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Comment by encryptluks2 | Hacker News Reader

This was during a time were unpriveleged kids didn't even go to school and child labor was the norm. Gotta love papers like this that attempt to prove something from a 100 years ago when it is really impossible to prove anything with that many variables and limited information, unless you already have a goal in mind and then it is just bias confirmation.

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While it's true that there are differences, I think one lesson we should learn from history is that that virtually every group thinks they're especially unusual and that lessons don't apply to them, and simultaneously that they're usually not so unique as they think, and the lessons usually do apply to them.

School was less common at that time, but plenty of people went to school, and if there was a marked dropoff in employablility even in just that group, it should absolutely be visible.

> and if there was a marked dropoff in employablility even in just that group, it should absolutely be visible.

Based on statistics and records from over a 100 years ago in an industrial economy ?

Yes. It's 1920, not 1620. Here's a page from a 1920 census:

https://raogk.org/census-record/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2...

Here's a tax return form from the same year:

http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/1040forms.nsf/WebByYear/1920/$...

The tax return says it is only for people making at least $5k, which would be $70k today.

If you want the actual data sources used by the paper, read the paper. I'm not trying to replicate an academic's source-finding, that would take months. I'm trying to quickly demonstrate that the US was a thoroughly bureaucratic nation by 1920, not some kind of backwater where we have to guess and infer demographics.

Do you have a better model for school closures vs. career outlook?

I'm hugely skeptical of our education system today with all the standardized and focus-busting largely irrelevant curriculums. Also the sleep deprivation can't be any good. Personally kids have thrived away from the classroom but maybe we're unusual.

Yep, kids don't have time to be kids anymore, even compared to generations 20, 30 years ago (back then, when school was over (1pm, maybe 2pm max), you were done with school, and did kid stuff.... now, with parents pushing their kids into extracurricular activities and all that stuff, their lives suck a lot more.

On the other hand, imagine being a first grader, unable to write or read, just coming from kindergarten, where most of the time was play-time, and due to something, you can't comprehend, you're put infront of a laptop with Zoom turned on, and your parents in a huge financial crisis suddently.

It's not even that, it's that education wasn't as important back then. Most people didn't even graduate high school. College definitely wasn't a thing for most. So who cares if you miss half a year, you're going to go work in the shipyards or factory.

The level of education required to do anything was also much lower. Even 20 years ago you could get a job programming without a degree but now you a PHD just to get past HR. Times have changed.

Dang, I guess I should quit then, they shouldn't have let me in the door...

It was a generalisation. But it’s true some places bin your cv if you don’t have a degree even if you’ve got heaps of experience.

The bias towards accreditation was much higher 20 years ago than it is today.

TFA is choosing and fitting facts to support a narrative.

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