What bugs me about this is reading the comments. Instead reading this news and thinking that when large swathes of the population are doing poorly there must be something wrong with the system, they turn around and just blame people for being stupid and lazy. There are tons of people in this country that grow up poor, in bad neighborhoods, with bad schools, and no hope of going to college and when things don't turn out well for them, we blame them for it. It may come as a shock to people from other countries but in the US school funding is extremely local. If you're from a rich neighborhood, your school has tons of money and resources. If you grow up in a poor neighborhood, some barely have enough money to keep the roof from leaking. And we've all just accepted this as normal and OK. We have the power to change this but we choose not to.
I understand where you're coming from and I'm going to leave an unpopular opinion as a comment, but I think the society we're growing into one that wants to absolve anyone of personal responsibility. I understand that growing up in poor neighborhoods and shitty family situations makes it immensely more difficult to set yourself up for success, but I just think at some point you're responsible for your own person, not anyone else and not society.
I grew up in methland, appalachia and had countless crackhead friends and family. I didn't have any money and had to work starting at age 15. I think I'd be in my right to complain and want education to be fixed and my city to be improved so it'd be easy for me to be more successful.
I took an alternative and left home, educated myself, and turned myself into a halfway decent contributor to society. I really think the US still has a lot of ability to reward those who go after it even if that means becoming a carpenter and saving for 30 years to retire early.
I understand our society is not ideal, but I just think those problems are going to take generations to fix. Why not take care of yourself and do your best to fix your own shit.
As a disclaimer, I'm not writing this towards disabled people or others that need society's help. I'm 100% ok with helping in those situations. I'm talking about the average american who has their health and some direction over their destiny.
I just don't get why people sit on their asses and complain instead of getting out and making shit happen or at least trying to. I don't get the barely getting by mentality.
> I took an alternative and left home, educated myself, and turned myself into a halfway decent contributor to society. I really think the US still has a lot of ability to reward those who go after it even if that means becoming a carpenter and saving for 30 years to retire early.
> I understand our society is not ideal, but I just think those problems are going to take generations to fix. Why not take care of yourself and do your best to fix your own shit.
This is survivor bias. There are tons of people trying hard and working to be in a place where they can find an "alternative" to take, but are faced with structural impediments like under-resourced schools, poor family and community support structures, and incentive systems that encourage short term survival and gratification decisions over long term preparation.
The existence of some people who don't strive for personal progress doesn't absolve us of the obligation to improve opportunites for those who do strive - and that begins from early childhood. Severe hardship is not a virtue we should be imposing on people to test their mettle.
After all, very wealthy people don't remove support from their children if those children don't "make shit happen". In fact, they usually pour more resources into those children in order to motivate them (from drug treatment programs, to therapists, coaches, ...), and if that still doesn't work, they still provide for them financially.
It feels like you have no understanding of the underlying problem, honestly. There is a saying that everyone has heard that goes, If you are trying to outrun a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you only have to be faster than your friend.
The bear, in this analogy, is the problem. It is society's problem. And the solution you propose for society is for everyone to run faster, but no one can run faster than a bear.
I think you’re giving the commenter you’re responding to too hard of a time. From what I understand, all he’s saying is let’s tackle two problems at the same time. Let’s address the systemic problem but since that naturally takes a long time, let’s also work on personal accountability and meet at the “perfect” end where we excel at both. I agree with his/her take that it seems that with each passing generation, there seems to be less and less independence in addressing personal issues (even if they stem from systemic issues). At the end of the day, whether society helps or not, you are the only person that cares about your wellbeing the most. Let’s just do both simultaneously is all I’m saying.
> I just don't get why people sit on their asses and complain instead of getting out and making shit happen or at least trying to. I don't get the barely getting by mentality.
And you think loud conjecture and opinions will change that? It's all well and good to be a idle proponent of social darwinism, but it's in your benefit, as well as 'theirs', to have people around you that are fostered to their best potential. A government that provides the best breeding grounds for highly-skilled workers will win everyone a better economy, and tax revenue. Seems a no-brainer to provide great education, in the same way it's a no-brainer for a farmer to use fertilizer.
> I think the society we're growing into one that wants to absolve anyone of personal responsibility.
You're fighting a false enemy. Folks researching issues like this aren't trying to abolish personal responsibility, they're trying to figure out why some people do better than others.
Is it because of inherited wealth? Inherited genetic material? Random genetic mutations? Inherited behavioral social norms? Societal trends? Entrenched interests maintaining a particular structural hierarchy?
The big question is why do people act the way that they do. These are worthy questions worth asking. If an exact DNA replica of you was placed in a different situation and had wildly different outcomes, it would raise pretty interesting questions.
You shouldn't feel threatened by these questions, they won't discount your personal achievements. Instead they may shed light on what makes you you.
> I understand where you're coming from and I'm going to leave an unpopular opinion as a comment,
No, you aren't; victim blaming and denying the personal responsibility of those who create, maintain, and benefit from an unjust system for the unwarranted harms inflicted on others by that system is an extremely popular opinion on HN, and among economic elites generally.
You are certainly entitled to that opinion, but you aren't engaging in some kind of revolutionary act by voicing a standard elite defense of the status quo.
Many people disagree with you, and want to live in a society where only exceptional people can live comfortably, and the rest of them live miserably. Many, many, many of the miserable people actually like it better this way, which is proven by their voting habits.
I think that it's hard to determine people's desires from voting habits. Voting is kind of a game, wouldn't you say? It's got teams and everything, almost like a spectator sport.
When asked directly, though, progressive policies (or whatever word you want to use here to mean "anti-misery") are very popular!
I can see why many people place feel that way. I agree that there should be some balance between collective and personal responsibility. I just think US society and politics has placed such a heavy emphasis on the individual for so long and that we'd be all better if we weren't so quick to blame each other but help each other out. I don't think anyone deserves to grow up with bad schools and yet that's the only option many people have.
I agree with your sentiment. I'm just too jaded to believe the government is capable to doing anything. I think I'm my best bet at staying alive and thriving.
> I understand our society is not ideal, but I just think those problems are going to take generations to fix. Why not take care of yourself and do your best to fix your own shit.
When success is governed more by luck than effort, I'd imagine one might get tired of putting effort in forever with no results. "The floggings will continue until you succeed" is not a strategy for happiness at scale. American Exceptionalism is an incredibly toxic idea not supported by data.
> I just don't get why people sit on their asses and complain instead of getting out and making shit happen or at least trying to. I don't get the barely getting by mentality.
Because there are lots of folks working their asses off who are barely getting by. These people are not hard to find and talk to about their situations (at least, in my experience politically canvassing by foot).
