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Comment by paulhauggis | Hacker News Reader

"How best to prioritize learning to read rigorously over scheming to get home and be the man of the house in the stead of the father who left? How best to find joy in school with so much hate and embitterment poisoning the rest of your life?"

How can we fix this? The problem is that no matter how much our teachers may push students to do better and work harder in school, their home life may work against it.

It's one of the side-effects of freedom. To some degree, there will never be a way to fix it. Unless we can control what happens when they get home.

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You are bringing up the argument for Welfare, Universal Healthcare, etc., that there is nothing that the schools can do. The problems that these kids are facing stems from the fact that they live in poverty. This leads to issues such as the one mentioned by the author. The only way to solve the problem would be to try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to where poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs, drinking, etc.

> try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to where poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs, drinking, etc.

Why do you think that the lack of a "decent Social Benefits system" is the reason why they do prostitution, drugs, drinking?

To put it another way, you seem to be assuming that someone drinks because they're poor. Could it be (for some/many) that they're poor because they drink?

"You are bringing up the argument for Welfare, Universal Healthcare, etc., that there is nothing that the schools can do"

You can give people all of the healthcare and the free money that you want, but it still won't automatically create a productive member of society.

This will only create generations of people that are dependent on the welfare system and can't actually go out and get a job.

As long as you aren't mentally or physically challenged, you should be able to work.

This is why I think KIPP works (and why it has been criticized as a cult by some). It creates an intense school environment ("work hard, be nice") in school and then keeps kids in the school environment for as long as possible, while making work mandatory for parents as well.

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