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Comment by williamtrask | Hacker News Reader

> people have completely given up on society and said fuck it, we'll make our own.

Fwiw, this type of thinking played a pretty strong role in how America began (and in other social/moral movements). It's not always a bad thing.

> This is sad. The real solution is not to homeschool. It is to force ALL kids, regardless of age, location, and income to be forced into the same school system. Want to improve things? gotta make it better for everyone.

I get your point, but just to continue my analogy, King George might have said something similar in the late 1700s. A good general counter-narrative to this line of thinking is James Scott's "Seeing like a state" which documents the degree to which governments regiment society in ways that reduce social welfare.

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I don't see it as social welfare, I see it as more "ensure everyone, ESPECIALLY the elite, are bought into the system". Otherwise we get conversations like we do today where "do we defund the education system" is a real convo. If those same people would have no choice but to send their kids to a defunded education system... we'll see change.

To add a bit more incentive, I'd say the children of any senator / congressman / local state legislature / governor / mayor / etc must attend school of that state. This will again ensure that people who make decisions and influence decisions are actually committed to the solution.

Again, not thinking about "how to rely on the government" but more along the lines of, "how do we make sure those in power / influence are as bought into the system and the solution of the system as the rest of us"

If everyone was forced to attend the same types of shitty public schools then it would just increase the market for private tutoring and supplemental education. The trend tends to be lowering the education standards to match the lower students instead of making standards more rigorous. This is why my kids attend charter schools.

I agree. This is why in Finland they made it law that nobody can not go to public education (a slight oversimplification). For exactly this reason. And they continue to diligently deny any attempts to game the system via strict court rulings. It even got to a point where kids wanted to swap schools due to them having less travel time, but the court said that this has the potential to lead to the wealthy using these exact arguments to send their kids to a local school which would be superior to other schools and thus defeat the entire point of the system. It is a lot of diligence but it is done for _exactly_ the reason you stated.

What I found interesting, is people look at the finnish education system and say "oh, if we did away with tests" or whatever... but the answer is, it has nothing to do with tests. It has everything to do with the thousands of small details that only get taken care of because the entire society is committed to making it work because _everyone_ is in it, so everyone has to fight for it, including the politicians who set policy and the elites.

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