I am greatly offended by your post. I don't understand why people use the same excuses like survivorship bias over and over again when they are so obviously unfair and wrong. I don't understand why people need to prop up their own successes as something innate to them and their hard work while dismissing others who work just as hard but fail as "sitting on their asses complaining". I simply don't understand human ego and how it drives most people and causes them to elevate themselves in their minds while tearing others down. I don't understand how they can actually believe everyone else is just lazy or not as deserving.
I will be dead by end of year because I am broken in about every way and have no survivable path. When I was not broken and was a firefighter I was treated entirely differently by society and by individuals. I must be BRAVE and STRONG and GOOD and DESERVED my life and praise and whatever. I tried to be those things but they judged me on their ideas about me and my job and as long as those were "good" then I was a "good" and "deserving" person. I didn't get that job, a notoriously difficult field to get hired in, on my own. Sure I tried my best to prepare and be a good candidate, but luck and connections helped too as they do for anyone who succeeds despite their belief it's all them. No matter how "admirable" one's station seems to society nobody thrives alone and EVERYBODY deserves basic human needs and respect. Once I lost all of that life and "status" due to doctor inflicted disability a predictable downfall ensued because people are mostly all the same self serving personalities. There was a period of sympathy and promises of assistance to help me "get a life back". Then as systems and programs inexplicably denied my the help everyone was sure I deserved, and they were sure would be there for them when they needed it, and when my attempts to do MORE with LESS failed, people shifted their behavior towards me. Suddenly I was a threat to their egos and this their security in themselves. A threat to their own view of the just world and what they wanted to deny could happen to them.
As one would expect when that happens to you...when you lose your physical health...your mental health declines. It snowballs as your finances and relationships declines and disappear. No matter how hard you try or what SHOULD happen things keep falling. Everyone starts tearing you down and spending your energy for you in unrealistic ideas because they can't lose that way...they get to believe they could do it and they get to dismiss you and not feel guilty when you cannot because it's obviously your being lazy or not deserving it. Once in a blue moon someone offers you a much needed PIECE of the puzzle but since you are flying down the hill you cannot even keep a hold of that piece and it flies out of your hand and the person offering it usually gives you an exasperated tut like "well I tried you just didn't want it bad enough". You get angry because you KNOW it's possible to live and even thrive in some way if you could just have consistent help...but you know help isn't profitable so nobody is going to do that. You get MORE depressed. That depression is blamed for all your ills. You are blamed for people's advice failing. You are "sitting on your ass complaining" to everyone who doesn't realize how lucky they have been, how they could manage things when younger or with the help of society or others that people cannot manage when they are older, broken, broke, abused. Who think a drowning person can just "swim harder" because they need to believe they will be able to if they ever get caught in a riptide. This is soul crushing...because it happens over and over and over and you cannot even read things online anymore because you see people blaming, judging, denying policies that can help...and you know it's hopeless.
Think about that next time you get upset at people who didn't succeed like you did. Try to understand they wanted to live...wanted a future...just as bad as you did. Try to understand they don't deserve it any less than you and that you didn't do it on your own even if you think so. Try to understand we are human beings and not slights to you ego or proof that you are better or that anyone can do it. The world doesn't work like that and many good and decent people suffer and sink every day because instead of working together and helping it's all Thunderdome and ME ME ME...even more so in the USA where people have decided basic social protections are "theft" and "wrong" and since I cannot get to and stabilize in a caring first world nation I give up on humanity entirely. There are not enough people who don't live in ego for anything to change in time for me. Even this...will just "offend" people like that rather than change anything. It's venting of hopeless pressure and ultimately nobody really cares. Another empty rant of agonal breaths and the same false beliefs about victims and those suffering will just march on because I have learned with humans it's 99.9% all about the ego. That's one good thing about being rid of this life...send me to cat heaven because people suck and I don't want to be around them even in some afterlife.
This thread has been hit by the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of comments making objections, followed by a wave of objections to the objections, which the community upvotes to the top of the thread.
Pointing this out is off topic, but I'd like the community to get aware that this is what typically happens. Otherwise it feels bad to read the comments, and the mind starts to overgeneralize about it, e.g. "I can't believe that HN thinks X." HN doesn't "think" X; it is just the universal tendency to make objections and it's the same in both cases.
One could even call it the contrarian dialectic, but I suppose that's pretentious.
I think that's a bit too simplistic. There are many conversations going on at the same time, and this is a property of how they emerge. Seeing something to object to activates enough energy to make a post— like a swimmer needing something to push off against.
The interesting thing is how obvious it is once you know what to look for, yet also how poorly understood it is. If it were understood, we wouldn't see so many comments of the form "I can't believe the comments here". Someone who's aware of the mechanics of objection wouldn't express themselves that way, because they'd know that their objection-to-the-objections is the same thing. I don't think this is bad, by the way; it's just that it comes from the structure of the forum and not from any of the specific topics people think it has to do with. The medium truly is the message. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Very true. Planning your life as a kid is a big gamble. How are you supposed to know which industry will be viable for a good career through the next decades? How can you know that other careers that are great today will die tomorrow? Some of us have lucked into the currently hot industries but that’s not because they had great insight when they were 18.
We really need a system where people actually get opportunity to change careers and retrain instead of just being thrown away by companies as it’s happening now. I have seen a log n of perfectly capable but maybe older than 40 people being laid off without much advance warning and no opportunity to even try to adapt.
Companies throw people away and the whole country throws away whole regions when trends change.
> If you're from a rich neighborhood, your school has tons of money and resources. If you grow up in a poor neighborhood, some barely have enough money to keep the roof from leaking. And we've all just accepted this as normal and OK. We have the power to change this but we choose not to.
I would suggest that the reason kids in rich neighborhoods turn out ok is not because their schools have more money but because their parents have set them up for success. I can say this confidently because my dad is in the military, and I've attended several years at a poor high school in Alabama where cheating and truancy was rampant.
See, here's the thing. People often greatly underestimate the role good parents have in producing good, contributing members of society. We like to pretend that everyone is born equal and that the reason some kids fail and other don't is because the public infrastructure they had access to was good or bad.
But I would wager that's only 10% of the issue. The other 90% of the issue is that all parents are on a spectrum. And it turns out that poor parents are at the end of the spectrum that sets up their kids for failure.
I totally get that it's not intentional; Nevertheless, they set bad examples to their kids (smoking, drinking, lotto), often times one parent (usually the male) is missing, they might not enforce school attendance/homework/chores, etc. Kids follow the example of their parents. If the parent is a single mom, pregnant at 14, smokes and drinks excessively, etc. chances are the kids are going to be the same way.
I am not convinced throwing money at schools is the solution. I think there needs to be some kind of mentorship between the poor and middle classes that essentially causes there to be better parents with each generation. Like temporary foster homes where poor kids can learn and observe how middle and upper class people do things.
