
Linus on Oregon HB 2748 and US education in general - praptak
https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/J1NCgKQi55X
======
taylodl
Linus is now seeing firsthand that opportunity is not equal in the United
States. You typically need to have attended a good university to get a good
job and to get into a good university you need to have graduated from a good
secondary school - which you need to have paid for either through tuition or
taxes. The goal is to keep the wealth concentrated in the already wealthy.
That's how it works here in the United States.

I'll assume for the moment that Oregon's intentions are noble, and they're
attempting to right this wrong. How ironic that it will achieve the exact
opposite result. The old law of unintended consequences and all. Those of us
who were in school in the 70s during mandatory desegregation will recall that
too had the opposite effect of what was intended: instead of providing better
learning opportunities for black students the white families left for the
suburbs leaving the black students behind in worse schools than what they had
started out with. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it I
suppose.

So what is the answer? I think we really need to understand the problem:
public schools are locally funded and operated and small locales can use real
estate to become exclusive. The solution then is to realize that exclusivity
can't be had on a large scale. You need to expand the scope of 'local' in the
local school system. A good start would be to expand 'local' to the county
level. While certainly there are some counties richer and more exclusive than
others, they are much more homogenous than individual communities. At least it
would be a step in the right direction that would better serve everyone.

~~~
robomartin
> The goal is to keep the wealth concentrated in the already wealthy.

I don't understand this kind of thinking. Perhaps it isn't what you meant. My
apologies if that isn't the case. I have heard and read this kind of sentiment
before.

Is the idea that the rich somehow conspire to do as you suggest?

If so, how does that work? Did Steve Jobs receive a letter once his net worth
passed a certain threshold inviting him to join the various "protect the rich"
conspiracies? How about Bill Gates or the many other rich folk? What's the
threshold? Do people like past and current presidents of the US and prominent
politicians get in on that too? D they have regular monthly or annual meetings
or is it all done over encrypted email these days?

Just wondering, because that kind of thing would require planning and
organization. Perhaps you have access to information not available in the
open?

Would it be far more likely that there is no such conspiracy and what is
happening in education is the result of other forces at play? What would
happen if teachers were not unionized and had to compete for their jobs? What
would happen if teachers lived in a true meritocracy without a sure
protections? What would happen if teachers had to have advanced degrees and
even some real world experience before being able to teach? I'm sure this
would not all the problems, but, what would happen? Why do we have a system
that disallows rapid goals-oriented experiments with realistic measurable
metrics and a goal to weed out those who are not serving our children?

Lots of questions. Few answers. My gut feeling is that the rich have nothing
whatsoever to do with the problem. Every US President, Senator and
Representative since I can remember becoming aware of politics has been
talking about fixing the education system. I am sure that was the case way
before I was born as well. Still, let's say that this has been part of the
national conversation for, say, 50 years. Speeches, promises and more
speeches. No actions. Nothing fixed.

Is it possible that they are simply incompetent or that they tell us what we
want to hear in order to get elected and then the go off and answer to their
own interests?

Who knows?

~~~
nawitus
" What would happen if teachers were not unionized and had to compete for
their jobs? What would happen if teachers lived in a true meritocracy without
a sure protections?"

Incidentally, practically every teacher in Finland belongs to an union, and
it's unheard of to fire teachers on the basis of bad job performance. A true
rationalist looks at the empirical evidence regardless of ideological
opinions. You may not "like" the fact that teacher's unions are widespread in
many countries which outrank the USA in education. Sometimes the American way
of firing people is not the correct fix.

" What would happen if teachers had to have advanced degrees and even some
real world experience before being able to teach?"

Now that's something I agree with. Teachers in Finland have Master's degrees,
and all teachers have real-world experience by teaching in real schools
("normaalikoulut") during their studies.

"Why do we have a system that disallows rapid goals-oriented experiments with
realistic measurable metrics and a goal to weed out those who are not serving
our children?"

