Is the US education system in a state of collapse, and what caused it? | Hacker News Reader

Is the US education system in a state of collapse, and what caused it?

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I have several friends who work or worked in schools, and they all have told me that students lack respect. They cuss out teachers on a regular basis, are insubordinate, and do not respect authority.

Teachers cannot discipline the students, either. Doing so gets them calls from angry parents, or in trouble with the administration that got said calls. The above factors cause people who want to teach to stop. It is brutal to their mental health to be disrespected constantly and be powerless to do anything about it.

I believe children are mostly reflections of their parents. If a child is not respectful, my hunch is that their parent(s) are not respectful. I’m curious to hear from parents: how do you ensure (if you do) that your children are respectful toward their teachers? How do your fellow parents do so? When I was a kid, the idea never occurred to me to be disrespectful toward teachers. I don’t think my parents ever had to tell me to be respectful toward my teachers. It came naturally, probably because I saw my parents be respectful toward my teachers. I of course saw children in my classes who weren’t, and I assume their parents were the same. I’m inclined to think something changed, though, since the disrespect sounds much more prevalent today. Or maybe I’m hearing about it more since I’m older, now.

You point to a key issue I have heard from multiple teachers: They have basically no options for a kid that is out of control.

If a kid is punching and kicking them or another student they are not supposed to touch the student they are supposed to remove all of the other students and call support. Depending on the support person, some of them are unwilling to pick up and remove a student. Everyone is concerned with being sued. Admins don’t want to suspend or expel because that is a bad data point. And how good they are at their job is based on data. They don’t want to remove them from the classroom because what else do they do with that kid? And removing a child from the classroom makes the parent complain, anyway, so it is a lose, lose.

This leads to teachers feeling option-less and it only takes one child to basically hold an entire classroom hostage.

The comparison is when I was a student and those students existed but were quickly removed from the classroom, usually physically as they threw punches at the support person and anyone else within arm length.

This is a dangerous line. As often, when people speak of not getting respect from others, they describe not getting subservience. Especially from kids. Especially, again, when it is authority speaking

It’s ridiculous to equate asking kids to be cooperative in class to subservience. If education is slavery, what alternative do you propose? Do we just let them live in the streets and scrap to survive? How does that benefit them to grow up and enter a society they know nothing about?

I didn't say it is slavery. That is on you. Though, I would not be shocked to see these complaints more in minority heavy environments.

My assertion is only to be careful with complaints on respect. All too often the folks that are complaining on it haven't done their part in giving it, either.

And I make no claims that this is a new or unique perspective. 30 years ago, I recall books and shows already touching it.

> I would not be shocked to see these complaints more in minority heavy environments.

This is almost surely factual. Why do you suppose that is?

No single reason. I do assert that respect is reciprocate, and all too often minorities are not respected.

Ehh. I don't want to be snarky, so let me politely ask you if you have any kids of your own or if you work with kids on a daily basis?

Yes. And yes. Good try, though.

In that case a more in-depth insight would be welcome.

I can't lay claim to easy insight here. My push is that thinking it is "lack of respect" is itself looking for an easy answer.

If I have anything close to insight, it is if you want respect from kids, start respecting the kids. And don't have rose colored glasses to how much respect we showed as kids. We seem to put this narrative forward that we followed rules way more closely as kids than we did. Which is unfortunate not the least because we had way fewer rules in many cases.

Can you provide proof of what you're saying? Respect does not equal authoritarianism. That's an extreme stance to take.

My experience growing up in the US south. I almost certainly counted as a respectful student. But I also saw what was around me. As a parent now, I have seen disrespectful kids, sure. Oddly, they are rarely "disrespectful" to me. Certainly no more so than my peers. Considerably less so than older folks, oddly.

I agree with you that often people conflate respect and subservience with respect to kids. However, aren’t both useful (and probably necessary?) in a classroom environment? I don’t see why it is dangerous to expect children to, within reason (i.e. on matters pertinent to their behavior and education), listen to their teachers. Both respect and subservience are lacking, based on what I have heard from my friends in education.

For instance, students cussing out teachers is a lack of respect, and has nothing to do with subservience. Students talking or distracting others while the teacher is educating also shows a lack of respect. Students bullying each other also shows a lack of respect. Again, none of these have anything to do with subservience and are reasonable behaviors to prohibit in a classroom.

