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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately you can't really fix students not caring about their education

You absolutly can, it should be the easiest thing in the world.

From birth give them caregivers with the time and ability to start learning early. Give them someone who will read to them daily, who will show them numbers and letters and counting.

Send them to a good pre-school with motivated teachers who are able to teach them math and language and cause and effect without them realizing they are being taught.

Send them to schools where they can do their assignments during the day, either in class or in an afterschool program. Give them tutors to help them in subjects they struggle with.

In other works, give them what every middle and upper class kid gets. It would do wonders.

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If that were the case then Asians wouldn't comprise 50% of school populations where affirmative action is banned even though there are far more middle and upper class whites in those states (California, Washington).

I don't think you've experienced what "caring about education" truly means. I mean that you are held to a high standard from a very early age. No B's allowed or you get an ass-whooping. You are expected to rank highly in any competitions or standardized testing. You're expected to take the most challenging classes possible and do well in them. Your parents constantly compare you to those better than you and motivate you to become better than them.

Those are much higher standards than what you're proposing, which is to just give them tutoring. They're things that you don't get by funding more resources, but by a certain form of family cultural norms. You can't buy culture with money.

This is not "caring about education" in a way that I think really helps anyone. I cared about education and didn't have these things. I honestly don't see how anyone can look at e.g. the SK system and cram schools and the like and think "Yeah! _They_ really know how to do it!"

Also, it's not clear that this actually leads to better outcomes for South Koreans either if you look at any sort of economic data.

Three quarters of South Koreans are college graduates but only 30% of jobs require a college education.

> No B's allowed or you get an ass-whooping. You are expected to rank highly in any competitions or standardized testing. You're expected to take the most challenging classes possible and do well in them. Your parents constantly compare you to those better than you and motivate you to become better than them.

I'm not sure that the world in which we give 90% of children depression is really the ideal we're striving for here.

It all comes down to being willing, as a society, to devote adequate resources to everyone, and in particular to every child, regardless of circumstance.

It also come down to providing better options to folks who don’t want to be or shouldn’t be parents. Lots of kids being born into homes that will fail them, even if you shoveled fiat into the household.

(from experience as a volunteer guardian ad litem)

That is one thing, and it is important, but what I said encompasses a lot more people and needs, so I think it doesn't quite "come down to" merely helping this one specific set of "problematic" adults you personally have some experience with. Maybe some problems are directly caused by what you said.

"Shoveling fiat into the household." We had the biggest drop in child poverty during the pandemic (too bad it's temporary), because we gave people money. If you want to limit the supply of dollars raise taxes on the top, that's where all the "fiat" (lol) ends up after just a couple steps.

What I said is much more general: our society must devote sufficient resources that all children have the opportunity to flourish.

Sorry I read "all" but you wrote "also", which is more in accord. Sorry!

Nevertheless I think what you said is a special case of what I said.

Society needs less kids overall imho, based on the quantity of capable family units fit to parent. Parenting and children should be a privilege, not a right.

More money doesn’t fix terrible parents/households, and they’re numerous to say the least.

People have fewer children as economic opportunities increase.

All over the world birth rates are falling—even India is approaching below-replacement.

So you can probably move on from your concern, and focus on getting the benefits of economic development to everyone, problem solved!

Yes, unfortunately it's quite easy to have them and not so easy to raise them.

In the words of a famous poet:

Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés, mais personne sait comment on fait des papas.

Make it easy to get contraception.

Make it easy for young men to get and then reverse vasectomies.

Invest much more in the education system and children in general.

Make it easy to get an abortion.

How would this work in practice? Who would pay and who would provide the service? Wouldn't it make sense for the parents to provide this service, or would there be forced conscription either in the form of forced labor (directly i.e. slavery) or forced labor (indirectly via taxation)?

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