Hacker News Reader

Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

A few points in an attempt to improve the discussion of education here:

1. The current model is not the only model. The US higher education system is unique amongst Western countries, AFAIK, in having both a very high cost and a large number of private institutions. This could (and probably should, IMO) change.

2. There is not one goal to education. For example, some people get an education to get a job while some people get an education to follow their interests. These are both valid reasons.

3. Education can drive equality or inequality, depending on how it is implemented. The current US system (and the UK system, to a lesser extent) probably drives inequality more than the other way around, but this is not the way it has to be.

View on HN

Regarding 3, lots of things drive inequality, but there is no reason to address the myriad reasons, especially ones that cannot be addressed such as differences in innate ability or the parents you have.

If the problem is inequality, and the solution is deemed to be reducing inequality, then a marginal sales/income/wealth/estate tax to redistribute wealth is the only necessary solution.

> there is no reason to address the myriad reasons, especially ones that cannot be addressed such as differences in innate ability or the parents you have.

Why not?

I think most people tend to overestimate the degree of variation in innate ability among the general population. Most of what might typically be considered "innate ability" is actually a result of factors that are not innate at all.

To your second example - Do you really assume that nothing can be done to mitigate the potentially negative impact of having the "wrong" parents? I have a family member who works in education and spends lots of time working on that specific problem.

Creating an educational system that works for the majority of people, as opposed to the elite, doesn't have to be a destructive, or even particularly controversial, endeavor.

It is too complicated, and I do not even think possible.

Tackling problems directly, in the simplest way possible results the least amount of corruption.

Suppose you even “solved“ the discrepancy in parents, now you still have a million other inequalities, such as attractiveness, height, skin tone, accent, etc.

The goal is not to have an equal, uniform society. The goal is to put a limit on the size of the gap between opportunities available to all, and provide the freedom to move up and down within it.

> Do you really assume that nothing can be done to mitigate the potentially negative impact of having the "wrong" parents? I have a family member who works in education and spends lots of time working on that specific problem

Yes, I think certain factors of “success” require generations to cultivate. This does not mean people are not worth helping, but that it is not realistic to expect to be able to bridge the gap between two children from vastly disparate backgrounds just via schooling them in a different way from age 5 to 18.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com