The problem is that you can't measure learning very well. Measuring test
scores means that the teachers will teach the kids to do well on tests instead
of learning.

~~~
PKop
He didn't specifically mention measuring test scores, you did. But is your
argument that effectiveness of teachers, effective educational outcomes are
unmeasurable? Then how do we know that schools aren't doing perfectly fine
right now? Why is there even a discussion about improving schools?

Would it be that objective comparisons between US and foreign students is
trending downward (while costs go up)? Would it be that more and more a high
school diploma (then college degree) means nothing as far as employability?

Is it that the demands of modern economy is not matched up with a supply of
highly skilled workers? I think these are all evidence that public education
needs modified... not necessarily that someone needs "blamed" for it, just
that everyone needs to acknowledge it and be supportive of change.

Now I'd argue that measuring student test scores should be one part of many
that go into evaluating teachers. But above all there has to be something that
we use to evaluate them, otherwise how do we know it's working... or not... or
when or how to try new ideas? It's not just the teachers but the whole system
that should be constantly evaluated. Not necessarily to fire someone, but to
give feedback and constantly improve.

For sure it could be argued that it's not teachers themselves that are failing
students, but the system is structured to be resistant to change and
innovation. Metrics that should be used to guide curriculum are graduate
employability, job placement, are skills being taught to satisfy the needs of
the job market, what's working and what isn't etc.

Introducing some sort of competition will allow schools to figure out the
evaluation process themselves. Look at places like Dev Bootcamp that claim 80%
of graduates are hired with X salary after graduation. That's succinct way to
measure the effectiveness of their teachers. Not that I'm saying this example
exactly compares to public school or that a CS solution is applicable to the
overall problem but... on a side note why isn't programming and such more
prevalent in high school? There's no reason a private company can impart those
skills in 9 weeks and public schools couldn't do it in a year. Maybe this type
of thing has been incorporated into public schools if so disregard...it's been
a while since I've been there. Generally, I think high school was an extreme
waste of time in regards to what was actually learned. And then college is
four more years with knowledge that itself could have been taught in high
school. I tell people all the time, nothing I learned in CS major in College
couldn't have been learned in high school. It just wasn't offered.

Likewise for subjects like economics, finance, personal finance, etc. Handling
ones finances is something that more Americans need to learn and these lessons
are not being taught early enough.

~~~
nawitus
Measuring education well is a hard problem. I don't know a good solution for
that, but usually schools simply use test scores, which is a pretty bad
solution.

"But above all there has to be something that we use to evaluate them,
otherwise how do we know it's working... or not... or when or how to try new
ideas?"

You can do qualitative analysis instead of quantative. It also works when you
use a test that the schools don't / cant directly optimize for, which is
probably true for the PISA test.

"There's no reason a private company can impart those skills in 9 weeks and
public schools couldn't do it in a year."

While I agree that schools shoud teach programming more, the Dev Bootcamp's
80% metric is not really relevant. It filters only the most exceptional
applicants to the program, not the average school kid. Many of those
applicants probably already know the basics of programming.

"Generally, I think high school was an extreme waste of time in regards to
what was actually learned."

Most people say the same thing here in Finland.

------
rayiner
It is objectively the case that our schools aren't bad in general. Not as good
as Finland, but adjusted for demographics about average compared to the rest
of Europe: [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html).

You can't really compare the school systems of a homogenous country with low
income inequality to one where 30% of the population is from either a
historically oppressed racial minority group or relatively recent immigrants.
It's especially misleading to look at school systems in urban areas, because
that's where the U.S. puts most of the poor people.

That is not to say we don't have a problem here in the U.S. But the problem
isn't with the education system, it's with how we've dealt with the
disadvantaged in our society.

A great example of this is Chicago. Finland spends about $10,000 per year per
student. Chicago spends about $20,000 per student. Chicago teachers are paid
over $70k/year on average, almost double the $37k/year Finnish teachers are
paid. Why does Chicago do so poorly? It doesn't take a genius to figure out
that it has nothing to do with money or school quality, but the fact that 86%
of Chicago's students come from low-income families, and 87% are disadvantaged
ethnic minorities.

~~~
vacri
Teachers in Chicago are not paid over $70k/year

[http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-
the-7400...](http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-in-box-
the-74000-lie/)

~~~
rayiner
The link you cited is highly misleading. The Chicago metro area is a census
tract of 10 million people. The City of Chicago is 2.7 million people. The
Chicago school system and the Chicago teachers union disagree about how to
compute the number, but CTU cites $71k and CPS cites $76k:
[http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-
chicago-p...](http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-
public-school-teachers-make/)

Also misleading from that link: Chicago's cost of living is right around the
US average:
[http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chica...](http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/illinois/chicago)

~~~
ams6110
You are also required to live IN the city if you are a teacher in CPS. So you
can't take that salary and escape to the suburbs after work.

~~~
rayiner
Sure but the city of Chicago isn't very expensive. It's cheaper than the
suburbs of say DC or NYC or SF by a good margin. $70k is a very good salary in
the city. You can get a nice 2BR apartment in Lincoln Park (one of the more
expensive areas) for only $1,600 per month. My studio Westchester costs almost
that much!

