Comment by woodruffw

> Being in tech doesn't make you a hacker.

Agreed. "Tech" includes a lot of people who are not hackers.

It's worth pointing out though that the "hacker" types who go with the flow are in many cases doing so motivated by pragmatism and cynicism. They don't really believe in management or in the company or the product, but they gotta stick around until their shares vest or whatever.

Speaking for a friend.

> they don't go against the elite. They see themselves as the elite.

These are not the only two options. Deciding some people are "the elite" and defining people as being either part of that group or in opposition to it is your choice, but it is not the only choice.

Your perspective is valid, but I think its worth reconsidering some of the assumptions youre making. Assuming your child is above average may not always reflect reality. Being above average at a thing does not make you above average at all things. The public education system provides resources like gifted programs, AP courses, and extracurricular activities to challenge / engage students at all levels of above/below average. So if your kid is an advanced learner they can still thrive without being “hamstrung.” I think using terms like “hamstring” dismisses the value public education provides in fostering diversity of experiences, social skills, and engagement with peers.. things that cant be replicated in a homeschooling environment.

At Least in the northeast US, there are advanced courses or tracts a student can be placed in if they're above their peers. Is that not the case in your schools?

I am a strong supporter of public school, to the point I volunteer often and advocate for them.

"Whims of the state" -- I'd recommend you make sure to advocate for a strong department of education, which for its many activities is a facilitator of credentialing. It's fundamentally societal and operated politically and bureaucratically.

'"modern" moral standard" -- I agree, we should target humanist ideals only as they are sourced from naturalism, otherwise we have neomodern or otherwise misaligned religious tenets creep in as "values" when they're really misplaced. Some folks advocating pro-religious values in schooling are quite insidious -- using religious freedom (where people have a right to practice in their homes and even the public square) as an injection to favor their religion as the majority in an area, to the exclusion of people who do not believe as they do. It's quite sad to see the Constitution, written fundamentally by Deists who were motivated more by motives closer to religious existentialism than current triumphalism, be run so roughshod over!

If you meant something else by modern moral standard, my apologies, I simply see this common thought-terminating cliche in a lot of places and it falls apart with 2 seconds of introspection.

> 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate

Not true in the case of the US, which famously adopted a culture of universal literacy earlier than the rest of the world. By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were not much different than they are today. It is one of the bright spots of American history; they took literacy very seriously for complicated historical reasons. Their book consumption per capita was also the highest in the world by a very large margin back in those days, which lends evidence.

It may or may not be relevant to your point, but at least in the US the idea that the average person was illiterate is ahistorical. They were the best read population in the world 150 years ago, and took some pride in that.

Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why can't it keep going?

Schooling didn’t fix all that. There have been major advances throughout society in every area: medicine, nutrition, sanitation, manufacturing, electricity, refrigeration, printing, computing, telecommunications… the list goes on and on and on. Some of these things contributed major improvements to the average person.

Advances in medicine and nutrition, for example, contributed to sharp declines in early childhood mortality and morbidity. Advances in reproductive health care (along with everything else) led to huge declines in birth rates. Smaller families have more resources and attention available for each child.

Other advances had less of an impact but still add up when combined. Widespread access to refrigeration improved nutrition and reduced spoilage, allowing increased consumption of meat. More meat means taller, stronger, healthier children.

On the other hand, schooling hasn’t improved all that much in 150 years. You can find lots of writing samples and old exams for schools from back then. The bigger difference is that children stay in school much longer and have less need to rapidly enter the workforce in order to support the family. This last factor is a product of many of the advances listed above.

I have this discussion with my wife who works at a school.

Children are required to be there. The school has to provide them with all manner of opportunities.

On the flip side, the school can't expect anything from the kids other than attendance. They don't really get to expect a certain level of behavior or performance. They can't relegate the bad actors (behavior or performance) away from those who wish to participate fully. Everyone has to be mixed together.

So you give a certain vocal minority that don't care about the education a heckler's veto. They are regularly disruptive and can't be removed.

Nobody has a solution for actually improving that group of student, but there are enough people involved in public education that demand these students be included in the process that they are trying to wreck.

150 years ago people could absolutely read.

> schooling fixed all that

Not globalization, industrialization, and urbanization?

> 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate, poorer (in all senses of the word) and less connected to the world around them. Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that.

Illiterate, yes, but likely better at other skills like milking cows and knowing which plants in the forest were edible. Less connected to the global world and culture, yes, but more connected to the hyper local environment around them. I don't know if the schooling "fixed" anything, it just created a new, national or global template for what a human being should be like.