On the other hand, there are many situations in education that require subservience of the student to the teacher. For instance, if the teacher asks or tells a student to stop talking during class, it is important that the student listen to them. If the teacher tells a student to complete their homework, an in-class assignment, or a test, it is again important that the student listen to the teacher. If the student does not listen, either their education or the education of their peers is hurt.

I’d be curious to hear more about what you are referring to when you say “this is a dangerous line”.

They can both be useful, maybe? And I'd go farther down one of your lines and say I'm way more worried when kids don't respect each other than I am when they don't show respect to older people. Oddly, this often plays out in many situations where the adults also don't respect each other in the same place.

Cussing is an odd one. Don't go out of your way for disrespectful language, sure. But also don't go out of your way to be offended by the way people say things. Is like my family getting upset when they see someone with blue hair. Just, why is that a concern and somehow disrespect from them?

Further complicating this, I grew up where we viewed Bill Cosby as the epitome of respect, and Eddie Murphy as not. And yet here we are, knowing what we know today. (I also cussed like a sailor, to the point that all of my friends would actually chide me on it, yet I was a very respectful person by all other measures.)

The assignments and such is even less stable. There is no evidence that doing homework helps. There is evidence that people that can easily do homework do well. Again, maybe. Often that is evidence that people with help do well. Those without help, do not. (And I don't mean "parents that did the homework." It could be as simple as "has a stable homelife.")

For the majority of these things, though, it is a tough environment for everyone involved. And all too often worrying about it at the scenes we are talking about do very little to help or improve situations. There are as many scenes where the kids don't show respect because they weren't given respect. It is reciprocal.

So, to specifically go about the what I mean makes it dangerous. It is years and years of seeing folks say things like "if only ___ would respect authority, they wouldn't be in this situation." It can feel very true. But it is often ignoring as much as it is looking at.

Thanks for the in depth response. I agree with you that often when kids do not respect each other, they’re in an environment where they are not respected or see others not respecting each other. Often this is from a bad home life, in my experience. There is little that the school system can do to help that. Though it is worth mentioning that all teachers and staff in a school should show exemplary behavior; it is not realistic to expect respect without showing it.

I should be more specific when I say cussing. I don’t care much about students swearing. I was like you in that I was “respectful” by most measures, but by the time I was a teenager, I was swearing every sentence. I thought it was cool. That’s mostly harmless, IMO. However, I feel for my sister who reports students calling her a “fucking bitch”, “cunt”, etc., when she is in class and asks them to, e.g., not use their phones. I’m not there to offer judgment on how respectful she is or is not to students, but I assume that is an unwarranted escalation on the part of the students.

As one sibling comment pointed out, and you pointed out, there are problems that can be solved that may lead to more respect shown by both students and teachers. Education has not kept up with changes in society, and I’m sure all parties involved feel that.

For instance, phones weren’t an issue in class when I was in school, because phones didn’t exist! If they did, they had 10 digits, a #, and a * button on them. Also, education practices have failed to produce results for students. I’m sure students feel disrespected that they are having their time wasted by teachers doing assignments that don’t benefit them.

Both of the above are problems that can be identified and solved without pointing out any blame. However, maybe that’s the reason they aren’t being solved; some people are more interested in pointing a finger than solving problems.

Perhaps these are underlying reasons, but the fact is that >90% of kids want to behave. And that >90% of parents want their kids to behave. But teachers just aren't on the side of parents. Reactions of teachers to my kids were always somewhere between disappointing and infuriating.

Also, as a rule, teachers do not know their subject matter these days. Whilst I do remember their knowledge being less than perfect in the past, it was not like this. I understand teacher pay is a factor, but I refuse to believe these people have even the capability of educating kids.

Luckily good teaching materials are more accessible than ever as well, it's just ... all of them are outside of school.

I suspect women have taken verbal abuse for a long time. Is a problem, but not new to current youth. Would love if they find a solution, though.

Hard to argue phones aren't changing things. I doubt they are as instrumental as often pushed. Remember when it was common for grade schoolers to smoke? Chewing tobacco was also huge.

My gut is things are more widely visible today. And even then, I'm not clear on what has changed.

> I have several friends who work or worked in schools, and they all have told me that students lack respect. They cuss out teachers on a regular basis, are insubordinate, and do not respect authority

Has there ever been a time when this was not a common complaint? If there was an award for “most consistent complaint in recorded history”, I think this would win.

