for "lower" school. On the other hand it's possible to attend a "Gymnasium" of pupils of a "lower" school if they have good grades. (About 20% of my final class came form "lower" schools.) The German system is a kind of elitist. And it's criticized that the parents income is too important. But it is elitist regarding to your marks, and not your district.
- rbehrends 14y ago
  This is what tracking means -- that you get "sorted" into either they "Gymnasium", "Realschule", or "Hauptschule" track after fourth grade. However, this is not what happens in Finland. In Finland, everybody gets the same basic education until age 16, then picks either general upper secondary or vocational upper secondary education (note that vocational upper secondary education does not bar you from attending a university, despite what the GP thinks). However, what he mostly doesn't seem to realize is that Germany (or Finland, for this matter) does not really have the same type of highly competitive admission process for its universities as the United States [1]. For example, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, one of the best German universities to study computer science at (according to a recent ranking, the best), has open admission for its CS Bachelor program. [1] The Bologna Process americanized the system a bit, but it's still mostly about managing supply and demand. If you can't hack it, you won't graduate, but admission is not particularly selective, especially not at the Bachelor level.

taylodl 14y ago

Linus is now seeing firsthand that opportunity is not equal in the United States. You typically need to have attended a good university to get a good job and to get into a good university you need to have graduated from a good secondary school - which you need to have paid for either through tuition or taxes. The goal is to keep the wealth concentrated in the already wealthy. That's how it works here in the United States. I'll assume for the moment that Oregon's intentions are noble, and they're attempting to right this wrong. How ironic that it will achieve the exact opposite result. The old law of unintended consequences and all. Those of us who were in school in the 70s during mandatory desegregation will recall that too had the opposite effect of what was intended: instead of providing better learning opportunities for black students the white families left for the suburbs leaving the black students behind in worse schools than what they had started out with. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it I suppose. So what is the answer? I think we really need to understand the problem: public schools are locally funded and operated and small locales can use real estate to become exclusive. The solution then is to realize that exclusivity can't be had on a large scale. You need to expand the scope of 'local' in the local school system. A good start would be to expand 'local' to the county level. While certainly there are some counties richer and more exclusive than others, they are much more homogenous than individual communities. At least it would be a step in the right direction that would better serve everyone.

newbie12 14y ago
Not sure where you live, but most school districts are already a combination of county and state funding. The state funding does the work of helping poorer districts, and targeted federal funding in turn helps poor states. You are assuming that money is the problem, when the reality is that the US spends far more per student than Finland. http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/ http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-... In fact, some of the worst performing districts in America are also the most well-funded, like the District of Columbia. The problem is the teachers unions control the delivery system, and swaths of American culture that don't value education.
enjo 14y ago
You typically need to have attended a good university to get a good job and to get into a good university you need to have graduated from a good secondary school - which you need to have paid for either through tuition or taxes. You left yourself a wiggle word there, but it doesn't make the sentiment correct. Just as a programmer I've worked with and for folks who have graduated from such juggernauts as Northwestern Oklahoma State, Southeast Missouri, San Jose State, and a host of other non-premier colleges. Not to mention the huge number of folks from public schools of various orders. I myself attended from Central Arkansas, and have had no issue getting a good job. My wife's experience in her field has been much the same. Now that doesn't mean the playing field is completely fair. As an entrepreneur I've been frustrated by the advantages kids coming out of the top-tier schools have. This is especially true in anything related to finance. Those schools are a ticket into that world, and it's a really amazing advantage. Both in terms of landing extremely high paying jobs (fund managers and the like) and in terms of raising money. It's much easier to fund raise when you come with that sort of credibility and direct connection to those who have a lot of money. Still, lets not confuse matters here. People from lower tier schools make it, and make it big, all the time. The system isn't rigged, it's remarkably fair. I worked hard to become very good at what I do. I put myself in a position to learn and experience a big win. That's given me the credibility I need to start to enjoy some of those advantages as well. Lots of others have done the same thing. So I reject the premise of your statement. Although I largely disagree with the notion that education is in crisis. There are certainly areas of crisis, but those cultures seem cultural and not institutional. Studies have shown that the vast majority of our kids are competitive on the world level. It's that our lowest performing areas REALLY underperform. I also reject the idea that further divorcing school from the community it serves is a good idea.