It took way less than 100 years to eradicate illiteracy, and further improvement followed. However, as soon as a system is established, the forces that corrupt that system start acting, finding ways to exploit it to their own advantage. Then, as special interests (politics, unions) take over, the quality stagnates and then decays.

>less connected to the world around them

In what way do you mean this?

>Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why can't it keep going?

Schooling has fixed all that, and still works just fine. Just not in America, because that country is rapidly self-destructing. Schooling is still working fine in the rest of the world.

>Why can't it keep going?

Because an educated populace is harder for the ultrarich to control and abuse, because an educated populace with free time can revolt against those in power, and because as a consequence of those two things ultrarich conservatives have consolidated ownership of media and used it to defund education and convince the population that funding education is bad.

You are attacking a strawman. I think most people would agree that public schools 30 years ago were better than public schools 150 years ago. I find it much harder to believe that public schools today are better than they were 5, 10, 15, or 20 years ago.

Schools used to do this, but the push for risk reduction, metrics, and rules has become so great that it no longer happens. There used to be thousands of student-run organizations in schools across the country. That wasn't a euphemism like it is now-there were no teachers or other adults involved. The kids running them did have to learn to cooperate and make decisions in a responsible way, or face the natural consequences of the group falling apart and social failure.

Now, such organizations are banned. The closest analogue is a "student" council, run by an adult, that might get to choose the color of the wallpaper at prom.

>It's also to teach you how to cooperate,

Cooperation requires shared goals. I can't cooperate with someone when we're not sharing goals. Young students don't have shared goals other than "survive in this classroom for 11 months out of a calendar year". So there's no lessons in cooperation.

>how to reach consensus,

Of what use is consensus, without shared goals? Sounds more like indoctrination.

>how to make decisions as a group,

Same as above.

>These soft skills are absolutely critical to maintain a properly functioning society.

These skills are actually being used to murder civilization/society, even as we speak. The current fertility rate is sub-replacement, but the children being indoctrinated in public schools are being indoctrinated to be even less fertile than that. Many will grow up to be and remain childless as adults, and as that happens, society will not replace those people who are dying of old age. Society then dies itself just decades later. Your society, such as it is, is absurdly dysfunctional. I suppose if one were to define "properly functioning" as "polite to a fault" or "as peaceful as cattle trudging down the slaughterhouse chute"...

why can't homeschooling involve the same attributes? genuine question. from what i've been seeing in modern trends, homeschooling doesn't literally mean you sit and your mother teaches you all day and then you "go home" by migrating to your bedroom. you're still in a small group with other children, all of whom likely still share characteristics where disagreements will naturally happen, and cooperation will need to occur to move forward. the way I see homeschooling is simply a parallel to the traditional public school path, but in smaller, more focused groups with a far more controlled environment. not seeing how this is inherently bad

I've tutored literally hundreds of homeschoolers at this point, mostly in the high school ages as their parents ran out of math ability. As a whole, they are far better socially adapted than the average teenager.

Sure, there is selection bias among those who get that far in math, and those who would seek out tutoring. But I had 9th graders coming to me already behaving well as adults. More often than not they were in charge of working things out with me, not their parents.

Every time one of these threads comes up I cringe, because virtually nobody here has worked with a large number of these kids. They just remember the one weird kid who stood out. If homeschoolers were to put forth the same arguments based on the one weird kid from public school, homeschooling would win by a landslide.

People say it's about socialization, but homeschoolers are out there doing it in a normal way all the time. Parent needs to go to the post office -- there is a class on that, and why. Everything can turn into a lesson and not just something taken care of by parents. They come out of this experience with far more adult level socialization and civic knowledge than the average kid, by a wide margin.

Who are kids in high school getting their social queues from? The drug dealers? The bully? The good kids in high school are typically well adjusted because of things taught to them not by their peers, but by their family and community outside of school.

Yes, homeschooling can be done poorly. But it is not inherently a poor education, and in my experience is far superior to the average experience at a public school. Some exceptions apply for those things which a large school may be able to have by aggregating sufficient students and resources toward (marching band, science classes, AP level courses).

I really couldn’t learn that from my experience in american k-12. I was too stubborn, emotionally stunted, and usually ahead of my peers, so I’d isolate myself and learn what I was interested in. I taught myself to make music, install and use linux, to write c++, to develop games etc on my laptop during and outside of classes, and the only reason I was even able to do that much was the disinterest and disregard of most teachers. Maybe that environment wasn’t the right one for me, and if it wasn’t, then it makes me wonder how many other people are underserved.