Chicago teachers start around $51k with a bachelors. You can live better with
that salary in Chicago than many Googlers earning $100k trying to live in
SF...

~~~
adamgray
That's not true anymore, the average 2BR cost has gone up to $1800-1900, even
higher in places like Lincoln Park.

~~~
rayiner
Where are you getting your data? I just moved from Chicago last year and my
friends in Lincoln Park were paying around $1600 for a 2BR at Clark/Fullerton.
Trulia suggests that this is not uncommon:
[http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Chicago,IL/16_zm/41.920751,41...](http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Chicago,IL/16_zm/41.920751,41.929645,-87.651894,-87.630292_xy/1p_baths/2p_beds/1200-2000_price/x_map/#for_rent/Chicago,IL/16_zm/41.922747,41.931641,-87.652623,-87.631021_xy/1p_baths/2p_beds/1200-2000_price/x_map/)

Also, the average for places like Lincoln Park is skewed up by all the high-
end housing in the area. Places like Andersonville and Edgewater are even
cheaper, and very safe and family-friendly:
[http://www.trulia.com/rental/3102177710-5406-N-Kenmore-
Ave-2...](http://www.trulia.com/rental/3102177710-5406-N-Kenmore-
Ave-2S-Chicago-IL-60640#photo-3)

Heck, last year I was paying $1450/month for a 1BR in a full-service high-rise
in Streeterville with a 28th-floor view. My wife paid just around $1100 a
month for a huge 1BR in Streeterville a couple of years ago. If you've got a
roommate, it's totally possible to live in River North on a teacher's starting
salary.

------
asveikau
I don't know why Linus says that Americans blindly accept the crappiness.
Perhaps they accept it because its systemic nature makes a hard thing to fix,
but the acceptance isn't blind. Most smart people I know in this country seem
to have had some clash with the school system in some form or another. Linus
talks mostly about funding, but there's also the huge problem that schools
don't seem to be teaching math and science, or anything for that matter, very
well. For me personally, thinking back to my youth, I think the most important
lesson I learned in school was to be cynical and not trust people in positions
of authority, to go off and do things on your own instead of relying on them
to catch up with you, which is a helpful lesson but probably not one that
you'd want to need to discover so young.

On another topic, I can't help but think some of his description of the
American acceptance of the brokenness has something to do with his setting of
the northwest. When I lived in Seattle I was really shocked at how unwilling
people were to question the status quo, especially when it came to things that
could be changed by political action. On topics where more aggressive east
coasters would loudly complain or maneuver around, apathy and letting things
go as they had been seemed to be the default for most things. Of course the
education problem is a national one and these latter traits are not unknown to
other parts of the country. But the northwest is less cynical, and more
content to let things just drift.

~~~
btbuilder
I didn't feel his comment was as general as 'blindly accept the crappiness'.
What I read (which mirrors my own sentiment) is that it is seen as the normal
and proper thing to supplement some local public services with fund raisers
because they are underfunded. Firefighters breakfasts and school bake sales.

Seriously we don't pay enough taxes to cover these basic services?

~~~
smsm42
If people pay a lot of taxes and still don't have enough money in the budget
to finance what's important for them, maybe they should take a look into the
local budget and figure out where the money went. I'm sure people of Linus'
grade of brainpower could do that. There's also a chance they'd discover that
some of the city workers have pretty cushy benefit packages and the cost of it
is more than they though it would be. And that they may be underfunded because
some of the city workers fly to global warming conferences in luxury hotels in
Hawaii on their dime, that is known to happen too. I wonder if that happens in
Finland.

There's a long known bureaucratic principle then when the budget is short,
first thing you cut is something that the public really feels the need -
schools, firefighters, police, if you can find a way to involve sick or
orphans - that's the gold. Because if you cut something really wasteful, you
a) admit you wasted money and b) never get this money back ever. But if you
cut something that is needed or perceived as needed, you show how bad it is
hurting and if the situation ever improves, you get everything back at the
first chance.

Of course, the alternative of looking at the local budget is to cry for the
federal government to take the money from "the rich" and give to the schools -
because think of the children!

------
jasonjei
I agree that our K-12 sucks, but why is our university system considered good?
For instance, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT/FSF, Carnegie-Mellon, UIUC, etc, have
made valuable contributions to Computer Science (this is becoming less true as
commercial and open-source have overtaken academia in many respects).

Is it possible that our K-12 system is broken is the reason that our kids are
capable of pursuing their own interests instead of the rigor of rote learning?
As a kid, I remember the easiness of school homework allowed me to spend many
afternoons in IRC and learning programming on my own.