This isn't an excuse, but maybe part of the problem is that schools haven't evolved in the way they teach.

Information doesn't move the way it used to, kids brains and attention spans are different, so maybe tying kids to chairs and lecturing them doesn't work like it used to and teachers are paying the price for it.

Not saying the teachers are to blame or that parents aren't part of the problem, just that there may be a bigger issue in play as well.

From a parent's perspective.

> Teachers cannot discipline the students, either. Doing so gets them calls from angry parents, or in trouble with the administration that got said calls.

Neither can parents discipline much, especially in public and particularly fathers. Everyone is a critic today, if you look at your own child wrong there is a call and complaint against you to DCFS or the police. It's not just teachers.

The foundational issue though is feminism, it's a long term social experiment running on live subjects before you. The results are not good.

Particular to child behavior is children are sent to daycare/preschool/kindergarten too early. They need more years to learn from and model healthy adults before they are thrown in with a bunch of children who have not matured themselves.

Start school several years later. Send mothers back home for those years. Things will improve.

I don't think that there will be a collapse. The linked post [1] has this telling line:

    Because I’m in a very very blue state and city

Emphasis on city. Every time I've read something about how the education system in the United States is on the verge of collapse or is collapsing, it's been from a teacher (or has quoted teachers) in a city school district. City school districts are in dire shape. But that's because many city school districts are massively overbuilt for the amount of children they need to serve, and politicians are loath to shutter schools. So these school districts chug along, spending more and more money on buildings and facilities that are hardly used, while, at the same time shortchanging teachers and the education of children.

Suburban school districts are smaller, have more children (which equates to more funding) and generally have newer buildings and facilities, so they're not in the same dire shape as city school districts. For that reason, you hear much less about them. After all, who wants to write a news story that reads, "Okay, everything is actually functioning as it more or less should?" This leads to a mistaken impression that all school districts everywhere are on the verge of breakdown when in reality the failures are localized to city districts like San Francisco or Chicago.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/11620il/the_us_is...

The orignal poster on Reddit isn't even in the US based on their post history. I've seen this happen a bunch on Reddit where non-Americans astroturf as Americans (and Americans astroturf as Europeans) on Reddit either as lulz or sockpuppet accounts.

But I can attest your statement. My mom works in education and it's open knowledge among teachers and certified staff that you start off in a city district for 1-2 years to get the no experience stink off you and then you go to a better suburban school district. PDs do the same as well.

I live in a smaller red city and it's as bad at select schools as it is in SF. Generally public education is horrendous here and everyone with an above median income sends their kids to private school.

Is the smaller red city demographically wealthy/upper middle class like Ft Worth, or a demographically working class/poorer city like Dayton? Class/family wealth plays a MASSIVE impact on school district performance, because richer parents have more time and ability to intercede in their kids education.

When people mention San Francisco, it's better to compare the families sending kids to public schools with those in Dayton tbh. Parents who can afford to usually leave San Francisco when they start a family so they can send their kids to better public school districts.

Also, like I've said a thousand times on HN - the primary city by population and economy in the Bay Area is SAN JOSE, not San Francisco. San Francisco barely had any tech employment until the 2010s, lost most of it's banking+law employment in 2008, and the union port jobs in the 90s. The biggest employer in SF is the city.

I think a lot of it is just that cities still have functional newspapers to report when schools are failing and the suburbs don't.

Most suburbs are reported on by the newspapers of the neighboring city when something newsworthy occurs, educational or otherwise.

Does funding matter? <insert one of a dozen studies here showing little relationship between student funding and outcomes, across and within countries>

One of the issues with many of those studies is that they track per-pupil spending and track educational outcomes without actually verifying that the per-pupil spending is actually being spent on pupils. If a significant fraction of the per pupil spending is being spent on facilities maintenance, then the water, so to speak, is evaporating before it reaches the mouths of the thirsty.

The problem I believe is three fold:

1. Lack of discipline.

Parents are less likely to discipline their children and don’t want schools to either. Admins are reluctant to remove problem students from classrooms and even more reluctant to suspend or expel them because of…

2. Metrics and Data

Around the early 2000 the fed, states, and districts became obsessed with data. The problem is the people making decisions are not researchers and even if they were they would probably still go down the wrong route because they fail to identify causations vs correlation.

