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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

I work in the education sphere, and this is not too surprising: one of the most significant factors in students completing more optional advanced education programs are familial and peer expectations, which are then instilled in that student to in turn pass on to their own children later in life. Students from families where they are the first generation to go to college, for example, generally have lower average outcomes. Although some of the variance in those outcomes are due to lower average socioeconomic status rather than familial expectations.

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> Although some of the variance in those outcomes are due to lower average socioeconomic status rather than familial expectations.

I’m not sure if it is lower socioeconomic status, or just inability to coach. It is hard to give advice about how to get into grad school or how to interview for an engineering job or even how to study engineering undergraduate classes if your experience is, say, being foreman of a framing crew. No disrespect, the trades are important and undervalued, but the experience-based advice you have to offer is in a different realm.

I experienced this myself. My dad went into the family business, and had another job offer waiting (in a small town) when they sold that without having to be interviewed. I never learned how to really network or do stuff like that in college, and it definitely impacted my opportunities and such. I never even realized how important it was until I went to an "elite" college, where it seemed like all the other (read: those whose parents had to, or were raised much more well-off than I was) students knew how to. I was kinda at a lost because the university often assumed we knew it too, and so let it go by without necessarily teaching us.

I think it's far more complicated than that although environment plays a big role, on those that are susceptible to it.

For example, in my AP Calculus honors class was mostly East Asian high school kids, in a school famous for gang violence (class of 05, I recognized their faces in the newspapers), started joining ethnic street gangs during this time. Like this Vietnamese dude was a high achiever like the rest of us tryna get into a good university, then the cops showed up and arrested for attempted murder for bashing some white kid's head in the hallway with a baseball bat. It was like a gang initiation thing, I hear many many other such incidents. Honestly, I was tense all the time. It was only when I was threatened with a deadly weapon over a scuffle, did I realize what I was dealing with. I asked that classmate why he attacked the student in the hallway, he replied

"cuz he was askin for it"

Pretty shocking since not long ago we were studying calculus together. Well, I hope the thug life was worth a permanent criminal record that permanently bars you from partaking in the mainstream economy.

I would expect that it's far more than just 'educational attitudes' - it's everything about life perspective, behaviour, habits, knowledge and high levels of conscientiousness etc.. Couple that with increased access to many things due to already-established economic background and you have generational success, I think.

Absolutely you're right, there's more to it than just parental & peer expectations. That's why there's still variance in outcomes despite the presence or lack of expectations. Another significant factor is what's been termed "grit", with multiple methods of measuring it, none perfect but still useful. There's no perfect way of determining long term outcomes, there's just too many confounding factors, and it's a chaotic system. It's why even "aptitude" tests like the SAT are actually very limited in the scope of what they claim to predict: not long term outcomes, only correlation with 1st year success in college, and imperfect at that (HS GPA is generally as powerful or more powerful than such tests, though predictive power is increased when both are used together.) And the further out in time you go, the weaker the "signal" is from such tests, the more you see variance in outcomes from the same initial conditions, due in part to those initial conditions capturing only a part of the picture, and due in part to the many intervening factors that happen after the initial conditions are observed.

Yes, agree with all that. Even grit though is variable and contextual. Some people have family and sports grit but not business grit. Also changes over time. I used to be pure grit, now only on work days :)

Here's one of the "grit" measurements that's been shown to correlate with education outcomes. However, I use in in some of my own research on students who transfer from one college to another, and didn't find it statistically significant in predicting short term outcomes. (I still need to revisit it to see if it is more predictive for longer term outcomes, one of the two hypothesis I had for the work) Anyway, this link will let you obtain your own "grit" score, for whatever that's worth: https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/

As a child of parents who either didn't go to college, or were the first in the entire extended family and didn't graduate: This rings true.

I was always encouraged to go to school. It's important they said. You need it to get a good job.

BUT! The teachers are stupid. Don't trust them too much. They dont know everything. If they were really that good, they'd be doing it, not teaching. Always question what they tell you, verify things on your own. If something doesn't make sense, speak up and get them to explain. You'll soon see how shallow their knowledge really is.

And don't worry. You're never gonna need any of this in real life. Grades are important! Get good grades. But also don't worry coz nobody is gonna care as soon as you're out of school.

Mixed signals right?

I never graduated and I like to think I got everything I needed out of college except a piece of paper.

PS: In high school I was everyone's worst nightmare. When I was engaged, I'd ask a lot of questions and derail the instruction. When I thought your subject was stupid, I'd just not participate, avoid any and all homework, and get straight Fs.

The straight Fs in particular had to have been frustrating to teachers because I'd then learn enough of their entire year's worth of curriculum in 2 weeks to get a D and pass the class.

PPS: My mum eventually did go to college when I was in college. She graduated before me. Still says it's useless IRL.