E.g, with too much free time on your hands, are you capable of thinking
different instead of answering challenging homework? Not defending our K-12,
just wondering how bringing in a Confucian system like Asia and Europe would
affect the outside-the-box thinking.

~~~
clicks
Only responding to a small part of your argument: For every univ. that is
good, there is a Univ. of Phoenix. But, for every univ. that is good you also
have Bronx High school of NY... which produced 8 Nobel prize laureates, you
have Stuyvesant, which produced 5 Nobel prize laureates. America is much a
place of extremes -- you'll often find the best and worst from nearly every
category.

~~~
jballanc
This is practically the only description of America that you need, and it's
only become more apparent to me now that I've left. America is obsessed with
extremes.

You could add health care to schools as an example. America is the _last_
place in the world I'd want to be if I broke my arm (especially if I happened
to be uninsured at the time), but probably the _first_ place I'd go if I was
diagnosed with some obscure cancer.

~~~
drstewart
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to receive health care in Africa. Or maybe
you have. Can you tell me why you'd rate your experience in rural Angola as so
good that you'd rather go there to treat a broken arm than Johns Hopkins?

~~~
octagonal
He probably meant "I'd rather be in any other developed nation than the US"

------
manaskarekar
The alternative many will be forced to take will be Homeschooling + Online
Courses, which is great!

À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected
by someone else for you.

~~~
jiggy2011
Surely with homeschooling kids are going to get even more inconsistent results
due to radically varying teaching abilities and knowledge of parents?

Not to mention severely biased curricular, I'm sure HN kids would all know
haskell by the time they were 9 but what about poetry , sports and history?

~~~
joelhooks
We have been home educating our four kids. The oldest is 15, enjoys poetry,
plays basketball competitively, likes to tinker with computers, reads history,
does math, etc. He isn't handicapped by our abilities or knowledge because we
provided him with _tools_ to learn. We've made it clear that his education is
ultimately his responsibility. It is his job to learn. We serve as mentors and
facilitators by providing opportunity.

The other three are on the same trajectory. I understand that you essentially
discounted HN parents as exceptions, but we are also part of a broader
community and I see similar results with children whose parents have no clue
as to what a HN is.

None of them know haskell, but the oldest is working through The Little
Schemer.

~~~
socillion
From personal experience, I would say optimizing for higher IQ at the cost of
lower EQ to the extent that homeschooling makes possible is a very poor
tradeoff - and it is also an extremely easy one to make.

> The oldest is 15, enjoys poetry, plays basketball competitively, likes to
> tinker with computers, reads history, does math, etc.

FWIW, that sounds like me at 15 and I regret having been homeschooled.

~~~
joelhooks
At 15 I was learning how to binge drink, smoke weed competitively, disrupt
class, and use my fists offensively/defensively.

So ya, I might have some advantage in the EQ department, but I regret having
blown my youth in school.

------
walshemj
Rather ironic as Finland has a comprehensive schooling system he seems to be
arguing for selective schools by the back door.

Though in Finland do seem to have the same rigid vocational / academic track
similar to Germany where going to the wrong sort of school locks you out of or
makes it very hard to go to the top universities.

And comparing his experience a tiny European country with a small and
homogenous population and thinking that the USA is going to have the the same
challenges or possible solutions is a bit naive.

~~~
fosap
I'm German. I'm not sure what you are talking about. You do need to graduate a
"Gymnasium" (years 5-12 or 13, right after elementary school). But any
"Gymnasium" will do. Every town has a "Gymnasium", you don't have to move or
bake cookies.

However, the "Gymnasium" is just one three schools. Only about 30% of students
attend. If your marks get too bad you have to leave for "lower" school. On the
other hand it's possible to attend a "Gymnasium" of pupils of a "lower" school
if they have good grades. (About 20% of my final class came form "lower"
schools.)

The German system is a kind of elitist. And it's criticized that the parents
income is too important. But it is elitist regarding to your marks, and not
your district.

~~~
rbehrends
This is what tracking means -- that you get "sorted" into either they
"Gymnasium", "Realschule", or "Hauptschule" track after fourth grade. However,
this is not what happens in Finland. In Finland, everybody gets the same basic
education until age 16, then picks either general upper secondary or
vocational upper secondary education (note that vocational upper secondary
education does not bar you from attending a university, despite what the GP
thinks).

However, what he mostly doesn't seem to realize is that Germany (or Finland,
for this matter) does not really have the same type of highly competitive
admission process for its universities as the United States [1].

