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Comment by champagnois | Hacker News Reader

Three things:

(1) One genius inventor like Newton is worth more than an infinite number of idiots. No exceptions.

(2) If education becomes a meaningless credential where everyone gets a participation trophy -- then educational attainment itself will be completely disregarded as a metric used to compare individuals. Thus, this drive to use the resources of education (while it is currently a prestigious metric) to try and balance for differences in the cognitive abilities given to us by DNA is going to harm the reputation of the credential altogether.

(3) When accreditated, public education is reduced to a daycare, the private sector WILL fill the void by producing an alternative system while also calling for defunding the public system as it had been rendered useless by "good intentioned" radical race marxists.

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Have you considered that Jordan Peterson is part of the problem with the education system? I doubt he could pass this math test given the arguments he’s trying to make about marxists.

I do not think it is worthwhile to engage in cults of personality. I do not obsess over him or anyone else (outside of my family).

While the man is accomplished and respected, his ideas are just ideas that he puts out there with the hope that we consider them and improve upon them.

You question his aptitude for math. Ok. I see no reason to have a thought on that particular matter.

The idea that the education system has a problen at all is an idea that suggests the education system isn't achieving a particular goal. The differences in perspectives all come from having a different goal.

Here is a breakdown of the differences in goals:

(1) Marxists in our society believe education's goal should be to achieve equal credentials for all people -- they view the contest and competition aspect as a negative.

Standardized tests inevitably reveal the different levels of intelligence between groups despite their afforded equal opportunities(which then makes a good argument for why we have disparate outcomes and is thus an ideological threat to marxists).

(2) Some marxists also view the aspect of actually training people to reach their maximal potential (IE fostering the genius of someone like Newton or Einstein) to be irrelevant to their goals. They just do not care about this aspect. They would rather advanced math classes be cancelled than see their ideology be dismantled by standardized scientific testing.

(3) A rather silent group of, say, "meritocrats" believes people are different, differences are beautiful, and differences create bellcurves of both athletic prowess and brain prowess. Standardized testing is the only way to assess people and see where their brain falls on the intelligence bellcurve. Education is valued as a way to foster our civilization's geniuses so that they reach their full potential.

Your view of equity is pretty narrow. There are loads of Non-marxists across the spectrum of political leaning and communitarian to libertarian that support equity of opportunity provided by educational access.

People who disagree with you aren't universally Marxists, though people with Marxists philosophy may also disagree with you.

With which part do you disagree?

Your usage of "marxist" to describe the people who push for equal outcome to the detriment of everything else.

Its just a label that is pretty universally applied to people with that mindset.

I have lived under communist governments. It is what it is, even if you refuse the label.

People are innately different. Marxism, in all iterations, has always been about blaming the different outcomes on some narrative of oppression, be it class or race.

While equal opportunity is great, equal outcome is a stupid and bad idea which should be opposed, lest we shackle ourselves to the lowest common denominator.

To avoid distractions I would therefore prefer a better label than "Marxist" that doesn't come with all the historical baggage, and is more precise.

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