asveikau 14y ago

I don't know why Linus says that Americans blindly accept the crappiness. Perhaps they accept it because its systemic nature makes a hard thing to fix, but the acceptance isn't blind. Most smart people I know in this country seem to have had some clash with the school system in some form or another. Linus talks mostly about funding, but there's also the huge problem that schools don't seem to be teaching math and science, or anything for that matter, very well. For me personally, thinking back to my youth, I think the most important lesson I learned in school was to be cynical and not trust people in positions of authority, to go off and do things on your own instead of relying on them to catch up with you, which is a helpful lesson but probably not one that you'd want to need to discover so young. On another topic, I can't help but think some of his description of the American acceptance of the brokenness has something to do with his setting of the northwest. When I lived in Seattle I was really shocked at how unwilling people were to question the status quo, especially when it came to things that could be changed by political action. On topics where more aggressive east coasters would loudly complain or maneuver around, apathy and letting things go as they had been seemed to be the default for most things. Of course the education problem is a national one and these latter traits are not unknown to other parts of the country. But the northwest is less cynical, and more content to let things just drift.

btbuilder 14y ago
I didn't feel his comment was as general as 'blindly accept the crappiness'. What I read (which mirrors my own sentiment) is that it is seen as the normal and proper thing to supplement some local public services with fund raisers because they are underfunded. Firefighters breakfasts and school bake sales. Seriously we don't pay enough taxes to cover these basic services?
- smsm42 14y ago
  If people pay a lot of taxes and still don't have enough money in the budget to finance what's important for them, maybe they should take a look into the local budget and figure out where the money went. I'm sure people of Linus' grade of brainpower could do that. There's also a chance they'd discover that some of the city workers have pretty cushy benefit packages and the cost of it is more than they though it would be. And that they may be underfunded because some of the city workers fly to global warming conferences in luxury hotels in Hawaii on their dime, that is known to happen too. I wonder if that happens in Finland. There's a long known bureaucratic principle then when the budget is short, first thing you cut is something that the public really feels the need - schools, firefighters, police, if you can find a way to involve sick or orphans - that's the gold. Because if you cut something really wasteful, you a) admit you wasted money and b) never get this money back ever. But if you cut something that is needed or perceived as needed, you show how bad it is hurting and if the situation ever improves, you get everything back at the first chance. Of course, the alternative of looking at the local budget is to cry for the federal government to take the money from "the rich" and give to the schools - because think of the children!

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

Bake-sale style funding for the military instead of for schools. That is a fantastic idea. I love it.

ams6110 14y ago
This bumper sticker has been seen on Volvos since the 1970s.
- irrelative 14y ago
  Indeed it has -- for those less familiar: http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-Bumper-Sticker-(5729).jpg http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-Bumpe...
  - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
    I was unfamiliar, thanks.

manaskarekar 14y ago

The alternative many will be forced to take will be Homeschooling + Online Courses, which is great! À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you.

clicks 14y ago
So, one of the big reasons homeschooling isn't more prevalent is that increasingly both parents have to work. Maybe a new, not before seen alternative is some sort of a quasi-daycare institution which has authority figures not teaching but just making sure the kids are focusing on their online courses and not horsing around! And only so occasionally answering questions the kids ask. Because you're still in an environment with other similar-aged peers, you can still have recesses to bond and mingle and have chances for having healthy socializing practices.
- rayiner 14y ago
  So, basically, private school? This is where my wife and I want to send our daughter if we ever make it back to Chicago: http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum. Basically some guy decided to home school his kid, but let other kids join in.The result was a curriculum in which kids learn formal logic in middle school.
- kamkazemoose 14y ago
  I just wonder how effective that would be. I think kids would have a hard time focusing in front of a computer, and being lectured to. I think a large part of the elementary school education is working on activities and worksheets, especially in groups. I'm not sure you can replicate that in an online course, and I just wonder how effective an online course could be for younger kids. I'd actually be interested in seeing if there have been any studies done on this.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    CAVA is the CA Virtual Academy using the K12 curriculum, and despite having a higher-than-normal number of "special needs" students, does better on standardized tests than the other public schools in CA. (CAVA is a charter school, and thus part of the public school system. Anyone with kids in CA can sign up for it, and everything is paid for -- they even pay for Internet and give you a computer.) In my experience, CAVA is very effective in all the areas you've mentioned. And they do weekly in person group activities as well, plus field trips, etc. I honestly don't know anyone in CAVA who's wanted to go back to sending their kids to day care^HHHHHHHHpublic school.