For example, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, one of the best German
universities to study computer science at (according to a recent ranking,
_the_ best), has open admission for its CS Bachelor program.

[1] The Bologna Process americanized the system a bit, but it's still mostly
about managing supply and demand. If you can't hack it, you won't graduate,
but admission is not particularly selective, especially not at the Bachelor
level.

~~~
derda
> However, what he mostly doesn't seem to realize is that Germany (or Finland,
> for this matter) does not really have the same type of highly competitive
> admission process for its universities as the United States [1].

Well that is because the Abitur (german high-school diploma) is regarded
equally no matter which school you attended. From what I gathered the US high
school diploma is worth pretty much nothing, without knowing somewhing about
the school and/or a high amout of AP-classes. Compared to the German degrees,
I'd argue that its actually closer to Realschule (the 10yr grade, which does
not qualify for university), than abitur. (Except you are at a top-notch
school and take lots of AP-classes)...

~~~
barry-cotter
Don't universties and Fachhochschule discriminate between the Abiturs of
different Laender? Bavaria has the most difficult and highly regarded one,
right?

~~~
rbehrends
No, universities don't do this (though they can consider other factors,
including their own admission exams, but this is rare). This is actually a
problem, because the matriculation exams are not the same in all German
states, so students in some states have an unfair advantage in those cases
where grades matter. Supposedly, in 2014/2015 the difficulty level of the
matriculation exam will be standardized.

The problem exists because traditionally, grades had not been much of a factor
in admission (outside of a few restricted courses of study such as medicine).
German universities (prior to Bologna) were used to running an open admission
process and instead enforced selectiveness by failing those students who
couldn't handle it early on.

------
Ras_
Did you know that Sweden (which included Finland) had effectively 100% reading
ability as early as the first part of 18th century?

This was due to a decree (Church law of 1686) by Charles XI which required
reading skill in order to be allowed to wed. There are complete parochial
records ("church examination registers") to study this progress up to level of
single individuals.

Surprisingly enough these documents prove that writing ability and reading
ability don't need to go hand in hand which has often been thought as self-
evident.

tl;dr What you don't see immediately in Finnish/Swedish education is hundreds
of years of reading tradition and deep historical commitment to literacy
(ability to read), quite unconnected to industrialization (unlike elsewhere),
which happened rather late in Sweden and Finland.

More: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Context, pg. 28 "The history of
literacy in Sweden"
[http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=fron...](http://www.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fi#v=onepage&q&f=false)

"The reading ability campaign in Sweden was carried through almost completely
without the aid of proper schools." (pg. 42) Thus there has always been a
strong component of household education.

------
jmspring
I can't find the original story I heard a couple of weeks ago (on the radio),
but another egregious sign of the state of public education in the US --
people are jailed for lying about their address in hopes of getting their
child into a better school.

The story I recall hearing a couple of weeks ago was about a woman who was
periodically homeless and used the address of her baby sitter (or something
like that) to get her child into a better school. Now she faces jail time.

Searching google for lying about address to get into a better school resulting
in jail time shows that this is not an isolated phenomena.

~~~
spikels
I think you are probably talking about the story linked below. Very sad but I
guess it is a form of fraud and theft.

Certainly it indicates something is wrong with our current education system
but there are so much other evidence (e.g. dropout rates, test scores, college
preparedness) that this is hardly news.

[http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-
sentenced-...](http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-sentenced-
to-5-years-in-prison-3437974.php)

~~~
jmspring
Thanks, that was the story.

Prison time for falsely reporting an address for purposes of schooling? A sad
commentary on this society.

------
fnordfnordfnord
Bake-sale style funding for the military instead of for schools. That is a
fantastic idea. I love it.

~~~
ams6110
This bumper sticker has been seen on Volvos since the 1970s.

~~~
irrelative
Indeed it has -- for those less familiar:

[http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-
Bumpe...](http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/Bake-Sale-Bumper-
Sticker-\(5729\).jpg)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I was unfamiliar, thanks.

------
linuxhansl
I can relate a story of a coworker of mine who recently moved back to Germany
with his two kids after living the US for many years.

They looked at some houses and ended up touring the local school and talking
to the principal. The conversation went something like this:

    
    
      Coworker: You ave a nice school.
      Principal: Thanks.
      Coworker: Do you have space for my kids?
      Principal: ?
      Coworker: Do you have space for my kids?
      Principal: What do you mean with "space"?
      Coworker: Do you have space for my kids?
      Principal: Your kids are required to go to school. We will have space.
    

The question of space/waitinglists/applications/etc did not occur to the
principal.

------
thrownaway2424
SHOCKING NEWS: Ethnically and linguistically homogeneous people from tiny,
frozen nation easier to educate than diverse citizens of world's most-
immigrated-to nation. Stay tuned for more surprising revelations, as soon as
we hear them!

