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Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

Is this good for the poor people who can not afford it? Will it make a difference? Certainly.

Will this result in a more highly skilled, and a more highly educated population? Yes.

People should still be able to afford private schools if they can now.

The American idea that you can't mix socialism and capitalism is absurd! (urg, just saying these words makes me feel like I'm using outdated old ideas from the 1800's!)

Societies much better than USA are mixing them well with great effect. Selling out your young people with debt is really silly. Having 45% illiteracy in the USA only benefits the people currently in power.

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Where exactly are you getting the figure that 45% of the USA is illiterate? Measured rates are closer to 1%.

That kind of absurd exaggeration really discredits your point.

I meant functionally illiterate.

Reading level of US adults at a proficient level is only 13% http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-...

You're misrepresenting what that stat means. ~86% of Americans are functionally literate.

It's ridiculous these kinds of claims even make it to HN comments.

Proficient on the survey that derives from, is the highest possible ranking. Proficient on that survey does not equate to functional; anything at or above basic is functional.

About half the 14% of people that fall below functional, do so because of language barrier problems related to not speaking English as a first language.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

United States has a functional illiteracy rate of 48.7% according to [0]

The UK is at 21.8% for comparison.

The link you provided shows between 43% and 55% are functionally illiterate (basic or below) depending on which test you look at, for English.

Just because education is poor for people who don't know English as a first language, and just because USA services are not available in Spanish despite such a large percentage speaking Spanish does not mean there is no problem.

Functional illiteracy in the USA is a big problem. The education system in the USA is a massive failure.

[0] Cleckler, Bob (2009). Let's End Our Literacy Crisis, Revised Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: American University & colleges Press. pp. 15–26. ISBN 1-58982-230-7.

You're wrong about the 45% illiteracy rate.

There are four scoring levels: below basic, basic, intermediate, proficient.

14% of Americans fall below basic, which is the line for functionally literate.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

There used to be five levels, but only a 3-4% of Americans scored 376 or higher, out of 500.

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf

How will it make a difference?

Say you're a poor Chilean and thanks to this new policy you get a free ride at Universidad de Chile or Católica, the two top universities in Chile. You're well educated, but you've got the wrong last name and no connections - who on earth is going to hire you for anything? Say you start a business. Who's going to give you capital? Who's going to even do business with you, when they've never heard of you or anyone in your family?

This is a way to placate the often-radical student movement in Chile, but I can't see it helping poor Chileans that much if at all. Perhaps they can get their educations and then emigrate to a place with less nepotism.

You can make a lot of connections at university. Along with job offers. Along with special consideration from banks for graduates and even enrolled students.

Will a change be immediate? No. But I've seen the affects in other countries over 10 year period.

It's never a single thing which helps people in society. It's many things at once. Of course if the students need to work to support their families or even to feed themselves, then a free education is going to help far less people. But if those same students don't need to pay for their education, then many more will be able to do so.

>Societies much better than USA are mixing them well with great effect.

For example...?

America is a mix of socialism and capitalism, and everywhere that socialism has touched it's been a bad experience.

You give a good example in your response: %45 illiteracy only benefits the people who are currently in power. That's your statement, and who is in power? Who controls the schools? The government. How do they benefit? They have a populace which is sheeplike and easily controlled.

That's the power dynamic I'd like to break.

Home schooled kids do better than public schooled kids and by a wide margin. But instead of burdening every family with having to be a complete school to themselves,s why can't several families band together and take turns? If one parent is an engineer, then they can take a day off or on a saturday teach engineering topics to the groups kids. This would lower the burden and provide higher variety-- this would be a makeshift school at very low cost. Even poor people could do it... but of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and so it's not allowed.

From one side you show socialism as the root of all evil, from the other you propose another utopia: home schooling.

>Then they can take a day off or saturday

Do you really believe that this chaotic schedule would ever work? Every parent have to work somewhere else with an agenda that might not fit. And then? One lesson of a particular subject once a month? Once a year?

>Even poor people could do it.

How? As an e.g what would a janitor teach?

>But of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and it's not allowed.

I think most countries would be happy to do it. Maybe not US.

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