Comment by mmarq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmarq | Hacker News Reader

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> Each child, like each adult, has different motivations in life. Not all children are equally motivated for schoolwork.

Ok, but you haven't answered my question

> No. You need to look at confounding variables, not just race. It could be that a large percentage of black children in this area come from poor families and must therefore work part-time jobs after school instead of studying. That’s just one example of many possibilities. “Correcting” the problem by putting these children into this special school does nothing to change their poverty: they still must work after school and can’t study. And that means they can’t keep up with the other children in this privileged school. Your solution is probably to make the schoolwork easier and force everyone to suffer the same fate. My solution is to give that family money so their high school kid doesn’t have to work to help support his family.

Children not being able to write a good essay when they are 10 because they have to work, is quite a degenerate case and I hope it is not the norm for those who are not admitted at this special school. The majority of 10-year-old kids, who aren't employed in violation of child labour laws, are smart enough to attend highschool without the need to make schoolwork easier.

> In reality, your solution is the one that gets chosen because of the wokeness movement.

This wokeness movement is not something I'm familiar with or affiliated to.

> Ok, but you haven't answered my question

Your question was “Do these 10 year old not care about school because there is something intrinsically wrong about them”.

I did indirectly. To be more explicit, I suspect the common answer is no: They do not care about school because they have other, more pressing needs besides school.

> when they are 10 because they have to work

If you want to focus solely on 10 year olds and not teenagers, and ignore that I wrote working is “just one example of many possibilities” , then you are probably purposely missing my point.

I agree most 10 year olds are not working. Substitute “working” or “poverty” with some other problem at home and you’ll get the same result. Alcoholic parent, drug addicted parent, parent with major mental illness, homeless parent, absent parents, foster home life, etc.

Use your imagination.

> Your question was “Do these 10 year old not care about school because there is something intrinsically wrong about them”. > My indirect answer is not necessarily, although there may be some for whom the answer is yes. I suspect the more common answer is no: They do not care about school because they have other, more pressing needs besides school.

So, the answer is: no, these kids are not broken.

> If you want to focus solely on 10 year olds and not teenagers, and ignore that I wrote working is “just one example of many possibilities” , then you are probably purposely missing my point.

You said kids can't write essay because they have to work. It sounds rather absurd to me.

> I agree most 10 year olds are not working. Substitute “working” or “poverty” with some other problem at home and you’ll get the same result. Alcoholic parent, drug addicted parent, parent with major mental illness, homeless parent, absent parents, foster home life, etc.

Fine, so we are excluding them because they are poor or disadvantaged, which was my initial point. And we are calling it "merit" because we ask them to write an essay.

> these kids are not broken.

> we are calling it "merit"

It sounds like you’re arguing about who deserves the prestige of going to Lowell rather than who actually benefits and contributes to the experience of attending classes at Lowell, which is the most populous school in San Francisco and has fairly large class sizes and tough grading.

Instead of pretending that all students are equally prepared for class or that every teacher is prepared to serve every kind of student at the same time, reformers should try to figure out exactly what the students such as the ones in the article need for motivation. It doesn’t mean that they lack "merit" or that people who don’t want to go to a competitive college are bad people. It’s ok to acknowledge that different people have different needs.

> It sounds like you’re arguing about who deserves the prestige of going to Lowell rather than who actually benefits and contributes to the experience of attending classes at Lowell, which is the most populous school in San Francisco and has fairly large class sizes and tough grading.

As we agreed that social economic background is a major predictor of admission, claiming that poor kids can’t benefit nor contribute to the experience of attending this school is a weirdly classist statement. It is also based on the assumption that to be able to read 3 novels in a year and to learn the cosine law, one must be a particularly gifted kid and not just a random 10, 13 or 16 year old.

Highschool prestige is a concept that I understand but I that I don't accept. Like I understand why some primitive tribes practiced human sacrifices, but I wouldn’t let them do such thing near me. So I’m not arguing for that. But if we accept that highschool prestige increases your chances in life, then state schools should distribute this privilege equally.

> Instead of pretending that all students are equally prepared for class or that every teacher is prepared to serve every kind of student at the same time, reformers should try to figure out exactly what the students such as the ones in the article need for motivation. It doesn’t mean that they lack "merit" or that people who don’t want to go to a competitive college are bad people. It’s ok to acknowledge that different people have different needs.

I insist that we should reason on why some minorities are significantly underrepresented. We may conclude that only gifted kids can attend this very important school and that kids from minorities are less likely to be gifted, but I wouldn’t be too sure of either.

If we find out that, say, blacks are significantly underrepresented because they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, then the admission process is at least classist, knowingly or otherwise. We may also argue that it perpetuates class and racial differences. Claiming that these kids have inherently different needs is like saying that my child should become an engineer because I’m well off, so he needs to learn advanced maths and whatever, and these children should serve food and clean toilets because they are poor, and they only need to learn who’s the boss. This is, like it or not, very very classist.

> then state schools should distribute this privilege equally.

No.

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