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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

I notice this in SF. The well off parents had private tutors pretty quickly after school closed and even middle class parents would split the bill across 5 kids.

They didn’t miss a beat at all. While the lower income families struggle with virtual classes while the parents tried to make ends meet.

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This. Just like with various decriminalization laws, the poor suffer the consequences while the rich feel no consequences of their “deeply caring” policies.

And we all went along with it! And gladly shot down anyone who breathed a defiant word! Oh how we never learn.

This comment seems a bit flippant. The choice was distance learning (something) vs. close down schools entirely and... ban students from learning at all?

There was a pandemic and I think in many districts they made as good a switch to digital learning as they could and tried to be effective. Unfortunately we had a black swan event so its a bit disingenuous to act like "we never learn"

Or do what Sweden did, and never close the schools at all, and still end up with overall mortality (across total population, not just kids) less than most US states.

There was a pandemic that basically left kids untouched, and frankly barely registers on the scale of deadly pandemics for almost everyone else.

Let's at least be honest about it - the decision was made to avoid any risk of disease and close schools, and instead pass on the negative effects to those unable to prosper in the new learning regime. That is, those without private tuition, and/or a stable home environment with some kind of suitable space to focus on online learning. In my opinion, the education and welfare of children should be somewhere near the very top of any priority list, and in this case, we have utterly failed them in our scramble to be "Covid safe". Has anyone noticed that the near-retirement-age folks at the top of the power pyramid seem to be doing just fine, as they demanded everything be shut down to "protect" people like themselves? Fortunately, my kids are young enough that I may never have to tell them anything about this pandemic.

Edit: And do you know who will pay for all of this? Me, and people like me. I will be burdened with the societal and economic costs of this for the rest of my life, just because I have a decent enough job and a family I cannot fail.

Surely there was a third option of keeping schools open. I’m not a parent and am not sure whether that was the right option, but that your comment doesn’t even acknowledge it is part of the problem.

I mean, plenty of countries never closed their schools down. Or at least not for very long. SF schools were closed from March 2020 to Aug 2021.

And the governor of the fine state of CA sent his kids to private school for the entire time.

Also, closing school for "just" a year and half is an enormous disruption to education.

A year and a half is an eternity for a kid. Remember how long summer break felt as a child? Or a whole year?

Society stole children’s childhood from them for a disease that doesn’t even affect kids.

It’s not flippant at all! People you know in real life would scream in your face if you dared challenge the idea that kids have to be in school. In fact you still see this now!

When the average person thinks getting covid comes with a 10% chance of dying… this crazy reaction starts to make sense. People are literally terrified out of their minds by covid.

Source: http://covid19pulse.usc.edu/

In the UK, even before COVID there was a government funded Pupil Premium programme [1] which gave funding for disadvantaged pupils to get private tutoring.

Additionally, during COVID, there is a new National Tutoring Programme which allows all schools to get funding for private tutoring [2].

I think it's really important that private online tutoring shouldn't be restricted to well-off parents, as it just perpetuates the poverty gap.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pup... [2] https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/

Exactly. I was a private tutor thru 2020 and this was my experience - it was much less “I’m falling behind” clients and more me just teaching the content since the online group instruction just wasn’t working.

So what happens if high/middle class parents discover that the results are superior for this solution?

Do you force them to send their kids to public school in order to bring up the lower income children?

What? Private schooling and home schooling have always been a thing. Why would they be forced?

People are constantly trying to ban private and home schooling. Commonly stated justifications for mandatory public schooling include reducing class divide, fighting extremism, etc.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private...

https://taipd.org/node/307

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...

https://www.ncregister.com/news/french-government-seeks-to-b...

People have been trying to do a lot of things - hasn’t been successful.

Instead of bring the public schools up to the level of private schools the solution is to get rid of private schools? That seems utterly ridiculous. If private schools do better than public schools should emulate them instead of banning the competition.

I am reminded of the Rush song The Trees

> Now there’s no more Oak oppression. For they passed a noble law. And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw

>Instead of bring the public schools up to the level of private schools the solution is to get rid of private schools?

It depends if private school superiority (or professional tutor superiority) is better in ways that can even be emulated in public schools. For one thing, a lot of their differences are due to exclusion.

On the face of it, I rather doubt that it's possible to raise public schools in the West to that extent.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Public schools in the US have achieved some degree of the nature of private schools purely by geographic segregation.

This is true, but I think there are ways we can mitigate this. A voucher system could help fix some of these issues and allow some kids in crappy inner city schools to get out and go to a better one.

An interesting angle to that is the continuous sorting that goes on.

You end up with some schools with the worst of the worst, and heaven help anyone stuck in there. How do you construct those places? Do they have a SHU?

Given our current infatuation with 'fairness' another issue arises. What happens when the good schools, given a voucher system, and the bad schools tend to have people who look alike within them. Should there be outrage?

We are already in the situation where some schools are better than other schools (regardless if they are private or public). This wouldn't change with a voucher system. It is impossible to have perfectly equal schools. Some teachers are better than others and that will always be the case.

Currently kids in the inner city are poorer and stuck in the crappy public schools. Even if their parents wanted to send them to a different school they couldn't afford it. It seems clear to me that the current system is not working for the poor and lower middle class.

The worst case situation would be nothing changes for kids in bad schools. They were going to bad schools and continue going to bad schools. The best case scenario would lead to some kids currently in bad schools going to better schools. This would allow them to get a better education which would be impossible in the current situation. I won't deny that some kids would still be stuck in bad schools, but I fully believe some will get out.

My point is more that a voucher system would tend to hollow out bad schools, taking out the more high-functioning kids. Perhaps they would hollow out the ranks of teachers as they'd prefer to work in a safer/less crazy-making environment.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the idea of vouchers.

Their presence hasn't threatened to depopulate public schools yet. When (if) it does, you can expect pushback.

Can that be forced?

i don't think it can be forced but before the pandemic there was a social stigma reinforced by many that homeschoolers were weird and anti-social. When the pandemic hit so many kids became home schooled that the stigma was lost because everyone was doing it. The pandemic was a real setback for those on the anti-homeschool crusade.

> Do you force them to send their kids to public school in order to bring up the lower income children?

As in, peer learning? It's the schooling systems job to accommodate and support, not kids?

Yeah, eventually lawmakers will, but will probably keep their own kids in private school the whole time. Just like the UK's abolition of grammar schools.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34538222

tl;dr "It's not fair"

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