tokenadult 14y ago

Linus is correct to disagree with the Oregon bill, and it's too bad that he didn't point to an existing example in another state with some cultural similarities to Oregon. Finding out what learning environment, inside or outside school, is optimal for each learner is definitely a worthy goal, especially if means are then provided to obtain that environment. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 so I'm always glad to discuss how to improve opportunities for learners with other participants here. I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle." http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm... Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis. http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two futher reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h... and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime. http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index... So Linus notes, in the article submitted here, that where he lives in Oregon, "And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of 'out-of-district tuition student' not be an option any more." That's crazy, because Minnesota's pattern of open enrollment has shown that every school district gains by enrolling as many students as it can attract, given the funding pattern here. Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detect the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and give it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices. The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better. To achieve the worthy goal mentioned in the article submitted here involves changing the incentives now operating in the school system in most countries, both as to direct regulations and as to funding. Schools should be eager to enroll new students, as a demonstration that the school is meeting learner needs, and then the schools should be rewarded for doing so.

rayiner 14y ago

It is objectively the case that our schools aren't bad in general. Not as good as Finland, but adjusted for demographics about average compared to the rest of Europe: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou.... You can't really compare the school systems of a homogenous country with low income inequality to one where 30% of the population is from either a historically oppressed racial minority group or relatively recent immigrants. It's especially misleading to look at school systems in urban areas, because that's where the U.S. puts most of the poor people. That is not to say we don't have a problem here in the U.S. But the problem isn't with the education system, it's with how we've dealt with the disadvantaged in our society. A great example of this is Chicago. Finland spends about $10,000 per year per student. Chicago spends about $20,000 per student. Chicago teachers are paid over $70k/year on average, almost double the $37k/year Finnish teachers are paid. Why does Chicago do so poorly? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it has nothing to do with money or school quality, but the fact that 86% of Chicago's students come from low-income families, and 87% are disadvantaged ethnic minorities.

vacri 14y ago
Teachers in Chicago are not paid over $70k/year http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-the-74000-lie/ http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-the-7400...
- rayiner 14y ago
  The link you cited is highly misleading. The Chicago metro area is a census tract of 10 million people. The City of Chicago is 2.7 million people. The Chicago school system and the Chicago teachers union disagree about how to compute the number, but CTU cites $71k and CPS cites $76k: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-public-school-teachers-make/ http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-p... Also misleading from that link: Chicago's cost of living is right around the US average: http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chicago http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chica...

diakritikal 14y ago

One thing Linus didn't mention about Finland and education which some of you may find interesting and of note; is that the right to education is enshrined in the Finnish constitution. http://www.oph.fi/english/education http://www.oph.fi/english/education Coming from a family of educators I can't help but think this plays an important role in cementing Finland's position at the top of the OECD education rankings. Furthermore, being a Scotsman and understanding how the Scots have long since had a history of free universal education, I think it's fair to say that this played an important part in the industrial revolution. It's also worth mentioning that Scotland is about to have it's independence referendum next year and high on the list for those who would see Scotland have self-determination is a written constitution. The UK is an anomaly in the developed western world for not having a written constitution and many of us would like to see free universal education enshrined into our new constitution, should we vote for independence.

daxelrod 14y ago
The right to an education is enshrined in many US states' constitutions as well. That's unfortunately not enough to make the difference.