~~~
purplelobster
Shocking news: downsides of the US being blamed on demographics and size. This
satisfies the population to accept the crappiness.

I've had this conversation too many times, but I'll say it again: Americans
(and all people who have not lived abroad) tend to overestimate the
differences within their own population and underestimate the differences in
outside populations. You overestimate the diversivness of America. This is
about the point someone says something stupid like Alabama and California are
as different as two different countries.

~~~
thrownaway2424
In what way did I overestimate the diversity of America? Our foreign-born
population is triple that (by ratio) of Finland, and Finland's foreign-born
consist primarily of other scandanavian people who are closely related
(Russians and Swedes). Only 80% of Americans are native English speakers while
over 90% of Finns are native Finnish.

Note that I'm not just picking on Finland here, I'm pointing out that
homogeneous peoples are easier to educate than diverse peoples. Locally
nondiverse areas of the USA demonstrate the same phenomenon. Portland, the
place that Linus is complaining about, is even more diverse than the USA
average with 14% foreign born and 20% of households speaking non-English
languages. Almost any major city in the USA is going to have a far more
diverse population than Finland, and you'll find that the more diverse the
city, the larger its educational problems are.

~~~
purplelobster
Agreed, Finland is a very homogeneous country, but you just have to look
across the Baltic to find a very similar country with similar immigration
levels to the US (Sweden), which I happen to be from. Now the difference is
what kind of immigrants the US gets versus European countries. The US has a
much higher ratio of skilled immigrant workers. It's very difficult to get in
to this country without a STEM master's degree, I'd know. Almost nobody moves
to Sweden for the reason to work. They move to Sweden because they might be
killed in their home country if they don't leave, and it's one of the few
countries that can't turn away immigrants who face threats to their lives. Now
look at Portland, which I also happen to live in. It might have a lot of
immigrants, but come ON! Are you really using Portland as an example of a
dysfunctional place? Portland? Personally, I think this is one of the best
places in this country. If I'd go by the correlation then I'd say more diverse
populations result in better communities, but I wouldn't go that far.

I'll admit that diverse populations do create problems, but I think it's a cop
out for people to blame that for any little problem you might be facing. Man
up and take some responsibility.

And this is the point where people start using size as an argument, and how
states within the country differ sooo much. I've had long discussions with
several people saying that New York and Texas are as different as France and
Germany. Which is just ludicrous and shows how little they know about the
world.

Btw, Russians and Finns are not closely related in any sense. If you said that
to a Finn they'd probably kill you, just giving a heads up. Swedes and Finns
are more intertwined by history and culture than related in the genetic or
language sense. If you told a Finn that they're related to Swedes they might
kill you slightly for that too.

------
smsm42
Something that I didn't understand - why Linus thinks it is completely nuts
that people help finance their kids' education locally? Why the only sane
thing is to give money to some anonymous amorphous central government, and
then ask for some of it back to build the school and hope some bridge to
nowhere or festival of cowboy poetry or some bigwig's 500K/night hotel bills
don't come first? I understand you can disagree which way is more efficient -
but why the local way is described as insane "to any sany person"?

~~~
olau
I'm from Scandinavia and I think I can answer that. Over here, there's a
pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are well off shouldn't give
you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are less well off. Equal
opportunities and all that.

For instance, in Denmark education is free, including university. You even get
a monthly allowance from the state if you study.

That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is a
better place than the US to do it, because despite high taxes statistically
you are far more likely to move on the social ladder in Denmark:

<http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html>

~~~
smsm42
>>>> Over here, there's a pretty strong sentiment that having parents that are
well off shouldn't give you an unfair advantage to people whose parents are
less well off.

This is both counterfactual (money _alone_ matters very little - worst schools
routinely spend per pupil more or roughly the same as good schools with no
improvement in results) and futile. Of course children of successful educated
parents would be better off that children growing in broken up family with
absentee parents and zero attention to their education. The only way it could
be otherwise is to drag everybody down to the lowest possible level. The whole
talk about "unfair advantage" sounds insane to me - why not then beautiful
people or smart people have "unfair advantage"? Let's do it like in the
Vonnegut's _Sirens on Titan_ (or _Harrison Bergeron_ ) - let everybody be
dragged down to the lowest level, let everybody has poorest education that we
can provide to everybody, let everybody be as ugly as the ugliest person
alive, as weak as weakest person alive, as dumb as dumbest person alive, as
miserable and sick as the most miserable and sick person alive. This is only
way it can be "fair". And people seriously think this approach is not only
sane, but the ONLY sane one? Just boggles the mind.

