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Comment by tsotha | Hacker News Reader

If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.

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No, "difficult to teach" often just means kids who have not had a proper meal the previous night because their family cannot afford it. Try paying attention when you are chronically hungry and you understand one of many problems very easily.

Uh huh. How many of those kids are there, you figure, on a percentage basis?

I just did some wikipedia sleuthing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#P...

> The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty: 22% of all people under age 18 13.7% of all people 19–21 and 9% of all people ages 65 and older.

So if we take 2/10 children and subtract 2 kids from the denominator because their parents could afford to send them to private school, you get 1/4 of students in an average school. I imagine the ratio is even worse in most inner cities and certain rural areas.

Poverty statistics in the US don't include government programs. How many of those kids are hungry after welfare and food stamps?

Aren't government programs in the US globally famous for being woefully inadequate and embarrassing? Who brings up America's social safety net in defense of the upper class? It's clear you aren't letting this topic go but this isn't the place for it.

>Aren't government programs in the US globally famous for being woefully inadequate and embarrassing?

Only to people who haven't actually looked at them. US welfare programs are certainly adequate to ensure nobody goes hungry. If children are going hungry it means their parents are spending money earmarked for food on something else.

That's what foodstamps, child-aid, etc are all for. Every country has it under different names. There are even soup-kitchens all over the place for the needy.

That, and they get free meals at the schools themselves.

If you want to use such excuses for disruptive students, then you have to actually fix the real problem. Vote for it. Petition for it. Protest. Call for a referendum.

I don't disagree food is a problem. On the other hand there are plenty of "difficult to teach kids" doing very little but causing problems who eat just fine.

Source: I was a public school student once.

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