Basically, I believe the ultimate solution to poverty is love - personal relationships with the poor. Actually making friends with poor people as a middle or upper class individual and helping lift them up a little. Money is part of the problem, yes, but my argument is that the importance of money is greatly overestimated in the poverty problem.
> I can say this confidently because my dad is in the military, and I've attended several years at a poor high school in Alabama where cheating and truancy was rampant.
I'm not disputing your personal experience, but this is an anecdote :)
You are right, I have no rigorous scientific study to offer as evidence, just my personal opinion based on 4 data points (me and my siblings).
But, anecdotal evidence is still evidence, weak as it is. I'm sure there are others here who have experienced something similar which is partially why I took the time to type it up - to see if that is the case.
I agree with your comment. We tend to see our own achievements as through our own efforts, failing to see any advantages we have, and further failing to see the disadvantages many others have had.
(OP has fixed typo, so below snark can be ignored:
And English is a really weird language, on top of that.
For example, "excepted" means almost the opposite of "accepted," but in most instances will be pronounced roughly the same way.)
The same concept is present in most posts about the poor and working class, tech people just don't like accepting that maybe they're actually elitist and not actually average joes who makes six figure salaries. Look at the post on truck drivers from a day or two ago, most of the comments are people explaining how the workers don't actually know what's best for themselves and so their complaints can be ignored.
and even with a good school, how much of receiving a good education is tied to good sleep and good diet? Being well fed and well rested is very important.
Coupled with new belief in the effects of epigenetics, bad food and sleep becomes something that can pass down generationly, both in habit and in gene expression.
Finally, once you reach a certain age, structured education disappears, and most peoples continuous self improvement comes from newspapers and television news. As journalism has forgotten its duty and role in education and become almost exclusively about capturing attention and feeding lust for entertainment, the nightly news acts under a veil of appearing educational.
I’ve experienced these toxic environments where good sleep and healthy food was almost impossible to obtain and it can be crippling.
I got a full-ride to university, but could not take full advantage of because of a toxic domestic environment and impoverished family.
I got to learn from smart professors and supportive friend which greatly improved my life because they helped me develop better learning and social skills. I’m using everything I learned to better my family and the immediate environment.
Good education is a powerful force for betterment. It’s troubling that access to opportunities like the I had one was based on luck.
Fortunately, educational opportunity has increased. Resources like Khan Academy and other MOOC platforms can help you get a top-notch education cheaply. Our society just need to make sure it’s accessible to those who need it most.
This. A 1000x this. There are hurdles for people that are systemic, some of those being racially, gender, and/or purely economically based.
The "personal responsibility" line get touted around these conversations quite a bit. It's not so dissimilar from the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" line. Quite often by racists/racialists or wealthy classists.
Yes, people should be personally responsible and held responsible for their actions. And also yes, systemic problems are also problems that cannot be ignored or absolved by saying people should take personal responsibility for their actions.
Take crime, when the poor and disadvantaged find themselves in the US court system, oftentimes their crimes are punished more harshly than those from more well-to-do situations. That's not the fault of the poorer person, that's systemic.
You can say neither the rich nor poor person should have committed the crime (personal responsibility is a "good" thing) , but the fact that the rich person might get off or have a lighter sentence such as probation, isn't the fault of the poorer individual - that's where the systemic failures start to rear their ugly head.
Please note: I don't discount personal responsibility (quite the opposite) here at all - however I'm sure my comment will be met with criticism by those that beat the drum for "personal responsibility" as being the primary mitigating factor in all things around these types of topics.
I also want to add that it can get even more complicated than simply rich vs poor districts. I feel that public education is not the HIGHEST priority in many districts around the nation. One example, Hillsborough county in Florida recently voted to raise taxes to assist with providing public high schools with proper access to air conditioning. Their schools do not have proper public transportation (school buses) or access to proper HVAC across one of the larger counties here in Florida.
It gets worse. In a few years they won't even have access to teachers nor a properly functioning classroom. There is an entire demographic of teachers approaching retirement and we don't have enough qualified teachers entering, and staying, in the field to replace them.
>In a few years they won't even have access to teachers nor a properly functioning classroom. There is an entire demographic of teachers approaching retirement and we don't have enough qualified teachers entering, and staying, in the field to replace them.
Yeah, for good reason: the career is terrible, so it shouldn't be a big surprise that no quality people want to go into it, and when someone good does get into it, they burn out quickly and leave. But government and society don't want to do anything about that.
Teachers in this country face lousy pay, uninterested, disrespectful, and sometimes violent students, occasional school mass shootings, incompetent coworkers and administration, etc. Why would a well-educated person want to go into this field?
Education is such a winner take all system that people get really crazy about it. Desegregation busing was a huge issue in the 70s, Harvard is getting sued by students and parents for not letting them in. It's an emotional thing.
My wife and I are in the early stages of homeschooling our kids and one thing I've noticed in all my reading about education is that there seems to be one side that argues for more job training in school, and there's another side that argues that a well-rounded life includes much more than just job skills, and then there are articles like these, that seem to indicate that a ton of people are making it through the education system without learning anything at all. That seems like a much bigger problem than what should be on the curriculum, but it doesn't seem to be much talked about.
On the professional side of things, I've come to expect that most 18 year olds won't know anything about anything, which is fine, 18 is quite young, after all, but it seems at odds with the tremendous amount of time and money that's been spent on the average 18 year old's education.
Most people spend their whole time in school learning things that they will never, ever use. Pardon my linking to twitter, but this thread really sums it up:
It's been my experience as well. I used to read pop-sci books voraciously from ~1st grade onward, and as a result everything in science classes from middle school until the middle of college were basically review for me. (As a result, I was bored and did poorly in most science/math type courses)
Another example is a kid in my high school who was running a reptile business during his sophomore year. They had him doing algebra and writing papers about US history. Why? The kid already knew more than the biology teacher about reptiles. And he made more money than any of us did at 16. Why is he spending 8 hours a day training to take the SAT?
18 year olds can know quite a lot, they're just not allowed to spend time learning things. Instead they have to learn a bunch of useless crap in school, from elementary school onward. All the way up to upper div in college. This is only getting worse, since school (especially "college prep") is sucking all free time out of the lives of children.
Here be dragons. An ignorant electorate will devolve into a society run by subjective mob rule. All those "useless" skills developed in school actually have indirect benefit to society.
Why are you assuming ignorance? In the parent's examples, the kids knew lots of things. Additionally, it is our current state of education that's led to such a large portion of the population being unable to do basic math and the like, which is the definition of ignorance. No one is suggesting less education, just different education.