So schools are obsessed with minimizing referrals, suspensions, and expulsions because they are correlated with low graduation rates. They are obsessed with test scores. So much so that much of the school year is spent prepping for or taking standardized tests.

3. Lack of Backing from Community

Parents are questioning everything teachers are doing and in my school district some parents are convinced teachers are trying to turn their kids trans or queer. Book banning is at an all time high from parents who have never read the books they are trying to ban.

> Metrics and Data

When I taught, we considered all the standardized testing as weighing your cows more often to increase their weight.

An issue often overlooked by the establishment pertains to the erosion of democracy's fundamental principles as a consequence of a deteriorating education system. This makes me thing it is intentional. There is at least correlation with voting patterns.

IMO it's emergent more than intentional, in the sense that our slide towards authoritarianism gives extremists more power to attack institutions that dissent. I don't think any of the villains responsible for degradation of democracy are strategic enough to have multi-decade plans.

I'm not sure it needs to work beyond getting people prepared enough to consume advertising.

As long as you can import talent and expand the public funding of private education there's little incentive in America to improve public education.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/betsy-devos-a...

Finland has no private education. The rich elite have to send their kids to the same public schools as everyone else.

The rationale is the rich elite will demand that the public school system will maintain education standards. And the converse that if the rich can send their kids to private schools why would they care about the standards of public schools?

This is a post on r/Teachers so it's not surprising they don't talk about gatekeeping via unnecessary but mandatory certifications. Teachers are directly responsible for this via the teachers unions.

Just an anecdote and not necessarily representative of the majority, in certain areas, teaching has taken on cult-like characteristics. Teachers engage in a radical cycle of self-sacrifice, constantly striving for virtuous superiority over their colleagues, often to the detriment of their own financial and emotional well-being. This mindset justifies exponentially increasing demands each year, requiring teachers to sacrifice more of themselves in the name of what is best for the children. District administrations, influencers, unions, and politicians seem to be enabling this as much as possible in order to cut costs (financially and risk). If one questions this approach, they may be labeled not only as ineffective in their profession, but also as morally deficient for putting children's futures at risk. From afar it appears as toxic nightmare that undermines a better education system.

Is the US education system in a state of collapse ?

* yes

What caused it ?

* greed, union busting, no one wants to pay taxes. This started with Pres Reagan, continued on with Bush, Clinton and went into overdrive with Bush II.

* Racism, I do not want my kid going to school with "those people".

* Now in some places we have the war on Edu, where if it is not in the Bible all facts are false. Plus some States want to teach falsehoods when it comes to what really happened in US history.

So we have a case were rich people are sending their children to private schools and trying to get their Taxes redirected to these private schools. This just started to work in many places and now and Public Education quality is falling again.

Not to mention good teachers are leaving in some states because to teach real facts they risk prison and/or hefty fines.

Of course a forum for teachers does not admit they are part of the problem.

The teachers can only teach what the admins allow and only discipline in the way the admins allow. They don't have many degrees of freedom.

Yeah, I had the same thought.

It couldn't possibly be that teachers' unions are the problem!

Can you elaborate?

Perhaps it was a reference to teachers' unions advocating school closure during the pandemic, which could have affected education?

"The dispute echoes those that occurred earlier in the pandemic when some of the nation’s biggest school districts battled unions over school reopening plans and safety precautions in classrooms."[1]

[1] https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2022/conversation-teacher-stri...

Multiple comments complain they are blamed and multiple comments complain about pay. Yet education spending is at its highest (relative to GDP).

I agree with them about bad parents and mobile phones/social media, though.

High education spending doesn't equate to good teacher pay. The pay for administrative staff has gone through the roof.

IMHO, teachers are underpaid for what they do and what we expect of them.

> High education spending doesn't equate to good teacher pay. The pay for administrative staff has gone through the roof.

Am I reading this chart correctly? It seems to indicate that US teachers' salaries are at #6 in the OECD countries (behind Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, and Australia):

https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm

Surprisingly Finland is at #17.

And this chart [2] seems to indicate that administrative expenditures have consistently accounted for around 40% of public elementary and secondary education expenditures since 1980. However they were lower in 1970 (32%), so there seems to have been some expansion in the 1970s.

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_236.10.a...

When I taught in the San Bernardino City Unified School District there were more administrator staff than teachers.

Ah, still the case: https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?I...