thrownaway2424 14y ago

SHOCKING NEWS: Ethnically and linguistically homogeneous people from tiny, frozen nation easier to educate than diverse citizens of world's most-immigrated-to nation. Stay tuned for more surprising revelations, as soon as we hear them!

jrockway 14y ago
So if the US were colder we wouldn't have education problems. Interesting theory.
- thrownaway2424 14y ago
  No, if it were colder nobody would want to immigrate here.
  - lotsofcows 14y ago
    That explains why Canada's full of WASPs! That always got me!
purplelobster 14y ago
Shocking news: downsides of the US being blamed on demographics and size. This satisfies the population to accept the crappiness. I've had this conversation too many times, but I'll say it again: Americans (and all people who have not lived abroad) tend to overestimate the differences within their own population and underestimate the differences in outside populations. You overestimate the diversivness of America. This is about the point someone says something stupid like Alabama and California are as different as two different countries.
- bromang 14y ago
  Should we ignore demographics? Why?
  - purplelobster 14y ago

Nrsolis 14y ago

I went to public school with Sheryl Sandberg at North Miami Beach Sr. High School. She was a senior while I was a junior. Her little brother was my lab partner in AP Chemistry. It really was a fantastic school. Some parents would put their kids in private school but we'd always see them back a semester later when it turned out that the private school wasn't much better than the public one. I took a look at that school recently and I can tell you that I wouldn't send my kids (if I had any) there: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/districts/miami-dade-county-public-schools/north-miami-beach-senior-high-4851/test-scores http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/di...

anarchotroll 14y ago

He says he dislikes a private system but, at the same time, indirectly acknowledges that what makes the system at his district work is the fact that it is partly private. It is partly private because people actually raise money voluntarily and charge outsiders in order to make it work.

acjohnson55 14y ago
He does acknowledge that. The problem is not that empowering the community to pay for its education doesn't work; the problem is that different communities have vastly different resources to pull from, both financially and in terms of the soft assets that communities share, like social mobility, intellectual capital, etc. It's unfair because your average low-income school district can't pull off a bond issue or massive fundraiser to fund new initiatives.

qdog 14y ago

I live in Oregon, although this might limit some of the funding for certain schools, when I was moving between school districts for my son, I could not start him in the new school district until I was a resident. The only public school we looked at that actually followed this method was Riverdale (www.riverdaleschool.com), and it was about $3k/year. Most of the public schools won't let you attend unless you live in their boundaries. There are a lot of public schools in Portland that have special programs, and you enter via a lottery, so that's kind of cool. However, it's my experience that Portland Public Schools are crippled vs. the surrounding suburban school districts. I don't really understand it, since PPS has a higher funding per kid. Also the facilities in suburbia (sports fields, buildings, etc.) are generally newer and bigger. If I had it to do over again, I'm not sure what state I would try and move to for education.

djvu9 14y ago

Sometimes I have a feeling that the US government is so good at being politically correct that the only thing they care is being politically correct.

linuxhansl 14y ago

I can relate a story of a coworker of mine who recently moved back to Germany with his two kids after living the US for many years. They looked at some houses and ended up touring the local school and talking to the principal. The conversation went something like this: Coworker: You ave a nice school. Principal: Thanks. Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: ? Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: What do you mean with "space"? Coworker: Do you have space for my kids? Principal: Your kids are required to go to school. We will have space. The question of space/waitinglists/applications/etc did not occur to the principal.

smsm42 14y ago

Something that I didn't understand - why Linus thinks it is completely nuts that people help finance their kids' education locally? Why the only sane thing is to give money to some anonymous amorphous central government, and then ask for some of it back to build the school and hope some bridge to nowhere or festival of cowboy poetry or some bigwig's 500K/night hotel bills don't come first? I understand you can disagree which way is more efficient - but why the local way is described as insane "to any sany person"?