Did those kids actually know a lot of things, or did they just think they knew a lot of things? My daughter has reached the developmental stage where she's an expert on everything, and on the surface she knows a lot of facts, but her understanding is rather shallow. It takes some age, experience, and (usually) rigorous education to go beyond that stage.
Because there's more to participating in society than hyper-specialization. You may be the world's greatest herpetologists, but you still need to maintain your finances, do your taxes, and vote in a way that requires historical and contextual knowledge.
Are kids learning enough to maintain their finances, do their taxes, and vote in a way that integrates historical knowledge?
It's not my experience that the average 18 year old knows any of those things, and the article suggests that many people aren't coming away from school with basic literacy or numeracy.
This all goes back to a point I alluded to in my first post. When someone suggests that public education is badly broken and perhaps could use an overhaul, they are bombarded with arguments about the importance of education that seem to ignore the fact that a very disappointingly large number of people are not, in fact, receiving anywhere near that level of education.
Ignorance is a given. The kids knew lots of specialized things, not a well-rounded education. History is important to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Math is important to develop critical thinking skills and a disciplined use of logic. Being educated in these areas offer an "indirect benefit to society", as kevin_thibedeau mentioned.
People, though they may be individually smart/educated in their own areas, are dumb in aggregate and in general. It's only by all sharing a holistic education that we can have an educated electorate. After all, in any given area of study, a group of people making decisions by vote is only as smart/educated as the average individual.
This is exactly what I was alluding to in my first comment though. Of course a well rounded education is important, but we’re failing to deliver basically any kind of education to a very large number of people. I think it’s not inappropriate to consider drastic changes, but when drastic changes are suggested, the counter is something like saying that a well-rounded education is important, as if that’s what we’re currently achieving and we’d be forsaking that.
This is largely my position as well. I think kids are capable of drastically more than we expect from them, especially when they are motivated, and there's no reason that 18 year olds shouldn't be perfectly capable of making an impact right at the beginning of adulthood.
Because dropping out of primary education is HEAVILY penalized in our society in multiple facets, sometimes in non-obvious ways. Dropping out of college does not create a major barrier to success for motivated people, dropping out of high school statistically nearly guarantees a bad life outcome. Even people who drop out and then attain a GED (arguably harder than just graduating) have lower statistical success indicators.
As a simple anecdotal example, I have an acquaintance who dropped out of high school because he was bored. He's actually quite above average in intelligence and educated despite not being formally educated. Nonetheless, he had a minor run-in with the law (bar fight, he didn't start it), and due to having his official record with the state showing he was a drop-out he was treated more harshly by the justice system, including having a higher bail set and receiving harsher sentencing. Our society basically just operates under the assumption that if you drop out of high school you are complete fuck-up, so that's the context of how you're judged.
One thing that I've noticed in California is that the system is totally disinterested in results from the student, and I have no clue how to fix it because, as far as I can tell, the teachers feel like they are not allowed to incentivize performance.
My oldest daughter discovered that if she turns in an assignment with something vaguely related to the questions written on it, she is pretty much guaranteed a B, and will often get an A. The only thing she has learned from school is that nobody cares about the quality of her work. She did manage to get a C for one term in one class in middle school by not turning in a single assignment. When we met with the teacher after that, we surprised her by asking how she could justify giving our daughter such a high grade (she was expecting us to complain about how low it was).
My second oldest has been consistently a year behind since 1st grade, and now that she is in 6th grade, things are starting to fall apart (so much of what you learn is cumulative by this point). We've been asking for her to be retained since 3rd grade and been denied 3 times in a row. Everyone is worried about her "self esteem" but it's not like she doesn't know that she's at the bottom of her class, and that's not doing any wonders for her self esteem either.
Our youngest two haven't been fucked up by the system yet, but I feel at this point like it's more of a "when" rather than an "if" question.
You might argue that kids not knowing anything when they graduate is a symptom of the focus on professional skills. I found that the more people tried to teach me what they thought I "needed" to know rather than the things I was interested in, the less I learned and the less useful the stuff I learned was.
Being highly motivated by something is a prerequisite to great self-learning. Video games (especially?) can be a great launching point to learn about math, programming, writing, design...
Being motivated by nothing means students will not learn or retain knowledge.
So yeah, I think letting a bunch of 13 year olds play video games all day would actually provide better results than keeping them locked up an a pseudo-prison like environment teaching them things that they're not interested in learning and for the most part wouldn't need to know anyway.
We already tell all children what they should be learning, and apparently a huge portion of them end up without basic literacy and numeracy. That's as bad as it gets. It's hard to imagine how these adults would have been worse off if they hadn't gone to school at all. Perhaps they would have stumbled across something that interested them and learned something.
You can learn many of the most important sorts of things that a 13 year old would want to learn by being into video games. Computers, math, history, how to tell a good story, how to organize a group of people to accomplish a common goal.
Of course, you can't let 13 year olds teach themselves, because they don't know what's out there and they don't know the best way to spend their time. But that's not the same as not allowing them to do things that they're interested in. Incidentally, I don't think that we shouldn't have any sort of required education, just that they should be a small part of the whole educational experience.
Yeah, I think you're spot on about a lot of kids not being interested in the subjects that are taught and I agree that it has a big impact on total learning.
On the other hand, I don't really remember being taught many professional skills in school, and in any case, it's still practically unfathomable to me that kids could make it through 13 years of any kind of education at all and not end up literate and numerate.
More of the funding needs to go towards teacher salaries, in the first place. They start on $18 an hour here, you can make more in a call center with no responsibilities.
Also, we spend a lot, however it's extremely unevenly distributed making it much more likely the scenario we're discussing comes about (someone making it through school without a useful education).
Come now, that is blatant overstatement. When I was 18, I knew how to read, write, do calculus, use Microsoft Office, do a bit of coding, and even enough to work in a biological research lab.
The problem is most skills needed in the economy are not aligned with the skills taught in school. Is it necessary that a plumber can read Shakespeare and analyze it? Is it necessary that a nurse knows all about the Civil War? Well no, in a purely skills-based sense, their schooling was "not valuable" and they "don't know anything".
I said most, not all, and do you consider yourself average? I would consider an 18 year old with your skills to be rather exceptional. And 18 year olds like you were tend to go off to college and not enter the workforce right away, anyway.
And your last paragraph is exactly what I'm talking about, we argue about whether a plumber needs to know Shakespeare or whether a nurse needs to know about the Civil War, as if they know those things but would be better served with other, more practical knowledge, but, in my experience, basically nobody knows about those things, anyway, beyond a few cursory facts. Meanwhile, apparently a huge number of people can't do basic math.
As an aside, the kind of people I know who do know a lot about Shakespeare or the Civil War are the kind of people who would have learned it whether or not it was a subject in school.