Apparently Canada spends less on its Public Education System than the United States but teachers salaries are higher in Canada. US Public School System is top heavy with administrators by comparison.

It's unAmerican if the managers aren't being paid 10-100 times what their underlings are being paid.

Higher education is also more expensive than ever, but most of that money is going to bloated administration positions and programs that didn’t exist a decade ago. Just because money is being spent doesn’t mean it’s being spent on teachers.

so your argument about teachers being part of the problem is that high investment is a leading factor in the collapse of our education system, and teacher salaries, which are about 3/4 of the average salary, are to blame for this high investment?

Sorry just trying to understand. They are part of the problem because they complain about how much they get paid?

Correct me if I’m making an incorrect assumption, but you seem to imply that they get paid too much because of the spending relative to GDP?

I had an incredibly bad experience going through public schools in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin in the 1980s and 90s. I did my best to hide it, but I began suffering from gender dysphoria starting at age 7. I was known by my classmates as the weird Jewish kid, and I stuck out badly in every possible way. I was a year younger than most of my classmates because I skipped third grade.

I was bullied for years and treated as a behavioral problem by my teachers. I hated every minute of school. It has always been a prison for children who are different.

My mother became a substitute teacher for the Madison Metro School District in the late 1990s, after I had graduated. As she learned about the way these institutions are actually run, she saw the need to apologize for sending me to school instead of just letting me stay at home to learn what I wanted to, at my own pace.

At a minimum, the truancy laws need to be abolished and you should be automatically exempted from property taxes if you homeschool your children. We have the remote work and the Internet now, so there is absolutely no humane justification for forcing all children into the same cruel torture chamber just for making the mistake of being born in the United States.

I am 42 years old now, so I've had decades to reflect on all this and consider my position very carefully. Edugenic harm is very, very real.

Should I be automatically exempt from property tax if I don't have school aged kids yet/anymore?

Please have compassion for those harmed by what is by nearly all accounts a heartless, unaccountable institution. My comment is not substantially about taxes at all, and I mention that as a remedy knowing full well that the chances of it coming true are close to zero. What's the harm in letting a girl express her utopian dream? The worst that could happen is that I drag us forward a little bit

I came off harsher than intended.

I'm actually all for everyone's property taxes being spent per kid not per school to see to their education. So a private school that is acredited (insert details here) would get funds from that pool too.

Saying that it should be contingent on learning outcomes sounds nice, but that's clearly not enforced in public schools today anyhow.

I was in school when the change started. In 1970-71 I was in 8th grade. And up until that time I never saw any disrespect toward teachers ever really.. students were paddled if they misbehaved.. and then in 1971-72 everything changed.. I know why it changed but I can't really say anything here because of censorship.. but now you know when it changed

The US seems to be having a general collapse on multiple fronts due to the apparent unwillingness to tax corporations and the wealthy to a reasonable level. I’ve heard the same thing about infrastructure.

Yet European nations that are not as rich as the U.S. seem to be having issues but doing ok on healthcare, infrastructure and public education.

Can you be a bit more specific with what you mean by "collapse"? When we talk about a bridge or a building collapsing, we're talking about a very obvious and immediate mode of failure. Are you using "collapse" to mean "noticeable degradation"?

FWIW, the European nation I'm from (France) is definitely not doing OK on healthcare and public education (and debatable on infrastructure). Hard to compare with the US 1:1 in any case, but I'm not sure I'd designate either as a collapse.

Im just taking it from Americans. I’ve never visited and maybe I best stay quiet. But the HN trend with these things is always to say “the whole world is like this”

No no it’s not. The US is lagging behind on many indicators. Another world is not only possible, it actually exists.

>Are you using "collapse" to mean "noticeable degradation"?

Do you believe that the Roman Empire never "collapsed"?

Probably every historian would agree that it did, however that collapse took centuries to complete.

Why do you think more taxing would fix it when we are already near the top of per capita spending per student?

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

Might not help there, I’m not an expert. I just said it because Americans will come in and say “there is no way”. Sorry, there is another way and Europe lives in that other way.

US public education (pre-college) is sorta similar to US healthcare: they spend the most per-capita in the world, and get, on average, very poor results.

Am I reading these charts correctly? They seem to be showing relatively high spending on education and health care compared to other countries.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

https://www.statista.com/statistics/281589/countries-with-hi...