The problem is that redistribution does not solve the problem. Moreover, by
becoming obsessed with redistribution solving the real problems only becomes
harder. We are way beyond the stage where the money were the actual issue, all
bake sales aside. The problem is much harder and has to do with the community,
the general environment, the history, the social engineering failures, there's
a huge mess there, but it there not because of the lack of government
involvement. If anything, partially it's there exactly because of this
involvement, which failed to predict the consequences.

>>>> That's probably why if you want to live out the American dream Denmark is
a better place than the US to do it

Highly doubt it. Somehow where I live there's Google, Facebook, and hundreds
others already done, and thousands others in the making, and in Denmark you
have.... well, I couldn't name one, to be frank. Maybe there are some, but not
many heard of them. Somehow Stroustrup is in Texas and DHH is in Chicago, and
we don't have a huge wave of US citizens moving to Denmark to pursue their
dreams.

Maybe if you move there, you have higher chance of secure mediocre living, but
it's not exactly what people call "American dream".

~~~
rdouble
The phrase "American Dream" traditionally has meant something much more like
"secure mediocre living" than the ease of starting a multinational
corporation.

------
davidw
Linus talking about politics is... still politics, even if one happens to
agree with him.

~~~
andrewflnr
HN seems to have a soft spot for educational policy. This makes sense when you
consider the importance of education for both a hacker's work and play.

------
diakritikal
One thing Linus didn't mention about Finland and education which some of you
may find interesting and of note; is that the right to education is enshrined
in the Finnish constitution. <http://www.oph.fi/english/education> Coming from
a family of educators I can't help but think this plays an important role in
cementing Finland's position at the top of the OECD education rankings.

Furthermore, being a Scotsman and understanding how the Scots have long since
had a history of free universal education, I think it's fair to say that this
played an important part in the industrial revolution. It's also worth
mentioning that Scotland is about to have it's independence referendum next
year and high on the list for those who would see Scotland have self-
determination is a written constitution. The UK is an anomaly in the developed
western world for not having a written constitution and many of us would like
to see free universal education enshrined into our new constitution, should we
vote for independence.

~~~
daxelrod
The right to an education is enshrined in many US states' constitutions as
well. That's unfortunately not enough to make the difference.

------
tokenadult
Linus is correct to disagree with the Oregon bill, and it's too bad that he
didn't point to an existing example in another state with some cultural
similarities to Oregon. Finding out what learning environment, inside or
outside school, is optimal for each learner is definitely a worthy goal,
especially if means are then provided to obtain that environment. Education
policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123>

so I'm always glad to discuss how to improve opportunities for learners with
other participants here. I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I
live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal
per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The
state law change that made most school funding come from general state
appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota
miracle."

[http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...](http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html)

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a
per-pupil enrollment basis.

<http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf>

<http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html>

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two futher reforms in the
1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled
unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new
compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school
alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by
the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college
while still high school students on the state's dime.

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html)

So Linus notes, in the article submitted here, that where he lives in Oregon,
"And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed
through to make that kind of 'out-of-district tuition student' not be an
option any more." That's crazy, because Minnesota's pattern of open enrollment
has shown that every school district gains by enrolling as many students as it
can attract, given the funding pattern here. Parents in Minnesota now have
more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal
of detect the optimum education environment for each student (by parents
observing what works for each of their differing children) and give it to them
by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound
open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence)
or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by
exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results
of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully
competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of
east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

To achieve the worthy goal mentioned in the article submitted here involves
changing the incentives now operating in the school system in most countries,
both as to direct regulations and as to funding. Schools should be eager to
enroll new students, as a demonstration that the school is meeting learner
needs, and then the schools should be rewarded for doing so.

~~~
ianb
Another Minnesotan, who also moved to Chicago and moved back when considering
where I wanted to raise a child...

I think part of what Linus gets wrong is that he confuses the correlation of
high-property-tax well-funded districts with the performance of the schools in
those districts. The high property taxes (or property values or however the
market works it out) doesn't make the schools good, it filters _out_ people
who are indifferent to the school quality, and filters in people who place a
high value on education. Once you cluster a lot of people with those values,
the schools will be good; in part because of the peers a student will
encounter, and in part because of all of the small but concrete things parents
do to make the schools better.