Knowing about history makes for a more informed voter. In the very short term for the individual it may not seem very valuable but in the long term it is very valuable for the country to have a populace educated in history and the liberal arts. By knowing our past we can hopefully not make the same mistakes in the future.
You haven't been exposed to average 18 year olds if you think one could understand Shakespeare unassisted, let alone analyze it. I have tutored fellow university students at a rather prestigious school who lacked basic skills which should be learned in Algebra I.
> a ton of people are making it through the education system without learning anything at all
Well people learn something. What is interesting in the NCES national literacy surveys they've consistently found that around 45% of adults who didn't graduate high school are illiterate, about 20% of adults who did graduate high school (but no further schooling) are illiterate, and about 10% of the population overall is illiterate. There's also non-zero illiteracy results for various levels of college graduates, ranging from 1 to 4% depending on the degree level.
Now these students that are graduating high school and college illiterate are extremely interesting. What's going on? Do they have incredible memorization skills and learn from listening to books on tape? Or have they selected degrees and colleges where literacy is not required, perhaps an art or physical education major or something of the kind at a small private college. They are submitting at least some papers and taking tests in their classes most likely. Papers can be bought or ghost authored, is that happening to the extent that illiterates can get a degree? Test taking, perhaps some professors will give everyone a passing grade just for attending even if they turn in blank tests. Is that happening? Or perhaps the illiterate people self-reporting to NCES that they have a Masters degree (1% of Masters degrees holders are illiterate) are lying either about about their degrees or intentionally failing the literacy testing just because they thought it was funny?
At the high school level though I am pretty sure the case of large numbers of illiterate graduates is that a lot of schools pass you with Gentleman's C's just for showing up, remaining quiet and obedient, avoiding fights, and not causing any disturbances or problems for the teachers. If you do this and don't turn in a single assignment and guess randomly on all tests you can graduate from many US high schools.
I have met several illiterate high school graduates so I know it is a real thing that happens. They all had great personalities. Some of them are successful business owners. Graduating illiterate might require some people skills.
It's worth poking around the sample questions on that literacy survey: https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_results.asp they're not using literacy in the sense of just being able to read english prose. I, at least, can see how you might fuck up the survey but still be able to muddle through writing a couple pages on Duchamp's Fountain, it wouldn't be easy but 1 in 100? yeah sure.
Hey yeah in the study methodology they do a 7 question simple screener at the beginning. Those with poor scores do not take the questions you mention which are intended for people who definitely have basic literacy. They instead do a test involving someone sits with them and shows them photos of laundry detergent and asks what's the name of the brand. If it's Era and the person says Tide that's a half-credit, if they say Tide it's a full credit. And so on. It's to determine exactly how bad are things.
But even with the test you mention you and I would definitely score far far above the "Below Basic" level that is a comparable term to illiterate. Sure they can recognize their own name and the word cat and dog, but they can't read a sentence in any newspaper or make sense of it.
Learning is a skill. If you can teach your children how to think and teach themselves whatever they need to know in whatever situation they find themselves in, they will be successful. It's what my parents taught me, and I'm grateful.
I don't think it's that difficult, but I think people spend way too much time arguing about the last half of the syllabus (what we should be teaching high schoolers) and ignoring the fact that a quarter or a third of students aren't even making it past the very beginning of the syllabus. It's like, arguing whether a kid should focus on computer science or Shakespeare, when the kid can't read. And obviously, there are tons of kids who are at the point of choosing between CS and Shakespeare, but it just seems like such enormous low hanging fruit to just make sure that everyone in the world can read and do basic arithmetic.
The problem is, for the education system to work, students need to be faceless cogs. The reality is that we're all interested in different things and would be better suited by an individualized education.
The fact that the majority of high school graduates are not educated enough to hold down a full time job to support themselves is proof the public education system is a joke.
One thing I’ve noticed is that as more things “advance”, there’s more that you’re supposed to already know - and an expectation (especially among people who themselves don’t really understand it) that it should somehow take _less_ time to get up to speed than it took in the past. Take machine learning, for example. You can work through a tensor flow tutorial in a day and understand how to use tensor flow to solve the problem in the tutorial or another problem close to it. If you actually want to understand how machine learning works - when it does or doesn’t apply, how to make it efficient enough to be usable, how to figure out where it went wrong when it does go wrong - you need to actually understand the statistics that’s behind it and the calculus that’s behind _that_. And that can take months or years, just to learn what you’re already “supposed” to know. I’m picking on machine learning, but I see this everywhere: I work with people who struggle to get Hibernate working because they don’t understand SQL joins, and they don’t have the time to go back and pick up “the basics” or people who can’t get Angular to work right because they don’t understand Javascript closures. As technology is made “simpler” it actually takes _longer_ to master while everybody on the outside looking in expects it to be easier to learn than before.
It's because the average American doesn't value education like they once use to. American's IMO value entertainment far more.
We're living in a time when information and the ability to gain skills is easier than ever. Google, YouTube, Public Libraries, etc. It's all there, available for anyone. But American's have it in the their mind that the only way to gain skills is by going to a school and sitting in a classroom. Perhaps, the institution is to blame for that?
Until Americans start realizing that education and being a lifetime learner is one of the most critical aspects of an economy, I'm afraid we won't see much in terms of improvements.
There's a mix of both. There are hardworking Americans - usually first- and second-generation immigrants and the older, wealthier families - that value education and hard work. And then there is the middle class, who was raised on entertainment, music, and media that romanticized apathy and disdain for education and the workplace. And there is the lower class, which has enough of its own struggles that I don't want to try to summarize their problems in just a sentence or two.
Either way, I do think that platforms like YouTube and Instagram give lots of influence to entrepreneurs - enough that Shark Tank started labeling some contestants as 'wanntrepreneurs' (wannabes) - and that the perceived value of self-driven diligence and the desire for intellect might become popular again. Actually, I think they already are starting to be popular again, especially among younger people.
> But American's have it in the their mind that the only way to gain skills is by going to a school and sitting in a classroom.
> and that the perceived value of self-driven diligence and the desire for intellect might become popular again. Actually, I think they already are starting to be popular again, especially among younger people.
I hope you're right :) Good points overall.
> Ivory towers will come crumbling down in time.
No doubt. We can't continue on the path we're currently on. It's not sustainable.
I think this is totally wrong. Americans of all levels highly value education. Babies are put on wait list for daycare as soon as pregnancy is confirmed. Parents have had their kids move in with distant relatives to be qualified for a better school district. Kids were driven dozens of miles away in the early dawn hours to get equal education. Students are eye deep in debt. Talk to any newly arrived immigrant with kids and they will talk about how education for their kids was a key driver in the move.
These meme has got to stop. Americans value education but our system is failing us in many ways.