The health care system is problematic not because it’s not well funded but because parts of the population can’t access it?

I have bipolar and I know online communities where the Americans with BPD talk about not being able to afford their meds.

It is not sufficient to merely fund something, you have to competently execute on it too. The US education system has more than adequately funding, but suffers from terrible administration.

On top of that schools are tasked with too much stuff. On top of general education, schools have to deal with child hunger, child abuse, mental well being, gender and sexuality issues. These should all be separate government provided services. Do we want our teachers to be educators or social servants?

Sounds like the public school system is being made into a scapegoat. Very easy to say “public schooling is broken” when you’ve assigned it 500 tasks and funded it for 10.

> Yet European nations that are not as rich as the U.S. seem to be having issues but doing ok on healthcare, infrastructure and public education.

They seem to be having issues with at least pensions, healthcare and public education

People keep speaking about "Europe" as if it's not 44 nations and many more languages and peoples.

the united states has a similar land area, similar number of states, over 500 sovereign constituent nations, two widely spoken languages, with largely unrestricted travel and trade within. europe does fund and coordinate social investments that involve multiple states. it's a useful comparison

It is definitely not reasonable to say that Europe is having trouble with public education or pensions or infrastructure.

sure it is. many aspects of the continent are subject to federal governance, and before that was the case, much of the social and infrastructural development was interdependent due to support+direction from the us in the west and the soviet union in the east

Federal governance?

No idea what he’s talking about. It seems to be a thing in right wing groups now to talk about Europe in this way.

infrastructure too: they have the same problem with old bridges, with a few recent collapses and many closed to freight; they have an ongoing energy crisis; they have coastal cities in both the north and south where the flood risk is both more imminent and more potentially destructive

You wouldn’t even need to raise taxes to improve some of these programs. Just stop spending such an absurd amount of money on the military.

The US doesn't spend that much on the military in terms of percentage of GDP. Compare it to other developed nations, and it looks pretty average really.

The US already spends more per-capita on students than any other nation. The problem is not funding. Throwing more money at the problem isn't going to help.

> The US doesn’t spend that much on the military in terms of percentage of GDP. Compare it to other developed nations, and it looks pretty average really.

All of the countries with higher GDP share in military expenditures than the US are in one of the following groups:

(1) Middle Eastern countries, (2) Non-Western-aligned former Soviet Republics, (3) Greece, Pakistan, and Morocco.

Of 145 countries with data, the US is #15. It is #3 in the G20, #1 in the G10, #8 of 48 among “high income countries” – with Greece and 7 Middle Eastern countries making up the top 7. It is nowhere close to “pretty average” among “other developed nations”.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/mil_spend_gdp/

> The US already spends more per-capita on students than any other nation.

Funny that shift from percent GDP to make your (false, even with that standard) claim about US not having high military spending, but shift to per capita rather than per GDP for education spending. On that, the US is merely fairly middle of the pack for developed nations, with 3.2% of GDP in primary/secondary education, compared to 3.1% OECD average.

The American social contract is broken. Government services are utterly broken, not just due to incompetence but because taxing the rich is seen as anti-capitalistic.

If it were not for the strength of the dollar, the US would have been no different from a third world country. Crony capitalists, uneducated populace, politicians lying to said uneducated populace, corruption at all levels (there is county-level lobbying too), healthcare is inaccessible to the average person and the homeless and prison population is greater than the population of some US states combined

This was part of series of Sunday morning posts in HN [1].

[1] A 'Science of Reading' Revolt Takes on the Education Establishment (nytimes.com): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35589013

Some comments here and in the Reddit thread suggest a lack of respect for authority which is causing several downstream problems. This especially makes sense in a country where more and more people distrust the government (authority) or any authority outside their community and their kids pick up on this. I’m all for questioning authority (you should!), if you’re sending your kids to an educational authority though, everybody will get more out of it if you respectfully do so.

The US has worked so long as people were and/or felt they were getting rich, or at least had a shot at it. Everything, including education, was designed around getting rich: being a good worker, being a good consumer, consume current product, excited for next product. Can't afford it? Here is cheap credit.

As people no longer feel that they are getting rich, america will increasingly stop working.

Ironically, love of money is the only thing we americans still have in common:

https://archive.is/FYZtc

We live in a society.

This is the most insightful comment about American society I think I've ever read.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com