Open enrollment without tuitions doesn't challenge that clustering. To
participate in open enrollment in Minnesota, you have to really value
education: you have to figure out what the school is you want to attend, you
have to figure out the bureaucracy to get in to that school, and you have to
provide your own transportation to the school. All those hurdles are just as
good as high property taxes or high property values.

The irony is that as a result open enrollment is not as progressive as it
might seem. It's something the privileged can use to fix their children's
education experience without moving, or allow people to trade effort for
income. But it doesn't bring the underprivileged up, because they really don't
take advantage of open enrollment. Though perhaps I'm using circular thinking,
as I generally consider children with engaged, informed, and capable parents
as "privileged" regardless of income; and maybe I even think that way because
Minnesota supports that particular lifestyle choice via things like open
enrollment. It's a particular life arrangement that I didn't see much of in
Chicago, and maybe that's no accident.

~~~
rdouble
In the part of Minnesota I grew up in, open enrollment was mainly used to get
a kid onto a different school's hockey team, if he didn't make the starting
team of his local school.

------
qdog
I live in Oregon, although this might limit some of the funding for certain
schools, when I was moving between school districts for my son, I could not
start him in the new school district until I was a resident. The only public
school we looked at that actually followed this method was Riverdale
(www.riverdaleschool.com), and it was about $3k/year. Most of the public
schools won't let you attend unless you live in their boundaries.

There are a lot of public schools in Portland that have special programs, and
you enter via a lottery, so that's kind of cool. However, it's my experience
that Portland Public Schools are crippled vs. the surrounding suburban school
districts. I don't really understand it, since PPS has a higher funding per
kid. Also the facilities in suburbia (sports fields, buildings, etc.) are
generally newer and bigger. If I had it to do over again, I'm not sure what
state I would try and move to for education.

------
Nrsolis
I went to public school with Sheryl Sandberg at North Miami Beach Sr. High
School. She was a senior while I was a junior. Her little brother was my lab
partner in AP Chemistry.

It really was a fantastic school. Some parents would put their kids in private
school but we'd always see them back a semester later when it turned out that
the private school wasn't much better than the public one.

I took a look at that school recently and I can tell you that I wouldn't send
my kids (if I had any) there:

[http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-
schools/florida/di...](http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-
schools/florida/districts/miami-dade-county-public-schools/north-miami-beach-
senior-high-4851/test-scores)

------
keithpeter
" _Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more
convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking
one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need
to have cookie bake sales._ "

UK: we have the same affluent area/good school, poor area/poor school issues
in the UK. I so wish we could get to the situation than Finland finds itself
in, but I doubt the government wants to _invest_ in the teaching profession to
the extent required.

PS: Buildings don't matter above a certain threshold level. Shiny classroom
equipment doesn't matter, just BYOD with a few loaner laptops and WiFi would
be good.

------
nnq
not on topic, but how comes any time there's a comparison of education or
healthcare or overall "social health" of the northern European countries
(Linus's Finland, Norway, Sweden) with _any other country in the world_ , the
northeners are _always better?_ How did they manage to get so many "social"
problems _so right?_ Does anyone know of a good case-study about how these
countries reached their current level?

~~~
Ras_
Start here: [http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-
content/uploads/2011/01/Davo...](http://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-
content/uploads/2011/01/Davos-The-nordic-way-final.pdf)

Then follow up on things that picque your interest. Like social trust and
Nordic social contract.

~~~
nnq
10x kudos! really great resource to start from!

------
anarchotroll
He says he dislikes a private system but, at the same time, indirectly
acknowledges that what makes the system at his district work is the fact that
it is partly private. It is partly private because people actually raise money
voluntarily and charge outsiders in order to make it work.

~~~
acjohnson55
He does acknowledge that. The problem is not that empowering the community to
pay for its education doesn't work; the problem is that different communities
have vastly different resources to pull from, both financially and in terms of
the soft assets that communities share, like social mobility, intellectual
capital, etc. It's unfair because your average low-income school district
can't pull off a bond issue or massive fundraiser to fund new initiatives.

------
Vlaix
The only thing that chocks me is that there's only one Swedish-speaking school
in Finland that teaches Latin (ofc the US public system thing is alarming, bu
it's nothing of a bombshell). Am I the weird guy here or ..?

~~~
Ras_
No demand. Our university education is not based on liberal arts, which makes
the likes of Latin effectively vanity subjects.

Also not having any Catholic tradition lessens the appreciation of Latin.

------
djvu9
Sometimes I have a feeling that the US government is so good at being
politically correct that the only thing they care is being politically
correct.