Of course they value it. There is no argument there. I feel the culture and average person just doesn't value it at the same level they once did.
My wife is a math teacher now for 15 years (Middle school & High School). The attitudes of kids in just that time span have changed significantly. There is more emphasis by students and parents for their child to pushed to the next grade level with less effort. Teachers are put in the hot seat for kids not doing their homework or getting extra help. Both are the students responsibility. Students come to school extremely tired, which they admit is due to various hours of entertainment media consumption and staying up late.
There has been study after study showing that students are spending more time on their screens, looking at various forms of entertainment media. How can we blame them? It's addicting.
You're probably right, the system has failed them. I'm not sure how it gets fixed, but I feel strongly that people can't depend on just getting educated by institutions alone. There are other avenues that we should be promoting.
>It's because the average American doesn't value education like they once use to. American's IMO value entertainment far more.
This isn't quite true. You're claiming that America used to value education, and this part isn't true at all. America has long been considered an anti-intellectual country. Various thinkers made fun of the country in this way a century ago. There's a famous quote, normally attributed to H.L. Mencken (though it's not sure that he said it): "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people".
I'd actually hate to reinforce that stereotype. Certainly not my intent, but I can see how what I wrote certainly could paint that picture. I'll do better next time to clarify my thoughts and learn from this.
Our entertainment options are crazy addictive today compared to the past. Our standard of living has also increased significantly post-WWII. If we do in fact value entertainment over education, it's not a knock on our society.
We're just comfortable. When you get comfortable while being a dominate superpower, it's only a matter of time that another country will take your place.
This might be an unpopular thing to say on this forum, but it needs to be said:
1. The average US worker is entitled and arrogant. The "everything is belong to me" attitude is rampant.
2. "There is no shortage if you pay enough" argument - especially in high-tech - is a bunch of BS. You could be paying 200-250K salaries and still you end up with bunch of incompetents.
Re 1: Mid-western/"fly-over" state folks have been hit by large amounts of change in the last few decades. The "white working class" (especially male) was overthrown by globalization, immigration, by a renewed push for women's rights, LGBTQ rights and so-on. Wages went down, social rank went down and opportunities dwindled. No training programs, no social programs, no healthcare, nothing.
This has led to a reactionary position of "returning to the good old days" of manufacturing, of mining, and conservative ideologies. To when they could pursue the American dream. I think it can come across the way you describe but it's driven more by fear and lack of opportunity than by some intrinsic arrogance characteristic.
These are the folks who were left behind by the Democrats in 2016. The status quo genuinely wasn't working for them. Not that the alternative was better, but it was an alternative to a system that wasn't working and from their perspective they had nothing to lose. That's why we find ourselves where we do.
Re 2: "There is no shortage if you pay enough" has more to do with the zero marginal cost business models that yield staggering quantities of revenue and profit per worker. Apple makes ~$40B per year in net profit off of 123,000 employees. That means could give each of them (including FTE geniuses and sales people) a $350,000 per year raise and still break even. There's tons of head-room here.
HN has such an absurd view of the Midwest. I live in the Midwest. We have a large MS campus here along with quite a few smaller tech companies. The main economic drivers here are tech, agriculture, and oil (not manufacturing, mining, or conservative ideologies whatever that means). My group of friends averages in the 150-250k range of income which is high for the area for sure but it's evidence of the thriving technology scene. It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years. Nothing in your description comes close to accurately describing our small city in the Midwest.
> My group of friends averages in the 150-250k range of income which is high for the area for sure but it's evidence of the thriving technology scene.
That's honestly not evidence of a thriving technology scene, its evidence that you and your friends make a lot of money. Would you say you and your friends are representative of the typical worker in the Midwest?
I could see how it is low compared to farmers, but most farm income goes into operating costs. Farmer Joe could be making 500k a year but that doesn't mean he's taking home much in profit, in a lot of cases he's taking far less.
It's not just HN, I keep reading many opinions and thinkpieces that reference "the situation in the midwest" when trying to talk about jobs, job markets and localized economies that are often frustratingly and annoyingly WELL off the mark.
I live in Michigan and I've spent a bit of time in northern Indiana. My observation is that it was one of the most impoverished, destitute, and hopeless places I've ever visited, and I've also spent considerable time in sub-Saharan Africa.
I've never lived there though, so I'm curious to hear how far off the mark you consider me to be.
Allow me to be a bit self-deprecating on behalf of my fellow Hoosiers here: I'm from Indianapolis, originally. We have a rule about going into "other" Indiana:
Don't.
More seriously, no you're not really that far off. Most of the wealth concentrated in NWI specifically exists to and from Chicago. In this case, not speaking for anyone else by me and my own experiences: I have many friends who live in towns like Hammond, but with the exception of groceries and utilities spend a lot of their time (and money) over in IL (these are the well to do types, I should clarify). My job is in Chicago. Personally I'd be curious to see if anyone's ever done the numbers on how towns like Merrilville and Hammond are doing fiscally against how many residents hold full-time jobs in the second city.
Brain drain is a real thing too, if kiddo isn't going to ND, IU Northwest or State (or even traveling down to Bloomington or Lafayette), they're probably heading up 55 to Chicago and going to one of the many schools up there. And not returning because...well, there's not much here, big wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
All that said: Housing is affordable. Indianapolis is slowly transforming into something really interesting. Have fun getting there with these roads but..
Thanks for the response. I almost went to IU in Bloomington for grad school, and I still love the town. The Runcible Spoon is still top 5 breakfasts I've ever had. But outside of there, and maybe Indianapolis, the state just seems forgotten by time.
I'm an IU grad myself and 100% agree it's still one of my favorite breakfast spots; I'll be down there for the holidays and it's definitely on the list.
I went to Purdue, and when I graduated (15 years ago) my best job offer in Indiana was 30k for a 1 year contract in Fort Wayne. I took an offer at 75k/year full time in California. At the time cost of living was comparable to Indianapolis (so more expensive than FW, but not $45k/year more).
It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years
It seems unfair to look at a farmer's peak income and say that they are doing well. Of my 5 uncles that owned farms, all but one had to give up their farms because they couldn't make a living -- now they work on corporate owned farms (which includes their former land) for mid-range pay for the area (which is much lower than tech-industry pay). A few lean years can put a farmer so under water that they can't recover.
The one uncle that still runs his farm (well, he's mostly retired now, his daughter and her husband do most of the work) managed to survive because he had two strokes of luck - he sold some land to a developer for a good profit and he has some natural gas wells on his property, as part of the "rent" for the well, he gets free gas so his energy cost is nearly zero for as long as those wells keep producing.