It sounds like your parents gave you great advice and instilled independent thinking into you (and realistic expectations for what education can provide).

There are a lot of people out there who did great in school but never learned to think for themselves. Some of those people are now saddled in debt and don't have the skills to dig their way out.

I agree, it was great long term advice. But for a rebellious irresponsible and immature teenager it created a lot of problems.

A better lesson would have been that teachers are a resource. You can go to them with questions when you're stuck. You can use them for guidance. College professors especially.

I was in a similar position (for different reasons) and it also created a lot of problems when I was a teenager. I'm not sure if the alternative would have been better though. I find a lot of things that caused problems in school ended up being very valuable in my professional life. Mainly questioning everything. It is best paired with some tact though, and that took a long time to develop.

> BUT! The teachers are stupid. Don't trust them too much. They dont know everything. If they were really that good, they'd be doing it, not teaching. Always question what they tell you, verify things on your own. If something doesn't make sense, speak up and get them to explain. You'll soon see how shallow their knowledge really is.

I loathe this attitude. I'm a teacher, and I decided to teach because I (thought that I) enjoy teaching, not because I couldn't be doing something else. This is true for several of the teachers I know. I know some who passed up on being doctors, or lawyers or other professions to become teachers because they enjoyed it, and liked doing it more.

Yes, some are stupid, but you're painting with broad strokes and, honestly, it's not easy to see why we have a cult of anti-intellectualism in America because of how common this attitude is. A lot of them have thorough knowledge to explain something, but the student doesn't yet have all the requisite knowledge to understand...Like when someone asks me why, when we study perpendicular lines in Algebra, it has a negative reciprocal slope. They don't know trig identities; they're not at a level to understand the various proofs behind it. So when I tell them not to worry about it, that doesn't mean my knowledge is "shallow".

"I'm a teacher, and I decided to teach because I (thought that I) enjoy teaching, not because I couldn't be doing something else.... I know some who passed up on being doctors, or lawyers..."

It would be nice if doctors became doctors just for the joy of helping people, not all the money and social status. Teachers work with difficult kids and put in the time to make the world a better place with zero pay [if you factor out cost of living].

Most that I know of are fine with the pay (I mean, of course we would all like it to be higher!) because they know they're making a difference, like you said. What always gets me is people like GGP who basically claims that teachers must be stupid, or else they'd be doing something more lucrative. That attitude upsets me, as many teachers actually want to help, and passed up on more lucrative and easier jobs.

As someone who has sort of "fallen into" the education field, I can only say this: If any of the interviews I've had, or the resumes I've sent, had turned into job offers more lucrative and reliable than education, I'd be doing something else. You aren't the only teacher who does it because you enjoy it; I'm not the only one who does it because nothing else is available to me. I am evidence of the axiom, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" - if you aren't, good on you.

I find the conclusion of the article to be surprising.

In modern times, we understand that access to markets is the determining factor in income. It is why those who live in cities can typically make more than those who live in rural areas, and why – as you alluded to – those with family connections to business find themselves making more than those who don't have an "in." It is even why people strongly advocate for limiting competition (through unions, for example) in a marketplace in order to increase incomes (or other benefits) of those who are in the inner circle.

One would naturally conclude that missions were correlated with access to markets, perhaps due to springing up where markets were already strong, but the article seems to have determined that education caused the higher incomes back then. Something that hasn't proven true in modern times, where incomes have held stagnant over the years for groups that have seen an increase in college attainment.

"access to markets" is not "the" determining factors, it is "a" determining factor. Have all the access you want via physical proximity, you also need to be able to offer something to that market, and an education is one of the factors in that. And it wasn't just missions that were the factor cited in the article, but a Jesuit one in particular: Jesuits are known for their strong push for education over the centuries. When the researcher here looked at non Jesuit missions in the same area, and therefore likely to have very similar "access to market", their outcomes were lower. I take your point about market access, and I think it is a good point, but education is one of the factors that gives a person access to a market.

"access to markets is the determining factor in income"

No, it's one small item of 'determining factors'.

Yes, the richest zip codes are in cities, but most impoverished areas in the USA are actually generally in cities. The former drags the average way up.

Have a look here, Postal Code map of Canada [1]

Scroll over to to Toronto:

You notice 'super rich area' uptown. Then downtown and environs and immediate burbs are poor, some very poor. Then the 'extraburbs' are wealthy, then then countryside in the middle.

If you account for cost of living - the countryside people are doing very well. It costs $120K for a nice big house in my hometown, and electricians earn $80K.

In the us - the rural areas in the US that don't have a history of slavery (like the Dakotas, even Texas) actually have high levels of income and low levels of unemployment, low levels of crime ... but as you point out, not quite the same as the 'professional class' within cities.

So the 'banker class' and 'professional class' will be in cities, and make the most money.

But many of the rest in economic zones actually don't fare very well.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/370804/income-by-postal-code/

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