> If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?

This is prejudice in the most basic sense: you literally don't know any of these things about the people you're surrounded by in a society. The person who rides the bus next to you could be a couch potato, or a talented artist, or something entirely different that simply isn't legible to you.

I don't know anything about California's math classes. I'm saying that, on a basic level, anybody who thinks this way about people they don't know is demonstrating the exact traits they're smugly claiming to be above.

> If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?

learning how to be patient and tolerant regarding situations / people / things i do not like or think of as “beneath me”.

tends to lead to better decision making as one can respond, rather than knee jerk react to everything.

edit — also, i tend to find i can learn a lot more useful lessons from beginners.

in the beginners mind there are a lot of possibilities. in the expert’s mind (especially self proclaimed ones) there are few possibilities.

children are a great example of this.

When my car broke down in the middle of a DoorDash run, I walked to a nearby park and sat next to a homeless guy who was about my age. He was deaf; we talked via text on our phones about how we'd ended up on the same bench, and I shared some of my food. I learned from him how resilient someone can be, even under incredibly unfair circumstances, but more importantly, he got something to eat.

It's not all about you.

> If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?

The appearance of humility^[0]? I don't really see what there is to gain either.

[0]: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Section II, Paragraph 9

Well, one reason is that your assumption that they are all or mostly inferior is wrong.

> what is there to gain from it?

Humility.

> Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I hate this fucking site lol

You missed the point: if you don't like how school work today, you need to improve the schools. If you are saving yourself, especially before helping others (because you have the means that others probably don't), you are the bad person in this situation, and you should reflect on your ethical position some time, preferably soon.

The well known adage of “buy the cheapest house you can afford in the most expensive neighborhood” is a sign that is what many think. The rat race to make sure your kids are in league with other parents of similar or higher stature is a huge contributor to home price dynamics.

Not since the industrial revolution.

I'd argue social skills are more valuable than improved curriculum. Not saying you couldn't learn social skills outside of the school system too, but seems to me that curriculum is easier to learn outside of the system than social skills.

people pretend to be this welcoming learned creatures but in reality it's still referral by people, who you know, like working with people that look like us etc

no better place to see that than in tech and HN

I like to think you mean that the so-called “elites” end up studying some useless degree and only can get jobs as trust-fund burger stand employees, serving fries to the “dummies” who chose to work hard and become wealthy the old-fashioned way

The fact that you don't personally meet with "average" people isn't the point. The point is that they exist, and they affect your existence, and they will not and cannot be made to disappear. The "average" people have to share resources with you, and in a way the resources cannot be segregated... unless we start building colonies in space, and send "non-average" people there or some similar dystopian project.

Trump isn't in any way "average". He's been more separated from "average" people than you have.

Your argument is similar to burning the house down, once you discover that you don't like the couch in the living room. Or, more realistically, arguing against taxation based on the idea that rich people avoid being taxed anyways, and it's only poor people who will get the short end of the stick. The school system isn't perfect, and is hard to improve due to many reasons, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It has a purpose which is much more important than the suffering of any individual who goes through it. It's a shared good that can only be made better if everyone participates. When people who can contribute the most are allowed to be excluded, the whole thing becomes worthless. But, guess what, those who thought that they may be exempt from contributing to the public pool will inevitably find out that the public who was in this way deprived of a public good hates them, and will eventually come after them with pitchforks and torches.

Learning how to co-exist with different sorts of people is definitely a valuable experience.

Trying to do that in an completely artificial institution that arbitrarily divides people into age cohorts in a way that resembles no organic social pattern and forces all social interaction to conform to bureaucratic rules is not just not a value experience, but in fact actively inhibits the above goal.

The kinds of social skills and expectations kids develop in a school environment often need to be unlearned entirely in order to function effectively in a complex and dynamic society.

> It's only recently that the average people have had the chance to become elites, rather than be born into it.

It still mostly depends on being born into it. In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extremely slim and socioeconomic mobility is among the worst compared to other developed countries. The US falls behind South Korea, Lithuania, Estonia, Singapore, Malta, and Slovenia, while the Nordic countries top the list.

Depending on the study, socioeconomic mobility in the US has either stagnated since the 1970s or actually declined. Average people have little hope of substantially improving the situation they were born into while the percentage of people born into wealth (but not the 1%) who slide downward in socioeconomic status grows. Wealth inequality continues to accelerate at an insane pace. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1962-_Net_personal_wealth...)

Just about everyone would like to be one of the "elites" but most people would be happy with a fair chance to meaningfully improve their lifestyle.