This. I went to a small rural high school in the MidWest, attended an elite college, and thereafter lived in L.A. and Chicago. Typically, whenever someone talks about 'fly over' country I don't take them seriously. Reality is a lot more banal and unsurprising. People who denigrate fly over country are exactly the same in their inaccurate claims as the people I know from fly over country who denigrate large urban centers.
When I first moved to L.A. I had two different people (on separate occasions at Pan Pacific Park) ask me if I was from the MidWest. I said yes, but asked how they knew. Both responded, "because you're friendly." Doesn't have broader significance, but those encounters always stood out to me.
As someone who lives in a 'fly-over state', this is not accurate at all. Thanks to new tax policies companies are building/hiring more than ever and the midwest has some of the best degree values with flagship state schools.
The 2016 Democrat failures also stem from the arrogance of the coastal populations. A lot of my progressive friends didn't vote because they were sick of being looked down on because they didn't live in California or New York.
> These are the folks who were left behind by the Democrats in 2016
Left behind? Wasn’t it their official party platform to offer social programs to help retrain these “left behind” workers for new opportunities? Instead they decided to vote for the party that promised them they would bring back 19th century industry, like coal mining.
The midwest is region that values hardwork and personal responsibility. The government offering retraining programs was not going to win any proud midwestern workers. I am not arguing against retraining the workers, just the view of it over here in fly over country
Both the Republicans and Democrats support job-retraining programs, and some do already exist for a few decades now. It's not clear they have much of a track record of success, though, and they've gotten a pretty bad reputation as a result. Proposing "more job retraining" nowadays as your solution is just met by cynicism.
The Democrats did lean for a bit towards offering something stronger, but proposals like universal health insurance were voted down by the centrist/neoliberal faction in internal party politics, and didn't make it into the 2016 platform. It definitely wasn't a focus of the campaign either, which somewhat infamously chose to write off blue-collar voters and try to win by flipping moderate Republicans in affluent suburbs instead (Chuck Schumer articulated the strategy as, "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia").
>Both the Republicans and Democrats support job-retraining programs
Care to point me to campaign promises in 2016 to this effect? Or perhaps actions by the current administration in this direction? All I've seen or heard is pining for "clean coal" in various forms.
>The Democrats did lean for a bit towards offering something stronger, but proposals like universal health insurance were voted down by the centrist/neoliberal faction in internal party politics, and didn't make it into the 2016 platform
So these voters were so distressed by this that they decided to vote for the party whose stated goal was to remove health insurance from the poor and sick? This argument doesn't seem to hold water.
It long predates 2016: the Reagan admistration enacted a job-retraining program in 1982 that was supposed to help people displaced by deindustrialization, offshoring, etc., and some version of it has been supported by every administration of either party since. It doesn't seem to have worked and I don't think any of the target audience believes it will work now, so it's not much of a vote-winner as a policy, unless you can convince people you mean something really different.
>The "white working class" (especially male) was overthrown by ... no social programs, no healthcare, nothing.
They don't have social programs and healthcare because they consistently vote against anyone who proposes these things. So they're really to blame for their own problems. Sure, globalization et al have been big factors, but they shot themselves in the foot by voting against policies that would benefit them, and instead voting directly against their own economic interests.
>Re 1: Mid-western/"fly-over" state folks have been hit by large amounts of change in the last few decades. The "white working class" (especially male) was overthrown by globalization, immigration, by a renewed push for women's rights, LGBTQ rights and so-on. Wages went down, social rank went down and opportunities dwindled. No training programs, no social programs, no healthcare, nothing.
In other words, white male hegemony in the Post WW2 period especially in the US had ended, and rightly so. The rest of the world was in shambles and the US was the de facto hyperpower.
With rise of China and others, that ship has sailed and this is the new reality and people have to deal with it.
1. The average US employer is entitled and arrogant. The "everything is belong to me" attitude is rampant.
2. The idea that "There is no shortage if you pay enough" is BS is just whining because employers just really want to underpay and overwork people and are defensive anytime they aren't able to accomplish exactly that.
100% agreed. sauce for the goose == sauce for the gander.
Hence, I find the argument that "there There is no shortage if you pay enough" so entitled and arrogant. The high-tech industry is already paying salaries, that most any other professions would kill for. So what is that "magic number" when your blue-collar guy will hang up his hard-hat and switch to coding?
I am not aware of any untapped geniuses now toiling as coal miners, truck drivers or construction workers waiting for the salaries to hit a magic number for them to unleash their talents.
> I find the argument that "there There is no shortage if you pay enough" so entitled and arrogant. The high-tech industry is already paying salaries, that most any other professions would kill for. So what is that "magic number" when your blue-collar guy will hang up his hard-hat and switch to coding?
You do realize there's other high paying industries besides software engineering, right? It's not like your choices are learning to code or working at Arby's.
It's really not entitlement, it's simply people who believe that the labor pool has market-like characteristics. During recessions and downturns this certainly is used as a reason to do hiring freezes, cut pay, and lay people off. So if the labor pool acts like a market during a surplus, how could it be arrogant to assume it loosely follows those rules during a shortage; where wages should be pushed upward?
My own view is that there is no true technology labor shortage, just that technology companies are still in the process of figuring out how to maximize the productivity of their technology teams outside of "Make them work longer hours" Better decision making, better working environments for technology contributors, and more focus on nurturing technology manager talent could significantly increase productivity IMO.
> You do realize there's other high paying industries besides software engineering, right?
Not trying to be snarky, as I'm generally ignorant about most career paths, but wharvelse is there paying well. Off the top of my head I cam think of finance, doctors, and, in some cases law, butnis there anything outside of that. I know that in many industries you can end up doing pretty well, but only once you've reached the very top. Whereas the aforementioned professions can pay well from that start .
SWE isn't a BLS tracked occupation, it's a title which loosely corresponds to a higher paid segment within the Software Developer occupation; the median salary for Software Developers is $105,590, with a Bachelor's degree identified as BLS as the entry-level education.
There is no healthcare profession with the same or higher median salary that doesn't have at least as Master's degree as the entry-level education, and all healthcare occupations except Physician Assistants and Nurse Anesthetists/Midwives/Practitioners with the same or higher median salary actually have a doctoral or professional degree as the entry-level education.
There are no occupations in Business & Finance with equivalent or higher median pay. (Personal Financial Advisors, at $88,890, are the highest in that area.)
There are some engineering occupation with higher median pay, but only Aerospace, Computer Hardware, and Petroleum Engineers (Chemical gets close, at $104,910.)
So, no, there aren't lots of occupations in those three areas paid, on average, better than SWEs (or Software Developers).
There are a bunch of management occupations with higher pay, though, ironically enough, “Top Executives” is just a bit below Software Developers.
That's just how a market economy works. There are limited quantities of every resource. If you don't pay the market rate for the resource, you don't get it.
