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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

If I was a billionaire I think I'd create boarding schools near urban ghettos and offer pre-K through 12th grade education for free to groups of kids who would otherwise have almost no chance in life. Have the kids go home on the weekends (if they want) but be able to control their environment the rest of the time.

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Something like this has been tried before. It results in the students being institutionalized and prepared for prison.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/boarding-school-syndrome

Maybe lifting the people of the urban ghettos out of the poverty trap might be a good start.

With little to no education that is quite difficult. There is a serious cultural failing occurring in urban ghettos and until people want to discuss it, nothing will change. For an excellent look at how culture has destroyed a School System and Prevented its change watch Dan Rather's "A National Disgrace" a 2 hour special on the failures of Detroit Public Schools and the culture controlling them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xypiZ-hqdY

Maybe, but single moms with only a high school education who homeschool, will place their kids int he top 60% of publicly educated kids.

Nothing matters more than parental involvement. And if every conversation about public education centered around "we can't do much if you don't care about little Johnny's education" maybe parents would start doing more. I'm not sure that being ambivalent about your child's education isn't a severe form of child neglect.

Interesting extension might be to offer jobs as well to 12+ year olds (apprenticeship/training). Essentially JROTC or something taken to an extreme.

A combination of a "total institution" for children, combined with a clear path to a good job after, would probably be appealing. I don't think anyone but government could legally do a lot of this, but a local or state government might be able to provide cover.

Healthcare as a field might be a good domain...viewed as "good", high amounts of government expense already (va, Medicare/Medicaid), a wide range of ultimate skill jobs ( orderlies through types of nurses and techs to doctors to research), etc.

If I were a poor parent in the ghetto, and I could get my kids into "work at local hospital: pre pre med coursework plus objective standards for admission into various education later, and jobs", I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Let's hope you're never a billionaire then. Poverty is a mindset. Yes, intense coaching from someone who cares can make a difference but I'm going to venture a guess that no one actually cares about those kids.

Yes, poverty is a mindset but not monolithically. Poor people make decisions around finances just like every other type of person in the western world. It's not clear who "no one actually cares" refers to, but in my experiences communities and households living in poverty care deeply about education. They just often lack the $$$ resources to supplement a crappy public school education. I'd be more inclined to agree if I (or you) could point to sustained mobility of populations out of generational poverty sans economic or political interventions, but I can't.

My statement wasn't clear. It's common for people to think they know better than the parents and that the best thing they can do for the kids is to take them away from their families. As another poster stated, such interventions institutionalize children.

That's what I meant. If it were as simple as "oh, you shouldn't raise your own kids" the current school system would have done its job.

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