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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

So many of America's social problems can be traced back to a lack of a decent educational system...

Can you explain this claim?

I.e., both define what you mean by "social problems", and how a "decent" educational system would help.

Also not the poster, but study after study finds that education and income inequality is correlated with everything from crime rates (unsurprisingly, poor people are more likely to commit, or at least get caught committing, crimes) to mental health (the less money you have, you are likely to be mentally ill and less likely to have access to good care). Then there's obesity (again, the rich are more likely to eat healthy food) and other similar physical health issues.

Some of that is a consequence of education (for instance, nutrition) or income (mental illness) but all of those are seriously worsened by inequality resulting from our education system. If you're interested, The Spirit Level (http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp...) and Ill Fares the Land (http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/0143118765...) both contain great discussions of this.

Could you explain the causal link between any of the factors you've mentioned and education?

Among other explanations, the correlation between these factors can easily be explained by irresponsibility (more precisely: high discount rate) of the people exhibiting these factors. There is very little evidence that a lack of education causes these other negative things.

I.e., do you have evidence that educational interventions can actually prevent criminality, gluttony and craziness?

Talk about irresponsibility, I go away for five minutes and just look at the mess you've made.

So can educational intervention actually prevent criminality, gluttony and craziness?

Well maybe, if you include civics, temperance and some form of psychological help and support somewhere within the curriculum.

Not the person that you are responding to but I made this point in my response to him. America's education system only cares about the results. I.E. how well can he do on a standardized test, how good are his grades, etc.

This leads to people taking the easy way out and just memorizing everything without understanding or thinking critically about what they are doing. These people aren't thinking for themselves and instead are just taking everything told to them as fact and regurgitating it when they are asked. This obviously leads to a problem when they become adults and need to make decisions on who is to lead them. Instead of coming to their own conclusion they will listen to their parents, preacher, neighbor, etc. All of whom might have come to their conclusion of who is the best leader faultily.

In Addition: Just to give you guys an example of where this is being most blatantly done, literature classes. I remember in my lit classes that almost 90% of the class did not read the book. Instead they just took the spark notes and memorized key points taking nothing out of the text. As soon as the exam was over they forgot everything.

Can you give me an example of a country that does it "right"?

I'm genuinely curious, but I also suspect that twenty different people here would give twenty different answers to this question.

The most common critique of the US system is the lack of focus on testing and measurable results. Bureaucrats and teachers unions have fought this push for decades and only now has it taken hold. Even if you are right that the American educational system now focuses too much on standardized tests, this focus pales in comparison to almost any other industrialized nation. And even then, this focus on testing is hardly even a decade old.

Speak to a student from China, Japan, the UK, or Ireland and get back to me about focuses on standardized testing.

But from what I've heard, their tests are more focused on demonstrating learning. The standardized tests I took (here in the US) were laughably easy and not always connected to actually learning anything.

>The standardized tests I took (here in the US) were laughably easy and not always connected to actually learning anything.

Standardized tests are measured relatively. If you score in the top percentile the test was easy for you, but so long as there is enough variation in scores to classify students into percentiles, the test is hard enough, i.e, if 50% of students answer everything correctly it's too easy, if only 0.1% do then it's hard enough.

>But from what I've heard, their tests are more focused on demonstrating learning.

Chinese schools are notorious for their emphasis on rote learning, so I'm not sure where you're getting your information on their standardized tests.

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