Pay what you need to or go out of business. Either way, stop your whining.
> I am not aware of any untapped geniuses now toiling as coal miners, truck drivers or construction workers waiting for the salaries to hit a magic number for them to unleash their talents.
That's not who would be most affected by a long term trend of high salaries. It's the kids who would go to biz school or wall street or law school (or med school, but that's less of a positive, hah) instead because that's where the money has been in the past.
You are arguing against yourself there. Please define "high salaries". Wall st, Doctors, IT Professionals are already the highest paid professionals, and paid anywhere between 3x to many x more than your typical blue-collar salary. Are you saying this multiple needs be even more for the "kids" to work hard and become scientists, doctors or programmers?
It's sort of basic economics that there are always people at the margin of any supply and demand curve. I was a line operator in a plastic factory for 15 years, making up to $15/hour. I had a 1480 SAT, but I saved 50% of my income so I was perfectly comfortable. I didn't believe all the extra effort it takes to do a professional job was worth it when I could just wear a uniform and bike to work. Doubling my salary makes it worth it, even in a higher-cost-of-living area.
Some of those industrial workers have built up amazing work habits that could really ramp up their programming skills if applied that way, as well.
The FAANG companies employ so many people that they anchor salaries. If you have a job offer that is more attractive than a typical FAANG offer (and paying more is one way of doing so), then you have access to a pool of labor that is practically unlimited for even a medium-sized business. 20 engineers a piece from each FAANG company is 100 engineers and they might not even notice such a small drop in employment.
I think this comes from an over correction in views of work. The younger generation has seen their parents enslaved their entire lives and know they don't want to live that life. I believe this is where the entitlement comes from, it's not that they think they deserve to be paid for nothing, but that if they're going to be forced to be imprisoned in an office all day then they want to be compensated handsomely for that sacrifice. Values are changing. Corporate American is stuck on a 60 hour work week that pays you for 40 hours and the youngest generation values life more (after seeing their parents give up everything for work) and they're also more in tune with the 3 day work week or 5 hour work day schedule. The younger generation values a healthy lifestyle while corporate America wants to work you to your death. Eventually there will be some swing back from the younger population, but I suspect most of the correction will appear on the corporate side.
That's a good point; the default is a realistic work-life balance, and American folks are willing to sacrifice for the company but only if they're compensated appropriately. This hits close to home for sure.
I think the opposite. The average US worker is not entitled or arrogant enough. The GDP has skyrocketed since the 70s, but wages have remained the same. All the wealth should be going to workers, but it's not and they don't feel entitled enough to fight for it.
I disagree. Quality of life with regards to access to a lot of important things has been decreasing dramatically. While the cost of a television has gone down significantly in the last few decades, the things that matter: education, healthcare, housing, have all skyrocketed in price. If Americans seem "entitled" or "arrogant", I imagine its simply because its become much harder access these basic necessities.
What a negative spin on a pretty neutral result. Here's the actual link [1]. The latest results are for 2017 and the prior ones for 2012/14. The government's conclusion is:
"Between 2012/14 and 2017, there were no statistically significant changes in the percentages of adults performing at each proficiency level in any of the three PIAAC domains"
So, how can you spin "no statistically significant changes" into something more click-friendly? You say U.S. workers show little improvement. Nevermind that this was in no way restricted to "workers"; the survey covers all adults ages 16 to 65, in a representative fashion.
How's the US compared to the rest of world? Here's the relevant documents: [2] for 2012/14 and [3] for 2019. Note that the format is slightly different, the first doc contains only OECD countries, while the second some more countries.
* literacy. before: the US well below OECD average, just below England and Germany and above Poland and France. Now: the US slightly above average, still just below England and Germany, and just above Poland, but well above France
* numeracy. before: well below average, only Italy and Spain worse than the US. Now: exactly the same.
* computer numeracy. before: a notch below average, wedged between Japan and Korea. Now: well above average, well above both Korea and Japan.
So, overall, either neutral (numeracy), or slight improvement (literacy) or substantial improvements (computers).
Should I dare to conclude that the most improvement the US workers have shown was in the area most relevant for 21st century?
> Americans struggle with the most basic of math skills,” NCES Associate Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a statement. “We need to better equip Americans with the numeracy skills that they need for success, starting in middle and high school.”
I can resonate with this. After starting sken projects that were going to require more CS knowledge than I have, I found in a rabbit hole completely ignorant of most things. Even simple things like doing division by hand and multivariable equations? I had completely forgotten hownto do. I was never particularly fond of math in school. Not sure why tbh, whenever I would get stuck on something the teacher was unable to explain things in a way I couldnt understand. I dont think I was stupid, hell throughout middle and high school I started programming andn hacking stuff, often finding ways out of classes to go do that instead. But by the time I was in HS, I found myself ending up in pre-calculus and calculus classes (ended up picking thats over stays because colleges would prefer it for any engineering discipline). And do to a mix of teachers who would generally pass anyone + technology ready available for me to plug in the problem in. I was constantly digesting articles that claimed this stuff would never be of use to me, that traditional education was useless for programmers and that of could slap together CRUD apps would be hired for six figures easily. I ended up deciding I wasnt going to bother with college as it was useless (in retrospect theres a lot of mixed truth to all that and I really wish I had gone to school)
And of course fast forward and I dont hardly remember simple algebra, and could flat out tell you nothing about trig, or calc. It sucks, but I dont have time to relearn all that now.
Anecdote: In high school (2004) I got a CCNA after a year of networking classes. That was pretty useful. Or would have been, had I not been into Linux as a hobby already. I’ve been in IT since then but ended up never touching a switch or router in my entire professional life.
Part of the problem I have noticed is people being brought up with the idea that a qualification is what is required to get a job when reality is usually far from the truth. It certainly might get you into the door more often that someone without but a common mindset is if I tick the qualifications boxes I will be given a job.
Tangentially related, this effects wage equality dissuasions as people get into the habit of comparing wages based on title and qualifications as opposed to value added to the company from your work. Some roles this happens to work ok for, but for lots of roles it just makes no sense, developers being a prime example.
The alternative is learning what value you add to a company, what others are earning while providing similar value and learning how to communicate that value proposition effectively. These skills are much harder to learn than getting a qualification because they are subtle and not taught at school. Schools teach you how to get qualifications.
Knowing the right people is the same as having a qualification, it's a stat boost.
Ah, but you’re confused about what “qualified” means. In addition to having the educational background and the experience, you have to be qualified to work for a third or a fourth the pay you want, be available 24/7 (and physically in the office from 7 AM to 8 PM), and never complain. Fortunately for employers, they’re recruiting from all over the world, and there’s always somebody desperate enough to be more “qualified” than you.