olau 14y ago
I'm from Scandinavia and I think I can answer that. Over here, there's a pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are well off shouldn't give you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are less well off. Equal opportunities and all that. For instance, in Denmark education is free, including university. You even get a monthly allowance from the state if you study. That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is a better place than the US to do it, because despite high taxes statistically you are far more likely to move on the social ladder in Denmark: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
- smsm42 14y ago
  >>>> Over here, there's a pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are well off shouldn't give you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are less well off. This is both counterfactual (money alone matters very little - worst schools routinely spend per pupil more or roughly the same as good schools with no improvement in results) and futile. Of course children of successful educated parents would be better off that children growing in broken up family with absentee parents and zero attention to their education. The only way it could be otherwise is to drag everybody down to the lowest possible level. The whole talk about "unfair advantage" sounds insane to me - why not then beautiful people or smart people have "unfair advantage"? Let's do it like in the Vonnegut's Sirens on Titan (or Harrison Bergeron) - let everybody be dragged down to the lowest level, let everybody has poorest education that we can provide to everybody, let everybody be as ugly as the ugliest person alive, as weak as weakest person alive, as dumb as dumbest person alive, as miserable and sick as the most miserable and sick person alive. This is only way it can be "fair". And people seriously think this approach is not only sane, but the ONLY sane one? Just boggles the mind. The problem is that redistribution does not solve the problem. Moreover, by becoming obsessed with redistribution solving the real problems only becomes harder. We are way beyond the stage where the money were the actual issue, all bake sales aside. The problem is much harder and has to do with the community, the general environment, the history, the social engineering failures, there's a huge mess there, but it there not because of the lack of government involvement. If anything, partially it's there exactly because of this involvement, which failed to predict the consequences. >>>> That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is a better place than the US to do it Highly doubt it. Somehow where I live there's Google, Facebook, and hundreds others already done, and thousands others in the making, and in Denmark you have.... well, I couldn't name one, to be frank. Maybe there are some, but not many heard of them. Somehow Stroustrup is in Texas and DHH is in Chicago, and we don't have a huge wave of US citizens moving to Denmark to pursue their dreams. Maybe if you move there, you have higher chance of secure mediocre living, but it's not exactly what people call "American dream".

nnq 14y ago

not on topic, but how comes any time there's a comparison of education or healthcare or overall "social health" of the northern European countries (Linus's Finland, Norway, Sweden) with any other country in the world, the northeners are always better? How did they manage to get so many "social" problems so right? Does anyone know of a good case-study about how these countries reached their current level?

Ras_ 14y ago
Start here: http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Davos-The-nordic-way-final.pdf http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Davo... Then follow up on things that picque your interest. Like social trust and Nordic social contract.
- nnq 14y ago
  10x kudos! really great resource to start from!

keithpeter 14y ago

"Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales." UK: we have the same affluent area/good school, poor area/poor school issues in the UK. I so wish we could get to the situation than Finland finds itself in, but I doubt the government wants to invest in the teaching profession to the extent required. PS: Buildings don't matter above a certain threshold level. Shiny classroom equipment doesn't matter, just BYOD with a few loaner laptops and WiFi would be good.

Vlaix 14y ago

The only thing that chocks me is that there's only one Swedish-speaking school in Finland that teaches Latin (ofc the US public system thing is alarming, bu it's nothing of a bombshell). Am I the weird guy here or ..?

Ras_ 14y ago
No demand. Our university education is not based on liberal arts, which makes the likes of Latin effectively vanity subjects. Also not having any Catholic tradition lessens the appreciation of Latin.

Ras_ 14y ago

Did you know that Sweden (which included Finland) had effectively 100% reading ability as early as the first part of 18th century? This was due to a decree (Church law of 1686) by Charles XI which required reading skill in order to be allowed to wed. There are complete parochial records ("church examination registers") to study this progress up to level of single individuals. Surprisingly enough these documents prove that writing ability and reading ability don't need to go hand in hand which has often been thought as self-evident. tl;dr What you don't see immediately in Finnish/Swedish education is hundreds of years of reading tradition and deep historical commitment to literacy (ability to read), quite unconnected to industrialization (unlike elsewhere), which happened rather late in Sweden and Finland. More: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Context, pg. 28 "The history of literacy in Sweden" http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fi#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=fron... "The reading ability campaign in Sweden was carried through almost completely without the aid of proper schools." (pg. 42) Thus there has always been a strong component of household education.